Chapter One
Princess Perky in Turmoil
Tears obscured Nicole's vision as she drove down the single lane highway that Wednesday night. The usually perky and bubbly DJ and Karaoke hostess was uncharacteristically miserable. She had held it together from Sunday until now and once she no longer had to hold things together and be perky and friendly for customers, she could not stop the tears.
Thankfully she was not going to a gig but to a friend's house, her closest friend as a matter of fact: Megan. Nicole lived in a small prairie town and Megan lived in an even smaller town, a short distance down this single lane highway. In this area, a fifteen minute jaunt down the highway was practically next door. That is why it was nothing for Nicole to be driving, in tears, at night down the highway to visit a friend.
Even though Megan was younger (26 to her 29) than she was, she always seemed to be the more mature one of the two. Nicole regularly went to Megan with problems in her life. Somehow Megan had a way of helping Nicole to feel better, and see things clearer. Nicole had doubts whether even Megan could help this latest pain go away.
Until Sunday Nicole's life had been going well, blissful even; all that came crashing down Sunday. Nicole had never been they type of woman to let men in close. After a single serious relationship had gone bad ten years ago, she has had a number of superficial relationships, but none that touched her heart; that is until John. John was the one man she truly let into her heart and her world eventually revolved around him.
Nicole met John at one of her Karaoke gigs a little over a year ago. After a few conversations and some light flirting (nothing unusual for Nicole) she agreed to go back to his house and talk. He was not the type of guy that she usually went for, but something about John drew her to him. He was selfish, self-centred (qualities Nicole herself shared), but he was also charming, friendly and of course, confident. While it wasn't until a few weeks later that they started "officially" dating, Nicole started to lose her heart to John that night. Nicole spent every spare moment with him, neglecting her business and friends. Her focus instead was on what she could do for him, how to make him happy.
All that ended Sunday when John sat Nicole down and quite plainly broke up with her. He told her that she was disorganized, childish, emotionally irrational and clingy. In short form, it had stopped being fun for him. She spent the better part of an hour trying to convince him not to give up on her; she could change, could be better... whatever he wanted. Nothing Nicole said moved or affected John in the slightest. John added that they both knew this relationship was never meant to last. Nicole wanted kids and John, at 45 had already raised his kids and had no desire to have more. Despite the heartbreak of having this man break up with her, her pride too suffered a blow as it was usually she who ended things... on her terms and in her own time. In her humility Nicole begged him to stay with her, and adding insult to injury, none of this worked.
While the break-up hurt Nicole it was not the real reason she was in such turmoil. John's reasons stuck with her and resonated within her, she knew he was right. All of her friends knew she was a bit of a scatterbrain, who was constantly running late. Her house was a disaster of disorganization. Part of the success of her DJ and Karaoke business was attributed to her "Perky Teenager" act. The trouble was that she had been putting on that act in front of people for so long that even she was unsure who the "real" Nicole was.
Even worse was the fact that it was now as if her eyes were finally opened and she was seeing her life from an objective point of view. When Nicole had started her DJ and Karaoke business ten years ago she wanted to be rich by the age of 30. She saw it as a stepping stone to her dreams of owning a string of investment properties. Now, ten years later she had a modest amount of savings in the bank and two plots of land with two dilapidated trailers on them which were a long way from being habitable.
Where had her life gone so wrong? How could she have been treading water for the past ten years, getting nowhere? She was not the woman she used to be, nor who she wanted to be. Her world was in chaos and turmoil because she had no idea how she got where she was or how to get her life back on track.
On the surface Nicole's was not all that bad: she was not broke, she owned her own house and she was in good shape physically. She was not into drugs, rarely drank to excess, watched what she ate, worked out on a regular basis and ran daily. All of this had given her the runner's body that the men in the bars liked to drool over. Her long, brown hair, Hazel eyes and impish face only added to her charms, combined with her "perky teenager act" men didn't stand a chance. The only thing Nicole disliked about her body was her smallish breasts that came part-and-parcel with the "Runner's Physique."
The screeching from the seat beside her brought Nicole out of her distracted funk. Looking around her she noticed that it was her cell phone going off. Answering it was not what she wanted to do but she stifled her tears and picked up the phone.
"Hi," Nicole said curtly into the phone.
"Where are you?" Megan asked, out of curiosity rather than concern, being late was a given with Nicole.
"I'm about 20 minutes away from your house," Nicole said with a good measure of hurt entering into her voice.
"What's wrong," Megan said in a knowing tone of voice ending with a sigh.
"John and I had a serious talk on Sunday," Nicole said, and had to pause to once again get a hold of her emotions.
"How serious was it?" Megan asks, curious to know to what degree she would have to patch Nicole together again.
"Very . . . we broke up," Nicole said with a bit of a whiny tone to her voice.
"Oh, Lord," Megan sighed, "Well, put a stopper on the waterworks, my kids are still up. Once they're settled you can fall apart," Megan finished in a compassionate tone of voice.
"Thanks," Nicole said with a relieved tone of voice.
"Okay, see you in a bit," Megan said and hung up the phone.
As Megan was hanging up the phone, Nicole heard Megan yell at her kids in her "Mom" tone of voice. That sent a shiver though Nicole and she almost dropped the phone; instead she tossed it down on the seat beside her where it bounced onto the floor.
