The Billionaire’s CamGirl

by Wylder, Penny

  The mood instantly changes. I can’t tell where this is heading, but it feels wrong.

  “If you’re afraid of losing the income, I’ll continue to pay you, we can set something up. I know you’re dependent on me for that.”

  I pull my hands back. Suddenly his fingers feel coarse on my skin. The money hadn’t entered my mind, and I’m not sure what he’s even suggesting now.

  “I’m not a prostitute. You understand that, right?” I ask, draining my coffee and concentrating on my cold eggs.

  “Of course, I do, Weaver. I wasn’t suggesting anything like that, it’s just that I—”

  I cut him off. “It’s just that you wouldn’t understand what it means to work for anything because it’s been handed to you on a silver platter your entire life.” I’m chewing furiously. I feel cheap. He made me feel cheap. “You know you can’t just snap your finger and throw down an AmEx card and expect everyone to fall in line with your plans. The world doesn’t work that way, Chris. At least, I don’t work that way.

  “I don’t know about this.” I gesture with my fork between us. “I don’t know if this can work, built on a foundation of secrets. I need time to think.”

  He looks stunned but nods his agreement.

  “I see.” It’s all he says.

  I already regret snapping at him. It’s so obvious to me that everything I said was about me, not him. About my insecurities as a cam-girl, my horrendous decisions that brought me to this predicament, my expectations about where I should be professionally. I mean, how dumb am I, depending on a single client to pad my bank account so I can realize my dream?

  My phone buzzes on the table. I flip it over and see a text from Kate: Food! Now! Dying!

  “I’ve gotta go,” I say, reaching into my purse and throwing a twenty on the table. “Kate’s up and hungover.”

  “Sure,” he says. “Can I ask you just one favor before you go? Can I have your phone number?”

  I rattle it off to him quickly and watch him type. He reads it back to me, and when I confirm it’s correct, he says, “Then I guess this is goodbye for now.”

  “See ya, Chris,” I say, and turn toward the exit. I’m halfway down the block when my phone buzzes. I don’t have to look at my phone to know it’s from him.

  This isn’t over. We’ve barely even begun.

  10

  Chris

  Well I couldn’t have fucked that up anymore if I’d tried. I know exactly why Weaver acted the way she did, why she was so icy when she left. She was right. I grew up wealthy, wealthier than anyone should ever be, and money has never been an issue for me. It’s just an exchange. I need to buy this meal; here, take this card. I need a flight to Prague; charge it. I don’t have a single emotional connection to money, but that’s unusual. Weaver’s shared enough with me as Echo that I know she has big dreams. When she talks about opening up a small youth hostel, she comes alive. The only thing standing in her way is money. That’s probably why she took the Sugar Girl job—lots of money, fast. I should have been more sensitive when I brought it up to her.

  I hate this feeling; not getting what I want. Who I want. I’ve never had a problem with women before, in fact, the opposite. I’ve found that women are instantly attracted to me when they hear my last name. That easy access is why I’ve stayed unattached. I’ve had a hard time trusting women in the past. I’ve been burned a few times to discover a woman I was falling for was only using me for a private jet to Santorini or Valentine’s dinner at Per Se. And now that I found someone, someone I trust, someone I want more than anything in the world, it’s out of reach. Ironically, it’s complicated by money.

  I throw myself down on the hotel bed and flip mindlessly through the television’s channels. Nothing holds my interest and I keep picking up my phone, hoping Weaver will text me. She hasn’t. She asked me for space and I’m going to respect her wishes. I just can’t say how long I will. I’ve never been this sure about a woman before, and I’ll do whatever I need to do to convince her she’s mine. I can’t even think of the alternative. It feels like I can’t breathe when I imagine receiving a text from her that says Forget me or It just can’t work. I don’t know what I’d do if that happened.

