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"But I was there!" I said.

"JJ, let's respect how he felt," Daddy said, and I realized maybe I was being a little insensitive.

"Sorry, Max," I said, nodding. "Come whenever you want, no rush. It's just that we really liked you and wanted you there. You guys too!" I added quickly to Rick and Esteban, because I didn't want them to feel left out.

They laughed when I said that. Sometimes I made people laugh without even meaning to — a lot of people told me I was really funny, but most of the time I wasn't even trying to make a joke, I was just saying things my own way. Well, at least it made people laugh — I guess that was better than making people cry.

"So why don't we lock it in for next Saturday?" Daddy asked the two of them. "What do you think?"

"I'd love that," Rick said. "We had a really good time and want to come back," he added, looking at me.

I was so happy to hear that. Max nodded too, and he was smiling — it looked genuine.

"It'll definitely be great," he said.

I felt all warm inside. Not just because I'd get my friend back, but because it was good to see that he'd felt welcomed. I'd been worried, thinking maybe he hadn't liked it at all, wondering if it had been something about how I'd acted — sometimes I annoyed people without even realizing it. A lot of people at The Hearth thought I was extremely annoying and avoided me, and that broke my heart. But Daddy always told me to ignore them, that I had way more people who loved me than people who didn't like me. It was just hard sometimes, especially when the mean thoughts in my head started screaming things like you're not enough, people just tolerate you, you're going to end up alone. Luckily, I always had Daddy to remind me those thoughts weren't true. Sometimes I let them get too loud, and he'd even correct me to remind me that he never lied to me, that I was being a bad boy for believing the mean thoughts instead of him.

But I realized I was losing myself in my thoughts. I snapped back to reality because, to my surprise, they were talking about Dominic.

"You guys know who was asking about Max?" Esteban said, with a conspiratorial look, and Max went redder than a bell pepper and hid his face behind his hands.

"Don't say it," Max complained.

"Safeword?" Esteban asked. In the community, if we'd already negotiated that playful protesting was part of the interaction, a safeword gave us a completely unambiguous way to say stop for real. It kept things clear, which was exactly what safewords were for.

Max shook his head, still embarrassed. So he didn't actually want Esteban to stop teasing him.

Esteban smiled like he'd just won a competition.

"Dominic asked for my number, and we talked a lot. Mostly about this one right here," he continued.

"I can't believe someone that good-looking would be interested in me," Max said.

"Well, believe it," Daddy said. "And this habit of putting yourself down for no reason tends to get naughty little boys in trouble. So you'd better be careful with that. Isn't that right, JJ?"

I nodded.

"I wouldn't risk it if I were you," I added.

Max laughed, and I tensed up a little, because since he was new to the scene, it was hard to know how far we could go with him about that kind of talk. It was hard with anyone, honestly, but even harder with newcomers, because we didn't yet know how confident they were about speaking up when something stopped feeling good or using their safeword when they needed it. It was always our responsibility as people with more experience, sub or not, to check that newcomers were genuinely comfortable. A lot of the time newcomers thought they had no limits and got themselves into all kinds of dangerous situations — I was one of those myself once. It took me a long time to learn that pretending everything's fine when it's not is the worst thing you can do, because it breaks your partner's trust in you and hurts both of you. I hoped Max would figure that out too.

"Dominic is a great Dom, very responsible. I can vouch for that. He'd never cross your limits or do anything horrible like ignore your safeword — which, unfortunately, we know can happen when someone ends up with the wrong person," Daddy said.

Max nodded, and he couldn't stop smiling. He was so cute.

"It feels like I'm dreaming, that someone like him is interested in me," he said again, and again went the color of a tomato. "I know you guys said I'm not supposed to say that. But what if I really mean it?"

"You can say it. You can do whatever you want," I said, and before Daddy could say anything — "you'll just have to deal with the consequences."

They laughed.

"And what would the consequences be for putting myself down?" Max asked. He seemed to be loosening up more, which was great — none of us wanted him to stop. "A spanking?" he asked.

I laughed and shook my head.

"You'll learn soon enough that, at least around us, spankings tend to be more fun than actual punishment. If you're actually really bad, you probably won't get something fun — you'll get something really boring, like saying positive affirmations about yourself out loud several times a day, or writing the same sentence over and over until it sinks in."

Max looked shocked at that. Esteban, on the other hand, laughed out loud.