Rachel had found herself in the dark, praying for illumination as to what could possibly be wrong with him. Bertie had been withdrawn for the last week, quieter even than usual, and while her boyfriend was a classic introvert at the best of times, he also didn’t tend to hide his feelings from her. Rachel took pride in that aspect of her relationship, there were few secrets that Bertie had tried to keep that she hadn’t deduced, cajoled or teased out of him. And yet, without her even noticing when, he’d picked up another one. And it was chewing away at both of them.
She had at least an idea of when it started. He’d told her about three weeks ago that one of his friends from the restaurant, Sophie, had left her job. She knew that he and Sophie had worked together longer than she and Bertie had been dating. She had also suspected that there was more than friendship between the two, but she’d let that idea die years ago for her own well-being. There had been an attraction, she couldn’t ignore that, but Bertie had the choice almost three years ago between Sophie and herself, and he’d chosen Rachel in a heartbeat. So while he missed his best friend, someone he’d shared a lot of history with, she was pretty certain that was the breadth of it.
Or was it? Because as much as she hated to make the link, it wasn’t just the conversation between Bertie and herself that had been suffering, at this rate she was changing her hair colour more often than she was having sex.
Scheduling alone was a problem. Both she and Bertie’s activity was scheduled around their jobs, hers in the middle of the night spinning club music, and his running the early shift at a trendy restaurant. She’d get back to their apartment in the wee hours needing release only to find him asleep, just as she was gone by the time he returned home in the early evening. Usually, they made up the time on days when neither one had any obligations, but it seemed that Bertie had lost interest recently, and that had Rachel worried. Her lover could be arrogant, stuffy, and dull, but among his redeeming qualities was a great deal of passion in the bedroom (And a certain enthusiasm for going down on her that she wasn’t prepared to say in public).
Whatever it was that had taken his mind off of her, it had frustrated the hell out of her. She’d spent more than one night in the last week lying on the couch with her vibrator, Bertie asleep in the next room, listening through headphones to an intimate video she’d accidentally recorded between the two of them.
And without that passion there, that was another thing she couldn’t tell him – she wanted him to spank her again. The video she’d played again and again had been intended for her podcast, but had been left recording while Bertie had put her over his knee, taken down her panties and… she blushed even thinking about it.
She’d thought of deleting the recording, but for some reason she couldn’t stop watching as he reddened her bare behind and told her to stand in the corner like a bad little girl. In the time they’d been together, he’d only punished her like that a handful of times. It wasn’t that she enjoyed the sensation of being spanked – okay, maybe a little, but for the most part it felt like a swarm of hornets making a nest on her plump buttocks – but each time after he’d raised her from his lap, they’d followed it up with the kind of mind-blowing sex she’d only ever associated with tearful arguments. It was make-up sex, and somehow heightened by the constant burn in her tail.
That was what she wanted right now, and that was what was being denied to her. She wanted that argument, she wanted that catharsis, and she wanted that resolution – even if it meant she couldn’t sit down afterward.
But when the time came that they both had the same day off, she couldn’t bear the thought of spending the time at opposite ends of their apartments, each staring into the screens of their respective laptops. So while it went against the core of her impulsive personality, she made other plans.
“What’s a Milford County Fall Festival?” Bertie asked.
She explained, “It’s an event they do back home every autumn. There’s a lot of farm stuff – a tractor pull, livestock competitions, arts and crafts…”
“It’s over two hours away.”
“All my friends from high school have been asking me to come back for years. Pretty much all of them are married and have kids now, so I didn’t want to be the only single person there. But now I have you.”
“So… I’m part of the livestock competition, now?”
Smart-assed as his answer was, it meant that he was at least considering the idea. “Exactly! You’ll win that blue ribbon for sure.”
He laughed and shut down his computer. And just like that, they were off to the fair.
***
The crowd at the fairgrounds was thick by the time Bertie and Rachel arrived. She sat in the car, mouth agape as they saw the lines streaming in – had the town grown so much in the fifteen years since she’d left?
Bertie nudged her from the driver’s seat as they parked. “If we get separated, we should meet up back here.”
Rachel gave her increasingly puffy blue hair a final once-over and returned her hairbrush to her purse. “Can’t I just text you?”
“We’re a long way from the city,” he replied, and held up his phone, “I’ve barely got a signal out here.”
“We’ll figure it out, okay?” She stepped out of the car and shut the door behind her. The cool country air felt good in her lungs – she’d been breathing smoky city fumes for too long. Even with the looming gray clouds above them, it was a beautiful day to be out and about. With Bertie close behind her, she joined the human tide washing into the grounds.
Caught up in the thrill of being back home, Rachel began excitedly pointing out the familiar faces in the crowd – a pastor here, a former schoolteacher there, some old neighbours and her grade school rival. Herb Widmark, a retired farmer, actually came up to her and gave her a big bear hug after he’d confirmed that she was the same little girl who’d used to go for rides on his four-by-four.
