Page 7 of In Her Own Way
Jessica Bennett:Yes, I would like to talk to you about this. Can we meet on Monday? I have cafeteria duty during period 6; we could talk there.
She had to pick her battles. She didn’t appreciate the fact that this particular one had been forced on her.Be assertive, not aggressive, a mentor said once. There was a fine line between the two and she had to find where it was. She reread her response. It wasn’t aggressive, even though she wanted to tell both of them to take a flying leap. Didn’t they understand how overwhelmed she was as a newbie teacher in a very competitive school? Didn’t they understand that as a teacher new to the school taking away one of her planning periods for cafeteria duty was a severe handicap? And didn’t they get that she was still learning the school culture and had yet to find a friend there?
Jessica groaned and hit send. She shoved her school laptop and the six-inch stack of worksheets she would grade over the weekend into her messenger bag. She then grabbed her coat making sure she had her phone and keys, then flew out the door.
Jessica pulled into her parking spot at the top of the hill near the road and walked down the sloped driveway to the two-story house. She rented the entire bottom floor from an older, widowed woman who lived on the second floor. The cool thing about the house was that it was built into the side of a hill, and both women had first-floor access. Jessica had to walk along the side of the house and down a few steps to get to her apartment from the back door. The backyard was a bit overgrown, but her landlady’s son mowed it on the weekends. She could mow it; she was perfectly capable, but she wasn’t going to offer since she knew it would end up being a freebie chore for her. At age thirty-one, she was still having trouble establishing boundaries and saying no. She was too nice, one former Domme had told her. She needed to sturdy up that backbone. Too bad the real world didn’t have safewords you could yell out to stop something in your life.
“Hey, Herrera,” she said once she got in the door and locked it behind her, “I call red. Stop making me do shit I don’t want to do.” She laughed. “As if.”
Excited meowing pulled her worries right out of her head.
“Hi, baby girl,” Jessica said, her heart filling. She dumped her overfilled bag on the kitchen table and scooped up the meowing cat. “I know. I know,” she said as she squeezed the furball in her arms. She kissed the top of the cat’s head three times and then put her back down on the old but durable linoleum floor. “You know the rules, fuzzball. I get changed, and then we both eat.”
Half an hour later, Jessica was in her sweats, plopped on the living room couch, facing the television. Her long dark brownhair, a gift from her father’s Greek heritage, was pulled up into a messy bun to get it off her neck. A TV tray was set up in front of her with last night’s leftover takeout, General Tso’s Chicken, from the highly recommended Chen’s Chinese Place. Misty, having snarfed her dinner, was on the carpet licking her chops and taking a bath. She’d be in Jessica’s lap soon enough.
Jessica lifted her glass of white zinfandel. “Here’s to a restorative weekend.” She laughed. Most people would wish for a “fun” weekend or something like that. She hoped for that, too, of course, but the thing she really needed was to rest and recharge. Her outing at Dominique’s tomorrow evening was integral to that plan.
She took a forkful of dinner and then powered up her home laptop. She never used her school laptop for anything personal. No searches, emails, or website visits. Her personal and school life? “Oh, ‘East is East and West is West, and never the two shall meet,’” she said out loud, quoting the Rudyard Kipling poem.
She opened her internet browser and went straight to her go-to website,Kinks.com. She cleared through the dick pics in her message box as she ate. She was oblivious to that crap by now and simply deleted the nonsense.
“Ahh, we have a new member application for theSapphic D/s Relationshipsgroup. Let’s see.” She clicked open the request and was immediately slammed with male energy. The name alone, Luscious Lesbian, was enough to turn her stomach. Just in case, she took a quick perusal of LL’s page and, sure enough, barely hidden thirsty male.
“Denied,” she said gleefully and tapped the remove button. She loved the group she had created a couple of years ago. She wanted it to be a safe space for her sapphic sisters to interact about their particular proclivities. Male energy was icky. Hetero energy was sometimes icky, too, but they had their spaces onKinks.Kinkswas drowning in it. This washerspace. No one was going to mess with it.
She dove into the group site to see if anyone had started a new chat topic or responded to any old ones. “Yes,” Jessica said, raising both fists in triumph. “You go, girl.” Rachels_Toy had a new story out.
Rachels_Toy:Hey, y’all. Another new chapter has been uploaded to my page. I wonder what mischief and mayhem our lovable submissive Muriel has gotten herself into this chapter. Hints? Nah. Go read. It’s good for you. LOL. Link in the next post.
Rachels_Toy:Click HERE for Chapter 32.
Jessica responded underneath RT’s post.
Juicy_Babe:Love it, RT! What a perfect way to start the weekend. I’m looking forward to reading it.
And shewouldread it. In a bit. Maybe some one-handed reading before bed, perhaps? Absolutely! She perused the group site for a while, Misty now in her lap, but wasn’t feeling that core satisfaction she sometimes got onKinks. No, notthatkind of satisfaction, that would be later in her bedroom and hopefully again at Dominique’s Dungeon tomorrow. What was missing tonight was the sense of connection and belonging she craved. Tonight, she just felt lonely.
She sighed. Maybe there just weren’t too many sapphicly-inclined women onKinks. Or maybe, and she was leaning this way, just maybe everyone was paired up and in relationships already and didn’t need a place like her group to unwind and mingle.
Whatever.
With another sigh, she decided to get another chat topic going. Maybe someone was out there this weekend.
Topic:We Love Our Mascs and Studs
Question:Is there a difference between “male” energy and “masculine” energy?
“Fuck it,” she said and posted a second new topic.
Topic:How Do You Say, ‘No?’
Question:How do you say no to something you just don’t want to do or know how to do? How do you let the person (Domme/Boss/Family member) know that you just aren’t interested?
With yet another sigh, she closed her laptop and clicked on the TV. She was so behind on her favorite singing competition show,Voices Discovered. She settled in and accepted the fact that, at age thirty-one, she was a cat lady, home alone on a Friday night.
Chapter 3
Victoria
