Page 1 of Learning to Change

Chapter 1

Dean

“I’m pretty sure everyone is supposed to be completely sober when they do BDSM shit.” Glancing over Tate’s shoulder, I couldn’t resist peeking at Joel who was stretched out on the couch giggling to himself.

My grandmother had a higher tolerance for alcohol than he did.

“Who said that?” Tate scoffed, pouring another screwdriver.

He only drank “girly” drinks, but he was the only one of the three of us who’d have a chance of out-drinking Grandma.

Who had said that?

I shrugged. “The internet?”

He snorted. “They also think that we need to invade Area 52 and that Elvis is still alive.”

“One.” What was Joel giggling about?

“Huh? This is like my third.” Tate shrugged, looking at the bottles on the counter. “Maybe fourth? Do you remember?”

“No, it’s Area 51.” And when he couldn't remember what drink he was on, we were done with booze.

“That’s what I said.” He rolled his eyes like I was being ridiculous. “How much have you had to drink?”

“Less than you, moron.” Sticking the orange juice back in the fridge, I took a second to put the rest of the bottles away to make it harder to get more booze. We weren’t lushes, but once everyone let their hair down things, had a tendency to get out of control.

Wait. If we didn’t have long hair, could we let it down?

Was that just for girls?

“You always have less than me.” Shaking his head and still surprisingly steady, Tate wandered over to the couch and sat down like he was sober as a church mouse instead of three sheets to the wind.

Possibly four sheets depending on how sheet math worked.

“Because someone has to make good decisions.” And once I went beyond fuzzy-brained, I didn’t like alcohol.

Besides, I could make bad decisions sober, so I didn’t need any help in that department.

“Bad decisions are always the best ideas.” Joel finally stopped giggling long enough to be thoughtful. “The weird guy downstairs said so.”

Great.

“We’re not using any of them as the standard for what to do.” The whole building was insane. “We’re smarter than that.”

Most of the time.

“You’ve got to be kidding?” Tate was looking at me like I was an idiot. “We’re just as stupid as they are. We were just stupidly uninformed too.”

No more booze for him.

“I don’t know how they were raised, but I had kiddie limits on all my devices until I was a freshman in college, and my parents’ talk on the birds and the bees didn’t include BDSM.” Thankfully, they’d never been surprised that I liked guys, so the birds portion of that lecture had been very short.

“Wait.” Joel frowned. “Why are the birds the girls?”

“Um, because bees have stingers?” Tate grabbed his generously sized stinger through his sweatpants.

Why he needed the hand gesture to get his point across I wasn’t sure.

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