36. My Body Is a Cage
ARCADE FIRE
Love is a four-letter word.
So is clit.
So is next.
I walk into the rented-out ballet studio, ambushed by my own reflection, mirrors everywhere. Celie’s already here—combat boots kicked up on a folding chair, oversized tee swallowing her cheetah-print shorts.
She's sipping iced coffee.
At the start of winter.
With her sunglasses on. Indoors.
The second she sees me, she laughs with her mouth around her straw. “Are you deadass right now?” She takes in my blazer, my wide-leg dress pants, my serious-as-fuck heels. “Tell me why you dressed like you just closed on a condo in Boca?”
I drop the briefcase on the folding table and snap open the metal clasps.
She falls forward with a cackle, palm smacking the table, boots slipping off the folding chair.
“You really brought a whole-ass briefcase?” She sets down her coffee.
“In SoHo?” Her head snaps back, bursting into laughter.
“Nah, Allie, be so for real. We hirin’ Boys today, or openin’ a business checkin’ account? ”
I hand her a folder.
She doesn’t take it.
I narrow my eyes. “Celie, please.”
She sighs and swipes it from my hand.
Inside:
today’s lineup with headshots and bios.
“We’re interviewing three candidates.” I place the glass bowl in the middle of the table.
“The order’s alphabetical. They’ll each get ten minutes.
You’ll be observing, not participating. Unless I say.
” I rip open a Halloween-size bag of Starburst and fill the bowl.
“Try to keep the commentary to a minimum, aight?”
This is recruitment.
This is business.
This is ice-blooded and cold-hearted Allison Taylor, relearning the art of not giving a fuck.
Brandon’s gone.
Ben’s imploding.
Andrew still hasn’t signed my contract.
So I’m rebuilding—fast.
Making moves. Stacking Boys. The only person looking out for Allison is Allison.
Celie clicks her tongue. “You’re suspiciously hinged.” She draws a finger down the length of my outfit. “Not a thing outta place, voice neutral...” She squints. “Yeah. Nah. Somethin’ happened.”
Yeah, no shit.
Miss No-Penetration fucked two guys in twenty-four hours, and now she’s a slut.
Not a badass or a player.
A real, actual slut.
“What happened is, I need new tongues,
“fresh mouths,
“willing learners.”
She fans the folder open, crossing her legs. “Yeah, yeah, down to one Boy. How will you ever survive,” she mutters, eyes skimming the next headshot. “You really think hirin’ a new Boy right before we take off for Cali is a good idea—”
“Celie, please don’t start.”
She pops her gum, all attitude. “Mhm. I know what’s really goin’ on. All them soft-ass feelings for Six-Point-Five creepin’ back up, huh?”
I reach for my pen, click it,
and circle the one with the pretty eyes.
“Wouldn’t matter.” I slap the folder shut. “Feelings don’t eat pussy.”
A knock echoes off the mirrors.
“And there’s contestant number one.”
// BOY #1 //
Contestant number one walks in like someone handed him a mirror in middle school and said, ‘You’re beautiful, so don’t waste it,’ and he hasn’t since.
I slide into Celie’s ear. “Name’s Jalen. Crown Heights. Works with kids in crisis—grief groups, troubled kids from juvie, that kinda thing.”
He’s crossing the floor,
heading right for us.
Thirty-two. Neatly edged beard.
Annoyingly perfect white teeth.
Broad across the chest,
navy shirt hugging just right.
He smooths down his tie,
checking his reflection.
Celie lights up. “Aww, you got one of those good hearts, huh?”
He grins. “Try to.”
He offers his hand.
I stare at it.
He’s too perfect. I don’t trust it.
So I push the bowl toward him.
“Pick one.”
He hesitates. “I’m good. But thanks.”
My face deadpans.
“Wasn’t a suggestion.”
His smile falters, and he grabs a red:
dangerous, confident, dominant.
Everything’s a test, even the Starburst—
how long he hesitates,
which color he picks,
how often he checks his reflection.
The quiet shit
always screams the loudest.
Pink Starburst:
people-pleasers, trainable, in love.
Orange: obsessed, toxic,
might write me a song,
then key my car.
Yellows are serial killers.
Or people who turn down the volume.
“Red?” Celie claps once. “Oh, he one of them respectful ass-eaters.”
“Celie,” I mutter.
He grins,
popping the Starburst into his mouth.
I stand and shrug off the blazer, draping it over the back of the chair. “Rapid fire. I ask, you answer. Fast, no stalling. Spit, don’t think.”
He nods, eyes never leaving mine.
I walk toward him, my heels echoing in the room. “Give head or receive head?” I ask, circling his chair.
He straightens with the question. “Give,” he says, glancing over his shoulder at me. “What kind of man picks ‘receive’ with two women starin’ at him?”
“An honest one,” I bite back.
“Now stand up.”
He rises tall to his feet.
I stand in front of him, my gaze sliding down all six-foot-three of him. “Notice the height difference?” I lift a brow. “Rule one: don’t ever stand over me.”
