Growing into the Job, Post 576: Melissa Returns, p1

As gray as it was, the late-afternoon sky was the slightly-off color the city got after a crisis - too bright, too clear, like everything had been washed in cold water. Or maybe that was just her vision, which had been improving, letting her see details other people couldn’t.  Melissa walked out into the parking lot of Far Horizons with her coat - even in the chill, she didn’t need it - over one arm and her purse hanging limp from her shoulder. The breeze hit her skin and she realized she’d been sweating, unusual for her, for over an hour.

Her footfalls felt heavy. She forced herself to step more lightly, gently. Don’t dent the pavement. Don’t shake the sidewalk. You don’t need to draw more attention, she thought...though - from the building, from others in the lot - she could feel eyes on her. She always did, now. Fine.

She got into her hulking, deep-magenta SUV, the Behemoth XX, carefully, slowly, like it might snap under her weight despite its enormous size, and closed the door with two fingers instead of her whole hand. She had learned to do that earlier this week. The integrated AI, which sounded much like her own voice, greeted her warmly.

The electric engine started with a soft hum. She sat there for a few seconds, breathing, eyes focused on nothing. Then she pulled out of her parking spot - I’m going to ask them to put up a sign for me - and began the slow drive home, to her mother’s house…to him.

The streets around Far Horizons were still congested from the building lockdown - traffic lights blinking yellow, roadblocks half-disassembled, police drones hovering, pedestrians gathering in little clusters. Talking. The news team was on the corner, filming. She caught the look of a young guy at a crosswalk staring at her car as she slowed: wide-eyed, jaw slightly parted, phone subtly raised. She pretended not to see it. She used to smile, or even wave when men looked at her like that.

Not right now, though. No need to encourage it. That’ll come again later.

The city began to roll past her window in a blur of reflective glass and faint afternoon sun. The misty rain had stopped, and there was a now a hint of shine through the clouds. Her friends’ voices - Lakshmi’s, Randi’s, Shanette’s - rolled through her head in pieces, pieces of the conversation as they’d discussed their next steps, her next stage of growth.

“What if all this - your promotions, your new powers, your growth, your future - what if it could become even greater if Squirt isn’t fighting it?”

“What if he…helps?”  

They’d talked of the bomb scare.

“Some men out there will not want to feel like they need a protector. Some will fight. Some will try to tear down what women are building.”

“Some will need harsher handling.” 

That had brought her a dark thrill.

“But that is not your job today.” “Let us worry about that, for now.”

They told her what she should do. They were her friends, and they were right. They gave her one mission:

“Go home to him.” “Go be a protector. Be the woman he loves.”

Melissa tightened her grip on the wheel, not enough to crack it. She checked. Her breath fogged in the car for a moment - still too warm, too fast. She turned the AC on.

She kept hearing that question, Randi’s:

“What if he helps?”

It echoed in the same place in her chest where fear or anger usually lived…but this wasn’t that. It felt like a door unlocking. She saw a mental image: Jay’s small hands, tiny now, pressed to her chest, his face tilted up toward hers, not afraid. Not afraid of her, not afraid of the future. Choosing her. Wanting her. Wanting what she could become.

Her breath stuttered, and she remembered what the girls had said:

“You’re becoming what he needs you to be.” “And what if that’s good for both of you?” “What if it’s good for everyone?”

And then, even: “What if all this doesn’t work unless he chooses it?”

A shiver went through Melissa so strong she had to check her speedometer again. She’d drifted ten miles over. She eased back down.

The city glowed gold in the early evening light - billboards, car windows, puddles on the sidewalk making fractured mosaics of the dim November sun. She could see her own reflection in the rearview mirror for a second.

She looked different.

Not just bigger - though that was obvious now in every line of her face, the cords of her neck, the breadth of her shoulders. But something in her eyes. A weight. A focus. Something gathered.

“People are watching you,” Lakshmi had said earlier, “Not just here, but around the world.”