As Nicole pictured her friend disciplining her kids she wondered what it was that made Megan so different than her? Why did it seem that Megan had everything together and she didn't? Megan was a mother of four kids: 2 boys, age 8 and 6, and 2 fraternal twin girls age 4. Megan had gotten involved with the wrong guy at age 16 but it took 10 years and 4 kids before she finally left him for good. Megan wasn't a stay at home mom either. She was a manager at a local clothing store, worked 40 hours or more a week, was a single mom, and still somehow managed to keep her house clean, organized with time left over for creative projects as well as be a good girlfriend to those who needed her.
Perhaps it was the fact that Megan got up early. To Nicole getting up early was waking up before 1:00pm. She worked the bars and the nightlife suited her just fine. All this worrying and wondering would have to wait, for Nicole was now pulling up in front of Megan's trailer. It wasn't fancy but it was affordable and in a spacious quiet trailer park made it the two reasons that Megan lived here.
It was an older trailer which the owners had tried to spruce up a bit, yet on a budget. It was not fancy, yet it was not a dump. Three small bedrooms and one bathroom made up the back half of the trailer, the front half was divided equally between a living room area and a kitchen area. In the kitchen was a small kitchen table pushed into a corner of the kitchen close but not right up against the pass-through to the living room. The living room had a loveseat, a comfy chair with two small end tables along one wall. Along the opposite wall tightly packed together was an assortment of chest of drawers, cabinets and an entertainment centre, as well scattered around on top of them all were a few DVD organizers. The wall between these two walls contained a large window.
If you get the picture that Megan's place was cluttered or disorganized you couldn't be further from the truth. Everything had its place and everything was in its place. Neat, tidy and organized was how Megan kept her home, yet she had enough flexibility to allow her kids to be kids, (as long as they cleaned up afterwards).
As for Megan herself, she had reddish-brown hair that was quite thick and perpetually in a body wave, naturally, and reaching just past her shoulders. Giving birth to 4 kids had taken its toll on her body, yet not nearly as bad as some of her friends. Megan still had the hourglass figure of her youth; she simply had few extra pounds evenly distributed on it. The delight of having a few extra pounds evenly distributed about her body, however, was that it gave her a generously proportioned set of breasts, easily a D cup. Her green eyes sparkled and lit up her cherub face when she smiled, behind her stylish glasses. She had a body and personality that was just made for cuddling up with.
As Nicole walked into the front door she was attacked by four kids screaming "AUNTIE NICKI" and once again Nicole "switched on" and she was the "perky teenager" once again. For the forty-five minutes before the kids were put to bed, Nicole played with those kids as if she was one of them; one of the reasons Megan's kids loved her so much. Eventually the kids were tucked in, all insisting to be tucked in by Mom and "Auntie Nicki."
As Nicole sat down on the couch she breathed a sigh of relief, the kids were now asleep and it was just her and Megan. Nicole could now "Switch off" and relax and be herself once again. Megan was one of the very few people that got to see the real Nicole. Nicole fell apart and the tears flowed freely as she collapsed forward into the waiting arms of her best friend. Over the next long while Nicole cried as she opened up and told Megan everything she was feeling after the loss of John.
Megan listened to Nicole cry and talk, as she had done so many times before. This time seemed different, this time Megan picked up on something she had not been able to see before. It was only recently that she had come to terms with it within herself, and once she had embraced what she knew was within the core of her being, she was much happier. Megan suspected that she and Nicole had this, seldom talked about thing in common: they both were Submissive. The difference was that Megan had embraced her Submissive side and had found the right Dominant: Mark.
Interestingly enough it was Nicole who introduced Megan to the man who was now her Master. Nicole had met Mark three years prior at a local community group that meets once a week. Mark had pursued Nicole and was unsuccessful but they had developed a close friendship but they were not as close as her and Megan. Nicole always figured that Mark was looking for an opening to date her and was relieved when Megan and Mark hit it off.
What Nicole didn't know was that Mark was a Dominant who had not come to terms with his Dominant side. Mark had always seen it as a "dark side" a side which only served to "subjugate" and "abuse" women. Megan was a Submissive who had not yet come to terms with her Submissive side, never trusting her now ex-husband Jack enough to explore that side of her personality which, upon reflection was what enabled her to take the years of mental and emotional abuse. After a few conversations skirting the issue of Domination and Submission, and one particular evening where a lot of alcohol had been consumed, the inevitable happened. They both opened up to each other and explored the aspect of themselves that they had tried to push away and deny was there. That set the two of them down a path to embracing their true selves as Master and Slave.
Megan now could see that Nicole was a Submissive who probably didn't know that she was a Submissive. Megan had picked up on a few hints that Nicole had said during her explanation of what had happened. Megan understood what was bothering Nicole was that she was a Submissive who felt lost without her Dominant. Even though neither John nor Nicole saw their relationship in that light, it did not mean that Nicole had not come to rely on him as her Dominant. In short she felt lost without having him to serve.
The dilemma that Megan faced was that should she point this out to Nicole, or just let Nicole discover it on her own. Megan now knew that Nicole would never really find peace until she had come to terms with this aspect of her nature. Discovering one's Submissive side is generally done in private, upon much reflection. Megan decided that since she had some knowledge and guidance to give in the area of Submission, she had an obligation to help her friend out.
"Can I ask you some questions?" Megan asked at long last.
