Praise (Salacious Players’ Club)
Praise: Chapter 4

Charlie

Sophie is in heaven as the waitress places a serving of fried ice cream bigger than her head on the table. Meanwhile, my mom is next to me sucking down a margarita that’s even bigger than hers.

My sister offers me a spoon, and I take it with a smile. We dig in, barely breathing between bites of the sugary caramel vanilla concoction.

“Wow, Charlie. Thanks for taking us out to dinner,” my mother says with a tipsy smile. It’s nice to see her so relaxed. With the extra shifts she’s been picking up at the hospital, I know she’s been stressed.

“My pleasure,” I mumble around a mouthful of ice cream.

“Freeze brain!” Sophie shrieks, clutching her forehead. Mom and I laugh at her misspoken phrase, which she’s been using since she was a toddler, and we never had the heart to correct her. So we all call it a freeze brain now.

When I came home with five thousand more than I expected to, I immediately told them to get dressed for a dinner out. It’s Taco Tuesday, after all.

I didn’t bother to mention how I came to have the five grand, but it wasn’t important. As far as they’re concerned, the extra cash was just the security deposit, and that was that.

Why did he leave me his number?

Why would I need to call him?

And what is SPC?

I googled it. I came up with a lot of responses that didn’t seem helpful. There’s a Sicilian Pizza Cafe eight miles away from my house, though, so that’s good to know.

I zone out while shoveling ice cream into my mouth, thinking about the way he touched my cheek, how strangely gratifying it felt when he said that one word: lovely. He didn’t call me pretty or say, ‘you look nice.’ This was different. It was…approval.

What a ridiculous thing to feel so good about, some stranger’s praise. Not even a stranger, really. Beau’s dad. I get a full-body cringe every time I think about it. I mean, yeah, he’s a good-looking guy, but he has to be like…twenty years older than me. He’s literally my dad’s age. Double ick.

And what exactly was he praising? My face. I hate my traitorous body for how turned on I felt in that moment, but that’s just a natural reaction, right? Because I am a full-fledged, card-carrying, fist-pumping feminist. The last thing I need to be satisfied with my life is a man’s approval.

It just felt nice. That doesn’t mean anything.

And the fact that being on my knees for him was comforting is just ingrained generational misogyny. Thanks, patriarchy.

After mulling the situation over in my head, I’ve come to the conclusion that Beau’s dad thought I was a prostitute. It’s the only thing that makes sense. And, apparently, he’s into submissive sex workers, which is cool—I mean, to each their kinky own, right?

So why can’t I stop thinking about it? Why does my brain seem to think there’s something worth hanging on to from this experience? And why did he bother leaving me his phone number?

“To breaking up with Beau,” my little sister announces, holding up the last spoonful of ice cream like she’s making a toast.

“Sophie!” my mom scolds her.

“It’s okay,” I reply. Then I clink my spoon against my sister’s. “He wasn’t any good for me. It’s better to be alone than to be with someone who’s bad for you.”

The table goes silent, and the memory of my dad fills the air like an awkward fog. He left about a year and a half ago, because he couldn’t let his ignorance go. He didn’t approve of the way my sister lives her life, and his own stupidity cost him his family. But we’re better without him, something I remind Sophie of as often as I can.

When love becomes toxic, it’s not love anymore.

And then I went and stayed with Beau for far longer than I should have, three months after I caught him cheating, letting him talk down to me, making me feel like crap, and questioning everything about myself.

So, I can’t exactly blame my sister for wanting to raise a spoon to the breakup.

“You deserve better, Charlie.”

“I know,” I reply, staring at the leftover caramel and chocolate sauce on the plate.

“I think you dated a jerk because you think you deserve a jerk.”

I glance up at her, my brow creased in confusion. “Dude, you’re fourteen! How are you so wise?”

“I read smart books,” she replies with a laugh.

“Oh, then I guess I’ll have to show Mom your e-reader. Let’s see how smart she thinks Mating the Werewolf is.”

“What?” my mom asks, tearing her tipsy attention away from the ice left in her margarita glass.

“You brat!” Sophie screams, tossing her napkin at me. Her cheeks are tinged pink from embarrassment, and I can’t keep my laughter in.

Lying in my pool-house room that night, I can’t stop thinking about what happened today. Before cashing the check, I scrawled his phone number on an old receipt in my purse. I couldn’t seem to part with it yet. It’s held tightly between my fingers, and the tone of his voice rings through my ears like an echo.

Lovely.

There’s no way I could ever call him. That’s insane. I’m sure he was just giving this to me in case I needed help or wanted to keep in contact…because of Beau. It was totally a dad move. So I don’t know why my brain seems to be stuck on this idea that he wants me to call him for any other reason.

