Chapter 24 – Rule #11 The girlfriend experience is your best friend.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
KAITLIN
I miss Henry. This is the longest I’ve gone without talking to him in forever, and zero out of ten do not recommend.
Especially with him grumpy and short on time when we last spoke.
Withdrawal is threatening. My hands are shaking enough that I have to put the phone down because it’s rattling my teacup. I need his voice to save me.
It’s Wednesday. I’ll be meeting him in less than a week. Just under five days. I’m overwhelmed with nervous energy, bouncing like a squirrel living in a Starbucks dumpster.
When his name finally appears as an incoming call, I lunge for the phone.
“Henry, three days is too long. I have so much to tell you, great stuff I cannot wait to share. Too much to text. I need to tell you everything.” I’m a bit of a kid on Christmas, ready for the big reveal.
Everything is going exactly right. Perfectly and wonderfully right.
“Hey, Kait.” His voice is the flat nadir to my ecstatic zenith. I’ve talked to him so much that I’m capable of identifying his mood in two words. I’d call this mood sad.
He stops and says nothing. After giving him a moment to speak that he doesn’t take, I fill the silence. “Henrypoo, have you been sleeping okay? You sound exhausted.”
“I have not been sleeping well. Better than last year, but I am, uh, stressed.” Is he sick? Is that why he’s been so quiet for the last few days?
“Are you home?”
“I just walked in the door. I was going to call from the car, but I wanted to give you the courtesy of my undivided attention.” Ewwww. The only way I would have flinched harder is if he had said, “We need to talk.”
“The courtesy of your undivided attention? Do we need to have a serious chat before I tell you the heaps of good things?” He’s a bit stiff.
Nervous means more formal, more anxious means he’s precise in his speech, but when he’s really wound up, he doesn’t use contractions.
If he starts talking like he doesn’t know what an apostrophe is, we’re in deep shit. It’s a Henry thing.
“Listen, Kait, I…” He takes a deep breath, like he’s bracing to jump into Lake Michigan in February.
“Kait, I have been thinking a lot the last few days. We, I mean you and I… I know this is a transaction, not a relationship. It does not always feel that way—sometimes it feels so real that I worry it will prevent a real relationship.”
My stomach drops. Not flutters. Drops. Like I’ve missed a step in the dark, and I’m about to take a tumble. “Henry, money doesn’t even cross my mind when I talk to you. I’m just happy to hear your voice.” This is how I know I’ve officially lost my mind. I say these things, and they are—gag—true.
Choosing love over money?
I don’t recognize myself.
I’d laugh, but Henry sounds so damn sad it strips the humor out of the conversation.
“Kait, I need to finish this thought. Bear with me, and I will endeavor to express myself in a cogent fashion.” Cogent fashion?
Shit. He’s really not okay. “Whatever this is, it is preventing me from finding a real relationship. I turned down a date recently because I would be cheating on you,” he confesses, his tone morose with a tinge of shame. “It was not the first time.”
He says it all so carefully, like elocution lessons, wrapping his mouth around every single word to make sure they’re formed right.
“I understand.” See Kait actively listen. See Kait panic. See Kaitlin smile. He thinks he would be cheating on me if he dated other women. Surely that means something important.
“I could have someone special in my life if I had the courage to put myself out there.”
“Of course you can. You’re amazing.” I suck in a breath and will myself to shut up and listen instead of jumping in to fix things like I always do. “I’m listening, Henry.”
“There is no world in which this thing we have becomes real.”
“There is, Henry…” Before I can formulate the words, he continues.
“I have spent days thinking about this. I am worthless at work, and every night, I toss and turn because I know a clean break would be best. I can’t have you, and I never want anyone else with you filling my life and making everything, um, fulfilling.
” The words come out slowly, unfurling, and dread pools in my gut.
In the space between his words, I press the heels of my palms to my eyes, trying to calm myself, but it doesn’t work.
“If I have to choose between no chance or a low chance of finding someone to spend my life with… don’t I deserve a chance, Kait?” He asks the question, but there’s no opportunity to answer; he rushes to the next thought.
“I am only thirty, thirty-one this weekend. I should try a little harder, for a little longer, before I give up on having a family. Kids… I can picture them so clearly, it is almost painful. Retire early and travel was never my big dream. It’s my fallback because I failed at a family.”
I listen in silence while he rambles, speculating on the odds of meeting someone who could love him, while I mire in the knowledge there is a 100 percent chance he could meet someone who already loves him Monday.
“I know women are usually down to, you know… They like the look of me, but maybe I could find someone who loves me back a little. Someone who cares for me some.”
His voice is soft, gentle even. I miss half of what he’s trying to say because he’s trying to gently let me go. He’s kindly dumping me. “I cannot love someone whose job is pretending, because I’ll never know what is real.”
His words burn like acid.
“I broke my rules,” I whisper, like a confession. “Because I fell in love with you. It is real.”
I’ve imagined his response to me telling him I love him.
Happiness. Confusion. Rejection. It’s none of those.
There’s a pause. Long enough that hope starts to make my body seem a little lighter until he snaps at me, his tone harsher than I’ve ever heard from him as he turns on me.
“That’s what you’re paid for,” he says, deathly quiet. “Making it sound real.”
My stomach lurches, and a sound comes out of me that’s more wounded animal than human, a brittle cry of pain inflicted without mercy. My eyes are stinging now, and I swipe at the tears. Is this what it’s like to have your heart breaking in real time?