  I settle on a program about Prague on the Travel channel. I’ve been to Prague a dozen times, but most of the program is new to me. Despite the visas in my passport, all the countries I’ve visited around the world, I’ve hardly spent anytime outside of conference rooms and airports. My phone buzzes and I jump so quickly to grab it that I knock it off the bed. I scramble to the floor and see my phone glowing under the bed. I lie flat on the ground and reach my arm underneath, but it’s just out of my reach. Fuck. I’m frantic. I go into the closet and take out the ironing board, the only thing I can think of that’s long enough to reach it. I slide the ironing board back and forth until I hit the phone and it goes sliding across the carpet. I scramble on hands and knees to the phone, only to see my brother Ryan’s name blinking on the screen.

  “Ryan,” I say. “What’s up? Did you just land?”

  “Yeah, dude, and I am ready to party!” Ryan’s voice booms over my phone and I hold the phone a few inches from my ear.

  “I don’t know, Ryan,” I say, strategizing the best way to get out of plans with him. I know how these evenings go, and they’ve never been my speed. And tonight, especially, I have other things on my mind. “We have a meeting early tomorrow morning, and I’m exhausted already.”

  “Are you out of your mind, bro?” he asks me, as if he’s horrified by the idea of skipping a night out. “What’s the point of these trips if I we can’t sample the city’s local pussy.”

  My brother has a way with words. A disgusting way of words, for sure. I have two brothers. Martin is my older brother, he and his wife Millie have three kids, and I really enjoy spending time with them at their home in the Rocky Mountains. I know if I ever had a problem, my brother Martin would give me the shirt off his back, no questions asked. Ryan, on the other hand, he’s a piece of work. He’s always been a guy of tremendous appetites: booze, parties, and women. And if I ever asked Ryan for the shirt off his back, I know he’d reluctantly lend it with a request to have it dry cleaned before I returned it. There was no way I could tell Ryan about Weaver, the reason I wasn’t interested in sampling any of the local…women.

  “Look, I know you’re at The Plaza, Mom told me,” he says. God, everyone in this family knows everything about each other. It’s aggravating. When you work with family you basically have no privacy. “I’ll come by around six and we’ll go grab dinner. Big steaks at Keens. We’ll see where it leads from there, okay?”

  I look down at myself on the floor, the ironing board tossed aside and the pillows disarranged from when I hopped off the bed. What was I going to do in this room all night? Stare at my phone and wait for Weaver’s text? It would drive me crazy alone in here, thinking about her.

  “Sure, dinner sounds good,” I finally say. “But don’t be surprised if I head back here after. I’m really not in the mood to party.”

  “We’ll see brother,” he says. “Never say never.”

  He hangs up the phone.

  I can’t stop glancing at my phone on the bar. I’ve given up any hope that Weaver will call me tonight, instead I’m checking the time because we’ve been setting at this bar forever. Like he said he would, Ryan met me in the lobby of The Plaza at six on the dot, and we took a cab down to the steakhouse together. The meal was amazing, as I’d expected it would be, and Ryan had been on his best behavior, sparing me the more salacious details of his trip to St. Croix with his secretary. When I threw down my credit card to pay, I felt pleased that I’d decided to come out.

  That didn’t last long, though.

  “You know what?” Ryan said when the waiter approached with the check. “Keep this open. My brother and I still have a lot to catch up on. We’ll take this over to the bar.”

  The waiter took back the billet and said, “Certainly, sir. As you wish.�
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  “Ryan,” I started protesting, but he was already halfway across the restaurant before I could finish.

  And now here I sit, at this mahogany bar listening to Ryan try to impress two young flight attendants. Heaven help them, but they are just too polite. I can tell from their body language that they’re ready to leave, but Ryan keeps talking, ignoring the hints they keep dropping. It took them only a few minutes to realize I wasn’t interested in anything more than conversation, and occasionally mentioning how late it’s getting. I’ve been sitting by Ryan’s side, sipping a forty-year Macallan because an hour into this, I decided Ryan’s going to pay the bill.

  “Tell me a secret,” he says to the blonde, his voice thick from the red wine we shared at dinner and the countless drinks he’s had at the bar.

  “A secret?” she asks, smiling. “Well, I hardly know you, but I can tell you this. I’ve just received my student pilot certificate and I’m going to start flight training lessons next month.”

