In fact, I’ll give Beth the day off too.
But I won’t. I have too much responsibility to the company to do this.
I watch her for a while, my head resting on my crooked arm. Her hair is sprawled like a messy fan on the pillow. It’s just-been-fucked hair, and I have never seen anything more glorious in my life. I lift a tendril of it and let it fall back on the pillow.
I’m loathe to wake her, and so I extricate myself gingerly from the bed. There’s a message on my cellphone from the previous night that I haven’t read. I pick it up.
It says:
“Are we on tonight?”
It’s Taylor.
Oh fuck. I’d forgotten completely about tonight. It’s our usual Monday night. Apparently, Aaron carouses with his buddies every Monday, and Taylor is left to her own devices.
I start to text back to cancel . . . and then I hesitate.
What am I doing? I’m basically putting my life on hold for Beth, and I swore I would never, ever do that for a woman. I mean, I didn’t take a vacation this week from work for our seven days together. So why should I alter my routine, right?
I’m not making any sense to myself.
Never again.
That’s right. If I want to live by that, I’ve got to stop rearranging my life around women. It’s not as if I’m in love with Beth or something.
Right?
A creeping doubt worms into my marrow, making goose bumps rise on my flesh.
I swallow.
No. I can’t allow myself to fall in love with her. It would be Selena all over again. They even have the same hair, for Chrissake. I would be dooming us to an early demise if I let this through. I’m jinxed. Just look at my mother. I loved her to bits too (though not in the same way), and she was taken away from me as well.
Never ever ever again.
A bolt of pain racks my chest, and I have to sit down for a moment on the bed to let it subside. Memories of Selena’s pale, wan face fleets across my mind screen.
What’s happening to me?
Shit shit shit.
Before I can lose myself again, I text back to Taylor:
“Tonight it is, but I can only stay for two hours. Meet me at the White Rabbit.”
BETH
I have my suspicions (or reservations, rather) when Chris tells me that he has to urgently meet a client tonight.
“It’ll only be about two hours,” he says, avoiding my eyes. “Then I’ll come home and we’ll have a lazy dinner together. And then we’ll make love by the TV in front of a dirty HBO original.”
I have no claim on him, of course. He has made that quite clear from the beginning. But within every girl, there resides a hope that she will be the one to change the handsome, eligible bad boy with deep psychological issues.
That’s why I stayed on yesterday despite knowing what I do about Selena, and the fact he will never reciprocate any romantic love given to him. That’s why I worked myself up to enjoy the easy physicality we have between us.
Enjoy his body, I tell myself. Enjoy what he has to offer. Use him like he uses you . . .
Carpe diem.
Oh, but what he does to me! Every time I think I’m OK with just enjoying his body, my former self pulls me back – the one who wants more. So much more than what he has placed on the offer table.
Making love to him is like eating a chocolate-laden, calorie-covered snack. Even when you know it’s wrong and that all this will end in a train wreck, you are drawn into indulging. Every time he kisses or touches me, I melt. I can’t help it. I’m behaving like a wanton slut who hasn’t had sex in years (and essentially, that is what I am). There’s something so mesmerizing and addictive about Chris that I’m drawn like the proverbial bug to a flame who must consume me.
It’s just a few more days, I tell myself. Three precisely. Take your time. You can decide later on.
But I know I have already decided.
I have decided that I need more time than just three days to give him my evaluation. Call it ‘needing more grace period’.
“OK,” I tell him. “I need a few things, so I’ll just go down to Walgreen’s down the corner.”
“Great. See you soon.”
He kisses me tenderly on the lips. It’s a kiss that makes me want to sigh. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was in love with me.
It’s heartbreaking – the thought that I have to compromise my values, and that he doesn’t have to do the same. But in this kind of relationship, someone must yield.
I’m heading towards the Walgreen’s in the direction when his Lamborghini revs out of the parking exit. Its engines purr sleekly, turning heads as usual. Chris is nothing if not an attention-grabber. He doesn’t see me.
