The next morning I woke up feeling hopeful. I'd suffered a terrible humiliation but I think that I managed to talk myself out of it, and I was pretty sure that I could trust both Melissa and Victoria to not tell anyone else about what happened.
I was also happy to learn that it seemed like Melissa was pretty open-minded about my panty fetish. Initially she was furious with me, but Melissa became pretty accepting once she'd spoken to Victoria. Whatever Victoria said, it worked and I'd forever be in her debt for it.
I woke up before Melissa and decided to do something special for her. I made her breakfast in bed. Once I heard her stirring in her bedroom, I told Melissa that I had a surprise for her if she stayed in her room. The smell of bacon cooking probably gave it away, but Melissa appreciated my effort. After making her eggs and bacon, I loaded the dish onto a serving tray with some orange juice and brought it to her room.
While she ate, we laughed and joked like old times. We didn't talk about anything that had happened the night before. We just chilled like best friends. When she was done, I gathered everything together to bring back to the kitchen. Before I left her room, Melissa did something really unexpected. She stood up out of bed -- dressed only in a t-shirt and her panties -- gave me a hug and kissed me on the cheek to thank me. It was the first kind of affection of that nature that she'd ever shown me.
"Clean up, and I'm going to take Victoria's advice and call Diane. We'll talk afterwards."
There was that name again, Diane. I really wanted to know who she was.
"Who is she?"
"We'll talk later, ok?"
I was really curious, but it seemed like if I let things be for now I'd find out soon enough. "Ok"
An hour or so later, we found ourselves sitting in our living room facing each other.
"Last night" Melissa started, "after - you know...Victoria and I had a long talk, about everything and she made me think about some things."
"Ok..."
"I feel like things are complicated right now, but Victoria reminded me about someone who might be able to help. You know Philip, right?"
Philip was a guy who occasionally hung around with us. He wasn't exactly a part of our circle of friends, but he was around often enough for me to know who he was. Philip was a big black guy, he was nice to those who knew him but probably intimidated anyone who didn't. I was pretty sure that he was also one of Victoria's fuck-buddies before she settled down with her current boyfriend.
"Yeah, I know him -- why?"
"Have you ever seen him bring an older woman around, she's in her forty's but still a really hot milf type? She's always wearing short skirts, has blond hair and big fake boobs?"
I knew exactly who she meant. I'd never spoken to that woman before, but she'd caught my eye more than once when I'd seen her out. She had a bit of an older porn-star look to her and definitely dressed to be noticed.
"That's Diane. Know what she does?"
"No, what?"
"She's a relationship and sex expert - of sorts."
"Really? What do you mean by 'of sorts'?"
"She specializes in counselling couples who live a little differently than other couples do -- 'alternative lifestyles' is what she calls it."
"Um, ok"
"What we have between us, it's a relationship, isn't it? We care about each other right? You jerk off for me, you perv-out with my panties and who knows what else you get up to. Plus we live together, we're around each other all the time, we go out together, we eat together, we have all of the same friends - that's a relationship, isn't it?"
"Yeah, I guess so....sort of"
"At first I didn't really think of it as a relationship either. Last night though, Victoria made me realize that I wasn't bothered by what you were doing with my panties. Don't get me wrong, it's weird but I'm ok with weird. What upset me was that it made me feel like you cheated on me, and if I didn't think that we were in a relationship I wouldn't have felt betrayed like I did."
"I get what you're saying, but this is nothing like a normal relationship."
"I didn't say that it was a normal relationship, just that it is a relationship. I knew a little bit about Diane and what she does but talking to her this morning made realize that maybe what we have is an 'alternative' type of relationship."
"Wait, what did you tell her?"
"Everything."
"What do you mean by everything?"
"I mean everything. She knows about everything that's ever happened between us and she's interested in helping us."
"You told her about..."
Melissa was growing frustrated with and lashed out at me "EVERYTHING! Your little dicklet, your masturbating, your panty sniffing, your cheating, every-fucking-thing!"
"You want me to go to this woman, who knows our friends and talk about all this embarrassing stuff with her? No way Melissa, I'm not going to do that."
"She's a professional! And besides, she already knows everything now." I could sense that Melissa's frustration was turning into anger.
"I don't know..."
"Our appointment with her is this afternoon, I booked it this morning. You're going. Get your ass ready, we're leaving in an hour." And that was that.
----
Diane had a bungalow out in the suburbs which served as both her family home and office for her counselling sessions. It felt both welcoming and professional at the same time. When Diane met us at the door, she looked totally different than we'd ever seen her before -- dressed conservatively, hair gathered into a bun and for the first time that we'd seen she was wearing glasses.
"Ah, ok -- it's you two!" was her greeting. "I knew who you were when you called me Melissa, but I wasn't quite sure who Grey was but now that I see you of course I've seen you around. Come on in!"
Diane led us into a room that was right off the entry way to her house. It was a white room with a desk for Diane, a couple of comfy chairs for Melissa and I and couch that looked like it belonged in a psychiatrist's office. There were some medical looking devices in the room, along with some charts and posters on the wall depicting things like different sexual positions. It more or less felt like being in a cross between medical doctor and shrink's office.
Once we were seated inside, Diane told us about the confidential nature of our visit, that nothing that we would discuss would leave that room and stressed how important it was that we were totally honest with her.