by Kate Stone
"Hi. Thanks for making the arrangements. I have classes tomorrow morning, and then our meeting."
Jeez. That was about as awkward as a fruit basket, even for me.
Amber sat on the bed beside me and crossed her legs. She was wearing crimson yoga pants, a lacy pink bralette, and a beaten-up leather jacket. I had long since given up on questioning her pajama choice. She leaned to plop her chin on my shoulder, looking at my phone screen.
"Is that him? Show me. Ah, though you don’t actually have to do this, you know, Casey? I didn’t mean to pressure you or anything. It’s just a little silliness..."
I hugged her and we let out a mutual sigh. Amber knew about the nonsense with my dad. When student housing set us up together in this apartment, we’d had a bit of trouble adjusting to living together because we had nothing in common and were complete strangers. She was so bubbly and out-going and seemingly carefree. By contrast, I had felt like a boring book-goblin and tried not to impose on her space. Or any of the shared space. Really, I ended up staying almost exclusively in my room for the first week. But Amber had zero patience for my anti-social antics. She’d dragged me out to the fire escape one night after that first week and let pour out an entire history of herself.
Amber grew up in a small farm town with four sisters. She actually had not one, but two ponies as a kid, Bubbles and Buckles. As the oldest of her siblings, she’d been forced to help her mother with the work on the farm. She was snapping chicken necks by the time that she was ten, vegetarian by thirteen, and ready to skip the sparsely populated town by sixteen. Amber hadn’t had the best relationship with her father either. Somehow, as Amber was telling me about her family and the "mind-your-business" culture of her town — how it allowed her father to do what he did — I felt compelled to tell her about me and Liam and our dad.
"I know that I don’t have to do it. It’s hands-down the most idiotic thing to go through with it," I said and pulled my long hair out of its ponytail. "But I read the terms and conditions. I have the deposit. It’s happening so fast, and isn’t it kind of crazy how quickly this could fix things for me and Liam?"
"Let me see the guy, at least! How much is he offering to pop your cherry?"
I handed her my phone with a shrug, letting her swipe through his profile pictures.
"Two million. Kind of." I said.
She quirked a single eyebrow in my direction. "Just a couple million, huh? How very plebeian of you. He’s not unattractive. Very square."
"I like his smile," I said without thinking. "But, I mean, it doesn’t matter what he looks like, does it?"
"You might change your mind if you suddenly have an overweight geezer breathing old spice into your tonsils. Or what if he doesn’t want to just punch your v-card? What if he wants to swipe it to poundtown?"
"You’re crude."
Amber smiled and passed my phone back. "I’m right, though."
What?
Sure enough, Mr. P had sent another message:
"Once classes are over, there’s something I want you to do."
"What do you mean?" I typed back, feeling particularly dense.
"Be at 1101 Juniper St by three PM tomorrow. Check in when you get there."
"Google it!" Amber urged me, not having waited for my permission to read over my shoulder.
I did. 1101 Juniper St was the address of a salon and spa with the tagline ‘First impressions are worth a thousand words.’ I wasn’t sure how I felt about the technicalities of that motto. I felt like I had a few trillion words just on the topic of how I felt at the prospect of having a first impression of this man. So not the point, Casey, I told myself.
"It’s a beauty salon." I told Amber, rather redundantly since her eyes were still glued to my phone.
"Yeah, I’ve heard about that one. It’s like super organic everything. Pricey as hell."
"Is that a good thing?" I asked, feeling even more uncomfortable than I thought I could be. Silly me, thinking that I’d be able to ignore the entire situation until I was literally up between Mr. Pragmatic and a hard place.
"Totally. You’re getting a spa day! That means he has class. Maybe. Maybe he’ll even send you home in a cab." Amber snorted in a rather unladylike way. "Look, if you’re going to do this, it’s okay. Treat it like a bucket-list adventure. Like bungee jumping. It’s new, yes. Uncomfortable, yes. But make a day of it. Go to the spa, treat yourself, have a glass of wine or two. Or a bottle. Then jump. And for goodness sake, Casey…don’t forget to get the money first."
