Open Doors (Suncoast Society #27)(45)

“It makes you human,” Marcia assured her. “Completely, utterly human.”





While Derrick paid their check, Mel went to the restroom. Marcia used that time to confer with her husband. “My instincts are telling me what’s going to happen.”

He slowly nodded. “You can offer her our spare bedroom, if she needs it, if it even comes up. Let’s see if she can knock some sense into Mike first. It’d be a shame for him to let fifteen years slip away just because he’s happy in his damn rut.”

“Selfish bastard,” she muttered. “I thought he was better than that.”

“Don’t be so quick to judge. I know she’s your friend, but there’s always another side to things. You know that. He might surprise us all.”

“Should we invite them over for dinner?”

“Play it by ear. Offer it to her, if she wants. Maybe hearing all of this from someone else will help him.”

She arched an eyebrow at Derrick. “You don’t sound convinced.”

“Because I’m not. You know the odds as well as I do.”

Back at the club, the evening was just getting started. There were already a few people there, including their friends from dinner. Derrick left Mel in Marcia’s capable hands and went to go check on things in the office and to make sure nothing had been overlooked.

Mostly, he wanted to give the two women privacy. He suspected Mel would need to talk to Marcia.

The odds were, when one partner “came out” as kinky and the other not only didn’t, but resisted the change, it wouldn’t end well at all. Having the couple over for dinner to talk wouldn’t be much help if Mike didn’t want to try to change and meet his wife at least halfway in the middle.

It wasn’t uncommon for the resistant partner, who’d grown quite comfortable in their rut, to get angry and dig their heels in even farther. They took their partner’s revelations as a personal affront to how they’d been living their life, or they took it to mean their partner had been lying to them all of those years. Sometimes both were true, sometimes neither.

In the few rare cases he’d seen where the vanilla partner allowed their kinky partner to get their fix on, even then some of those had eventually flamed out. The ones who had survived and thrived as a result of the compromises, however, were almost always happy ones. As the vanilla partner grew more comfortable and realized they were getting a happier partner as a result, it allowed them more freedom to relax and realize it was a good thing. Every once in a while, the vanilla partner ended up joining in, in some small way, and having fun, too.

But…

When he finished in the office, on his way over to the kitchen area he glanced at the table where Marcia and Mel were now sitting and talking. Mel was watching Kel preparing to suspend Mallory as Marcia obviously narrated the process.

The look on Mel’s face, the complete recognition that she was finally where she belonged, nearly broke Derrick’s heart.

He knew that look.

And he knew it meant their friend would wade through an emotional ocean of crap before emerging on the other side of it. He wished he could spare her that journey, but it was one that countless others had made before her. She would survive it, too.

There were no shortcuts, no matter how easy he wanted to make it on her, or on any of them.





By the end of the evening, Marcia sensed the quiet resignation in her friend. “I’ve been doing this for ten years now,” she told Amelia. “Well, we’ve been running the club for ten years. We’ve been involved in the lifestyle longer than that, pretty much our whole time together. I’ve seen nearly all of the most common options play out. And I can see it in your face.”

There were still a couple of people playing, but it was less than an hour before closing time. Amelia looked sad. “I want to be happy. I’ve forgotten what it’s like.”

“Life is way too short not to be happy. Believe me, we’ve seen that personally.”

Mel nodded.

“Anything else you want to ask?”

“Yeah. How good is your friend the divorce attorney?”

Marcia laid a hand over Mel’s. “He’s very good. And we’ll be there for you. You’re not alone.”

“I have a feeling I will be alone when Mike gets done talking to all my friends and family.”

“You’re not. And you don’t know if he’ll try that or not.”

She snorted. “No, I know. I feel it. I wish I was wrong, and I’ll still try, but I feel it.”

“Well, if he does, and they abandon you, it proves they weren’t good friends to start with. This group, they’re like a family, and they’ll welcome you in with open arms.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I am. I’ve seen it happen before. The people who walk through these doors become adopted family.”

“Well, what do I have to lose?” Mel said. “I’m miserable now, and it won’t change unless I change. All I can do is try, and if he fights me, that’s it. I can’t live the rest of my life like this. Maybe he wants to, but I don’t. I feel like I was bait and switched in my marriage. He was completely different, worked to get me, and once he had me, he just…gave up trying to keep me. I’m not asking him to swing from the ceiling, I just want him to snuggle with me, make love to me. Hell, act like I’m more than a f*cking roommate!”