  “Wow,” I pipe up. “Congrats. I’ll raise a glass to that.” She smiles at me, and she and her friend raise their glasses to meet mine.

  “Thank you,” she says. “It’s taken me months to get the hours, but I’m determined. One day I’ll be flying the plane instead of just handing out bags of nuts.”

  Ryan chuckles low in his throat. “I have a great idea,” he slurs. “How about, you two come back to the hotel with me, and you can play flight school on my stick while your friend handles my nuts?”

  Ryan’s laugh is filling the bar, and he’s oblivious to the looks of disgust on our faces. The other few people at the end of the bar are staring, and I motion to the bartender for the check. This night’s only heading downhill from here.

  The women are gathering their purses, mumbling to Ryan that he’s a pig, but he’s still laughing, pleased with his joke. They go to grab their tab, but I wave them off.

  “Please,” I say, walking them toward the door. “Let me take care of that. I apologize for my brother.”

  The blonde looks up at me kindly. “It’s a wonder you’re even related to him. Make sure he gets home safe. I relish the thought of the hangover he’ll have in the morning.”

  Laughing, we say goodbye, and I walk over to Ryan, who’s wiping his eyes with a handkerchief.

  “It wasn’t that funny, asshole,” I say, and reach into Ryan’s jacket pocket for his wallet. I take out his card and throw it to the bartender.

  Ryan’s completely unaffected. He’s finishing his drink, and I can tell by his posture and expression that he’s looking over the bar’s patrons, trying to see if there’s another woman he can hit on. He really disgusts me, in part because he reminds me of myself, once I graduated from college. I went right to work for my grandfather traveling, under my older brother Martin’s supervision. Martin was already dating his wife at the time, but I always found a client or an old college friend to hit the town with no matter what city I was in. London, New Orleans, Vienna. I’d black out and wake up in bed with a different woman in each city. Luckily that lifestyle didn’t even last a year before I realized it was a miserable existence. So often, I realized in retrospect, I thought I was the big man of the night while the women I was with thought I was a fool: racking up drinks on my tab and sniggering behind my back at the pipsqueak who thought he was God’s gift just because he had an unlimited expense account.

  After I gave that all up, I started spending more down time with Martin, and he taught me more about the business, and got me to a level where I was traveling on my own to meetings by my second year. He also helped me discover my love of the outdoors, and the time I spent with him and Millie hiking, skiing and fishing, gave me lots of hobbies to replace drinking and women.

  Now that I’m thinking about it, I guess I’m moving into another chapter of my life again. I’m ready to find someone to share my life with. Maybe it’s time to curtail the traveling, and settle down, like Martin did with Millie. I wonder if my attitude shifted because I met Weaver, or if it was just the right time, right place.

  Ryan belches, and I look down on him with disgust. Once I get him back to his hotel and through the meeting tomorrow morning, I’m going to find a way to limit our interactions. He’s fine at family holidays, but I don’t want to end up on the road with him again.

  “Let’s go, pal,” I say as I clap him on the back. “It’s time to get back to the hotel. Early morning tomorrow.”

  I feel him start to stand, and even though he’s unsteady, I’m relieved. I thought I’d have to sling him over my shoulder and drag him outside.

  “Seriously,” he growls once we hit the sidewalk, “women in New York are the biggest bitches. No sense of humor.”

  Not a cab in sight. Shit.

  “Actually,” I remind him, “those women were based out of Cincinnati. You’d know that if you ever shut up long enough to listen. And they did have a good sense of humor. We all had a good laugh at your pathetic ass.”

  I whistle through two fingers as a cab goes by. The sharp sound pierces the street’s silence and does the trick. The cab stops halfway down the block. I start walking, hoping Ryan will just follow me.

  “Fuck you, Chris,” Ryan says defensively. “You think you’re so special.” His voice is just a few feet behind me, so I’m relieved he’ll actually get in the car with me. There’s nothing I want more than to say goodbye to my brother right now, but I won’t leave him here, in the middle of Manhattan alone and loaded.