Chapter 4
By the time that my alarm went off at six, I had hardly slept a wink. Instead, I’d let my thoughts swirl upwards with the blades of the ceiling fan. I knew the rotation of this ceiling fan very well after a few minutes. There was a screw loose on the left side that caused the entire base to jerk to the right every fourth rotation. Fluffy accumulations of dust clung to the edges of each dingy, white blade. The dangling chain clinked softly against the light bulb. The greatest unknown with this ceiling fan was a general uncertainty of whether I’d get hit with a dust bunny to the face. At worst, it might make a jarring noise if I turned it on max speed.
My next twenty-four hours, on the other hand, were a complete unknown. Mr. Pragmatic was a complete unknown. I didn’t even know his name. I could have asked, I suppose. But I hadn’t. I didn’t know what he expected from me. Would this be a "close your eyes and think of England"-type scenario? What if he had some weird fetish? Could I commit to that? And then there was this thing with the spa. Was I supposed to know what to do when I got there? Did he want me to look a certain way? What if I arrived and he decided that I wasn’t what he’d envisioned? I suspected that showing up in the sweatpants and tank top I’d slept in would be a no-no.
With a groan, I rolled over and shut off the chiming bell sounds of my alarm. There was no way I was going to be able to focus in classes, but skipping them was a bad plan. I was going to have to record the lectures and take a few surreptitious photos of the whiteboards when my professors weren’t looking. I could worry about understanding the material after I was done with Mr. Pragmatic and my money worries were over.
I got ready for classes on autopilot and spent my morning wondering how much of an idiot I was for agreeing to meet a man I’d met on the internet. The only thing I knew about him was that he was rich enough to put a large amount of money in my bank account.
I sent a message to Mr. Pragmatic when I got to the salon fifteen minutes early.
"I’m here. What’s your name?"
He replied after a few minutes.
"Thought you’d never ask. It’s Alex. Go in and ask for Tiffany, she’ll take care of you. Let me know when you’re done."
Mr. Man-of-few-words. Fair enough. I smoothed down the wayward strands of my hair as if it mattered how I looked going in, and entered the salon. Aside from a couple of older women with matching blowouts gossiping over cucumber water and getting pedicures by the window display, the salon was surprisingly empty. Apparently people didn’t usually book their organic hair coloring, organic massages, and organic nail treatments at in the middle of the day. I wasn’t complaining.
Two impeccably put-together women chatted at the front desk. They wore matching forest-green smocks over their little black dresses, and clearly went for a sophisticated glam look with their earth-tone smoky eyes and French manicures.
"Hi, I’m Casey," I introduced myself. "I think I have an appointment with Tiffany?"
The girl with ginger curls escaping prettily from her updo perked up.
"Oh, you must be Mr. Quinn’s young woman. Welcome!" The redhead glided around the desk and guided me with a hover-hand to a cozy arrangement of reclining chairs that looked to be the Lather, Rinse, Repeat section of the salon. I prickled a bit at being referred to as ‘Mr. Quinn’s’, but not enough to say anything. I had to brace myself for who-knows-what today. Miss Tiffany could refer to me as the Easter Bunny if it suited her fancy.
"So, I don’t really know what I’m here
for..." I mentioned quietly, nervously eyeing the line-up of pristine scissors on a nearby table.
"Don’t you worry about a thing, honey. We’ve done this before. Sit back, you get the full experience today," Tiffany explained as she secured a warm towel around my neck and sank me into one of the reclining chairs. "Would you like a mimosa?"
The chair began vibrating with massaging heat rollers as I leaned back, letting Tiffany comb my hair back into the hair-washing sink. Again, no complaints.
"When in Rome," I said.
Half an hour later, I was covered in half a dozen masks of one type or another. There was a conditioning mask on my hair, dark smears of activated charcoal and sea salt on my arms and legs, and something avocado on my face. That’s all that I could remember Tiffany telling me after she’d washed my hair, disrobed me, and ushered me into a short, silky dressing gown. I could hardly keep up with all the information that bubbled out of her mouth. I felt like I was sitting through twelve lectures on active ingredients, essential oils, and rejuvenating serums all at once. It was especially difficult to pay attention when she would drop a snippet every now and then about how I shouldn’t worry, that Mr. Quinn was a gentleman, how very nice my skin was (she especially liked the freckles around my eyes), and oh wouldn’t he melt when he saw me tonight?
