by Amelia Wilde
When I walked back out with my parka over one arm, Brandon looked confused. “I thought you were going to wear a dress.”
I shrugged. “It’s cold. And you tore my stockings.” I grabbed my purse from the coatrack and slung it over my shoulder. “You ready?”
His face twisted momentarily into an adorable pout as he took in my covered legs, but he followed me out the door and caught my waist as we walked down the hall.
“It’s just as well,” Brandon growled in my ear, making my skin tingle under his lips all over again. “I’m not sure I could have focused all night with the dirty thoughts those stockings put in my head. It’s bad enough looking at your butt in those pants.”
With that, he briefly squeezed my ass, making me squeak. He flashed a toothy grin and proceeded to make me laugh and yelp all the way down the stairs with a continued onslaught on that part of my anatomy.
It wasn’t until Brandon ushered me into the back of a sleek black vehicle that I realized it wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill car for hire, but a Mercedes S-Class AMG. My dad drooled over this particular model every time he dragged me to the yearly car show at the convention center. They retailed for more than all three years of law school tuition combined.
“That’s David, my driver,” Brandon said, gesturing to a middle-aged man in the front seat.
David waved a black-gloved hand and gave me a friendly wink through the rearview mirror as he pulled away from the curb.
“Hi, David,” I said with a smile toward the mirror as Brandon tucked me neatly into his side.
As the engine purred to life, I marveled at how quiet Boston suddenly seemed from inside this car. I could understand now why Brandon had scoffed at the town car in New York. It was like comparing haute couture to the Goodwill.
“All right?” Brandon murmured.
I nodded. “Yeah. Where are we going for dinner?”
“One of my favorite restaurants. You’ll see.”
I was still feeling shy after our encounter and was relieved when Brandon didn’t press for conversation. He seemed just as content to look out the window, drumming his fingers on the pane until a flurry of messages announced themselves on his phone.
“Sorry,” he said as he unwrapped his arm from my shoulder. “These won’t take long.”
“No problem,” I said and slid to the other window. Brandon frowned at the movement, but quickly turned to his phone while I watched the city pass by.
It was hard to imagine having the money required for this sort of lifestyle. The modest cache courtesy of my mother had only ever been used to pay for Dad’s previous “issues” and for my education. My original goal was to give what remained to my dad as a retirement gift. Who knew if that would even be possible now?
But that was clearly chump change compared to the kind of wealth that Brandon Sterling had. Live-in staff, a top-of-the-line Mercedes, a ten-million-dollar townhouse on the Commons. Wikipedia (and Jane) had informed me that his net worth was upwards of two billion dollars, a number likely to grow once his investment firm went public. People like this didn’t need to work. Their money made money for them, more in a year—or even a week—than most could hope to make their entire lives. I peeked at Brandon, who gave his familiar half smile as he tapped out another message.
“Sorry,” he said again. “Some things won’t keep until the morning.”
“It’s all right.” I turned back to my window. “I know your business is important.”
Like a shadow of the other cars on the road, the Mercedes wove on and off the highway down to the south end of Boston. Maybe Brandon was taking me somewhere in Back Bay, or even Dorchester, although that seemed like a weird choice for a date. Maybe he was going to show me where he grew up too. The thought cheered me.
But when David pulled onto a private drive next to Logan Airport, my eyes blinked wide open. This definitely wasn’t a quick visit to the old neighborhood.
The car came to a silent stop in front of a building that guarded a mostly empty airfield. David quickly jumped out and ran around to my side to open the door. On shaky legs, I stepped out of the car and looked suspiciously beyond the chain-linked fence.
A few small planes were corralled at the far end of the field, deserted and dark. However, closer to the building, a small, sleek jet was testing its engines, lights on, side door open, and a portable set of stairs pulled up for boarding.
I turned to Brandon, who was watching me carefully.
“Is…is that plane for us?”
He nodded. “It is.”
I balked, my head swiveling back and forth between the plane and him. “You chartered a jet for our first date?”
He offered a small, tentative smile. I would have found the twinkle in his eyes charming had I not been completely floored.
“Well, no,” Brandon said. “The jet is actually mine. Or at least my company’s.”
Looking back at the airfield, I saw that Sterling was painted clearly across the jet’s steel siding in bold black letters, accompanied by the sharp black and red logo of his investment company.
“What…where…why? Where are we going that we have to take your private plane?” I sputtered.
His smile faded at my tone, and a big hand reached out to steady me. I must have looked like I felt: about to topple over.
“My favorite restaurant is a small brasserie in Paris,” Brandon said slowly. “They’re open late. I thought you might like to go, considering your history there.”
I coughed, hard. “My…my what?”
The smile on Brandon’s face vanished. “Your history. Your resume said you spoke French, and you mentioned that you studied abroad in Paris.” He studied my face. “What’s wrong, Red?”
It wasn’t his fault. I had confirmed those things. And there was no way he could know that although I loved France, my year in Paris was stained with rejection from my mother and a lot of self-medication courtesy of Parisian nightclubs. But still.
“I…don’t have a passport with me,” I faltered.