I toss the number into my trash bin next to my bed and turn off the light. But instead of drifting off to sleep, I replace myself tossing and turning for almost an hour. I keep reliving that moment over and over, where he called me lovely and stroked my face.

Let it go, Charlie.

But I can’t. And a minute later, I’m picking up my phone again. This time instead of googling SPC, I put Emerson Grant into the search bar. I don’t know why I was so afraid of looking him up earlier, but I think I was too nervous. If I knew too much about him, he’d get under my skin, so the less I knew, the better.

But right now, my curiosity won’t let me rest. So I’m going to scratch this itch once and then move on.

Those three letters, SPC, pop up first, just under his photo and the title, CEO.

I click on the link, and it goes to a black screen with a box in the middle, declaring this site Members Only. Well, shit. There’s a place to input a password, but I clearly don’t have one, so I backtrack.

Scrolling down a little farther, I keep digging. There’s information on him and his work history, a lot of vague details about his education, and a few dashing photos of him in his twenties and thirties, mostly in tuxes and at important-looking events. But it’s not until page seven of this never-ending Google search that I replace what I’m looking for. Apparently, someone else was curious too, and posted everything I’m dying to know.

Salacious Players’ Club. A dating, escort service, soon-to-be expanding operations to a full-service members-only club in California’s Briar Point district.

He owns a…dating service? And what the hell does a members-only club mean?

Clicking through post after post, I nearly drop my phone when I land on what looks like a soft-core porn site. It’s a blog titled: Madame Kink’s West Coast Escapades. The woman on the screen is wrapped in tight leather, holding a whip and a bone-chilling smile. Words like kink, slave, submission, bondage, and exhibitionism stare back at me on the screen.

“What kind of dating service is this?”

Suddenly, I’m twenty pages deep in a kinky rabbit hole, and I can’t stop clicking. Apparently, Madame Kink has some experience with Emerson’s…club, er, services, or whatever. And she has journaled her way through each interaction.

The SPC is a groundbreaking service in sexual liberation for both men and women. Finally, a place where we can explore our desires in a safe and healthy (and oh-so fulfilling) manner. Mr. Grant and his team are real pioneers, and I hope to see this club’s services spread across the country.

I have to gulp down the ball of nerves lodged in my throat. Am I dreaming right now? Something about all of this tells me this dating service doesn’t pair you up with people who also like to do yoga and take long walks on the beach. According to Madame Kink, people who like to be bound and gagged can easily replace other people who like to…bind and gag. Is this really what Beau’s dad does? My brain cannot seem to wrap around any of this, but I’m too far in now to discontinue my search.

Can’t…stop…clicking.

This blog is like a dummy’s guide to kink, and I scroll through a multitude of things I don’t understand. There’s extensively more to it than I ever thought, and there are a lot of things I’m a little too afraid to read about, but my eyes do catch on one thing in particular.

Praise kink.

Against my better judgment, I click on it. A page pops up with a woman on her knees and a man’s hand holding her by the chin. She’s staring up at him as if he’s God himself, and my stomach churns. That’s what I did today, wasn’t it? I let him put me in that position, and I liked it.

“Nope.” Quickly, I swipe the screen away and toss my phone on the nightstand. “Nope, nope, nope.” I am not that kind of girl, and I have absolutely no interest in replaceing guys who want to make me get on my knees while they call me pretty. Fuck that.

It’s almost two when I finally drift off to sleep, after putting all thoughts of Emerson Grant and Madame Kink and the Salacious Players’ Club out of my mind.

But apparently, my mind has other plans because my dreams are filled to the brim, reliving every moment in his office, the man in the suit replaced by Madame Kink herself, who then morphs into Beau. Instead of fighting against the act of kneeling, I actually beg for his attention. I’m clawing at his legs, chasing after him like a dog, but he only makes me feel worse, telling me how pathetic I am instead of how lovely.

It’s excruciating, but finally, everything changes when it’s Beau’s dad looking down at me. Even in my dream, I have some sense of awareness that this isn’t real and that it’s okay to like it because I will wake up eventually and no one will know.

Except in my dream, I want more. I reach out and touch the soft cotton of his slacks, feeling the muscle of his legs underneath. I fumble with his belt, staring at him from the floor. He strokes my head and overwhelms me with a feeling of euphoria. And I keep struggling with his belt, desperate to get his dick out. And just as I get the zipper down, I wake up.

My alarm blares on my phone, and I let out a groan. My body is a livewire, anxious and horny—not exactly the way I wanted to start my day. I seriously need help. Trying to have sex with my ex-boyfriend’s dad in my dreams…just lovely.