Nothing in the handful of messages I’d exchanged with Mr. Pragmatic led me to believe that he was capable of melting, but I kept that to myself and tried not to get various mask bits in my mimosa. I checked my phone as Tiffany started to remove the mask concoctions, starting with my legs, and began on another spiel about how I should take a long, relaxing bath when I got home to make sure that all the residue was gone before tonight. Did I have candles?
Amber had texted me a ‘Go get ‘em’ message with a few too many emojis and a relieving promise to take Liam out later with her theater friends. Thank goodness. The last thing I needed was him wondering why I was spending so much time getting ready for a date. Yeah, I’d told him that it was a date. Close enough, right? And Amber was taking Liam to see some indie film at a theater in the same part of town as the hotel where I was meeting Mr. Pragmatic. I wasn’t ready to refer to him as ‘Alex’ yet.
My skin was pink and tingly after Tiffany finished removing the clay-like gunk and thoroughly moisturized me. She then ushered me to the hair-cutting station and into a heavy tent of a smock.
"So, sorry for asking, but do you know Mr. P… Quinn?" I asked, feeling my cheeks begin to burn.
"Me? Oh definitely not. I don’t have time for that amount of trouble, if you pardon my saying so. But he sends a pretty young woman here every once in a while. Very respectful about it, if you ask me. Now, I don’t want to cut too much off. Your hair is so thick and healthy." Tiffany reassured me. "This’ll just be a little trim."
A little trim, a massage, manicure, pedicure, and some rapid-fire tweezing of my eyebrows later, I was sitting pretty while Tiffany blew out my hair, styling it in luscious curls. The entire operation had lasted over four hours and as many mimosas. I’d been able to semi-relax by the end, but even so, I was rattled again as soon as I slipped back into my jeans and t-shirt. I worried for a moment that I might have to pay for the whole affair, but Tiffany simply debriefed me and sent me packing with a little bag of sample potions and elixirs. Okay, moisturizers and body scrubs. Same difference.
On my way home, I felt too-warm and moist, but I went ahead and let Mr. P know that I had been spa-ed to death as requested.
"Good. Go home, have a small lunch and relax. I’ll call you in a couple of hours."
I was suddenly convinced that this was a very bad idea.
Even though I hadn’t slept last night and I couldn’t relax enough to take a nap. However, I did stand in the open door of my refrigerator for a long time. Tiny tingles across my lips and scalp told me that I was still feeling the mimosas. I should eat something small. How would one define a small lunch... Leftover spaghetti Bolognese? Probably not. Granola bar and an orange? Not enough to keep me full. What would Mr. P do? I wondered to myself, laughing in an exhausted way at my own exhausted hopelessness. Mr. P probably imagined a small lunch as something that elegant ladies at brunch in cafes with wait staff would eat; tiny salads of apples and wildflowers. Or something like that. With a mimosa or Bloody Mary in hand. Now that wasn’t such a bad idea.
Losing my virginity was turning me into an alcoholic, and I hadn’t even lost it yet.
I settled on frying up a grilled cheese with liberal amount of butter. What I lacked in elegance, I made up for in carbs and fat. That should have been my profile description. As I pushed aside Liam’s strewn belongings and settled down into the couch, however, all my worries of what constituted a "small lunch" vanished. So had my appetite.
Instead, I wrapped up the grilled cheese (waste not, want not), and pulled Amber’s bottle of vodka from the freezer. She’d told me once about an old boyfriend who’d dumped her via text at eleven-thirty PM the night before New Year’s Eve and how she’d vowed to never again be caught empty-handed should emergency strike after the liquor stores had closed. She’d said that the boy had pretty eyes, but had told her that he didn’t envision himself loving someone with childhood trauma. Ick. Amber had a certain eccentric reasonability that I loved.
So I poured some emergency vodka into a glass with plenty of ice cubes, some lemonade, and a blue bendy straw because that’s how I wanted to be at the moment. I needed to be a little bit more like courageous, resilient Amber. I set about folding Liam’s clothes and then cleaning some dishes while humming a tipsy tune until about an hour and another vodka lemonade had passed. I’d even dusted. I’d run out of apartment to tidy and felt a twinge of panic.