“I may have snooped around a little while you were in the bathroom,” Brandon said with another cheeky grin, which once again flattened as he observed me.
I must have looked like death. I certainly felt like it.
“It wasn’t hard to find,” he continued slowly, obviously confused. “You keep your desk very organized. Skylar, what the hell is wrong? I thought you’d like this.”
I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Kieran’s words from Monday echoed through my head, her descriptions of sociopaths loud and clear. Sometimes a man who comes off as a prince is really just the devil in disguise.
This was a first date, for Christ’s sake. Who whisks someone off to Paris in a private plane for dinner? Not to mention steals my passport? Following me to New York. The ostentatious shoes. All of it felt at once grossly strange and also too familiar.
Suddenly all I could think of was Patrick, with his habit of rewarding me with some fancy dinner or theater tickets when I suspected him of cheating. There was a pawn shop in East New York that had made some serious money off the consolation jewelry I’d deposited there after that relationship was finished.
Yes, once it was described to me, I realized I was very familiar with sociopaths, considering I’d already been with one. It wasn’t a situation I ever wanted to be in again, and dinner in Paris was exponentially bigger—and more inappropriate—than diamond earrings or tickets to Aida.
Full of sudden resolve, I looked up. My body started to shake, fury slowly mounting. First the guy essentially asked me to be his call girl, then stalked me through New York City, more than two hundred miles away. I thought we had come to an understanding about his boundary issues. Clearly not.
“Where is it?” I asked, my voice barely loud enough to be heard over the hum of the jet.
“Where’s what?”
“My passport.”
Brow furrowed in confusion, Brandon reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the thin blue boo
klet. It was well-worn and nearly full of stamps from the traveling I did while living in France. I plucked it neatly from his grasp and shoved it into my purse.
“Did you take anything else?” I demanded as I stepped back.
His thick eyebrows crinkled together. “What? No. Red, what’s going on?”
“I’m going to go,” I announced a little too loudly, glad that my tongue wasn’t choosing this moment to tie itself into knots.
Hands shaking, I turned and started to walk down the sidewalk toward the gated entrance to the airfield, beyond which I hoped there would be an easy walk to the main terminal. The shuttle to the T wouldn’t be far from there; I could possibly be home in an hour.
“What?” Brandon jogged after me. He grabbed my hand and forced me to turn around. “What the hell, Skylar? Where are you going?”
I spit out the strands of hair that flew into my face, now too mad to speak calmly.
“A plane to Paris? Really?” I huffed as I wrenched my hand out of his clutch. My accent was starting to come out now. “It’s our first date. I’m a poor student. I would have been impressed with anything more than Dunkin' Donuts. I thought you understood I didn’t want to play these kinds of games! What the fuck are you trying to prove with all of this?”
Brandon's mouth hung open for a moment as he shook his head. “What…are you serious?”
I didn’t reply, just stared at him in the wind and inwardly begged myself not to cave. His eyes, so wide and so blue, almost made me believe that he was innocent, that he really did just want to show me the best time he could. But visions of Patrick’s sly smile danced through my memory, right along with Brandon’s coarse words in his office. No. I wasn’t doing this again.
“This is really not how I saw this going, you know,” Brandon said coldly. “Is this how you normally show your gratitude when people do nice things for you?”
“Don’t give me a guilt trip just because I’m not falling for your manipulative bullshit,” I snapped. “None of this”—I waved a gloved hand erratically in the general direction of the plane—“is about me. Obviously.”
“Do you think I regularly skip to Paris whenever the mood strikes me?” he asked incredulously. “Of course it was for you. I told you I needed to make time for this. Do you have any idea how much it costs me to do something like this? Now come on, let’s go!”
He reached out to grab my hand again, but I yanked it quickly away.
“I do know how ridiculously much this costs, actually! Which is exactly why I know it has more to do with your ego than with me. And any sane person would know I couldn’t possibly accept this kind of gift from someone I hardly know!”
“But you’ll let him make you come instead?” Brandon retorted. His eyes flashed, and a large vein throbbed at the side of his neck. “I guess I know what kind of girl you really are, Red.”
Before I could control it, my hand flew out and slapped him, hard. My glove left an angry red mark across his cheek, and he stumbled back in shock.
“Fuck off, Mister Sterling,” I said in an eerily even voice, just loud enough to be heard over the airfield. I shoved my hair out of my face again with an angry swipe. “Don’t ever contact me again.”
I turned on my heel and stalked away, leaving him next to his fancy car.
“You’ll regret this,” he called after me. “You know you will, Skylar!”
I didn’t answer, just held one finger up in an extremely rude gesture as I continued to the main terminal, eager to get as far away from Brandon Sterling as I possibly could.
15
It took me nearly two hours on an airport shuttle and two trains back to Harvard Square that night. I got more than a few strange looks as I muttered to myself like a crazy woman, occasionally punching a fist into the down of my parka. Every time I thought I had calmed myself down, a new wave of fury would sweep over me as I remembered his words. “I guess I know what kind of girl you really are, Red.”
Fuck him. There was nothing else to say—or think—about it.