He moves to sit again. “Yes, ma’am.”
Fucking ma’am.
“Call me that again and you finish this interview on your knees.”
He grins. “Yes, Baby.”
Celie’s wide-eyed with her hand to her face, shakin’ with that oh-no-you-didn’t giggle.
“Application says your penis is four-point-five inches,” I say. “Cutting it close. Is that measurement taken erect or flaccid?”
“Hard.” He kicks back, thighs wide. “Ain’t tryna waste your time. I read the fine print.”
I stand freakishly still, my hands laced behind me. “Stand up.”
He sits there as if it’s a trap.
I bend closer.
“Rule two? I decide when you can break the rules. I say stand, you stand.”
He stands at full height again, amused, looking down through light brown eyes and thick lashes.
I don’t step back, leaving an inch between us.
“This job doesn’t come with perks. You don’t come.
You don’t get head. You don’t fuck me. And you sure as hell don’t fuck anyone else.
” I rock back on my heel. “A grown-ass gentleman with a respectable career, and you wanna be a one-woman mouth pet? Explain that one to me.”
A vein ticks at his temple.
“I’ve seen too much shit to play the game,” he says, exhaustion riding his voice. “I manage crisis cases, sit in grief circles. These kids? Some of ‘em hustlin’ for lunch money, sleepin’ two to a couch.”
His gaze moves over me—hips to lips.
He’s not afraid of me.
He’s seen worse,
done worse,
survived worse.
“You think I’m tryna come home and fake it? Smile through date night and surface-level convo?” He shakes his head. “Nah, I take charge all day. Fight systems, break cycles, hold shit down. Don’t even wanna think after days like that, just let go. Let your rules handle me.”
The only reason he’s here is 'cause he’s tired after being a hero from nine to five.
The only reason I’m here is 'cause I need someone on-call to eat my pussy.
I’m seriously a piece of shit.
“Sit down.”
He sinks back into the chair, eyes locked on mine the whole way down.
I turn on my heel, head back to the table.
While I got him in the chair, might as well run a few hypotheticals. See how a man’s head fires under emotional cross-examination.
“Let’s say you’re into a girl, but the two of you are not in a committed relationship. Never were. If she were to—hypothetically—have sex with someone else…” I pluck a yellow Starburst from the bowl… “she obligated to tell you?”
“What does this have anything to do—”
“Tells me what kind of man you are," I bite out. “Now answer the question.”
This has nothing to do with Andrew, but I still feel Celie’s stare hot down my back, like she’s burning a six-point-five inch line with a blow torch.
“Obligated? Nah,” Jalen says. “Not my place to know. But if I meant somethin’ to her at all, I’d hope she’d tell me. That’s the kind of woman I respect—one who tells me anyway.”
The Starburst’s stuck to the roof of my mouth. I scrape it off with my tongue. “So lemme make sure I’m understandin’ you correctly. You’d lose respect for someone for not disclosing information you didn’t know existed?”
Celie shifts in her seat behind me,
her side-eye loud as fuck.
He laughs under his breath,
then looks around.
This isn’t going the way he rehearsed.
“I’ve learned keepin’ shit in? It leaks out. In your tone, your body, how you treat people.” He shrugs. “You hide a lie long enough, it starts shapin’ you.”
At some point, I stopped walking.
Sounded like something
Dr. Mitchell would say.
“Last question.” I cross my arms. “If a girl tells you up front she’ll hurt you. But then you fall for her anyway, and she hurts you, like she said she would, whose fault is it, really?”
He coughs into his fist, throwing a glance at Celie sitting behind me. “Depends. She honest with herself? Or she usin’ that line to dodge guilt? Either way, we both pretendin’ and sharin’ pain in the end.”
Yeah, this would never work.
He’s too emotionally intelligent.
“That’ll be all,” I say, gesturing toward the exit. “Appreciate your time. You can send the next Boy in.”
He pushes up from the chair,
about to say something—
“We’ll let you know,” I say
before he can get a word in.
Soon as the door clicks behind him,
Celie’s glaring at me.
I avoid her start-talkin’ eyes. “He was disgustingly perfect,” I grumble, tapping the edge of the folder against the table to straighten the papers, even though they’re already straight.
“You don’t sit on a face like that, you slap it with a marriage license.
Still, lowkey wanna keep him to ask dumb shit when I spiral and make stupid ass decisions. ”
“Uh...” Celie huffs a laugh. “You wanna explain what that was, ’cause from where I’m sittin’, it looked real personal.”
Soon as the door swings open, I lean sideways, closer to her, the words coming out fast before the next guy makes it to the table. “Oh, nothin’… Just took part in sexual intercourse with a six-point-five inch penis Thanksgiving night.”
Celie’s wide eyes slowly turn to me,
mouth opening—
Treyson approaches the table.
// BOY #2 //
He’s wearing a gold chain, a crisp black tee, with Bronx all over his walk.