She’d been expecting a lot of ribbing about her looks – brightly coloured hair and tattoos were commonplace in her line of work, but in the country they were reserved for rebellious teenagers. Herb instead left that conversation alone and shook hands with Bertie, asking the two of them to tell him about life in the city. Inactivity hadn’t agreed with Herb, who had clearly taken up gossip as a hobby in the ensuing years and talked for nearly half an hour about people she didn’t remember. Finally Bertie came to her rescue.
“It looks like everybody’s going inside,” he observed.
Herb spat on the ground. “You two picked a bad time to come all this way. They say a storm’s coming, and all the outside exhibitors are being told to come back tomorrow. You’ll miss the demolition derby.”
Bertie gave Rachel an exaggerated pout, and she punched him in the shoulder. She gave Herb a polite goodbye and pointed Bertie toward her old high school across the field, where the arts and crafts displays were taking place.
“Come on,” she urged, “I’ll show you my old locker.”
They were cutting across the baseball diamond toward the school when they both heard a child crying. Their eyes met each other, and together they dashed toward the source of the sound, around the corner of the building ahead. As they came around the side, they could hear a slapping sound accompanying the cries, and Bertie stopped, holding up his hand.
“Don’t cry like that to me, mister… you’re going to apologize to your sister and behave, or we’ll finish this at home!”
Rachel peeked around the corner to find a young mother furiously applying her hand to the seat of her eight-year-old son’s pants. For all the fuss the boy was making, Rachel could see that he was more embarrassed than hurt by the summary discipline. The blood rushed to her head, and she stood transfixed as the boy wiggled and kicked in a manner she was all too familiar with. She quietly stepped back, only to stumbled into Bertie, whose face was frozen in the same expression that gripped her own.
The woman jolted to her feet, suddenly aware of her watchers. She sized up the pair and immediately placed them as out-of-towners.
“Sorry, folks, my son here got a little too big for his britches and upset his sister. We’re a little old-fashioned out here in the sticks.” She grinned sheepishly. Suddenly, her expression changed. “Rachel?"
It turned out that the young woman was Connie Delaney, one of the friends Rachel had mentioned. In the years that had passed, Connie had taken a job as a letter carrier, gotten married and settled down as a homemaker and mother of three.
She insisted on leading Rachel through the marketplace set up in the high school gymnasium, stopping at each booth to reintroduce Rachel to the vendors, who would all reminisce about how pretty and well-behaved they remembered Rachel to be – all to the glowering of Connie’s son Christian, who still rubbed at bottom when nobody was looking. After an hour of his constant pouting, Connie was ready to send him over to his father, who was tending to his prize cows over at the agricultural tent.
“I can bring him over if Christian’s all right with it,” Bertie volunteered. Rachel gave him a look – she’d never known Bertie to be comfortable with kids.
“Can you? He’ll be at the Delaney Farms paddock. He’s about forty, tall, light beard…”
Bertie finished, “…answers to ‘Daddy’?” Christian giggled at the joke and nodded. Bertie took him by the hand, then reached over to whisper in Rachel’s ear.
“Half an hour by the car, then?”
She nodded, and he passed her the car keys, adding, “In case you get out first.” Then he kissed her and stepped away with Christian, swallowed up in the flow of people.
“Your husband is very… well-spoken,” Connie murmured, “Comes from money, does he?”
Rachel bit her lip, unsure what to make of the implication. “His parents got rich in the eighties from real estate, but got divorced and lost most of it by the time he was ten. So for now he manages a restaurant.”
“Oh. I just figured, with you still doing your music that you must have found somebody with deeper pockets, that’s all. And he looks a bit younger than you…”
“What are you saying?”
“Nothing, nothing.” Connie raised her hands defensively. “You were always one to skirt expectations, that’s all.” Perhaps deciding that she’d overstepped, Connie turned her attention to the commissary at the end of the hall. “You remember Kennedy Cole, right? She’s got two daughters in the Miss Milford pageant, and they are so cute. You have to see this…”
***
“Attention all visitors. This is not a drill…”
The announcement made Rachel jump as it bellowed over the loudspeaker. Connie looked up from the jar of homebrewed cider she’d been showing off and pointed toward the closest window. Rachel’s eyes widened – in the time since she’d last glanced outside, the sky had turned black. With Connie silent, she could hear the pounding of rain against the glass. She looked down reflexively at her phone and cursed. She’d promised to meet Bertie fifteen minutes ago.
She told Connie that she had to meet him, but the other woman grabbed her arm and held her fast. “Aren’t you listening? They’re locking down the school. You’ll be closed out.”
“Then we’ll just go home.”
“Through that?”