She could still feel that truth vibrating under her skin. She’d seen it happening, over the past several weeks. On patients’ faces, on strangers outside. On the men on social media, the women too.

Icon. Ideal. Blueprint.

The words the girls had used floated in her mind like embers.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to be any of that. But she wasn’t sure she didn’t.

The Behemoth rolled to a stop at a red light. Outside the window, two young women on electric bikes drifted past. One glanced in through Melissa’s windshield, made eye contact, and immediately straightened her posture, nodding back at Melissa. Melissa blinked at that. She hadn’t seen that before.

The light turned green.

“Icon. Ideal. Blueprint.,” she murmured aloud, testing the words on her tongue, “Protector.”

It felt…right. Heavy, but right.

Not a monster. Not a captor. Not the girl who tied her boyfriend up because he scared her.

A protector.

What if that could be me?

Lakshmi had said it herself:  “Can you go home, untie him, and not pop his head like a grape?”

Melissa had choked on a laugh at the time, embarrassed, but - Yeah. Can I?

She thought of Jay’s face earlier - fear mixed with something else she didn’t want to examine too closely. The way he flinched when she raised her voice. The way he looked so small, so fragile, so - 

Her fingers tightened on the wheel. She forced them to relax.

The girls had asked her: Could she protect him without smothering him? Could she hold him without hurting him? Could she be big without being dangerous?

I’m not sure. But I want the option to be.

She wanted him to look at her and not be afraid. She wanted the world to look at her and not (necessarily) be afraid. She wanted to be more, for him, for all of them.

And for herself.

She turned onto the street that led to her mother’s house. Quiet. Tree-lined. Familiar. Her heartbeat rose - not the violent thudding from earlier, not the growl under her ribs from rage, but something softer, warmer, more thrilling - even scarier - in a different way.

Hope.

She pulled into the driveway. It was a big house, elegantly contemporary, a purchase her mother had made once she’d come into the money from her research. But right now the house looked…small. Smaller than it used to. And then into the garage. She turned off the motor. She sat in silence.

Her hands trembled once, then steadied.

She opened the car door, the metal hinges groaning slightly under her weight, and stepped out, careful on the cement floor of the garage.

Melissa stood for a moment, breathing the cool air, letting her friends’ voices swirl back through her chest - gentle, grounding, guiding.

Go home to him. Be the protector. Be a bigger person.

Slower. Softer. Calmer. She stepped to the door that would lead into the house. Her hand closed around the doorknob, mindful of the pressure. She turned it. And stepped inside.

The house felt different the moment she stepped in.

Not dangerous. Not hostile. Just…off. As if the air pressure had shifted while she was gone. Melissa paused just inside the mudroom, one hand on the doorframe, coat still draped over her arm. She hung it up on a hook. The house was quiet but for the hum of the refrigerator, the tick of the automatic thermostat sensing her entry, the faint creak of the beams settling overhead. Her senses were sharper than ever lately. And they told her something had happened.

She swallowed.

“Jay?”

She kicked off her shoes. Bare feet whispered across the floor - she could be light in them, when she wanted. She moved through the kitchen, to the front atrium, up the stairs deliberately. She had done this walk with Jay in her arms just hours earlier in a far different, more agitated state of mind. 

I can do this. I’m not a crazy lady. 

Her heartbeat was a steady thrum in her ears, not panicked, but heavy with anticipation. The girls’ voices kept looping through her mind.

‘Go home to him. Be a protector. Be a bigger person.’

She exhaled through her nose, grounding herself, and pushed the door to her bedroom open.

Who had closed this?

The smell hit her before the sight did. Not the sour, panicked scent from earlier - this was different. Stronger. Concentrated. Rich. It made her eyes flutter. Melissa froze in the doorway, her breath hitching...

Something must’ve…happened. He’d orgasmed, since she’d been gone. It was in the air, plain as day to her heightened sense of smell. How had she not sensed it, when it happened? Where had been the energy, the Squirt, the Bliss?

