We pulled into the parking deck across from his office. I hadn’t realized the time had gone by so quickly. Because he liked getting to work rather early, we were one of the few cars in the deck.
I looked at my watch. Still three hours until my meeting. I decided I’d either stay in Nathaniel’s office or go shopping or something.
“Are you coming up with me?” he asked.
“For a few minutes,” I said. “I was thinking I’d head down to the coffee shop in a little bit. Not sure I’ll get any coffee, though. My stomach is all queasy again.”
He walked around to my side of the car and helped me out. “Abby,” he said, taking my hand. “You’re an intelligent, hard-working woman. Don’t let nerves get the best of you—you’re too good for that.”
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s just hard sometimes. I haven’t done this in a long time.”
He kissed my hand. “You’re going to do great.”
I spent about an hour in his office, talking. He had a few ideas for the fund-raiser he wanted to run past me and I gave him my thoughts. The location we’d used in previous years wasn’t available this year and he had to find a new one.
“I have got to find someone to take over running this,” he said, meaning the entire nonprofit, not just the fund-raiser.
“You’ve been saying that for years.”
“I know,” he said, rubbing his forehead. “But I really mean it this time.”
I just laughed. It was his pet project and he’d have a hard time passing the reins over to someone else. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Watch me,” he said, and I had a feeling he might be serious this time.
He stood up. “I have a meeting I need to attend. Are you going to stay here or go out?”“I think I’ll go out. Maybe grab a cup of coffee?”
“Let me know how it goes.” He kissed me softly on the lips. “You’re going to blow them away.”
“I hope so.”
After he left, I told his admin good-bye and I walked to a local coffee shop to pass the time. The place held quite a bit of history for me. Years ago, Nathaniel had met me here after I walked out on him. It was in this shop, in a back corner booth, that he confessed everything to me and I decided to take him back.
I took out a paperback I’d brought, but after reading the same page over and over, I gave up and put it away. One of the waitresses stopped by my table and asked if I’d like a refill. I drank half the cup before picking up my pen to write.
Nathaniel had told me I couldn’t start on his assignment until I’d meditated, so I couldn’t work on that. The suggested pieces Meagan asked for were complete. I tapped my pen against the table before I took my third fantasy and wrote about it in more detail.
The scene was so vivid, it was as if the bustling shop around me disappeared while I wrote the interrogation. Interestingly enough, I found I wasn’t able to write the part I’d described to him about gagging on his cock.
Why? I wrote.
I thought about the question. Why could I write the entire scene, but not that part? It couldn’t be because we hadn’t done it. I’d written and fantasized about a lot of things we hadn’t done. That was one of the points of a fantasy, wasn’t it?
I wrote a few paragraphs about fantasies. The freedom they gave us. The flexibility. But none of that helped me answer my question, so I stopped and made a note that I could add more information and use it for a blog post.
Maybe, I thought, my inability to picture that part of my fantasy had little to do with me and more to do with him. I jotted down why that could be: his hard limit on breath play, fear that he would hurt me, and my uncertainty about what he would do. Nathaniel was too real and I knew him too well to even fantasize about him doing something he considered a hard limit.
Spurred on by my possible revelation, I starting writing down things I knew about him. A few things I noted were just words: strength, passion, and caring. Others were sentences: he doesn’t complain when I buy cheap artwork from antique stores simply because I like the shade of blue the artist used, and he knows how to make the best hot chocolate. By the time I lifted up my head to glance at the time, I had completed three pages. I giggled, picturing him rolling his eyes if he came across my list. I folded the pages together and closed the notebook. I needed to leave in a few minutes.
My phone vibrated with an incoming text and I smiled when I saw it was from Nathaniel.
So proud of you. Love you and can’t wait to hear how the meeting goes.