Jonna's Fantastical Sexcapades

26. Make Up or Break Up?

"What happened?"

Jonna spoke the words to herself, though she rather would've posed it to Laney. But she hadn't seen Laney since before the blindfold descended over her eyes.

Jonna stumbled out the front door of the massive house. She hopped on one foot, stopping to slip into her other shoe.

The wind howled, dirt sailing above the gravel driveway. A slight woman waited on a bench near the porch.

"Hey!"

But when the woman turned around, the features were all wrong. And it wasn't Laney.

"Sorry, never mind."

Jonna gingerly sat on the porch steps. She reached for her phone in her pocket with shaky hands. She clenched and unclenched her fists.

To herself, she asked again:

What happened?

Flashes of recent events hit her---Roaming hands that belonged to a stranger. Laney's voice reassuring her. The knot of the blindfold on the back of her head, the ropes anchored on her wrists biting into her skin. Then it was over.

Afterward, Jonna had dressed in the empty room. She then stepped into the hallway filled with more strangers. Downstairs onstage, a Black man bound in cellophane struggled on his back while a dark-haired White woman posed on his face. Hours before, Jonna wouldn't have stopped for such a scene. Now, it was the second show, and it felt like she was watching the thirtieth iteration. She recognized that the pill someone had pressed to her tongue upstairs had impacted her judgment.

In a haze, Jonna drifted toward the stage for a closer look. The man's muffled moans became more intelligible as Jonna watched. Finally, she understood that he insisted, "Harder!"

The woman acquiesced.

A White woman with blonde hair in a fish net dress placed a hand on Jonna's shoulder. As Jonna focused her eyes, she realized the woman had nothing on underneath her very see-through dress.

In her mind, Jonna pictured reaching out to explore the stranger's body while a crowd gathered to watch them.

That's when Jonna had left to go outside.

~*~

On the porch steps, Jonna stared at the phone screen.

- What happened?

The words were far from complicated, but if she hit send, things were likely to get complicated.

She had never been in an open relationship, if that's what she could call her experience. Since she and Laney weren't strictly an item, Jonna decided they hadn't crossed any sort of line. In effect, they'd participated in a mutual and group sexual encounter.

Encounter.

The word fit and didn't fit with what had happened.

Once more, Jonna contemplated the on-screen message she had typed. A silver sedan pulled up. The driver signaled at Jonna, and she deleted the text before hurrying to the car.

~*~

"---- What about next week's assignment?"

"Um." Jonna struggled to respond to the student question. Instead, she reviewed the incoming messages on her phone. "Uh, let's touch on that next class. Pass forward your in-class writing, and have a great rest of your day."

Her announcement was met with many blank stairs. After a few moments, the students complied with a shuffle of papers, zippers opening and closing, and mumbles about the assignment calendar.

Canceling class was rare, with good reason. Jonna regretted her impulse to dismiss, but taking it back was impossible. She was partially excited that instead of 20 more minutes of class discussion, she could sit in her office and review her mostly empty inbox.

Maybe today.

Laney had not called or texted. Neither had Jonna.

Based on their last interaction, she was flummoxed on what to say or how to approach their next conversation.

Engrossed in such thoughts, Jonna failed to notice the vibrations from her phone while strolling to her office. With every click clack of her flats hitting the tile floor, she considered how silly she was for not reaching out first.

Her phone slipped from the haphazard stack of papers and folders she clutched to her chest. Before it fell to the ground, she caught it, accidentally hitting the ACCEPT CALL button when she did so.

"Hello?"

A disparate and teeny voice sounded from the phone. Jonna fumbled to hold it to her ear while balancing the folders and papers in her arms.

"Hi. Who is this?"

A pause. A sigh. Then:

"It's me, Laney."

The stack of papers and folders tumbled to the ground in a grand cascade.

"Well, hey," was the only thing Jonna could think to reply.

"Can I come over later to talk?"