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September 11, 2025 – September 25, 2025
After the soup night, there was more silence.
Violet had gone to Jerry’s house on September 10th injured and walked into bourbon, Viagra, unfinished soup, and the admission that he had not been working. She had stayed anyway. They had slept together. He had bitten her hard enough to leave marks on her thigh while her ribs were broken, and the next morning, she had tried again to talk to him.
That was when he told her he had not read what she had sent him after Father’s Day: the clearest thing she had written, the thing she had sent because he would not talk to her. September 11th was also his wedding anniversary, and Violet knew the day may have carried weight for him. She tried to hold that with compassion, but she also had to absorb the fact that the writing she had sent months earlier, the writing that explained what she wanted and what she was not asking for, had apparently sat there unread.
So she sent it again, not because she had suddenly found new words, but because the words she had already given him had never really been received.
Then she did not hear from him. Days passed, then more days. They did not see each other again for almost two weeks. Violet had once again put something honest in front of him, and once again she was left waiting to find out whether he would engage it.
Still, she kept the door open. That did not mean she had forgotten what had happened, or that the bite mark had stopped registering, or that the soup night had suddenly made sense. She sent messages that made it clear that she wanted to see him again. Suggestive, open messages, without making a demand.
She also knew that the anniversary of his grandfather’s death was coming up.
“I know you need hugs so do I,” Violet wrote.
On September 23rd Jerry invited her over.
“Come to the house after work?”
Violet did not immediately say yes.
“I’ll consider it.”
She had ridden Cindy to work that day. Cindy had become part of her life by then, part freedom, part joke. “I rode Cindy today it’s gorgeous out,” she told him.
Jerry answered with enthusiasm. “I can’t wait to ride Cindy again!! Glad you got to enjoy her today.”
Then the plan changed. “Can we shoot for tomorrow instead?”
Violet adjusted. “I can come over after therapy tomorrow.”
Plans shifted with Jerry, and Violet had gotten used to moving with them.
Jerry answered, “I’ll get the ropes ready.”
Violet teased him. “I get it you need time to practice.”
Later, she added, “And to finish your homework.”
The homework was the writing, the PDF she had sent after Father’s Day and then sent again on September 11th, after he admitted he had not read it.
The next morning, Jerry seemed ready. “I’m ready. What time do you get off of work?”
Violet told him she got done at five, but had therapy at six. She could be there around seven.
Jerry replied, “I’m going to be extremely hungry in 12 hours.”
“Same,” Violet wrote. “You’d better feed me more than Oreos for dinner.”
The last time she had been there, the soup he had promised was not ready until almost morning, and he had offered her Oreos instead of a meal.
“You’d better be able to eat and be fed more than Oreos,” Jerry wrote.
“Always 😊”
The conversation kept sliding from ordinary logistics into sexual charge, then back again, as if dinner, therapy, Cindy, and rope all belonged naturally in the same plan.
By afternoon, Jerry pushed it further. “You don’t intend to go to therapy with panties on, do you?” He sent a gif of a man in a suit sitting on a bed tapping on his leg in a dominant “come” motion.
Violet answered, “It’s virtual.” Then, she added, “But I wasn’t planning to wear panties when we ride Cindy.”
Jerry asked whether she was planning to take her therapy appointment from his place, then added that Cindy would be offended if she did wear underwear when they rode.
Violet said she would not be able to focus and told him she was going to do therapy from her office. When Jack put a sweating emoji on this she added, “My, my so impatient today…”
Jerry replied, “Anytime you’d like.”
Then, “I’ll see you soon, I hope.”
Violet could feel where the conversation was going.
“I feel like you have ideas. Do you want me to do therapy from there?”
Jerry did. “I do have ideas 💡,” he wrote. “And you’re welcome to come here for therapy.”
That was his invitation. Bring the appointment into his room, his house, his space, with the ropes already waiting in the background.
“You won’t be distracted?” he asked.
