Girl In Pieces by Jordan Bell

neighbors I will always be shaped like a pastry.”
    She smiled, the look of sadness vanishing as quickly as it had come. “At least I am in good company. Have fun. Make sure he pays for dinner or he doesn’t get to visit second base. Don’t do anything that could get you arrested.”
    “Sound advice. Happy baking.” I started to push my door shut when her voice piped up from behind her wall of groceries.
    “Hey Kat? If he’s boring, run the other way no matter how nice he is about it. If he bores you to tears, that’s as good as it’ll ever get until you can’t even remember what excitement feels like. Trust me. Nice isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.”
     

 
     
     
     
EIGHT
     
    I arrived at the restaurant Le Chat early with the idea that I’d case the place before deciding whether or not to go inside. It was upscale, way more than I could afford.
    His ad whispered to me.
    How can we please each other, my little pet ? Can we talk? Can we kiss? Can you accept my control? Can you obey happily? Can you let go enough to learn? Would you like to be taught? Would you like to be mine?
    Yes, yes, yes.   I daydreamed for hours before responding. He was poetry, promises of pleasure, offers of unconditional, temporary love and that was enough to bait me. That tiny, whispered promise was all I needed to be all in because the man I longed for had a tarty redhead between his sheets instead and that was starting to really piss me off.
    The writer behind the ad emailed back before midnight. He felt confident and sweet. He wrote like he’d majored in English Literature and everything he said seemed intimately familiar, like song lyrics.
    When he said, I know you’re nervous. Me too. But we can figure this out together , I felt like he had crawled inside my head and made himself at home.
    And yet, Julie’s words haunted me. I couldn’t turn off my skepticism completely. She’d doubted Tyler because of the way Josh had been so cavalier with dismissing my heart. This stranger had no such motivations to take care of mine, so why should I trust him not to wreck it totally?
    But, I reminded myself,   you’re not giving him your heart. Just your body .
    He gave me his information and I sent it to Julie. She made me promise to text and call her every 20 minutes. I promised to take pictures of him when I arrived and send them to her.
    He told me that he only liked the lifestyle in bed and afterwards he wanted someone he could have a nice conversation with. He wanted someone he could see movies with, cook for, hang out with on a Friday night without getting undressed. He wasn’t looking for a long term, serious relationship, but he was willing to commit as long as we met each other’s needs. The fact that he chose a restaurant called The Cat without knowing my name made me both excited and terrified. Maybe this was serendipity after all.
    I’ll be the nervous man at the table by the window. Wear something purple. It’s my favorite color.
    The skirt I wore was black. So were the knee high boots, but the thigh-high socks were the purple of his choice. I also wore a purple see-through shirt over a black cami. I felt cute, maybe more cute than I had since the disastrous party that ruined my life.
    I paced outside for fifteen minutes before going in and by then I was barely on time. He was already there, by the window, fiddling with his phone.
    He looked up as I approached. I felt his eyes take me in, all of me, straying along the lines of my body and hovering along the curve of my hips. My Dom was young. His age surprised me, mostly because it had taken all my power of self-denial to stop picturing versions of Josh when I pictured this man in the days leading up to our date. He looked maybe 24 and had close cut dark hair and glasses. He looked like a nervous accountant. Or Clark Kent. Not a Dom.
    Nothing like Josh.
    But then he stood up and reached for my hand and when his fingers clamped down around mine, a surge went