“So, you might get laid off?” Her eyebrow arched.
“Maybe. Or I might just get shifted into another role in another task or department.”
“Which you’ll hate. Why don’t we just take this as a sign that we’re supposed to move?”
Tyler stared down at his empty glass. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Let’s just think about it. What if I go out to California and do the job interview? That way, I’ll have a better idea about things, and then we can talk about it again.”
Maybe it was the beers he’d had tonight, or maybe John’s warning about layoffs had affected his judgment, but somehow, Lana’s suggestion sounded reasonable. “OK. Go out there and do the job interview. If you get the job, then we’ll see. We’ll talk about it.”
Lana lunged at him, kissing him with a passion and excitement he hadn’t known since before they married. They clumsily kissed their way up the stairs and into the bedroom.
At midnight, Tyler watched the clock tick by as sleep continued to elude him. He might actually have a shot at a career he wanted and a chance to make his father proud all at the same time. It had taken his wife initiating the suggestion to light a fire underneath him, but now it seemed like the best idea in the world. From the bedside table, his cell phone buzzed with an incoming text.
He pushed himself onto his elbow and lifted the phone. Tara.
Had a great time chatting with you tonight. Maybe take me up on a game of racquetball next week?
He quickly deleted the message and glanced over his shoulder at Lana’s sleeping form. Yes. Santa Monica was the best idea in the world.
8
Kaki
Saturday, November 19
There was no way she would do that. Absolutely no way.
“It’s just dancing, baby.”
“Yeah,” she sneered. “Dancing while I take my clothes off. I mean, how can you even ask me to do that? Knowing that all of those guys would be looking at me? I thought I was your girlfriend? You said you loved me.”
“I do love you. I just need this one favor from you. To help me out. Because you love me.”
Parked in the lot just behind Damien’s club, Kaki had never felt so sick in all her life. First of all, she was coming off of a bad trip. Whatever drug he’d given her that night was not having a good effect. She kept waiting for the high—the euphoric vibration that crept up from her calves and shot out along her arms and into her hands—that wonderful, tingly sensation she usually got. But he didn’t give her the blue pill, like usual. Tonight it had been some white pill that made her sluggish and dizzy.
“It would just be this one time,” Damien insisted. He slid his arm around her shoulders as he whispered and stroked her face. “It would be like you were proving to me how much you love me.”
“What about Nishelle? Why isn’t she dancing tonight?”
“Nishelle moved on.”
“Really?” Nishelle didn’t seem like someone who’d just quit. Nishelle seemed pretty desperate. “I thought she needed the money for her son and all.”
“Yeah, well, she’s not part of our game anymore. ‘K?”
Kaki shook her head. Standing up and dancing in front of all of those people? No, just no. “OK, well, whatever, but I can’t do it.”
“You can. You can do it. You’re beautiful and…well, look, baby. Look what Daddy brought you, right? This is your favorite, right?” He pulled some crackly paper out of his pocket.
“What did you give me earlier? It made me feel sick. Like, I could just throw up right now.”
“That was just a little something to get you in the mood—you hear what I’m saying? A little something to make you feel good.”
“Well, I don’t, OK?” Her voice sounded foreign to her. “I don’t feel good. I feel sick. And I’m not dancing. And I’m definitely not taking off my clothes.”
The leather creaked as Damien sat back against the seat and stared out the window. “Yeah, OK. I see how it is.”
Feeling confident she’d won the battle, Kaki shook her head. “I mean, I can’t believe you would ask me to do something like that. I’m not like those girls. I think you know I’m better than that.”
“Oh, I see.” He glared at her like a demon. There was a strange blackness to his eyes—a flash of something evil. “Oh, I see how it is. Oh, see, see, you think you’re better than all this? Is that it? You think you’re better than all this?” His voice rose in volume, the tone sharp and angry.
“Yeah, I do. And I hope you think of me as better than all this too.”
The slap came so suddenly and with such force that, for a minute, she wasn’t sure what had happened. Had he just hit her? The radiating pain and heat across her cheek told her that he had. But no one had ever hit her. Ever.
Holding her hand to her face, she looked up at Damien. She no longer recognized the man in the car. He was yelling, screaming so hard his voice broke, calling her names—horrible names.
“I can’t believe I ever thought you cared about me. All you care about is yourself. You can’t even do me this one favor? Get out. Get out of the car. If you don’t want to help me out, then you can find your own way home. Get out of my sight! You ain’t even as good as those girls in there.”
Bile rose in her throat and panic rendered her limbs useless, frozen. He was serious. He was pushing at her, shoving her out of the car as he reached across and opened the passenger side door. “Here I been buying you all kinds of stuff, making you out to be my queen, and this is how you repay me? Get out.”
Kaki tumbled onto the ground, scraping her knees against the cold, icy pavement. Confused and disoriented, she pleaded with him. “Damien, please—please. Come on. You can’t just leave me out here. How will I get home?”
He reached across the passenger seat, grabbed the door handle, and pulled the door shut. The car sped out of the parking lot, turned left, and with screaming tires, disappeared into the night.