“Are you planning to try and distract me?” Violet wrote.
“Yes, I am.”
“Can you distract me before therapy?”
“I can tie your hip and chest harnesses before therapy.”
The words were easy between them now, maybe too easy.
Violet joked that her therapist would be very confused if she appeared on video tied in harnesses. Then she asked if she was supposed to ride Cindy with them too. Jerry had to decide who he wanted to ride first, she told him, because it was better to ride Cindy before it got dark.
Then Jerry said he needed to make a trip to the liquor store.
After the bourbon bottle by his chair, after the night he had admitted he had been drinking, after the strange soup and the unemployment disclosure, alcohol no longer felt like background noise.
Violet kept it light anyway. “No DUI on Cindy!!”
She asked if he was going now and told him she was leaving work.
This time, she did something she had never expected to do. She went to Jerry’s house for therapy.
She sat in the chair in his room with his cat on her lap, talking to her therapist from inside the room where so much of the confusion had happened. Jerry was somewhere nearby. It was intimate in a way she did not quite know how to name. In a way she felt exposed.
She thought that after therapy, they would have sex. That was where the thread seemed to be pointing: the ropes, the harnesses, the panties, the teasing about distraction.
Instead, Jerry surprised her by asking if she wanted to go see a documentary at an independent movie house nearby. There was a film festival happening that week.
Violet was surprised. They had not been out in public together doing something like that in a long time. Most of their connection had narrowed back down to his house, his room, his bed, the texts between them, and the private language of sex, care, and confusion. But this was different: a movie, a public place, a documentary.
He bought tickets and they rode Cindy to the theater. The documentary was about the long shadow of slavery and racism in America, and it was not the kind of film anyone watched lightly. As an adoptive parent the subject had a personal dimension for Jerry, although Violet didn’t think he had expected the evening to become quite so heavy.
They arrived late and had to sit in the front row. Afterward, there was a talkback, so by the time they left, the night had taken a very different shape than the one Violet had imagined. It reminded her of the parts of Jerry she had connected with early on: the person who could sit with hard subjects, who cared about ideas, who seemed moved by injustice, history, art, and larger moral questions.
On the way back, Violet let him drive Cindy. By the time they returned to his house, it was late, she was starving, and he still had not fed her. The whole afternoon had been threaded with hunger and teasing about dinner, but after therapy they had gone straight to the movie. So Violet ordered DoorDash.
There was not much time before Rick would get home from work, but Jerry started the scene anyway. Again, Violet still didn’t know that there was a name for what they were doing. He didn’t get very far when Rick came home.
Jerry had to stop in the middle of tying her. He left her in the room and said he would be right back. She asked him to get her food that had been delivered.
Once again, the timing had not really been thought through. Violet had come over expecting sex after therapy, then followed him into an unexpectedly heavy night out, then returned to his room hungry and waiting on delivery, only to have the scene cut short because Rick walked in from work.
It was frustrating, but not enough to make her leave. It had turned into a very late night. The next morning, she overslept and was late for work. His room was a chaotic mess and her stuff was all over the place. She had to rush out the door and told him she would come back after work to get the rest of her things. Jerry was understanding and told her that was not a problem.
That practical accident became the reason they saw each other again the next night. She came back for her things, and they talked for a while. She told him about a strange situation with a coworker who had said something racist, someone in an interracial relationship. She had considered this co worker a friend and was struggling with how to handle this shocking piece of information.
They continued talking for some time and then she moved to the bed and climbed on top of Jerry, still in her scrubs. They kissed for a while and he told her that if she didn’t leave soon she was going to have to stay. She stayed.
After sex they talked some more. That was when he told her he still had not read the writing.
Still.
After Father’s Day, after September 11th, after the silence, after the homework joke, after the therapy night, after the movie, and after another night in his bed, he still had not read it.
