Page 29 of In Plain Sight

“I don’t mind messy, either.”

He made a sound that could have meant anything.

“What are you in the mood for?” I asked. Might as well get the ball rolling, so to speak.

“Um…”

I tried a different tactic. “Do you want it to be like last time? Or do you want to try something different?”

“Maybe different?”

“Have you ever used safe words?”

“No. But safe words over the phone?”

“It’s just a precaution,” I assured him. “Sometimes it’s easier to use safe words than it is to say no or tell someone that you’re uncomfortable.”

“That makes sense,” he said slowly. “So do I pick a random world like Rumpelstiltskin to blurt out?”

I huffed out a laugh. “You can. Or we can use the stoplight method.”

“Is that like red zone, green light?”

“I’m not sure what that is.”

“It’s this thing we did at my old job during a seminar on boundaries. We were told to create a space around us that was our red zone and to say ‘red light’ to anyone who got too close and breached our zone. Then we were supposed to say ‘green light’ when they were far enough back.”

“Something tells me that didn’t have the effect your bosses thought it would.” I grinned. “If we did that at my workplace, everyone would spend the next week getting right up in everyone’s business and making a sport out of seeing how far they could make someone back off to get to the green zone. And yelling ‘red light’ any time someone asked them to do something.”

“That’s pretty much what happened at my job.” He laughed. “We had to sit through another seminar on professional behavior in the workplace. You can imagine how well that one went over.”

I laughed. “I’m so glad my work doesn’t do that sort of thing.”

“My new job doesn’t, thank fuck. Although I do miss the donuts.”

“Donuts?”

“The seminars were the only time management would bring in donuts for us. I guess they thought that filling us with carbs and sugar would placate us enough we wouldn’t complain about not getting paid to be lectured by a corporate video.”

“You didn’t get paid? That sounds illegal.”

“Probably was.” I could practically hear him shrug. “We didn’t get overtime or anything either. Didn’t matter if we had to stay three hours after closing, we were only paid from when the doors opened to when they were locked. They scheduled us to start a half hour before the place opened, but we weren’t allowed to clock in until five minutes before or clock out any later than ten minutes after, even if we stayed late.”

“That’s wage theft, which is definitely illegal.”

“Yup. One of the many reasons I don’t work there anymore. But enough about my shitty job. My dick is hard, and I want to do something about it.”

I laughed. “How about we finish setting our safe words, and then we can get started?”

“Yeah. Okay. We were talking about stoplights?”

“The stoplight method,” I said, picking up the thread of our conversation. “That’s when you use the colors of the stoplight to get your message across. Green means everything is fine and you want to continue. Yellow means you need a break or to pause things, or you’re not sure about something. Red means an immediate stop. I’ll still listen if you say no or stop or anythinglike that, but this will give you another way to communicate if you need it.”

“That sounds simple enough.”

“Do you want to use the stoplight method?”

“Yes.” He paused. “My dick is really hard right now, just an FYI.”

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