Her eyes took it all in quickly.

Jay was still tied to the bed. Still blindfolded, mostly, though the sports bra she’d tied around his face was half-askew, revealing one sleeping eye. He was still bound wrist and ankle to each bedpost, her bras stretched taut, binding him. Grandma’s thin knit blanket was half-covering his lower body, messily. Had I put it on his legs like this earlier? I don’t remember doing that. How had it gotten there? But Melissa’s stomach fluttered with another realization:

He was smaller. Noticeably smaller.

For a second she thought her vision was playing tricks on her again, the way it had been different lately, seeing colors others couldn’t. No, though. His limbs looked shorter relative to the bedframe, his torso and legs lifted inches above the mattress where the tension of the straps now held him suspended. He looked…weightless. Frail. Out cold?

“Jay?” she whispered.

No response.

She stepped in fully, careful, deliberate. The floor creaked under her, and even that soft sound felt too loud. Her pulse fluttered.

“What happened to you?”

She reached the side of the bed, her shadow falling over him. He was breathing - thank g-d - shallow, steady, unaware. His face was half-covered by her sports bra, clinging damply to his skin. The knot had loosened slightly, likely from movement, but not enough to fall away.

Her chest tightened. Someone has been here. Someone has touched him. Someone has done something.

Her first instinct was fury - hot, protective, immediate enough to make her sharp nails dig crescents into her palms. But right on its heels came something else. Something deeper and older, a trembling, fragile ache in her throat.

He’s so small.

The smallest she had ever seen him.

And despite everything - despite what he’d said earlier, despite the fear in his voice, despite the panic she’d caused - seeing him like this made something inside her fold inward, but then blossom. 

He needs me. He needs me more than ever before. 

Her hand hovered over him, inches above his bare, soiled chest, aching to make contact. Her fingertips tingled with heat, with strength.

“I can’t hurt him,” she whispered to herself, “ I won't. But g-d…”

The way he looked now - suspended, shrunken, held up only by the tensile strength of her bras - made her pause. A shiver ran up her spine, confusing in its intensity. Pleasure, excitement, yes - the thought of holding him, even smaller in her arms. Something more complicated though, too: a pride tangled with fear, responsibility knotted with longing.

Her breath came out trembling. She couldn’t stop staring at him - at how little he looked, how utterly helpless, how easily she could likely lift him with one arm now. Maybe - it sent another shiver through her - even one hand. She flexed that hand, still hovering over his chest, marveled at how easily it spanned his ribcage. So big, I’m so big compared to him…

She bit her lip, looked down at the already semi-turgid cock lolling onto his belly. He may be asleep, but it knew she was here. She felt her hand drifting down. She could…

No. Stop. Be calm. Be…good.

She pulled her hand back, but the truth vibrated in her bones: If this is what I’m becoming…what does that make him?

She reached out again, slower this time, fingertips now brushing a lock of hair that had escaped from under her sports bra. He didn’t stir.

Melissa swallowed hard.

Something happened while I was gone, yes, she thought, Something I need to know about. Plus, he needs to be made to realize running away was wrong. I need to show him h-

The guilt hit her like a wave - swift, cold, bracing. She steadied herself against it. She looked him over - frail body, stretched into an ‘X’ across her bed. Dirty, probably cold. She took grandma’s knit blanket - who cares if it gets dirty - and pulled it up more fully over him, covering the mess and the erection that soooo wanted her. She could be strong, though. The girls had told her: They believed in her.

Calm is good. Control is strength. Trust is sovereignty (whatever that means). She could do this. She could be all of it. Protector. Partner. Role model. Heroine. Something more. But first- 

She licked her lips, heart pounding again.

“Jay…” she whispered, leaning down carefully, bringing her face close without touching him. Pheromones began to flow from her, something to rouse him. “Sweetheart? Can you hear me?”

She stopped just before her fingers touched his face.

And waited.

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