The Good Girl's Secret

I've been a paralegal for eighteen years. Same firm, same desk, same slightly dead plant on the windowsill. I'm the one they hand the messy files to. The one who catches the typos. The one who remembers which judge hates being called before ten.

Good girl. That is the entire reputation. At work, at home, everywhere.

And lately? Lately it's been suffocating me.

You know that feeling when your life fits so well it doesn't leave any room to breathe? That's me. Tuesday nights are lasagna. Thursday nights are climbing gym. Sunday is laundry and calling my sister. I'm forty-two years old and I could tell you what next March looks like. It looks like this Tuesday, only colder.

My boyfriend Sid doesn't see it. Or maybe he does and doesn't know what to do about it. He's forty-four, coaches high school wrestling, built like a fridge with a gentle voice. We met three years ago at a climbing gym. He spotted me on the wall, I dropped my harness on his foot, and here we are. Living in a quiet suburban house with a worn leather couch and a long mirror he bought at a garage sale for reasons neither of us has explained yet.

He's a good man. That's part of the problem, if I'm being honest with you. Good men ask permission for everything.

So. Tuesday. Lasagna. We ate at seven, watched half of a show neither of us cared about, and went to bed around ten. The sex was fine. It's always fine. He touches me, I touch him, we both finish, he falls asleep first. A well-run machine. A quarterly report.

I lay there in the dark afterward, staring at the ceiling, and I don't know what got into me. Maybe the lasagna. Maybe the dead plant.

"Sid," I whispered. "You awake?"

He made a sleepy noise. Then, "Yeah? You okay?"

"I want to stop being good for one night."

Silence. Long enough that I almost laughed it off.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I'm tired. I'm tired of being reliable. Of being the good one. At work, here, everywhere. I want somebody to just... take me over. For one night. Tell me what to do. Make me not be in charge."

He sat up. I heard the sheets. In the dark I could just make out the shape of him facing me.

"Alise," he said, and his voice had changed. Lower. Careful. "There's something I've wanted to tell you for a long time."

"Okay."

"I think about tying you up. Having you completely under my control. Every part of you, mine to do with what I want." He stopped. "I've never said that out loud to anyone. I was scared to. You're so good and so soft and I didn't want to scare you off. I figured you'd think I was a creep."

I lay there and felt something unlock in my chest. Relief, mostly. Huge, dumb, flood-the-basement relief. Three years of wanting the same scary thing, both of us sitting on it like polite idiots.

"Sid. I've been waiting for you to be a creep."

He laughed. Actually laughed, and the tension in the room cracked a little.

"Come downstairs," I said. "I don't want to have this conversation lying flat on my back like it's a doctor's appointment."

We ended up on the leather couch in the living room, both of us in robes, the soft lamp on. Cold feet on cold floor. Real conversation energy. Sid sat with his elbows on his knees, looking at me like he was about to give a halftime speech.

"Okay. Rules first," he said. "We talk about it before anything happens. We agree on a safeword. If you say it, everything stops, no questions, no sulking. I mean it. Everything stops."

"Yes."

"And we start slow. Tonight doesn't have to be everything."

"Sid."

"I'm serious."

"I know you're serious. You've been serious since we met. Pick a safeword with me and stop stalling."

He smiled at that. We batted a few words around. "Red" felt obvious. "Meatloaf" made us both giggle for a solid minute, which is a terrible thing for a safeword.

"Clock," I finally said. "If I say clock, you stop."

"Clock. Deal." He took my hand. His grip was warm and steady, the grip of a man who has held a lot of scared wrestlers through hard matches. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Are you sure you want this? Truly? Because once I start, I'm going to mean it. I'm not going to check in every five minutes and ruin it for you. You tell me tonight, clearly, that you want me to take charge, and then I take charge. I ask for that permission and then I use it."

God. The way he said it. My stomach did a slow flip.

"Yes. I'm giving you that. Take charge. Use it."

"One more thing. This is your first time doing anything like this, right?"

"First time. Same for you, I think?"

"Same for me. So we're both idiots learning together." He squeezed my hand. "If it's awful we laugh about it and never speak of it again."

"Romantic," I said.

"Standards," he said.

You have to understand how strange this felt. Eighteen years of being the competent one. The one who anticipates. And here was my gentle, lasagna-making boyfriend asking me, in plain words, to hand him the wheel. I wanted it so bad my hands were shaking a little.

"Last chance to bail," he said.

"I'm not bailing."

He stood up. He seemed bigger suddenly, which is a stupid thing to say about a man I share a mortgage with, but there it was. He pointed at the floor in front of the couch.

"Take off the robe. Then kneel on the rug. Hands behind your back. Eyes down."

I stood there a second longer than I needed to. Not hesitating, exactly. Savoring.

"Did you hear me?"

"Yes," I said.

"Then go."

I let the robe slide off my shoulders and dropped it on the couch. The air on my skin made me shiver. I knelt on the rug, the fringe scratching my shins, and laced my fingers behind my back. Eyes down. The pose felt bizarre and enormous, like I'd stepped off a ledge.

I could hear him breathing. I could feel my own pulse in my throat, fast and loud. This was it. The ledge. And God help me, I wanted to fall.

He circled me once, slow. I could feel his eyes on my back, my shoulders, the back of my neck. He didn't touch me. That was somehow worse and better.

"Look at you," he said quietly. "My good girl. On her knees."

I felt my face go hot. In the best way. In the way where the heat goes somewhere useful.

"Sid," I started, and his hand came into my hair, not pulling, just resting there. Heavy.

"That's coach," he said. Then a pause. "Too much?"

I thought about it for real, down on the rug with my hands locked behind me. Too much? No. Not even close.

"No. It's not too much. Coach."

"Good." His fingers tightened slightly in my hair. "Here's how tonight goes. You do what I say. You don't decide anything. You don't anticipate anything. You just take what I give you. If it gets to be too much, you say clock, and I stop. Otherwise, that mouth of yours only opens when I ask it a question. Understood?"

"Understood. Coach."

"Yes, coach."

"Yes, coach," I corrected myself, and he made a low pleased sound.

He walked around to face me. I kept my eyes down like I'd been told, which was its own kind of agony, all that wanting and no permission to look. I could see his feet. Bare feet on the hardwood. I could see the hem of his robe.

"Stand up," he said. "Slowly."

I got up. Knees cracking, because forty-two, and he made a small amused noise at that, which should have ruined the mood and instead made me feel