The car stops at a light, and I make a swift decision.
I hail a cab, which screeches to a stop in front of me. Feeling like every clichéd amateur detective, I get in, slam the door and say, “Follow that car.”
“It’s going to be hard,” the cab driver cautions me.
“I’ll give you an extra fifty if you try.”
What the hell am I doing?
I’m not a stalker. I have never stalked anyone in my entire life. I know what I’m doing is wrong – acting like a jealous girlfriend – and yet I’m compelled to follow it through. Maybe I just want affirmation. Maybe I’m secretly a masochist.
Visual evidence. Yes, that’s what I’m seeking.
And yet . . . what do I want visual evidence for? He has been upfront and open about his lifestyle with me. Do I want visual evidence that five days with me hasn’t changed him profoundly, that I’m not the alpha and omega of his life?
Who are you kidding, girl? You know that already.
I’m trapped in the moving cab anyway. Trapped by my own stubbornness, like an automaton which refuses to give up the last refuge of her ideals.
The cab manages to keep up, thanks to many red lights littering the block junctions. Maybe the gods of traffic lights are smiling upon me. The Lamborghini finally pulls in front of a seedy-looking club – all neon and glitter and flashing lights – with a white rabbit insignia on the side of its entrance. Chris gets up and hands his keys to the valet.
He walks in without turning to look back.
“OK, don’t stop right in front,” I say to the cab driver.
A couple of tough-looking guys with tattoos and leather glare at me balefully as the cab screeches to a halt in front of them. We are about twenty feet from the entrance of the club.
My heart sinks as I tip the cab driver generously.
What is Chris doing in a place like this?
I know Chris has tendencies. The very first night we were together suggests that he may not have an aversion to bondage play. It strikes me as hilarious that up till one week ago, I didn’t even know what bondage play was!
But still, to watch him walk into a club like this . . . it’s another threshold I haven’t yet crossed.
The doorman – black leather, metal studs and with multiple long silver earrings on either ear – watches me as I enter. In my simple blouse and jeans, I must look out of place.
Inside, the thud of the music is almost too loud for my ears. The place looks like a Halloween party of strobe lights and PVC – all sleekly shining black, and with more flashing metal than a scrap yard. I quail a little at the sight of almost naked women and men dancing in suspended cages.
A woman with more studs on her nose and lips than I have ever seen on anyone. She’s dressed in a metallic outfit that resembles a 1960s depiction of a spaceman. She comes up to me.
“You wanna get high, sugar?”
“Uh, no thanks.”
I sidestep her neatly, and look frantically around until I catch sight of Chris’s back vanishing behind a trio of Goth women (or they may be men, it’s difficult to tell). People press in on me from all sides, and the first pangs of claustrophobia begin to worry the edges of my consciousness.
I delve in after Chris, narrowly avoi
ding a hulking black man who stares at me as if I’m something to eat. I find myself at a doorway of a darkened room.
I stop, unable to make myself step in.
Chris is kissing a beautiful blonde goddess, all decked up in a black latex suit. She has breasts the size of which dwarf mine completely, and her body is lithe and graceful. The way they are all over each other – groping hands on waists and buttocks, hungry mouths on mouths – suggests that they have been lovers long before this.
Intellectually, I know she is one of his ‘friends’.
An archetype of what he wants me to be.
If I embark upon starting an affair with him, this will be what I am reduced to – occasional fumblings at seedy nightspots, forced to share him with myriad other unidentified women. God forbid, he might even force me to do things I’m not ready for.
It’s as if my eyes have been opened to everything he really is.
A heaviness swells in my heart, and despair like I’ve never known it descends like a dark cloud.
I can’t do this. I really can’t.
I can’t be someone’s sexual plaything without emotional intimacy or hope for ‘foreverness’, no matter how much he desires me and how much I want him. The last few days have been surreal, dreamlike. But like a dream, everything must now dissipate as I fall down to Earth – my wings broken –with a resounding thud.
