Page 1 of Degrees of Control

Chapter 1

Charlie Bell examined the party unfolding in front of her, torn between exasperation and wonder. Over a hundred people were dancing, drinking or tucked into dimly-lit corners chatting. Glamorous women sipped champagne from crystal glasses while well-groomed men swigged micro-brew straight from the bottle. Sophia Hunter’s enormous house glowed with long tangles of Chinese lanterns and flickering pillar candles. A hardwood dance floor had been installed and four margarita machines were dispensing tequila cocktail slush like it was tap water. The event which Sophia had insisted would below-keylooked like a cross between aGQafter-party and Mardi Gras. Charlie should have known better from a woman whose engagement party had featured both live doves and a chocolate fountain.

Whether Sophia’s fiancé, Parker objected to the money spent on this so-called ‘mid-season softball function,’ Charlie didn’t know. This party, which bore no relationship to their crappy softball league, had been orchestrated by Sophia solely so that Charlie could get a look at a rebound penis.

It had been budgeted for three hundred dollars, which meant pizza and beer, not oysters, black tie and what she was pretty sure was a professional DJ. At least this charade explained the dress. Sophia had insisted she ‘borrow’ her blue silk halter. Considering she was a foot shorter than her friend, the dress fit Charlie, suspiciously well and was low in the front and non-existent in the back. Not exactly something a girl wore to a friend’s barbecue.

Sophia’s planning frenzy also explained the make-up artist who’d stormed her apartment this afternoon. One minute Charlie was minding her own business eating almond butter from the jar, the next Gloria from ‘Glorious Beauty’ was raiding her house like the goddamn FBI. She had pinned Charlie to a chair, curled her hair, painted her face and plastered horse-like eyelashes over her human ones, all while talking at a hundred miles an hour. When the makeover nightmare was over, Gloria was as proud as a dog groomer with an award-winning spaniel, but to Charlie it felt like a disguise. Surely any guy she flirted with would sense the desperation seeping from her gigantic eyes and flushed mouth? Not that she even remembered how to flirt. She could win people over, convince them that touching their toes was an achievable goal, but casual sex wasn’t something she’d ever been good at, even before Dale.

Amidst a boiling Melbourne summer, Charlie had fallen for a wiry, Theroux-reading musician. After a few months of dating, Dale had somehow inserted a message into a fortune cookie and given it to her. The note read‘for happiness eternal, go with your soulmate to America.’ Dale was the kind of free-thinking guy Charlie had been worried didn’t exist, so she ignored her family’s cries of “it’s too soon” and caught a seven-forty-seven to the land of the free. Via Dubai.

Her first month in Minneapolis were a dream. All she and Dale did was play house, have sex and eat quinoa. His friends were charming and Dale’s straight-laced family accepted her instantly. They were the perfect, environmentally-friendly couple. Then she accepted a full-time position at a yoga studio and joined a local softball league and everything changed. Her new independence connected with the well-concealed tripwire of Dale’s jealousy and he went fromlovertocustodianin a heartbeat. Not that she realized; Machiavelli could have taken pointers from Dale.

Her boyfriend never accused her of encouraging men, he asked if she felt rude not flirting back. He never said she dressed like a slut, he just implied her clothes were too tight and offered her money for new ones. Whenever she confronted him about this behavior Dale always managed to convince her she’d misinterpreted his words or that she was overreacting because she was tired or homesick.

It was ridiculous, embarrassing even, but for months Charlie didn’t even realize she had to justify every crop top and girls’ night out. The silk of their relationship tightened so imperceptibly that by the time she realized she was in a straightjacket, her limbs had already been bound to her sides. Dale wasn’t her soulmate, he was her crotchety old Grandma Bell, forever telling her to put on a sweater because her large breasts would make men think ‘unseemly things’ and she didn’t want that, did she? She wasn’t an attention-seeking gutter whore, was she?

She might have stayed longer, too ashamed to admit she’d fallen for such a cruel man, but one fateful evening a guy spilled a drink on her at a bar where Dean’s band was playing. The spiller apologized, bought Charlie a new sparkling water and they spent a few minutes chatting about the weather. It was then that Dale had spotted her and dragged her away as though she were a child playing too close to an unmarked van.

“The fuck do you think you’re doing?” he’d hissed, his breath hot with vodka. “It’s not enough that you’re here dressed like a slut, you have to embarrass me by flirting with some random guy too?”

