CHAPTER 3
L ogan rolled out of her bed more than got out of it. Somehow, she ended up on her feet and made her way into the small bathroom in her apartment, where she washed her face and brushed her teeth. Then, she put on a pair of not-so-dirty jeans and looked at the strap-on, which was clean, at least, but was lying on top of her dresser. She removed the jeans and slipped into it, tucking it back into the jeans once they were on again. She didn’t always walk around with it on, but recently, the types of women she’d been attracting liked it and seemed to get off on cupping her and stroking her, despite the fact that Logan couldn’t even feel it. It was for them, not her, but she didn’t mind wearing it.
She put on a T-shirt over her sports bra and checked the clock by her bed. Her room was spartan, at best, and had a queen bed with a blanket instead of a duvet and only a couple of pillows. Logan had one bedside table where the clock sat and where she charged her phone, and there was a small dresser. She didn’t have many clothes, so the closet was relatively empty because of it. Having slipped into her shoes, she found her keys and phone on the small round dining table, grabbed them both, along with the wallet she’d left on the kitchen counter, and left the apartment.
First, as always, Logan opened her hookup app while walking the three blocks to where she had to park because her apartment building didn’t have parking for its residents. She scrolled through a few profiles and checked her in-app notifications, discovering that a woman she’d met up with just last week had messaged asking if she wanted a repeat. Logan did, so she told her as much before she checked the time again, noting that it was one in the afternoon. She could get in eight hours of driving, making a few dollars, and then meet up with this woman wherever she wanted and drive a few more hours until she’d go home to crash.
She opened the Lyft app once she got to her car, and finding a ride right away, she moved through traffic to pick up the guy who sat in her back seat talking on his cell phone the whole time. Twenty minutes later, he finally got out, and she picked up a group of three women who looked like they were about college-age. Logan dropped them over on Canal Street, guessing they would be doing some shopping before going out that night in the Quarter, like most tourists. After that, she picked up another ten rides around the city and deposited them wherever they requested.
Most of her passengers had left her alone, choosing to talk to each other or stare at their phones, if they’d been by themselves, which would’ve been fine by her, except Logan needed a distraction today. She was jonesing for it, and she knew she needed to focus on anything else. A conversation with a stranger, even if it was a dull one or basic small talk that neither of them cared about, would help her mind stay calm. She needed to focus on something else, and if no one wanted to talk today, she would find another way to keep herself from making a mistake. Yes, there was a more obvious way to do that. She could go to a meeting. There was one every hour on the hour somewhere in the city. Logan could stay there through the night, if she needed to, and keep herself distracted by listening to the stories of other people to try to remember why she had decided to never do what she’d done again. She knew why. She was living it.
“Hey,” the woman from last week said.
“Hey,” Logan replied.
She’d walked into the bar around nine, after eight hours of sitting in the car and only stopping to grab a quick meal and pee in the restroom. She had needed to stretch anyway, so finding someone who wanted to stretch with her was as good of an idea as any. The woman from the app had messaged her that she was working that night as a shot girl at one of the bars in the Quarter. She’d be working until well after three in the morning, so if they wanted to do something, it would have to be on her break.
“I have fifteen minutes,” she told Logan and offered her a purple-colored shot that was inside a test tube.
Logan took it from her, but instead of downing it herself, she nodded for her about-to-be-distraction to open her mouth and tipped the alcohol into it. When the woman licked her lips, Logan nodded out the door, but the nod she received back was in a different direction, toward the back of the bar. Logan followed her, allowing herself to be pulled by the hand until they were walking through a door that creaked as it was pushed.
Once outside, Logan asked, “You want it here?”
The woman looked around the alleyway, and seeing no one, she pressed herself into the brick wall behind her and hiked up her dress, telling Logan without words that, yes, she did want it here.
“Do you want what I’m wearing or my fingers?”
“Fuck. You’re wearing it right now?” the woman asked, pulling on Logan’s hand until she was right in front of her. Then, she reached for Logan and cupped her exactly how Logan knew she would. “God, yes. I want this.” The woman squeezed Logan harder, turning her on.
Logan looked around, and while they could hear the revelry, no one was in this alleyway. She knew this wouldn’t take long. It never did. She unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans, letting the woman pull out the flesh-colored toy and stroke it. Logan watched, letting this distract her. She pressed a palm into the wall behind the woman and put her other hand on the dildo.
“Are you at least ready for me?” she asked.
“Yes. I’ve been hot all day. Why do you think I messaged you?”
The woman spread her legs wide, and Logan remembered that she hadn’t seen her take off her panties. She slid her fingers into the woman’s folds, discovering that she wasn’t wearing any, and coated the toy with what she’d found. She didn’t waste any time. Thrusting inside, she pressed her entire body against this woman’s and moved her hips, pushing deep and pulling out to do it all again. The woman let out several expletives. Her hands moved to Logan’s back, and her nails dug into the skin under Logan’s T-shirt. It hurt, but in the way that Logan needed it to hurt; in the way that helped her stay distracted. She pressed her other palm to the wall, but only for a second. The woman in front of her pulled her hand from the wall and shoved it between her own legs, wanting Logan to stroke her clit, too.
Logan did. She flicked and squeezed the flesh while she rocked into her, letting the woman’s fingernails inflict more pain and maybe even draw blood. When the woman tried to lift her leg, Logan removed her other hand from the wall and held on to it for her, letting the new position give her more access. It felt like only seconds later, the woman was coming and whispering Logan’s name into her ear. But Logan wasn’t ready for it to be over. If it was over, the thoughts would reenter her mind, and she needed to remain distracted. She pulled out before the woman had finished coming and turned her around to face the wall.
