[Girl_On_Fire]

Alana felt a black hole of pain start in the center of her chest and fan out until it completely encompassed her rapidly-beating heart. She had to consciously force herself to breathe. In. Out. In. Out. She tried to swallow but her dry tongue caught in the back of her throat and threatened to choke her.

She forced her trembling fingers to type:

“What do you mean she’s moving in? Since when do you have a girlfriend?”

OhmyGod. OhmyGod. OhmyGod. OhmyGod.

Chris didn’t say anything. Didn’t even type back. She watched hym continue on with his conversation in the chat room as though her entire world wasn’t crumbling both in front of her eyes and inside her body. As though the past month of intense conversation and plans to meet had never happened.

Hy signed off.

Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months but despite repeated private messages, letters, and phone calls, Chris never got back to her. She tried flirting with other butches. Some were good-looking, younger, and lived much closer but each time they hit on her, instead of feeling excited, she felt nauseous. She hated them because they weren’t Chris.

Nobody could be Chris.

Nobody.

****
(5 Years Later)

Alana put the final touches on her profile and clicked ‘submit’. Everywhere you went on the Internet, you had to click ‘submit’. She swore the World Wide Web was a closet Dominatrix. She smiled. For the first time in 5 years she started to entertain the thought of getting interested in the BDSM community again.

Her competed profile popped back up onto the screen and she reviewed it for errors. She suppressed a giggle when she saw the typo, “Looking for my fist time.”

Shaking her head, she hit the ‘edit’ button and changed word ‘fist’ to ‘first’.

“Don’t want to get into it all at once now.” She laughed at her own silly joke.

She inputted her search criteria and browsed through profiles.

“Oh. Hy’s cute.”

35. Single. Lives only a state away. Piercing green eyes. Interested in heavy edge play and water sports.

“Yikes. Too much for me!”

She clicked on the next profile.

19, femme, and liked to be spanked.

Nope. Next.

68 and already had two partners.

Nope.

She clicked on the next profile.

Her body reacted before her brain even caught on to what her eyes were seeing. She gasped and jumped up so fast, she knocked the computer chair out from under her. She didn’t stop retreating until her back forcibly smacked the wall. Her vision swam for a moment and she had to brace herself to keep from passing out.

Those eyes.

It was the same picture from 5 years ago. The same picture she’d fallen in love with the second she’d seen it.

Chris.

Shakily, she crossed the room to the computer and sat back down. Scrolling down, she saw that hys status said ‘single’. And hy was online. Right now.

She took a deep breath, hovering over the small ‘mail’ button. No. Scrolling up, she clicked on the chat room instead. Maybe hy’d be in there.

He was. Same screen name and same avatar photo as the website she’d met hym on. She waited. Greeted a few people. Waited. Hy’d been chatting when she came in. Now hy stopped. Was hy staring as hard at the screen as she was now? Some femme with the screen name “babygirl” (how original) was trying to get hys attention.

“DaddyChris?” A little pouty face. “You’re ignoring me.”

A little white box popped up in the left-hand corner of her screen.

“Alana?”

Her heart raced. Her fingers trembled. The black hole she’d kept behind lock and key seeped through the cracks in her heart, and spilled out over the keyboard.

“Chris?”

She couldn’t contain the tears. So casual now hy was. Hy had no idea the pain, the agony she’d felt over hym. Not a clue. If she told hym now, let it all spill out…how much she loved hym, worshipped hym, would have done anything for hym from the moment she’d laid eyes on just hys photo alone, hy would think she was completely insane.

“How are you?”

A stupid grin broke out over her face.

The pain, the burden she’d carried all those years lifted instantly.

“I’m okay. Hanging in there. Long time, no talk. How are you?”

She couldn’t believe how casual she was able to come across.

“I have a lot I want to say to you. Can we talk on the phone?”

Her eyes popped wide. Her fingers typed out her number before she could think twice.

Thirty seconds later, her cell phone rang.

To be continued...