He went on for a while then, about how she was always eye-fucking other men, shoving her tits in their face and laughing too loud at their jokes, and she thought,wow, I’m in an abusive relationship. This is what an abusive relationship is. I’m being abused by a guy who has a Planned Parenthood bumper sticker.

She then waited until Dale ran out of steam, took a deep breath and told him he was living proof a man could be a veganandan asshole.

She’d left him that night. It was a risky move for a broke yoga teacher in a foreign country but her friends helped make it easier. Jordan drove her home from the bar at two in the morning. Sophia let her crash in her guest house for three weeks. Hayley wrestled her belongings away from Dale who was attempting to hold her yoga bag hostage.

The separation was awkward and messy but it was over, and once she was free of Dale, Charlie felt like she could see everything clearly again, perhaps even better than before. All her life she had chosen safe, or in Dale’s case, deceptively safe guys, steering clear of the scary, authoritative men that made her knees shake. She enjoyed vanilla sex, but whenever it was happening her mind ran thoughts of being taken and controlled like dirty films on a continuous loop. Her cookie cutter relationships were self-preservation, but they were also cowardly. She’d never really evolved beyond the shy, desperately horny teenager she’d once been. The too-busty nerd who dreamt about being tied up and screwed by handsome super villains.

Dale, spectacular jerk though he was, taught her a valuable lesson—that even when you played it safe you could lose and lose hard. So what was the point of playing it safe? Charlie had never been able to marry her sexual needs with her peaceful, tree-hugging self, but in a new country, with a new life and new friends, she’d thought it was probably time to start.

She invited her friends around for a special‘thanks for rescuing me’dinner and with shaking hands confessed her kinky secrets. She expected Hayley, Jordan and especially Sophia to be horrified but instead they’d been curious and wildly supportive. That night Charlie had the best, most wonderfully open minded conversation about sex she’d ever had. It turned out Sophia liked having her hair brushed, and Hayley was crazy about anal. Jordan once dumped a guy for not letting her sit on his face. They’d laughed and swapped stories and readMy Secret Gardenaloud until Charlie realized her fantasies were pretty minor. None of them involved dogs. The relief of confession alone was exhilarating, but she had an ulterior motive; there was no way her friends would let her forget what she told them. They would force her to take action.

As it turned out, Sophia, Jordan and Hayley took her dilemma a little too seriously. They began debating kinky hook-up tactics as heatedly as they ever debated the pre-game lineup. Hayley suggested an app that located BDSM sex partners by proximity, but Charlie felt that plan contained a high risk of post-coital strangulation. Jordan recommended fetish clubs, but Charlie didn’t want to yell at men over ear-splitting music. They offered exes and known players but no one could vouch for sexual competence. Hayley slyly suggested a male escort. Unsurprisingly, it was Sophia, the corporate sales executive who formulated the solution. She planned a house party and, using a military-grade drafting system, invited every single handsome guy in Minneapolis.

So here Charlie was, lurking in the doorway of Sophia’s house, witnessing her own personal man buffet come to life. Despite the insanity, the atmosphere was perfect; intimate and classy with just enough seductive influence to suggest anyone could get laid if they played their cards right. The way people were already grinding away on the dance floor, they actually might. Wouldn’t that be ironic? A party for her vagina and she came too late to score.

“Darlin’, you look amazing! What kept you so long?”

A low southern accent snapped Charlie out of her reverie. Gliding across the dance floor toward her, immaculate in shimmering pink, was Sophia.

“Sorry, Soph, I caught the bus.”

“In that dress? You’re a crazy woman. I asked Gloria to drive you!”

“Yeah, I wasn’t bumming a ride off that make-up Nazi. You could have warned me about her, by the way.”

Sophia smiled. “Then you wouldn’t have let me send her over. Anyway, never mind that, you’re here now and you look fantastic.”

“So does this place. It’s like something out of the Roaring Twenties.”

Sophia flipped her hair like the former beauty queen she was. “Thanks sweetie.”

“Charlie!” Strong arms wrapped themselves tightly around Charlie’s waist. “You’re here!”

She turned to see Hayley had thrown herself on her. She was holding a strawberry margarita and her rumpled red hair and shining eyes suggested it was far from her first. “Hey lady.”

“Hey, Hails.”

---