SS NYM Ch 8

“I’m impressed,” Meri says. “This deserves a closer look. I’m going to put you down for a follow-up if you’re OK with that.”

“Absolutely,” the woman sitting in the other chair says with a smile and a nod, putting her materials back in her bag. She’s a pretty blonde, about the same age as Meri’s mother. Meri gets to her feet, and the blonde rises as well.

“It was good to meet you,” Meri says, offering her hand. “Annette, right?”

“That’s right. Thanks for your time,” Annette says warmly.

Meri watches the receptionist showing Annette out. It’s done.

Meri made her choice. As she leaves the building and climbs into her Uber, she shudders at the thought. Maybe that’s why today was so uncomfortable, on top of everything else: she’s had to make difficult decisions before. This experience reminds her of that.

But she knows better than to avoid things that bother her. Avoidance doesn’t make things better. Meri’s first job was in fast food, and she had feared working the register. She did everything she could to avoid it. Older and wiser, she knows that was a mistake. The smarter move would’ve been to work the register as much as possible. Getting good at things makes them less scary.

This internship will be the same way. Meri will get used to it and it will be OK. That is, if she didn’t just get herself and Athena burned.

But she also didn’t factor in an extra meeting, so she’s behind schedule.

Back at Athena’s apartment building, Meri rushes through the lobby to the elevator and jabs the button to call it. Upstairs, she finds Colby wearing a robe with her hair wet and the apartment smelling delicious. So Colby, at least, is on schedule.

“You’re late,” she says as she lets Meri in.

Meri feels as though she just fought a war and ran a marathon, but this is just a normal day. And there’s no way that Colby can understand the pressure. So it doesn’t bother her that there’s no acknowledgment of what she’s been through.

“I know,” Meri replies, grabbing Colby for a cursory smooch before dashing off to shower.

“How’d it go?” Colby calls after her.

Meri looks back and hesitates. “It’s a lot,” she says. Three minutes later she’s clean, wet, naked, and tangled up with an equally naked Colby as they try to implement a plan that made sense on paper.

“It’s wrong. It’s wrong,” Meri repeats. “Turn around.”

They have two big spools of soft, red ribbon. The idea is to wrap each other up with them erotically, in a vaguely shibari-like way, but without binding any limbs so they can still move. It’s harder than it looked in the TikTok video.

“Why is this not working?” Colby asks. “It worked in the video.”

“She didn’t move in the video,” Meri tells her. “We just have to, uh, move carefully.”

“Great.”

They make it work, finally. Now, both are tied with bows that will theoretically unwrap them with a single tug. It was a lot of work, but as Meri watches Colby bend to get something out of the suitcase, she reflects that it was worth it.

“We should take pictures,” she suggests.

“No!” Colby says, her eyes getting wide.

Meri had been kidding. Colby tosses her a frilly apron, which Meri ties on. Before they can look each other over, Athena’s key is sliding into the lock.