Kaki looked around. Strange people stood in the parking lot and the alley. She recognized a few of their faces from the club, but without Damien there with her, protecting her, all of these people looked threatening and scary. She tried to think straight and figure out what to do. She couldn’t call either of her parents. So far she’d gotten away with sneaking out every two or three nights to see Damien. If she called them, that would be the end of her relationship with him. They would probably press charges against him.
But do I really want to keep seeing this guy? He had hit her. She was from upper middle-class America where no one did anything like this. No one was desperate for cash. If she needed money she could ask her mom or dad and they would give it to her. So what was she doing hanging out with a guy who wanted her to dance naked in front of a bunch of strangers?
Standing in the middle of the freezing parking lot, Kaki tried to shake off the effects of the drugs. How had this happened to her? She’d never done drugs in her life before meeting Damien. She’d never done a lot of things. She shivered.
Maybe Damien was just messing with her. Maybe he’d come back in a few minutes, and they would make up. An involuntary sob erupted from her throat. What could she do? She began to move along the sidewalk. Maybe she could get a cab to take her back to her house, and then she could run inside and get some money from her dad’s wallet or something. Great, now she was a thief on top of everything else.
A dark vehicle pulled up to the curb, and for a moment Kaki thought it was Damien coming back for her, but as the window lowered, the bald head of a middle-aged man looked out. “Hey, honey? You on the clock?”
Panic and fear tore at her heart. Now what? Would this guy assault her? He leered at her with a creepy smile and looked ready to jump out of his car to grab her. She’d worn a short black skirt and patterned leggings, her long legs ending in high-heeled ankle boots. She’d dressed for the club, not for running from strange, creepy men. She looked up the street to the corner where other women stood—actual prostitutes. She looked j
ust like one of them.
Terrified, she ran. Darting in and out of parking lots, behind buildings, and through alleys, she ran until she reached an area that was well lit, just under the street signs on K Street. Holding to the pole, her fingers numb against its surface, she panted as tears streamed down her face.
As a kid she’d knelt by her bedside with her dad, saying night-time prayers. But that was before the divorce when she was still his little girl. “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep…” Prayers of protection as she slept. Now she needed deliverance. “Help me, God! Please help me!” The desperate sound of her own voice spoken in a cloud of condensation scared her. If she hadn’t met Sydney, none of this would’ve happened. Wait. Yes! She could call Sydney.
Grasping her cell phone, her numb fingers hit the speed-dial. As soon as Sydney’s groggy voice answered, Kaki spoke loud and quick. “I need you to do me a huge favor. I need you to come right now. To the corner of K and 21st in the city and pick me up. OK?”
“Why? Where’s Damien?”
“Just do it. Please?”
“OK. Give me half an hour.”
It was an hour before Sydney arrived. Kaki was so cold she was sure her feet had frostbite. She walked up and down the street, trying to stay under street lights, trying to look busy on her phone in order to avoid the stares of men as they drove by. It was the longest hour of her life.
“You know I really shouldn’t be doing this,” Sydney told Kaki as she fell into the car, shivering and exhausted. “Damien’ll be mad if he finds out, so do not tell him.”
Kaki glared at her. “Yeah, I’m just fine. Thanks for asking. I didn’t know what else to do, Sydney. I don’t need you scolding me.”
“Why did he leave you there? What did you do? Did you say something to make him mad?”
“He wanted me to strip at the club, OK?” Kaki blurted.
Sydney laughed. “Is that all? Seriously? You made him leave you here in the middle of DC because you wouldn’t dance at his club? You are stupid.”
Kaki leaned forward to get a good look at Sydney’s face. “Are you kidding me? You think it’s fine that he asked me to strip for a bunch of strangers? I’m not stupid, Sydney! I mean, I’ve watched enough movies to know how this goes.”
Sydney laughed again—this time long and hard—as if that was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. “Well, this ain’t no movie, honey. OK? I mean, first of all, Damien asking you to dance at his club is like, a huge compliment, OK? Not everyone gets to do that. That means he’s like, super-crazy about you. Second of all, I’ve done it lots of times, and it’s really no big deal.”
“You’ve stripped before?”
“Lots of times.”
“At Damien’s club?”
“Yeah, and others, too. It’s no big deal. I promise you. It’s actually kind of fun.”
Between this bombshell and the extreme cold and exhaustion, all Kaki wanted to do was go home, crawl into her own bed, and forget this night ever happened.
“Look, I’ll talk to Damien for you if you want,” Sydney continued. “I’m sure he feels really bad about what happened. I know he’s crazy about you. He’s told me he thinks you’re like, the hottest girl he’s ever had.”
Despite the whirling confusion and brain fog, Sydney’s words still settled her nerves just a little. Damien thought she was hot? No guy had ever called her hot before.
“I don’t know.” A smile threatened the corners of her mouth. But then she remembered. “You know, he hit me.”
Sydney didn’t even flinch. “He’s just temperamental, you know? He’s, like, a really talented guy. Guys like that have a temper sometimes. You got to take the good with the bad.”