I leave the club.
Even though it wrenches my soul, I know what I have to do.
CHRIS
As soon as Taylor’s mouth presses onto mine, I know something is wrong.
Fuck.
This whole scenario feels forced and unreal. The kiss has the patina of rote – something I have been doing so long, like taking my diet coke in the mornings, that I’ve long forgotten why I’m still doing it even though it has ceased to have meaning.
This feels wrong. Something has irrevocably changed – a shift in the air – and nothing is as it seems anymore.
Taylor senses it too.
She breaks the kiss. “What’s up?”
I shake my head. “Sorry. It’s me, not you. I, uh . . . ”
I don’t know how to say this, because I haven’t analyzed it myself yet. But I do know that Beth’s beautiful face keeps superimposing itself on everything. Images of her laughing in Grant Park by the fountain. Her with my mother – attentive and caring and solicitous. Her entwined in my arms, loving and sexual and sweet.
I’m still confused, of course. I can’t shed the bitter vestiges of what happened with Selena and my promise to never love any woman again. I can’t wipe away with scars with laser surgery overnight.
But there’s something there with Beth. I can feel it. I wouldn’t yet say it’s love . . . but close. Very close. It’s there . . . like a glimmer of the sun upon a thundercloud, the hope of a new dawn. Something that needs to be further explored.
Something that compels me to try.
Taylor nods. “You’ve met someone.”
I sigh. “Kind of.”
“Wow. This is new for you.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Wow. Just wow.”
“I know.”
She smiles at me, showing white teeth. “What are you doing here with me then?”
“Old habits.” I laugh. We have always been brutally honest with each other. Taylor is one of the best friends I’ve ever had.
“Go get her before she sees us together.”
“She won’t. She’s safely tucked at home.”
“You never know. Walls have eyes and ears.”
“Goodbye, Taylor.” I give her a kiss on the cheek.
“Meet up for some latte time to time?”
“You bet.”
“Aaron will be so disappointed. He was looking forward to seeing you getting on with me in the flesh.”
I laugh again. “That will never happen.”
I run out of the club. This is something Beth doesn’t have to know about. I’ve already screwed it up by telling her about Selena. I’m dying to get back to her, take her in my arms and make violent and passionate love to her all night. Beth is where I belong.
Beth.
Thank god for my Lamborghini.
I race back to the penthouse as fast as I can, hooting a couple of slow-moving cabs out of the way. Bad manners, I know, but I don’t care. I screech into my parking lot and almost forget to lock the car as I scramble to the elevator.
The ride up to my penthouse seems to take a decade. Finally, a ping sounds and the doors slide open. I tumble out.
I unlock my front door and fling it wide open.
“Beth?” I call.
No answer.
I forget. She might still be at Walgreen’s (if one can spend two hours at a Walgreen’s). I should give her a call on the cellphone, but I don’t want to appear possessive. (Or obsessed. Yeah, never obsessed.) I should probably sit here and wait for her to come back.
I know. I’ll surprise her.
Instead of going out, I’ll prepare us dinner.
I’m not a great cook, but I busy myself with boiling some pasta in a saucepan and emptying a can of pesto sauce into a frying pan. Hey, give me some credit. I put a bottle of red wine out to chill in a cooler.
I’m smiling as I do this. I picture Beth coming home with Walgreen paper bags, and beaming when she sees what I’ve been up to.
Home. That’s a good consideration. I wonder if Beth would consider moving in with me . . . just for a bit until she can get her own apartment. I just don’t want her in that awful place. She’s much, much safer with me.
I wonder if she’d let me pay for her new apartment.
I’m getting ahead of myself. There’s so much I want to talk to Beth about. It’s as though I’m a new man. I haven’t been this excited about a relationship since Selena, and I refuse to let the ghosts of my past intrude this time. I’ve had therapy. I’m a much stronger person now. Maybe I can love again. Maybe I can’t.
