Page 1 of His to Teach
HARPER
This is such a terrible idea.
That’s really all I can think as I stand in front of the dark facade of Club Wyld, trying to find the courage to either go inside or go home. Going home is sounding more and more like the better option. At home I could take off these heels. At home I have ice-cream.
As if somehow sensing my wavering determination from our apartment across town, my best friend Emma chooses that moment to text me.
Are you in yet?
I’m not sure if I should be relieved or annoyed by the message. On one hand, it buys me some time to stay out here on the sidewalk, where I’m safe. On the other hand, I know Emma isn’t going to leave me alone until I step through those heavy wood doors.
I type out a response.Yes, I’m inside. It’s wonderful and exciting and everything you said it would be and I’m being very charming and vivacious and not at all awkward.
Only a few seconds pass before she responds.Liar.
I shiver. It’s unseasonably cool for a late August night in Charlotte, North Carolina, and my jacket feels thin. Or maybethat chill I’m feeling has nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with my nerves.
I type out a response on my phone.I’m still outside. This was a terrible idea.
The device trills in my hand. Emma. I bring it to my ear, bracing myself for the lecture I know I’m about to get.
“Harper,” she says in a familiar, exasperated tone. The tone that just screamslook at what I have to put up with.“You’re being silly. Just go inside.”
“I really don’t think I’m up for?—”
She raises her voice to be heard over mine. “You’ve been wanting to go for weeks. Months, even.”
She has a point. I scuff the toe of my heel against the pavement. “It sounded a lot less scary in my head.”
“Scary? You’re a grown-ass woman. You can go into a nightclub.”
A nightclub. Yeah, right. Club Wyld is a nightclub the same way the Pacific Ocean is a bit of water. This place is so far beyond the limits of a normal nightclub they shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same breath. And Emma knows it as well as I do.
She switches tactics, going for the guilt angle. “Do you know how hard it was for me to get those passes? Wyld is the most exclusive club in Charlotte.”
“Yes, Em. But the key word there is passes—plural. You’re supposed to be here with me.”
I can practically hear her rolling her eyes over the phone. “I’m very sorry my pneumonia is putting a damper on your kink exploration.”
I groan. It’s bad enough that Emma knows about my predilections when it came to Club Wyld’s offerings—and I can blame some poor decision making over a pitcher of margaritasfor telling her that—but does she really have to mention it? Out loud?
It doesn’t escape my notice that the fact I’m uncomfortable even talking about it with my best friend is probably pretty good evidence that I’m not ready to walk into that club.
“Listen,” Emma says, her tone gentler now. “Think of this as research, right? Wasn’t this kind of thing the whole basis of your senior thesis last year? Kinky fucking and the people who enjoy it?”
“Sexual Counterculture and its Impact on Relationship Structure,” I correct. “But yeah, pretty much.”
“So get your ass in there and observe some counterculture, babe,” she urges. “And if you find someone who’s interested in scratching that itch you’ve been trying to hide all these years, even better.”
I don’t really have an argument for that. Iaminterested in studying the behavior I’m sure to see beyond those doors. I’ve been researching the subject for years and plan to really devote my studies to it now that I’m in the sociology master’s program at Denby University. But there’s only so much you can learn from books. The scientific part of my brain yearns to get in there and talk to people, to observe, to find out what makes them tick, why they like the things they do.
WhyIlike the things I do.
I push the thought down. My own sexual desires have nothing to do with this. I’m an academic. A social scientist. Maybe if I can just focus on that I’ll be able to find the courage to walk inside.
Emma’s words flash through my mind.Someone who’s interested in scratching that itch.
No. Nope. Stop right there, Harper Cain. That is not what we’re doing here tonight.
