Chapter 1
I’d only been at the company for three weeks. Three weeks in my hometown, in the same little town where I grew up, working in an office with people who used to be my parents’ friends. Then suddenly they send a whole group of us to the city for three days of job training. I’d been to the city maybe four times in my life. I packed way too much. I brought three pairs of shoes for three days.
Our hotel was in the amusement district. I didn’t know that when I booked in. Well, the company booked it, and obviously somebody in accounting picked the cheapest place they could find. The first evening, when we came out of the train station and walked to the hotel through all those flashing signs, I just kept my eyes on the pavement and held my bag tighter. There were neon lights everywhere, men standing in doorways, music thumping out of basements. I felt like a little kid who had wandered into the wrong building.
Lucy was the one who made it bearable. I’d noticed her on the train, because she was the only other person in the group under thirty, but we’d only exchanged a couple of words. She was a little younger than me, blonde, a bit chubby with these really wide hips that she wasn’t shy about at all. She wore tight jeans like it was nothing. I always wore the loosest things I could find. She laughed loudly, and she talked to everyone. I mostly looked at my shoes and pushed my glasses up my nose when I got nervous, which was constantly.
The next morning we walked from the hotel to the workshop, all of us in a long line behind the older colleagues, like a school trip. They walked fast and talked about their kids and their mortgages. Lucy and I ended up at the back.
And that’s where we passed the shop.
I tried not to look, but you couldn’t not look. The whole window was full of things. There were handcuffs, pink fluffy ones and shiny metal ones. There were whips of different lengths hanging on little hooks. There were paddles, some made of leather, some made of wood, and one with a word printed on it that I didn’t read. And there were rows and rows of dildos in every size and color, and next to them these weird cone-shaped things with flat bottoms.
“What are those?” I whispered.
Lucy stopped right in front of the window. She actually stopped, while the line of colleagues kept moving. She leaned in and squinted at them.
“Butt plugs,” she said, completely casual.
“What?” My face got hot immediately. “Why would anyone… no. No way.”
“I don’t know! Maybe it’s like a hat for your butt!” She burst out laughing, loud enough that one of the older guys turned around. I grabbed her sleeve and pulled her along, and we were both giggling like idiots, trying to be quiet, which only made it worse.
“That’s so weird,” I said when we’d caught up. “Who buys that stuff?”
“Probably Gerald from accounting,” Lucy said, nodding toward one of the guys at the front of the line. I almost choked.
“Stop it!”
“Did you see the whips? Imagine going home and your boyfriend is like, honey, I bought a new whip.”
“That’s disturbing.”
“It’s a little disturbing,” she agreed, grinning. “But also kind of funny.”
The workshop was as boring as I’d feared. Ten hours of slides about compliance software, a man with a very flat voice, coffee that tasted like hot water with a rumor of coffee in it. Lucy and I sat in the back row. She leaned over every twenty minutes to whisper something that made me bite the inside of my cheek so I wouldn’t laugh. She drew little cartoons in the margins of her notebook, a tiny version of the trainer with a whip. I had to put my hand over my mouth.
By lunchtime we were basically best friends. She told me she was from a town even smaller than mine, that she’d started at the company a few months before me, that she was tired of everyone assuming she wanted to talk about weddings. I told her I was shy, which she already knew, and that I’d never really had a close friend at work before. She said, “Well, you do now,” and bumped her shoulder against mine. I felt this little flutter of happiness that was totally out of proportion to the situation.
And yes, she brought up the sex shop at least five more times. At lunch, she said, “I wonder if they do student discounts.” In the afternoon, in the middle of a slide about data protection, she whispered, “Do you think the handcuffs come with keys?” I had to pretend to cough.
After the workshop there was a group dinner, a long table in a restaurant where everyone talked about work and ordered the same schnitzel. When it was over, the older colleagues decided they were going out for drinks. They had that loosened-tie look in their eyes. Gerald was already loudly suggesting a bar with live music. One of the women, Sabine, asked us if we wanted to come along.
Lucy and I looked at each other.
“I think we’re pretty tired,” I said. It wasn’t even a lie.
“Yeah, long day,” Lucy added.
When they were gone, Lucy turned to me and said, “Okay, they’re so cringe. Do you want to go back to the room and do something fun instead?”
“Like what?”
“Drink. Obviously.”
So we stopped at a little supermarket on the way back and went a bit wild. I’d never seen canned cocktails before, I swear. Where I live, you buy beer or wine, that’s it. But here was this entire refrigerator wall of them, cans with colorful labels. Jack Daniels and Coke. Mojito. Gin Tonic. Vodka Soda. Something called Strawberry Daiquiri.
“We have to get all of them,” Lucy said.
“All of them?”
“We’re in the city! We’re living a little!”
We filled up a basket with cans and added chips, gummy bears, and a bar of chocolate, because it felt like the right thing to do. The cashier raised an eyebrow at the amount of alcohol. Lucy gave him a big smile and said, “Team building!” and I wanted to disappear into the floor, but I was also laughing.
Back in the room, we dropped everything on the bed and both just stood there. It was a small room. Two single beds pushed against opposite walls, a window with a view of a blinking sign across the street, and a tiny bathroom with a shower curtain that had seen better days.
“Ugh, I’m so sweaty,” Lucy said, pulling at her blouse. “That workshop room was a sauna.”
“Me too,” I admitted. “I’ve been sticking to my chair for hours.”
“Okay, I’ll go first, then it’s your turn. Don’t drink my Jack Daniels.”
“I wasn’t going to!”
“Famous last words,” she said and disappeared into the bathroom.
I sat on the edge of my bed and listened to the water running. I took off my glasses, cleaned them on my shirt, and put them back on. I checked my phone. Nothing. I pulled my knees up. I felt strangely nervous, though I couldn’t have said why. I’d shared rooms before, at school trips, but never with someone I’d known for only a day.
When the water stopped, I heard her moving around, humming something. Then the door opened.
Lucy came out in just a long, oversized t-shirt. It was big and gray, with a faded band logo on the front, and it hung halfway down her thighs. Her hair was wet and combed back, and her skin was pink from the hot water. Her legs were bare. She wasn’t wearing anything else that I could see.
“Your turn!” she said brightly, as though nothing were different.
