Page 52 of Mark my Words

“I’d like to touch your true self,” I smirked, and she threw more popcorn at me.

It was moments like these when we were alone and just talking to each other casually that I found myself wanting more from her. Sitting in the same room with her wasn’t as tension-filled as it had once been. We didn’t need to talk to fill the silence, but I was comfortable sharing parts of myself with her.

Occasionally, she’d even reveal trivial things about herself and her childhood, and it made my heart hurt thinking about this lost little girl, raised by nannies with two parents who ignored her until it suited them and a brother who made it a point to be horrible to her on a regular basis. I tried not to react to the things she’d told me, just being an ear to listen, but it still made me angry. She’d developed a thick armor, hiding away the best parts of herself, and I found myself resenting her family for how emotionally guarded she’d become.

“What?” she asked self-consciously as she caught me continuing to watch her from across the table.

Shaking my head, I leaned back in my chair, forcing myself to concentrate on our work. “Nothing, you just seem relaxed today. It’s nice.”

“Are you getting soft on me, Spammy?”

“No, don’t worry,” I teased. “No getting soft over here. I know you’ll go back to criticizing how I insert my notes in the margins any moment now.”

“You know I don’t have any issue with your insertion techniques,” she winked.

Her mind was such a curious place for me. One minute she was playful and making borderline dirty jokes. The next minute she was pinning me to the wall, practically tearing off my pants and telling me to shut my mouth. Then there were other times when I could see the shutters slam down, and she’d actively keep me at a distance no matter how much I tried to show her that I enjoyed her company.

Studying the notes already marked in this scene, I shook my head at some of the sentences Adrian had left in the margin.

Adrian: Do you realize the connotation of the nickname Fanny outside the US? It seems a little sexually suggestive, not that I’m opposed to it.

Looking over at Kristine, I highlighted the note and turned my laptop so she could see my screen. “Did you see this one?”

“Hmm?” she hummed as she pulled the earbud out of her left ear. She typically had one earbud in when we worked together. I had no idea how she could read and listen to music simultaneously and still concentrate, but it worked for her.

Using my stylus to tap on the note, I watched as she read it, holding back a laugh at the loud sigh and eye roll that followed.

“He really does not understand irony, does he?”

“You think they named her that on purpose?” Evan was infamous for looking up the meanings of names to develop his characters. Still, I could see Adrian’s point on this one. The slang equivalent for pussy in the UK was fanny, so they’d effectively named their female main character after a vagina.

“Have you met Chase? Of course, this was intentional. She probably thought it was hysterical to name the character who uses her sexuality as Frances does after the female genitalia.”

“Evan’s pretty anal about knowing what his characters’ names mean.”

“Anal,” she giggled.

“Have you looked up what her name means?” I asked. Out of habit, I looked up the main character Frances and her submissive, Dominic. Her name meant ‘free one,’ and his meant ‘of the Master.’ Those seemed fitting for a Domme who was very free with her innate sexuality and her long-term submissive who was very devoted to his Mistress.

“Hold on...” I watched as she pulled out her phone. “Hmm. Okay, I can see it. But Adrian is still an idiot. Chase made that her nickname because it probably made her laugh. They could have called her Franny or something similar, but they didn’t.”

She continued to look down at her phone, typing something else onto the screen. “Pffft.”

“What?”

“Do you know what your name means?” she smirked.

“Yes.” And I knew why my parents named me that. My dad had been desperate for a son and begged my mother to have one last child before he got a vasectomy. “Name of God or heard by God.” My mother felt God answered my dad’s ongoing prayers for a boy while girly girls surrounded him.

“That’s a little much.”

“Well, yours can be interpreted as a follower of God, so...” I laughed as I looked down at my phone.

“You’re not a god, Sam.” She rolled her eyes but kept typing. “And I’m hardly following you, but your last name is hilarious,” she giggled.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up.” In English class in my senior year of high school, we had a unit on Onomastics, which was the study of naming things. It frequently occurred in literature for authors to try to use intentional naming of characters, items, and places to add depth. My last name had been an endless source of entertainment for my classmates with its suggestive connotations. It was bad enough that we lived near a small town called Climax, MI, and discussed all the different meanings of that word in the same unit. Plus, my middle name was Ethan, which means firm. So there were endless jokes about my firm long wood for months afterward.

“I don’t know, Sam. Maybe there is something to this naming thing. It seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Wonder if all the Langley men have long wood?”

---