Her dad had a pretty bad temper, too, but he’d never hit her or her mom or stepmom during one of his episodes. She shuddered. How would he react if he knew she’d been sneaking out, sleeping with a twenty-five-year-old guy, and taking drugs? And now she would add stripping to that list of sins.
~*~
Sunday, November 20
All the next day, Damien sent her texts.
hey. U know I luv u bae.
sorry things got bad last nite. I got something for u.
can you meet me tonite?
She didn’t respond to the first three or four, but by the eighth or ninth, she started worrying that he might get mad if she didn’t. OK. I’ll meet u once everyone is in bed.
She wasn’t sure if God was real or not, but she could almost believe that He was for all of the don’ts resounding in her conscience. Don’t respond to his texts. Don’t talk to him anymore. Don’t agree to meet him.
She was isolated from everyone and everything. Since she’d quit the track team, she had only seen Riley in class, and their conversations were forced. The girls she used to hang out with from the team were hanging out with other people now, and she was pretty sure they were talking some smack about her, too. She’d seen a few things online about how she was hanging out with a group of boys after school. She didn’t even know the boys they were talking about. One of them was a football player. She didn’t even know any football players. It was better to just avoid those girls.
Things were crazy at home, too. Her dad and stepmom were totally into their own lives and their own kids, and they might be moving to California anyway. Her mom was just crazy all by herself and always had been. She had some boyfriend now, too. So no one even noticed how bad Kaki’s second quarter grades were, or if they did, they said nothing. She had gone from being an A/B student with the occasional C+, to a C- and D student.
Sydney and Damien were the only people in her life who actually talked to her and seemed as if they wanted to be around her.
When everyone went to bed that night, she enacted her usual exit strategy, narrowly missing her brother who was on his way back from the bathroom. Kaki froze in the hallway until his zombie-like form moved back into the bedroom. Once his door was closed, she worked her way down the stairs and out the front door. As always, Damien’s car was there, heated with warmth and the spicy scent of his cologne.
They kissed for a while, and Damien assured her how much he loved her. “You’re my only baby. You know that, right?”
She nodded and went in for another kiss, longing for the affirmation of his touch and the affection of his words. She wanted to forget about the slap and the parking lot argument—the fact that he’d left her there in the cold, alone and unprotected.
“I’ll always take care of you.” He pulled out a red bag with patterned hearts on the outside.
There were several sexy undies in the bag—red ones, black ones, white lacy ones. She giggled as she pulled them out of the bag one at a time.
“I want you to model those for me tonight,” he said.
Next, she pulled out a new iPhone, the most recent model. “Now,” he said explaining. “I’ve loaded this up for you. Every app you could ever want is on here, and if there’s something else you want me to load on there, you just let me know.”
Despite what had happened the night before, how could she not love this man who wanted to give her all of this stuff and really seemed to want to take care of her?
“And finally, there’s this,” he said, pulling out a small, blue box and placing it in her hand.
Her heart pounded. It looked exactly like a ring box. Inside the felt holder a silver ring with a small diamond and sapphire sparkled. Later, she would find out that he’d bought it at a discount store for $20.
“Now, this is a promise ring. I know we got to spend a little more time getting money together, and I got to get us a house and all that, but one day, I’ll get you a real engagement ring.”
“I love you, Damien.” She threw her arms around him. She did love him, after all. And didn’t all of this mean that he loved her too?
“OK, then. Do you trust me now?” He grabbed her hands and rubbed her fingers under his thumbs.
“I trust you.”
“OK. And we’re
all good now? We know who belongs to who and all that?”
She nodded, beaming. Warmth rushed all over her body. “Yes.”
“OK, then. Now let’s talk a little bit about that favor I need you to do for me.”
9
Tyler
Saturday, November 19
Tyler had reclined on the couch all weekend, his feet propped on the arm at the opposite end, his head slightly tilted under the lumpy, brown, velveteen pillow as he flipped through travel shows. Monday, he’d have to go to work. Soon, if all things went according to plan, they would be living the good life in Santa Monica—sunning on the beach, watching the waves roll in and out. They’d both get rid of all of their bulky winter clothes, get fit, wear trendy clothes like they used to. Things were going to be so much better.
He hadn’t even felt like surfing his usual sites online today. Life was looking up.
“You know what, honey?” He rolled his head to the side to look at Lana and reached his hand out toward her. She clasped his warm fingers in her own. The grasp was familiar, yet new to him all at the same time.
“What?” She perched on the edge of the coffee table and smiled down at him. For the first time in years, she resembled the woman he’d married. “I was just thinking how this idea of yours is sounding better and better.”
“Is it?” She sat a little taller.
“Yeah.” He propped on his elbow. “I mean, when you first brought it up the other week, I thought it was crazy. But as I think more and more about it, I’m kind of like—why not? I mean, what if I do lose my job, and what if you do get this job in California? It makes sense somehow, you know?”
“I know.” She leaned down and planted a kiss on his forehead.
Tyler’s cell phone rang. He read the name from the screen. “It’s Christina.” Muscles tensed. Maybe he should just ignore it.
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