"Tasy? Tasy Cooper?" The nickname felt a little bit unfamiliar on Joshua's lips after all these years, like the kiss of an old lover returning for one last fling. But he knew it was Anastasia, even before she turned to look at him--he'd spent most of his K through 12 years one seat behind her, the luck of alphabetical order always putting Josh Copperfield just inches away from those long, honey-blonde locks he'd started daydreaming about the second he hit puberty. Even twenty-five years hadn't diminished their luster. Joshua suddenly wished his own hair hadn't started vanishing somewhere in his thirties.
But when she turned, she looked at him with a delighted smile that didn't so much as flicker at his bald head and the thirty extra pounds middle age had put on his once lanky frame. "Josh!" she squealed, her eyes lighting up with excitement at the sight of him. "Oh my god, Josh, it's so good to see you again! I'm not Tasy anymore--gosh, I haven't been Tasy for years now. But don't worry, you're far from the first person to make that mistake. Oh, you have to come and talk to me and tell me how you've been doing all this time!" She took him by the hand and gave him a playful yank, dragging him off the dance floor and toward the double doors that led out of the gymnasium.
"I, wuh--don't you want to have a seat?" he stammered, left a little off-balance physically and mentally by Tasy--by Anastasia's sudden and enthusiastic reaction to his presence. He'd never really thought they had this kind of connection; oh, sure, they were friends in school, but that was normal when you lived three doors down from each other and shared so many of the same classes. They certainly hadn't kept in touch after heading to college, although in fairness Joshua had gotten so swamped with coursework at Yale that it was a good solid year before he lifted his head out of a textbook, and he really hadn't seen her pop up on social media. She hadn't even attended any reunions before this one. And now she was all smiles and giggles and... was she batting her eyes at him?
She certainly sounded like she was flirting. "Oh, we don't want to have to talk over all that din," she chuckled, leading him out into the hallway and down toward their old locker rooms. "Besides, if I have to hear 'Semi-Charmed Life' one more time, I think they're going to have to pull me off that DJ." Joshua laughed, almost surprised at how easy it was to fall back into that same comfortable camaraderie with his old friend. With his old crush, he admitted, at least in the privacy of his own head. Joshua had gone to every high school reunion determined not to make an idiot out of himself by confessing any old feelings about anyone he hadn't seen in years, and he had every intention of keeping that promise, but he couldn't deny that he'd spent most of his teens pining for the leggy blonde with the impressive cleavage and the sparkling blue eyes.
And Tasy--Anastasia--she'd taken good care of herself over the years. Better than Joshua, although he still had days when he looked in the mirror and saw someone who reminded him of the young man an old girlfriend had described as 'cute, in a nerdy way'. Anastasia must revel in the sight of her own body, though; even at forty-three, she had the sensual curves of a twenty-something, and her breasts almost seemed to have gotten larger over the years while still retaining that impressive bounce he always remembered from when they were teenagers.
Not that Joshua was trying to rekindle that old crush or anything. Not that he was thinking at all about the way that Anastasia was leading him all the way down past the trophy cases into the forbidden territory of the girls' locker rooms, their footfalls smacking on the black and white tiles that looked as though they hadn't been replaced since their high school days as they went back to the benches that Anastasia must have sat on when she was changing into her sports bra for soccer practice. Not that Joshua was thinking about Anastasia taking off her clothes. He'd just had a relationship crash and burn on him, he wasn't interested in using his old friend from high school for rebound sex. Whatever his half-engorged dick might be telling him.
"There," she said, tugging him to a seat next to her on the long wooden benches. "Now we can talk without having to scream over a medley of Jewel songs." She swiveled to face him, sitting with one leg crossed under the other, and gave him a beaming smile. "So how have things been going with you since the divorce? I know you got that big promotion, and I'm so happy for you, but I've really been worried since Sue broke up with you. Please tell me you haven't gone and hidden yourself in a shell or something. You deserve so much better than that."
Joshua honestly didn't know how to answer that. Any of it. "I--you--have you seen my Facebook posts?" he asked, his eyes widening in bewildered shock. Admittedly, his list of Facebook friends had kind of metastasized over the last decade or so, what with his professional, personal, and familial connections all sending him requests, but he felt sure he would have remembered Tasy. Anastasia. Whatever she called herself these days. She was a part of his life every day for fifteen years, from nursery school right up until graduation; he simply couldn't imagine clicking 'Accept' on her without even noticing it.
And her answer... she said it like she was trying to reassure him, but his expression went well past shock and into goggling astonishment when Anastasia replied, "No, no, nothing stalkery like that. But Master still keeps in touch with a lot of people, and he mentioned it to me the other day. I think we were both kind of surprised when I said I wanted to see you and find out if you were doing okay." At least, that was what Joshua thought she said. Honestly, he was so stuck on the 'Master' part, she could have mentioned she was the Zodiac Killer and he wouldn't have really noticed.
Joshua blinked hard. "I--I'm sorry, did you say, uhh, did you say 'Master'? Like, as in, um, as in... you know, your Master, Master?" He felt like he was in danger of babbling like a sitcom character, but somehow he never connected the pretty, charming girl next door he knew in high school (well, three doors down, but still) with some sort of kinky sexual deviant from the porn he tried to tell himself it wasn't sad to watch now that he was single again. Tasy didn't look like the kind of woman who had a Master. She looked like she had an MBA and a convertible she used for her weekend trips to Cabo. Joshua didn't even know how to respond to this worldview-rearranging news.
But Anastasia didn't react to his reaction at all. "Of course I have a Master, silly!" she giggled, swatting him playfully on the knee as if to chide him for his foolishness. "I told you I wasn't Tasy anymore, didn't I? Master took me my freshman year of college, back at USC, and he turned me into his obedient fucktoy. That was why I never really kept in touch with you over the years, Josh. I was being brainwashed into Master's sex slave, and it kind of took up a lot of my time. I wound up dropping out of school and moving in with him, and after that, well... you spend all your day cleaning and cooking and masturbating in front of the spiral while you recite your mantras, and you'd be surprised how fast the years go by." She made it sound normal, that was the weirdest part. She told him that someone had hypnotized her and programmed her and taken away her entire life, and she made it sound like it was no more important than Joshua's trip to Europe a few years back.
"I, T-Tasy, I...." Joshua trailed off into silence, not even knowing how to begin unpacking the revelations his old high school friend had just dropped on him. "Do, uh, do you need to go to the police? Can you tell me who this 'Master' is? Can I help you... I don't know, fight this, somehow?" It all seemed like a woefully inadequate response, but Joshua had never contemplated this particular scenario in all his occasional musings about what he might say if he bumped into Tasy someday. He didn't exactly have any tools in the toolkit for it.