Then, all at once, he seemed willing. It was as if the moment had simply arrived, as if the previous avoidance had not happened, as if the thing she had been asking for was suddenly easy. “You want to talk? Let’s talk about it.” Jerry was almost oddly enthusiastic about it.
So they talked. He read the writing while they were together. Violet watched the thing she had written months earlier finally land in the room between them, not as something he had sat with privately, not as something he had read, considered, and returned to with care, but because she was there and the conversation was happening now.
It should have bothered her more than it did. In the moment, though, he was finally engaging it.
He seemed to understand. He acted like he got it. He asked her if there was anything she would change now. Violet explained that the writing was on honest account of how she had felt when she had written it.
Violet had not been asking to be his girlfriend. She had not been asking for exclusivity. She had not been asking for promises neither of them was positioned to make. She wanted honesty, communication, sexual transparency, and some shared understanding of the reality she was consenting inside.
That evening she told him she was not sleeping with anyone else. She told him that if she were going to sleep with someone else, she would tell him beforehand.
Jerry agreed. Literally. Enthusiastically.
“Agreed.”
He also told her he got STI testing every three months. It felt like the adult conversation she had been trying to have all along: not dramatic, not possessive, not conventional, just honest.
So she told him she had met someone recently. She had been on a few dates. Nothing had gone further yet, but she wanted to tell Jerry before it did. She felt that telling him was the right thing to do.
At first, he said he was not jealous. Then he paused, or softened, or let a little more truth show. He admitted he was a little jealous.
Violet did not want him to be jealous, but it was a human reaction. Jealousy was information. Jealousy was something they could name instead of hide from.
Then Jerry initiated sex again. To Violet, that felt like confirmation. They had talked. She had told him the truth. He had agreed to the terms she cared about. He had admitted a feeling. They were still touching. They were still choosing each other in the room.
For the first time in a long while, Violet felt like maybe they were finally on the same page, or close enough to keep trying.
The next day, she texted him. “I am glad we talked last night, I know it was a lot to process but I appreciate your willingness to listen. I hope you will continue to share your wants/needs and I will do the same.”
Then, because she was still Violet and because intimacy with Jerry always seemed to move back toward desire, she added a request.
“Like I need a long hair, handsome devil, deep woods selfie for my phone 😉”
Jerry had said he was taking his kids camping in a state park that weekend, and Violet pictured him there with the trees, the kids, the fall air, his long hair, and the father version of him that still softened her.
Jerry answered her message. “I’ll work on the picture details…”
Jerry did not send a picture from the woods. He sent a strange selfie from his room.
It was clearly not what she had asked for, and it was a little odd, but the previous two nights still carried more weight than the oddness of the selfie. They had talked about disclosure. She had told him the truth before anything happened with someone else. He had agreed. She had stayed over both nights and Jerry had been on his computer much of the time looking for a Halloween costume for his child.
It was ordinary, harmless, dad-like. That kind of detail made the whole thing feel steadier than it probably was. He looked like a man trying to be a father, trying to manage his life, trying to talk, maybe trying to let her in.
Then later, “I appreciated the conversation last night as well…and look forward to more of the same.”
Violet read that and felt encouraged. More of the same sounded like openness. It sounded like continuation. It sounded like he was willing to keep talking, keep listening, keep trying. It was not a detailed plan. It did not define what would change. It did not name what honesty would look like in practice, what safer kink would require, or what kind of communication they were both agreeing to. But at the time, Violet did not need it to be perfect. She needed it to feel real enough to keep going.
The next morning, she softened the selfie joke.
“We will work on your selfie game but your long hair and vulnerability are super sexy 😉”
The vulnerability was never separate from the desire. His willingness to send a picture, his tired face, his long hair, the conversation from the night before, the costume search, and the possibility that he had finally listened all landed in Violet as intimacy.
She wanted to believe him. After almost two weeks of silence, after the writing he still had not read until she was sitting in front of him, after two nights in his room, it felt like they had finally gotten somewhere.
Not all the way, but somewhere.