It was only five PM but I sent a message to Mr. Pragmatic, "So, I don’t think that nap is going to happen."
I’m not even sure why I messaged him. It’s not like I had an aching desire to get to know the stranger who was paying to take my first intimacy. I don’t think I did. There wasn’t an immediate response, of course. Surely, someone with that kind of cash to throw around buying and grooming girls had to have some sort of job that kept them busy. Too busy to deal with the insecurities of a pathetic girl they’d only see for one night.
My phone rang.
Oh no.
Another ring.
Why did I have such a stupid ringtone? The sound of gentle wind chimes was so inappropriate for the amount of dread I felt at answering the damn thing. I wondered what his voice sounded like…
Halfway through the next ring, I answered it and held my breath.
"Hello, Casey?" His voice was deep, but unimposing. Very matter-of-fact, but he didn’t sound indifferent. Color me surprised.
"Hi. Alex..." I found myself tripping over saying his name. "Sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you."
"It’s no bother. Did you enjoy the salon?" Alex asked.
I twirled my silly straw around and began to pace the hallway to my bedroom.
"It was… different. But yeah, it was nice."
"I’m glad you got to pamper yourself."
I could hear the thrum of an engine in the background. Maybe he was driving somewhere?
"I have you to thank for that," I said. "So, thank you. Um, I guess I don’t have a reason for calling you. Sorry. Again."
"No apologies." He laughed softly. "I called you. You’re nervous about tonight."
It wasn’t a question. I didn’t answer and took a sip of my drink instead, feeling a great deal of warmth in my cheeks.
"Are you alone?" he asked.
"Yeah, I’m at home. My roommate and brother are out for the day, and I skipped my classes, so, yeah. I don’t know what to do with myself."
Who ever said babbling wasn’t an attractive quality? Well, they weren’t wrong. I could no longer identify whether my cheeks were flaming because of the emergency vodka, the nervousness I felt at the prospect of meeting Alex, the weirdness of saying his name, or because of how embarrassed I was at how dumb I soun
ded.
"Want to do me a favor?" he asked. Points to Mr. Pragmatic for not acknowledging my poor conversational skills.
"Um, sure. What is it?" I blurted. And the award for Stupidity of the Year goes to…
"Why don’t you go ahead and start getting ready for me. We’ll have an early dinner."
"Oh. Okay, I can do that." I laughed nervously. Relief sank into me at the simple request, and dinner? Dinner is good. Dinner is normal and safe and…
"And Casey?" Alex interrupted my thoughts.
"Yes?"
"I’m looking forward to everything tonight. If you’re nervous, don’t be. I promise this will be the best night of your life."
The line clicked off after I’d managed a sort of gurgled sound that was somehow neither agreement nor resistance. The way he said ‘everything’ made my whole body flush. What exactly was he expecting from the night? Did he think I had any kind of skills in the bedroom? I knew how graceless I was and that ineptitude was my worst-kept secret.
Alex was sexy, no doubt. Would I be able to keep up with him? Would I even know how to keep up with him?
I stood in front of the bathroom vanity and took all of myself in. My long, brown hair retained the curls and volume that Tiffany had styled into it and my skin was shining and dewy, if not a bit more pink than I would like.
I started running a bubble bath and relocated all of the various mismatched candles from around the apartment to the bathroom and dimmed the lights. Paranoid about ruining Tiffany’s hard work, I coiled and pinned my hair to the top of my head. I let myself sit in the hot water for a few minutes with my eyes closed, letting go of the weight of my body and the stress in my muscles.
Keeping my eyes closed, I pulled my loofah under the surface of the water until it was heavy and soaked. Then I massaged my fingertips into the sponge and slowly, one arm at a time, started concentric circles up from my wrists to my shoulders. I focused on the feeling of the bubbles sitting atop my skin, the water running little rivulets down off of it, the steam of the bath drawing deep breaths from my lungs. I washed the nape of my neck and brought the loofah down across my collarbone and then over my breasts. Despite the heat of the water, my nipples were hard and goosebumps skidded across my skin in waves.