Page 4 of For Real

Because I knew what he meant. I understood exactly. And I’d felt it too, that interior certainty. But over the years, I’d let all the fervour fade. I’d stopped believing in it, somehow. I’d let it become something I did, not something I was.12

And then I was suddenly deeply, uncontrollably sad. For this boy who might become me.

His still-clenched fist swung into the air, not quite a full Scarlett O’Hara but nearly. His whole body was practically vibrating with frustration. “I know what I want. I really know what I want. I just don’t know how to get it.”

That sounded all too familiar as well.

“You’ve never…?” I asked, with a futile attempt at delicacy.

“Well, there’s the internet. And I’ve messed around with boyfriends or randoms or whatever. But”—his words came too quickly now, their honesty its own challenge—“it’s not right, or enough, or something. Basically, it’s not what I want. It’s not even a little bit like what I want.”

I needed to walk away. Leave the young knight to chase the questing beast on his own. Maybe he would even find it. Plenty of people apparently did. “What do you want?”

His head came up. God, his eyes. In a few years…in a few years I didn’t like to think what someone with eyes like that might do to me. Or make me do.

“What I don’t want,” he said, “is someone like me. Like, what’s the point of that, y’know?”

He was silent a moment, chewing at his lip, hands shoved into his pockets. I had no idea what he was thinking, but it seemed to be quite a big deal to him.

So I waited. I waited for him. As I hadn’t for anyone in years.

I didn’t know what I was expecting. Some kind of blurted confessional. Not what he gave me, which was his unwavering gaze and his utter conviction. “I want someone like you.”

It felt as though he’d pulled the entire universe out from under my feet, shaking me loose and into a terrifying free fall. So I tried to make light of it. “Someone far too old for you?”

“Someone who knows who he is, and acts like he owns the whole fucking world.”

Ah. “Look, I…” I blushed. I actually fucking blushed. “Look, um, I don’t…really switch. At all. It’s not…my thing. Not that you aren’t—”

“God, no.” It was almost a relief when he cut over me. Almost. “Not like that. I’m not interested in that. I’m a dom.”

It should have been ridiculous. It was ridiculous. A skinny nineteen-year-old with his adolescence still written on his skin. I nearly said, You’re not a dom, you’re a child.

His expression grew sheepish, and I was glad I’d held my tongue. “Well, thanks for not laughing. It’s the best reaction I’ve ever got.” He sighed. “I’m so confused. I don’t know what to do.”

This was officially beyond me. Telling him to go home, I could deal. Being sort of bluntly hit on, maybe. Giving him a spontaneous personal, social, and health education class in the middle of a BDSM club, absolutely not.

“It’s like,” he went on tormentedly, “you’re not allowed to be a dom until you’re forty and six feet tall and own your bespoke bondage dungeon. But I’m probably not going to get any taller, and forty is forever away, so what the hell am I supposed to do now?”13

“I have absolutely no idea.” I’d been with Robert, and we’d somehow figured it out together.

“I just want to know what it feels like, y’know?”

“What?”

“Anything. Any of it. Something really basic. Like”—he drew in a deep, surprisingly steady breath—“I want to know how it feels to have some guy on his knees for me. And not a kid. I want a man, a strong, hot, powerful man, doing it because he wants to and because I want him to.”14

When I’d thought he’d be stunning in a few years, I was wrong. He was stunning now.

He twisted both hands into his hair until he was all edges and angles, fingers and wrists and elbows. “I think about it all the fucking time. When I jerk off at night. But I’m so bored of the fantasy. I want something real. I fucking need it. I need to know how it really feels.”

I didn’t know why I did it.15

Maybe because he was beautiful then, so earnest and vulnerable and unafraid.

I couldn’t believe that lack of fear. It gave me vertigo, as though he was the edge of a cliff and I couldn’t bear the view.

Or maybe it was because Robert was there, Robert and his lover, and I’d never done this for anyone but him. I’d been with others, yes, but I hadn’t given them what I’d given Robert.

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