And as this is my dream job, I figured I could put up with him for a year, seeing as he’s a senior and will no doubt graduate at the end of it. Because that is one good thing about Nathaniel Black IV—he’s brilliant. Top of his class. Star athlete. Everything about him is perfect. Scarily so. Obsessively so. Aside from my degrees to become a librarian and a teacher, I took extra courses in psychology because I found the subject fascinating and even halfway considered becoming a school counselor at some point. It was easy for me to spot the clear signs of OCD in the young man. But having basically been muzzled when it came to this particular student, I kept my observations to myself.
His school uniform is always pristine. I once saw a food fight break out in the cafeteria, and he stormed out after something got on his shirt. He changed into a clean one he obviously kept stowed in his locker for such an occasion. He aligns his textbook, notebook, and three pencils just so at his place, at the same exact seat he sits in every study hour. He wears a pencil behind his ear between classes, as if to always be prepared in case he has to write something down in the hallway. Not to mention he always pushes in all the chairs every day as if he can’t leave the library until it’s back to the way he found it—the way I had it. I thought about testing a theory, leaving chairs out before his study hall group comes in to see what his reaction would be, but I found myself hesitating, as if afraid to catch his look of disappointment in me or something.
Which is utterly ridiculous. He’s an eighteen-year-old high school student. I’m a twenty-two-year-old woman with way more life experience than he’s had. Why should I care if anything I do disappoints him?
I will admit it was quite startling when Reese Trenton mentioned that it’s the quiet ones like me who are the freaks. Quiet, yes, but it’s taken years of therapy to come to terms with the fact that what I am is not freakish. If it weren’t for Dr. Walker, I’d be lost, thinking these feelings and urges inside me made me the freak Trenton spoke about. Thank goodness the bell rang and snapped me out of it before I could correct what I heard. Because speaking about personal and sexual things with my students is obviously a no-no.
I spend the next hour returning books to their shelves and sending out email notices of books being late from students. Today is Friday, and there are no afterhours available to students, so I get to leave earlier—3:30—than every other day at 5:00 p.m. I’ll open again early Monday morning as usual, an hour before school starts.
I love the fact that I get to go home early on Fridays. It gives me a chance to relax and prepare for the night at Club Alias, pretty much my weekly reward for getting through another five days as a functioning adult.
Oh, Club Alias. My happy place, my escape, my oasis. It’s the one place I can go and shed the worries of my daily life and relax. As soon as I walk through that door, it’s like the rest of the world just disappears. I’m no longer scared of my own shadow. All my anxiety fades away as soon as the darkly lit space swallows me up and I inhale the scent of leather and expensive colognes and perfumes. My hesitations disappear when I no longer have to make decisions for myself and allow the Doms to take away the responsibilities that weigh heavily on me. I let them make all the hard choices and just follow their instructions, trusting they’ll make everything good for me. As long as I’m a good submissive, everything always turns out wonderful. I don’t even have to think, just do. And since every single member of Club Alias has been vetted by a team of experts, including my therapist Dr. Walker, who is a co-owner, I trust every member wholeheartedly.
After the hour commute home, I lock my door behind me and hang my purse on the hook on the wall in the little foyer. I’m proud to say at twenty-two I own my own home. It’s a small two-bedroom house in a nice little town I’ve called home my whole life. When my parents passed away a few years ago, they left me a small fortune in life insurance policies. The giant house I lived in growing up held way too many memories and was entirely too large for just me to live in and take care of, so I downsized to this adorable place I’ve slowly made my own. Each room has been a fun project to makeover, with only my yard and the kitchen left to go.