  “Hey, man,” I say to the cabbie as I slide in. “We’ll be making two stops. I’m at The Plaza and my brother here is at the…Ryan,” I shout, trying to get his attention. “Where are you staying?”

  I glance down and see he’s opened Tinder and is swiping past pictures of women. I poke him in the ribs to get his attention.

  “Standard. East village,” he mumbles, without even looking up.

  We drive in relative silence except for Ryan’s occasional remarks: “Whoa look at those tits,” “dog,” “she’d have to wear a bag on her head.” Listening to him is making me angry. I’m angry he has no respect for these women, but I’m also angry he has no respect for himself or the family name.

  “Can you shut up, Ryan?” I say. “Just stop it. I can’t listen to you.”

  “When did you get so stuck up, Chris?” he spits out the words and they sound as if they’re laced in poison. “Everybody thinks you’re so perfect. The golden child of this family. And it’s gone to your head. You think you’re like Pop, like Martin, but you aren’t. You’re no better than me deep down. So just stop being a God damned pussy all the time.”

  I stare out the window and ignore him. After all, we have to present a united front at our meeting in the morning. I can tell he’s looking for a fight. If he can’t find some random woman to debase for the night, a knock-down-drag-out fight with me will take second place. I won’t bite. Because I’m not like him. I’m nothing like him.

  We pull up to The Standard and he gets out without even saying goodbye. It’s probably better that way. The car door closes with a loud bang, and as the cabbie pulls away, I see him giving me the finger. As we turn the corner, I see that he’s walking away from the hotel, probably to the bar up the street.

  I take out my phone and pull up my text exchange with Weaver from earlier in the day. I promised her space, but right now, I really want to hear her voice, to talk to her. Normally, if I had a shitty night or stressful meeting, I’d hit her up on the Sugar Girl app. Sometimes just a quick “Hi, how are you doing” was enough for me, to connect with her, with Echo. But now that she knows who I am, it’s not simple, and suddenly I realize how much I’ve depended on her companionship, even if it has been over the internet in bytes, rather than sitting side by side, talking to each other.

  And after having her last night, I need more. More of her body. I want to feel her skin, taste her. My jacket feels too tight. I hate this feeling, not having control, not being able to get what I want, when I want it. I type.
/>   Please Weaver. Talk to me?

  I stare at the screen but there’s nothing to look at. She’s not texting back. My hand hurts from squeezing it so tight, imagining her seeing my message and ignoring me. I’m angry at myself. There are so many mistakes I’ve made, and what if Weaver decides I’m too much trouble? Greater than the anger, though, is desperation. My mind is racing, thinking of ways to persuade her to be with me, to just answer my fucking text. But I don’t know what to do.

  The cab jolts to a stop and I realize we’re in front of The Plaza. I hand the cabbie my money and walk up to the hotel. I make it all the way up the elevator and into my room without making eye contact with a single person. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this lost, at a loss for what to do. If I can’t talk to Weaver, all I want is to sleep, to turn off my brain for a few hours and hopefully wake up to find a message from her. I send her one last message before I get under the covers.

  Good night.

  I strip off my clothes down to my boxers and splash cold water on my face. I’m across the room, in the bathroom, brushing my teeth when I hear my phone come to life. I don’t dash across the room this time to see who it is. I’ve given up hope and I worry it’s my brother, texting me inappropriate pictures or just his general brand of harassment. When I see Weaver’s name on the phone, I feel weightless.

  Meet me in our room?

  She means the chat room, and now I do sprint to the desk across the room to grab my laptop. Like a superhero I manage to open my computer and pull up the page all while diving onto the bed. In an instant, with just five words from Weaver, I feel like a new man.

  When I log onto Sugar Girl, I message Weaver immediately.

  I’m sorry. I was an asshole this morning. Forgive me.

  Just as I hit send, a message from her pops up.

  I overreacted this morning. I’m sorry.

  I’m flooded with relief. I realize we still have loads of baggage to work through, but at least we’re talking, at least she seems to want to do this together.