“Oh, yes,” the woman moaned when Logan entered her from behind and continued to pump inside her while she wrapped her arm around her and kept up the pressure on her clit.
The woman’s hips were rocking into Logan’s palm, and she was now coming either for a second time or just finishing her first orgasm. Logan wasn’t sure, but she wished she would have gone down on her instead. That would’ve taken at least a few more minutes. She stopped stroking the woman’s clit and waited for her to come down. When she did, the woman turned around, and Logan lifted her dress, making a move to kneel in front of her.
“Hey, hold on a second there, stud,” she told Logan. “I only have a fifteen-minute break.”
“It’ll be fast,” Logan replied, tapping the woman’s inner thigh to get her to move it and let her take her again.
“I can’t come again so fast. That one was really fucking good.” The woman closed her eyes and lowered her dress.
“When’s your next break?”
“I don’t have one. I’ll be off at three.”
“I can meet you at your place. I’ll be up,” she said.
“Oh, that sounds good,” the woman replied. “Will you still be wearing this?” She looked down at the glistening toy that was standing tall between Logan’s legs.
“I can,” Logan said.
“Do it,” she replied. “And I’ll let you lick me for hours, if you want.”
Logan didn’t really want to lick her, but she also didn’t not want to do it, so she nodded and tucked the dildo back inside her jeans, buttoning and zipping them up.
“Follow me. I’ll let you cut in the line for the bathroom so that we can clean up.”
Logan nodded and followed her back inside the bar, where the line for the bathroom was ten-women long. Using her uniform as a pretend excuse that she needed to clean the bathroom, the woman Logan had just fucked moved them to the front of the line and closed the door behind them.
“God, you are seriously sexy. Do you know that?”
Logan felt hands running over her chest repeatedly.
“I thought you said you couldn’t come again so soon,” she replied, letting her own hand drift low again to lift the woman’s dress.
“Just finger me. I’ll come,” the woman told her.
Logan slid two fingers inside her and fucked her against the sink as knocks continued against the door of the one-stall room. The woman came loudly, so Logan covered her mouth with her other hand and let her bite down on the inside of her palm, relishing that pain because it made her feel something other than a want for something she could no longer have. The temporary distraction was over before she knew it, and Logan went to the sink to clean the dildo as best she could while the woman cleaned herself up and replaced the paper towels. Logan then washed her hands, and they left the bathroom to women standing there, scowling at them.
Logan didn’t say goodbye. She just made her way toward the front of the bar and walked out, heading in the direction of her car. She climbed inside and went to look for another ride but decided that she needed something else more than rent money right now. Minutes later, she was sitting in the church parking lot, waiting for the meeting to begin. She’d tried this meeting thing twice before in her life. Once had been because her family had conducted an intervention, and she’d promised them that she would go to meetings and get help. She’d gone to three and ended up on a riverboat. The second time had been after she’d ruined her life. She’d gone to one meeting and decided it wasn’t for her.
Tonight, though, she knew she needed something, and if she went home, she wouldn’t sleep. If she kept driving, that would help, but on these late-night trips, she often risked having to drive past the same riverboat casino, bringing back all those memories, so instead, she got out of her car and walked inside the church, taking the stairs at the right to the room above the actual church, where the meetings were conducted. The donuts someone had brought were there. So was the coffee. Logan went over and made herself a cup, letting it burn her tongue and throat a bit. Then, she sat down in one of the cold plastic chairs.
“Hello. My name is James, and I’m a gambling addict,” the man who had just walked to the front of the room said.
“Hi, James,” the rest of the room replied in unison.
There were about twelve other gambling addicts in the room, all looking like they’d rather be anywhere but here.
“We have someone celebrating their one-year chip tonight,” James announced, and Logan drowned out the rest of what was said.
She knew she should listen. It was why she’d come there in the first place. But hearing them all talk about their own issues that had led them to gamble away their life savings, their homes, their cars, losing marriages, jobs, children, and more in the process, only worked to make her want to leave, not to keep herself from downloading her poker app again and going all-in with the money she had made from driving today.
An hour later, the meeting was over, and everyone stood, preparing to leave and probably head home to get some sleep. Logan stayed, though. There was an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting after that, and while she’d never had a problem with alcohol, the principles of addiction were somewhat the same, so she listened to the people in this meeting tell their stories before it was over as well, and she left, not feeling like either meeting had been worth her time. She drove her car to the shot girl’s apartment building, and at three-fifteen, she saw another car pull up, and the woman climbed out. Logan got out of her own car and crossed her arms as she leaned back against it.
“Perfect timing,” the woman told her. “I’m more than ready for you.”
“Let’s go, then,” Logan replied.
Walking to the apartment, they didn’t hold hands; they didn’t even look at each other. Within minutes, though, Logan had this woman coming beneath her and then again, from behind. After that, she cleaned the toy in the bathroom, and when she emerged, the woman was still naked on her bed, asleep now. Logan left her there sated and drove home, where she took a long shower and finally climbed into bed around five in the morning, wondering how long she was going to continue on like this, barely making enough money driving to pay rent on her crappy apartment, fucking women who rarely even knew her name, and trying not to think about the fact that she’d lost everything due to her own stupid mistakes.
The next day, she woke up around two in the afternoon, showered again for something to do, grabbed a pizza pocket from the freezer, heated it up, and took it with her to eat on the way to her car while she scanned the app for women to meet that night. Once in the car, she opened the Lyft app and checked for people who might be looking for rides. Between her second and third ride, she took a break and opened a different app, one where she could search for jobs. One brand-new opportunity caught Logan’s eye, and she decided that going for a job interview might be a good place to start.