“You are incredible at your job, Kait, but I need someone who can tell me their name. Someone who can curl up next to me. Someone who exists when the call is over. I need to be hugged and held. I need affection, not a girlfriend experience with fake everything.”
“I can do those things. I am that person.” The tears are flowing. I sniffle. “I have never faked a single thing with you, Henry Benedict Sterling. I have never lied to you.”
“You need to understand, I need a real life, not this fake fantasy life.” His tone is harsh, bordering on ugly.
I’m quiet but firm. “This has never been fake for me. Not for a minute. This—whatever it is—has always been real to me. You have always been special to me. I want to meet you. I want to be with you if you want that too.” The sniffles are impossible to hide.
I know this can be fixed. That’s the only thing keeping my chest from cracking open and my battered heart from spilling out.
“Tears won’t change my mind. I will not be manipulated.” Henry Sterling, mergers and acquisitions, has joined the conversation.
Anger rises up, bubbling in me, and threatening to boil over.
He’s handed down his decision, judge and jury.
Pure, fiery rage is welling up, but I mentally silence the anger and reach for love and kindness before I speak.
He needs to be loved through this, not to have me tearing into him with anger.
I love him, and the only way forward is to act like it.
I’ll love him up, then surprise him Monday. Easy peasy.
“I’m not manipulating you. I know you—huge difference.
You need words of affirmation, and it’s important that you feel understood and appreciated, but you rarely feel seen, even though you’re one of the best humans I’ve ever had the good fortune to know.
” I try squeezing my eyes shut tight, and I rub at them, but the tears keep flowing.
“You are the least judgmental person I know. You never judge me for being a sex worker.”
He starts to interrupt, his tone still nasty but his words honest. “It would be hypocritical to call you and judge you…”
He doesn’t understand. He can’t see he doesn’t just have Kait; he has Kaitlin too.
I’m not resisting anymore. I’ve fallen. Part of me wants to lash out, but the best part of me, the part that loves this man, wants to protect his delicate heart.
He’ll remember every harsh word I say forever and forget the kind ones instantly.
“Your dog when you were a kid was named King Charles but answered to Sir Alister, thanks to Declan, and for some reason, that pisses you off even to this day, but you won’t tell me why.
” He makes an irritated noise at the mention of the dog’s call name.
“I know your siblings’ names in chronological order: Declan, Llewellyn aka Wells, Killian, Schuyler—Sky, Dr. Lachlan, and Saoirse.
I even know the words to your favorite song, which is excellent to be fair, but it’s not really part of my fucking job description, Sterling. ”
“You’re paid to be a good listener,” he scoffs.
“Henry, now that you aren’t lonely, you’re sleeping. I bet that scares the absolute shit out of you. Feeling like it could be real might make running from it seem smart.” He says nothing, and I ignore his noncommittal grunt. “Henry, please, trust me for a few days.”
“I can’t. Two days, two weeks, ten years, seven hundred thousand dollars with interest.” He’s so damn sad, but he’s cold, and words are spilling out of him.
No more hesitancy, lacerating me with his thoughts.
“You’ve made me want more. I had given up on the idea of a family.
I was alone, but I wasn’t being strung along. ”
I flinch. Strung along?
“I was okay. I just needed sleep. You made me want it all again—love and children and to have someone sleeping next to me. You make me not want to give up on having a best friend who can make my toes curl. I want that, and I can have you, or I can have that, but I can’t have both.
I won’t cheat, and I’m so tired of being used for tickets and dinners and vacations, yet here I am. Again. Clearly, I am the problem here.”
His words are like jagged ice picks, jabbed straight into my delicate places. “This is the girlfriend experience, you making pretty decent money making me feel like I have someone in my life. I can’t keep going with you. I’m done.” He’s cold, all sharp edges and steel.
“Henry, it isn’t the girlfriend experience if the sex worker in question actually wants to be your girlfriend.” I can’t keep irritation out of my tone.
“I can’t do this anymore, Kait. I won’t.” His words are laced with pain.
The mean part of me that wants to lash out quiets at the sound of his anguish. The best of me, the part that delights in helping him sleep and wants to love him, is the strongest part of who I am in this shitty-ass moment.
“Henry, I want you to be happy. Period.” I let out a breath slowly. “Does this make you feel like you’re a lucky man? What song is playing right now?”
A sound comes out of him that I’ve never heard before, like a ragged whimper.
Pure pain. “No. There isn’t any music playing in my head.
There isn’t a song right now, but that doesn’t matter.
I need a woman I can trust. That’s not you,” he says, his voice oddly calm while he destroys me.
As though there is a robot in command, pressing the big red button that sends weapons to annihilate me.
“This ends today, Kait. We’re done here. ”
My entire body goes still, except for the sound of my heartbeat pounding in my ears. If he doesn’t trust me, there is nothing left to save.
“Oh.” I curl into a ball in my chair, arms wrapped around my knees, stunned. It would hurt less if he slapped me. The pain expands until I can’t feel anything else.
His voice is strong, resolute. “Promise me you won’t call, Kait. You are my favorite deadly addiction, my heroin. Let me go.”
I sit up in my chair, straighten my spine. Now we’re both resolute. “You’re free, Henry. Your wish is granted. I promise.” I use my chipper voice and grab the hem of my shirt to wipe off my dripping face. He doesn’t deserve a single one of my tears. “I won’t even say your name again.”
The line goes dead. It’s a silence so thick and complete that I want to scream into the emptiness.
Not even a click. Just—nothing.