At one point, another passenger on the train, a cocky-faced man who looked three sheets to the wind with his friends, asked me to smile from across the car. The suggestive leer brought out my inner New Yorker in full force as I snarled, “What the fuck are you looking at?”
The man didn’t reply, just murmured “bitch” as he and his friends got off at Kendall Square. Yeah, the way I was feeling right now, he had no idea.
It was nearly eleven by the time I walked back into my apartment to find Jane sitting on the couch in the dark, drinking from a bottle of wine in her lap while another sat unopened on the coffee table. There was no glass in sight. A rerun of The Mary Tyler Moore Show was playing on the small TV set in the corner, and Jane chuckled in the dark while she rubbed smears of mascara beneath her eyes.
I flipped on the lights. “What’s up, Howard Hughes? Bad date?”
Jane groaned. “The absolute fucking worst.”
“I bet I can top you.” I stripped off my parka and gloves and flopped them on the kitchen table before joining her on the couch.
“You’re on,” she said and took another swig directly from the bottle. “So, Physics guy? You’d think he’d be shy and sweet, an egghead type. But when I go to the bathroom, he follows me and tries to convince me to give him a blowjob right there in the club. Like, in the fucking hallway. He even unbuckled his fucking pants.”
“Sounds like a real winner.” I pulled the bottle from her lap and took a long drink myself.
“Yeah. I’d rather not have a record for indecent exposure going into my first year as an ASA. And when I got back, he was sitting with another woman with his hand up her skirt.”
Black tracks of mascara-stained tears trailed under Jane’s glasses and down her cheeks. Immediately I scooted over and pulled her head onto my shoulder.
“Janey, I’m sorry. What a shit,” I murmured as I smoothed her messy bob. I took another long drink of wine.
“It wasn’t even just some chick he picked up at the bar,” Jane said into my sweater. “Turns out he had a whole other date planned for the night, Skylar. He double-booked us in case I wouldn’t put out.”
“Did you at least throw a drink in his face before you left?”
She sat up, took the bottle from me, and had another long slurp, and then belched loudly. “Two, actually. His and his runner-up’s. God, men are shit.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice. What is this sludge we’re drinking?”
“Good old Three-Buck Chuck.” Jane giggled and gave me the bottle back.
I scowled. Wine wasn’t my drink, and this was bottom-of-the-barrel crap. But I took another several gulps.
“Yours really must have been bad,” Jane said as she watched.
I handed the bottle back to her and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “You have no idea.”
I proceeded to tell her everything about my night, from my impromptu double orgasm to Brandon’s insane surprise at the airport and our terrible fight. By the end, Jane was staring at me with her mouth open in disbelief, all thoughts of her own shitty night long gone.
“I can’t believe he said that!” she said after I recounted his parting remark.
She thrust the wine bottle at me as if she knew I really needed it. She wasn’t wrong.
“What a dick,” Jane continued. “I mean, first of all, who even thinks about sex like that anymore? This isn’t nineteen fifty-fucking-seven, you know? A, you’re not a girl, you’re a woman. A wo-man! And B, you have every prerogative to have any form of sex with whomever you want, whenever you want. We’re not virginal damsels protecting our fucking flowers!”
“Hear, hear.”
I held the bottle up in silent agreement before I took another drink. The bottle was almost half empty when I arrived, and we were nearly done with it. My head was fuzzy, but I welcomed the oblivion if it would block out the twin faces of Patrick and Brandon. I had done the right thing. I had.
“Was
he at least good?”
I closed my eyes, downing the rest of the bottle before answering. “Unfortunately, he might be the best. He had me screaming, Janey. Like, the way those idiots in romance novels do, but you know that no one actually does in real life? Yeah, I was doing that.”
“Oh, that is a shame,” Jane remarked with genuine remorse. She sighed and shook her head. “Why is it always the assholes who are good in the sack? Practice, you think?”
I cringed, not wanting to think about just how Brandon had acquired those particular skills. It only made me feel more stupid for letting him use them on me. I’m shit at dating, he’d said. Yeah, fucking right.
“I can’t believe you turned down a free trip to Paris, though,” Jane said with a giggle as she grabbed the second bottle of wine. “Girl, it’s Paris.”
“Shit.” I fell back on the sofa. “I know, right?”
After nursing a hangover and forcing myself to swim on Saturday morning, I spent the rest of the weekend buried in case studies. There was no word from Brandon. With mild remorse, I remembered that we had never actually exchanged cell phone numbers. But every time I recalled that comment at the airport, a satisfying wave of rage would flood my system.
“Skylar! Hold up!”
I turned around on the cobblestoned street outside the student athletic facility on Sunday after another swim. Jared bounded down the steps. Despite the cold weather, he wore only a pair of fitted track pants and a t-shirt.
“A little underdressed, aren’t you?” I asked as he caught up and continued to jog in place. Both of our breaths were visible in the cold air.
“I jog to and from my apartment,” Jared said with a grin. Even in the dull winter light, his teeth were noticeably white and very, very straight.
“Oh?” I asked. “Whereabouts do you live?”
Jared nodded in the direction of Massachusetts Avenue. “Porter Square. I’ve had the place for a while.”