But at least it doesn’t give me migraines to take the first step. Once I decide I’m going to try, I’m certain as hell going to try.
Thing is – what am I going to do with that tattoo?
The pasta is cooked. I taste it. Not bad. I lay the dishes on the table and set the plates.
And wait.
And wait.
It’s been over an hour, and she still hasn’t shown up.
Frowning, I dial her cellphone. It goes directly to voicemail.
Shit.
I hope nothing bad has happened to her.
Still redialing her number on my cellphone, I grab my jacket and head down to Walgreen’s. The night air is chilly and brisk, and the shadows thrown by the street lamps are long on the sidewalks. The atmosphere seems to take on an ominous cast, as though there are shadows behind every shadow.
When I get to Walgreen’s three blocks down, she isn’t there, of course. I ask the lady at the cash register if someone fitting Beth’s description has been down here.
“Not that I recall, sir,” she says, giving me the once over.
I panic.
I run down the sidewalks, looking for her. If something happened to Beth . . . fuck fuck fuck . . . I’ll never forgive myself. It’s that curse again. My jinx. I bring down everyone I’ve ever loved the moment I decide I love them.
If something happened to her, it’s because you went out to meet Taylor, the voice of my conscience intones.
No, no, no!
White hot jagged lightning streaks through my brain as I desperately dial her cellphone again. I expect futility, of course. Her broken body lies on a darkened alley in my mind’s eye, blood seeping onto the stones.
No!
This time, it actually rings and it doesn’t go straight to voicemail.
My heart is slamming against my ribcage as I listen to the ringtone. I don’t know what I expect to hear at the other end. The voice of her kidnapper or rapist?
It’s all my fault.
The other side gets picked up.
“Hello?” I say, anxiety riddling my voice. “Beth?”
Pure silence.
Oh no.
There comes the hesitant sound of a half-sniffle, as though the person on the other end is trying hard not to cry, but being unable to choke back a sob.
“Chris?” Even the voice that filter through is ragged and broken.
“Where the hell are you? I’ve been worried sick. Are you hurt?”
Fuck!
“I’m OK. Chris, I have something to tell you.”
Dread sinks my heart.
“I can’t do this anymore, OK?”
“Do what?”
“What we’re doing. There’s just no future in it.”
“No, that’s where you’re wrong. I’ve been meaning to tell you. I want to give us a chance, Beth. I want to – ”
“I saw you.” Her voice is dead.
Oh shit.
“What did you see?”
“I saw you with her. Your friend.”
“I – ”
“It’s OK. You didn’t do anything wrong. You were always honest and level with me. I appreciate that. But it hit home that it isn’t the kind of life I want for myself, and it’s best we don’t do this anymore. I can’t be what you want you want me to be, and you can’t be who I want you to be either. So just let’s call it quits.”
“No, no, Beth, that’s where you’re wrong. Nothing happened. Honest! I can prove it. I swear. I can call Taylor right now, and she’ll tell you – ”
“Even if nothing happened,” she sounds disbelieving, “I can’t go through my life this way. Yes, nothing happened tonight. But I’ll always be wondering if something will happen some other night, because you can’t change who you are, Chris. And I’m not saying it’s wrong. It’s just that we want different things, and we deserve better.”
“No, that’s exactly what I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. Beth – ”
“You’ll have my resignation in the morning through a delivery service. I’m giving you a twenty-four hour notice right now, and since I’m not a confirmed employee, I can do that. I checked with Sully.”
“No, no! Beth – !”
“I’m not at my apartment, so please don’t come find me. Please, I’m begging you, let this rest. Goodbye, Chris. I can’t talk to you anymore because I don’t want you to convince me otherwise.”
Shades of Submission: Fifty by Fifty #1: Billionaire Romance Boxed Set Page 9