Chapter 3 #3
She’s already drawn back and said, “Thank you,” when I realize she’s just kissed me. Just my cheek, a sweet tap, but when I look at her, I notice her pupils are slightly bigger, her color brighter, her lips still parted as she keeps her eyes on me.
“I like that you came here to show off your body. You look hot in that outfit.” Not a lie.
She may not be a supermodel, but she’s absolutely hot in that outfit.
I have to continually catch myself from staring at her boobs jiggling in her corset.
And yeah, I’m trying to be a gentleman, but every time I’ve leaned behind her for any reason, I may have let my hand travel across her butt.
It’s soft and squishy underneath the spandex.
I’m a pig.
She grins like she’s never heard that before, which is ridiculous to me. There’s no way guys aren’t checking her out regularly. “Thanks. I was worried this was going to be overkill, but then I thought what’s the worst that’s going to happen? I get laid?”
I go rigid at that. That wasn’t an invitation.
I don’t think. Like, it definitely wasn’t an obvious invitation, and I don’t know if it was an attempt at a subtle invitation, but it wasn’t close enough that I’m willing to risk it when I’m enjoying just hanging out with her.
So I play it safe with, “I have a confession. I also wore this with the concern it might get me laid.”
“Wear is a strong word.”
I nod.
She holds my eyes for a long time, but I don’t think she’s expecting me to say anything. I think she’s deciding if she wants to say something. I think she does want to fuck.
“How old are you?” she asks.
Odd. The first personal question she’s asked me. This whole time, I’ve been worried about what to tell her if she asks about me, if I should tell her things that will give my identity away. Usually, I have no misgivings about lying on that front. “I’m 26.”
She nods, absorbing that info, neither a positive nor a negative response. “Have you ever gone through anything that changed you so much that you’ve forgotten how to be you? Or like you’re not you anymore, and you don’t know how to be that anymore?”
I want to immediately agree, but my answer is ridiculous because it happened when I was so little.
My parents dropped me off at my Gammy’s when I was five, and I didn’t see them again for two years.
Even then, it was only for the occasional holiday.
I loved Gammy, had been to her place many times, had even lived with her for a couple weeks at a time, but it wasn’t until I was an adult that any of it made sense.
That it wasn’t anything wrong with me.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know how to be how I was before I got sick. I don’t know if I’m supposed to be someone different. I am someone different. Everybody’s made that super clear with me, but I feel like I’m still the same me, I just don’t know how to get back there.”
“Do you think they’re scared of you now? Like they’re still scared of losing you? Or that they’re going to hurt you?”
“God, I hope not. Oh, but . . . yeah, that last thing. Physically hurt me. And like I’m not just a normal person who wants to do normal things anymore.
They act like I need to live every moment to the fullest when I just want to live every moment.
” She takes a big breath, steadying herself, and then looks back out over the lobby and says, “Fine. I just want to get laid.”
I’m about to take the plunge and offer myself up. That sounded good enough for me. She wants to get laid, I want to get laid, we can make this happen.
“God, I used to get laid all the time,” she continues before I get that chance, and I immediately backtrack my thoughts because I might have just been friend-zoned.
“I used to be such a whore. I fucked anyone who offered—” She cuts herself off with a gasp and looks to me, horrified.
“Not a whore. Not like that. I was never, like, selling myself on a street corner.”
I should tell her I didn’t think that and I don’t even judge sex workers.
I’ve heard there’s a lot of human trafficking in the industry, and that blows.
But an enterprising woman deciding to put an ad on craigslist or sell pics of her stuffing weird shit up her vag or even standing on that street corner?
That’s her business. I sell my body, too.
So I should say something like that, but then I notice the way her coloring intensifies and her eyes widen, only for the lids to go heavy immediately. I notice the cadence of her voice and the swell of her chest. She’s not embarrassed by what she’s just said. She’s secretly excited.
I lean in a bit, get closer to her ear. “Wouldn’t it be fun, though?”
“What? No! It’s scary. Terrible things happen to those women.”
Not disgusting or shameful to her. Just dangerous.
“Not to the high-end ones. The escorts.” I don’t even know if that’s true, but it sounds right.
That’s the way of the world. “Wouldn’t that be exciting?
To be taken up to a fancy suite and drink champagne and then indulge in lewd, filthy, shameful, delightful things and make bank off it? ”
She’s silent. Still. Her breath lifts and drops her chest, her eyes dart around in thought, but other than that, there’s a very long time she spends with my words before responding.
She swallows and says, “I have a suite.”
“I have eighty-seven dollars in my boot.” Formerly a hundred, and then I got a single smoothie from the hotel’s cafe, and here we are.
She takes another breath before saying, “Eighty-seven dollars does make bank.”