The wrongness starts on Wednesday, a persistent pressure sitting low behind my pubic bone. It feels like I pulled a muscle doing deadlifts on Tuesday morning, except the ache is internal. I spend the afternoon walking a client through his municipal bond yields. His name is Vance, a guy who made three million in commercial logistics last year and now wants to talk about buying a marina. I sit across from him in the glass-walled conference room, keeping my face relaxed, smiling at the right intervals.

There was an extreme screaming sound in my ears as I opened my eyes to see Coach Register yelling at me.

“Dennereck! You alright?” He barked in a voice that would never sound calming to anyone.

I nodded and stood up.

I was back at school.

“That was a major hit,” Keith replied as he brushed at the dust on my shirt.

“Yeah,” I answered as I looked around and saw about every other guy in PE playing soccer, turning the center of the track into a mosh pit. “What hit?”

Part 16 The Minting of Penny

Next day we filmed a couple of linking scenes. One was where Susan inspects the work that the other two had overseen and decides that I need new bras; so, setting up the short shopping trip.

The second was the scene with me and Odette in her office where she inspects my changes so far; declares that I am coming along nicely and ordered me to pleasure her as my reward for the good start.

We took our time, and I made her shout when she came with my head being squeezed between her thighs.

CHAPTER 37
We went to the Smugglers, of course, just four of us, Tom driving and promising to collect us if needed. Sod discos and stuff, we took a table in the usual bar. It had been occupied by a group of twinks, but Marlene had simply walked over and said something, quietly for once, and they had picked up their stuff and left for one of the other spaces.

She waved us over, and as we sat, she simply asked if we were her sister’s family.

I woke up with the sunlight blazing through the window, which it normally would not do until around nine.

I was late for school. Really late!

“Mom! What’s happened?” I yelled as I moved to throw the covers off, but there were no covers to throw. I sat up and looked at a bedroom with a lot of whites and grays with some shades of blue on a comforter that still covered the bed. I planted my hands on the mattress, vaulted myself off the bed and onto a hardwood floor.

I did not have a hardwood floor.

Having just married both Nancys, she was the focal point of my dream the next night, though I kept seeing Nancy change between my Nancy and a version of Victoria’s Nancy who had the most outrageous of the tattoos and piercings of the guests at her wedding. On Sunday, December 3, it was my Nancy who I found in bed with me.

CHAPTER 35
I was still reliving that break a month later, realising that we had a high bar indeed for good food now, thanks to Madame Boucher, and just as high a set of standards for fantastic places to stay. We had settled on one of those other ideas for our post-nuptial break, flying to Rome for a few days and then taking the train to Florence, Venice, Austria and Germany, flying home from Cologne, where there was apparently a chocolate museum. I joked that it would be an excuse to get her into her ‘barmaid’ uniform, and see if she could yodel. She had slapped my arse and told me to behave, or rather only misbehave in ways she could enjoy.

The paddle is in the bag in the hall closet and I've been looking at the closet door since eight in the morning.

I get it out around ten. The bag has the new paddle in it. It's the replacement I ordered after I put the other one through its edge guard the night this started. I take it out and grip it. The grip wraps the same. The flare of the handle, the weight forward of my hand, all of it as it should be. I bounced a ball off the face a few times in the apartment and it goes where I aim it.

Part 15 The Shiny New Penny

Monday morning arrived on time and so did Sam to take me to the studio. Odette went in Tonys’ Porsche and Tanya went with Steve, via his place so he could get a change of clothes. It looked like the penthouse had gone from housing one tenant to now looking after five, at least.

At the studio we had a cast meeting to talk about the direction that the show would go next. We ended up with a good set of scenes that would take us beyond the halfway point, and we would think about the further plot lines then.

CHAPTER 32
We had a late lunch there, between the bliss of soaking in the water. It wasn’t the sea, but it was just what I needed. It was amusing as I realised exactly how much I had come to depend on a daily swim.

Megan's painting her toenails when I get there, door propped because she heard me on the stairs, foam spacers wedged between her toes, and she doesn't look up right away. "There's beer in the fridge," she says. "Grab me one too if you're getting one."

For a while, Archie thought about Amy.

Deliberate thoughts had become difficult now. They needed somewhere steady to stand, and stumbled around in his mind as the ground crumbled away beneath them. Each thought came without asking, soft and immediate, gliding softly around the gaps. Instinctive thoughts settled much more easily, as they could simply float through the spaces as they pleased.

He remembered the first time she had rescued him.

I had a weird dream. I was Victoria, and we were back at the weddings of the previous week, but it was Victoria who got married to Nancy, to Mona, and to Aries in consecutive ceremonies. Of course, my parents weren’t there, like in all my dreams, but we went to what should have been their apartment afterward. Aries wanted to consummate our marriages, and her ovipositor was fully out, though I had no idea when she had had time to have sex with a man during the day. Then it turned out that Nancy and Mona were Pasthru emales, and I was worried that the group was going to impregnate me somehow. We got as far as the four of us nesting our organs when all of that evaporated and Victoria was there alone, and then I woke up.

Mark Lansing never wanted to stand out. He was perfectly happy disappearing into a football huddle with the rest of the team until one play made him the talk of the town. Thrust into a spotlight he never wanted, every choice can reshape his future, and every decision could transform him in ways he never believed possible. Mark’s destiny will be determined on the field … assuming he can figure out how to dress the part.

At 5:30 the alarm doesn't go off, because I turned it off last night, but I wake up at 5:30 anyway.

I lie there in the dark with the spare blanket and the wrong quiet and the ceiling, and the body starts its inventory: breasts, the weight of them in the position I've been sleeping, the labia warm and in their soft continuous contact, the hip bones wider against the mattress. Eight seconds, maybe. Then I'm done with it and I'm just awake at 5:30 with nowhere to be.

CHAPTER 14
“Ellie?”

“Umf?”

“Have I been asleep?”

“Er, yes. It’s one of those things with tents and bikes”