by Daya Daniels
Snatching up a towel, I reach into the shower stall and turn on the water, making the temperature as hot as I can take it. As soon as it heats, I step beneath the showerhead and use the bar of soap to scrub myself speedily.
All the thoughts that would usually crowd my head aren’t there. They’ve been held at bay by my post-orgasmic brain. I’m still relaxed from the fucking I’ve just received. As soon as I’m done, I turn off the water and wrap the towel around me.
When I head back out into the room, Austen is lying in the same position with his eyes closed. He looks peaceful, sated.
I dress quickly and shove my feet into my shoes. I snatch up my purse and fish out my wallet from inside it. I pull out a wad of cash—all crisp green bills withdrawn straight from the ATM machine before I came here. I count out exactly five hundred dollars. When I move to place it on the little table next to a matte-black skull cap helmet a heavy hand stops me, clutching my wrist. When I twist around, Austen is standing right in front of me, only wearing a pair of white boxer briefs that hug his firm ass and toned thighs.
“Don’t, Callie.” He gives me a funny expression.
I look at him bug-eyed. “It’s what I owe you. Please take it.” I shove the cash toward him, shaking my hand. “Take it. Take it. Take it.” It’s the only thing that makes me feel semi-normal about these encounters—paying him for them.
No one puts up with a woman like me for free.
Austen covers my cash-stuffed hand with his own and curls my fingers around the money. “It’s on me,” he says in his deep voice.
Free?
“I don’t want to take your money anymore, Callie.” He massages his package through his briefs, blatantly adjusting himself in front of me.
I’ve probably paid this man over ten thousand dollars out of my savings since he’s been fucking me, and every single time it happens he charges me less and less. Now, apparently, he’s down to charging me nothing for three hours of his time and effort.
I’m exhausted, sleepy, and everything in between. I let out an irritated breath and stare at the time on the clock once more as it flashes like the reminder it is.
I have to go...
“I have to go. I want to argue with you about this, but I really don’t have the time. I really have to go.”
Austen nods as he leans in and kisses my cheek. “I’ll see you next Sunday, Callie.”
I shake my head from side to side before I speak, wondering if I can get the words out that I must say. I focus on his good feet then my eyes travel up the length of his body, drinking in how attractive he really is. “No, no, you won’t. Not next week. This is the last time.” I run a hand through my hair, straightening it a little. I square my shoulders, craning my neck up to look at him.
The corners of his mouth twitch up into a relaxed smile. “You said that last time, Callie, and the time before that...and the time before that...and the time before that...for the past three months.”
I squeeze my eyes shut at the sound of his deep voice and at the truth he’s just stated.
“I can fit you in on another day if Sundays aren’t enough.” He cocks his head to the side as if everything I’ve already said was stupid and ridiculous, which it probably was.
I shake my head even more and bite my lip. “No, it isn’t necessary.”
“Okay.”
“Goodbye, Austen.” I step away from him, walking backward, and snatch up keys from the table along with the crumbling pieces of my soul.
He keeps his gaze on me as if bemused. I reach for the door handle. Yanking it open, I slip out of the crack, keeping my eyes on him as he stalks me toward the door.
“Goodbye, Callie.” He winks which causes me to jerk my head back in reaction to his cockiness before I shut it.
Austen
PUSHING THE THIN CURTAIN that covers the window back, I watch Callie rush across the lot to her truck—an old Ford that’s parked right next to my Harley-Davidson Street 750.
Her pickup truck is blue with big wheels and I can tell it isn’t something she bought because she didn’t have much of a choice. It’s a vehicle she has because it holds sentimental value.
I’m usually good at reading people, especially women.
But this one confuses me.
A woman like Callie could fuck whoever she wants. She reminds me of that girl in high school you’d never forget after you kissed her. Or the one you could never erase from your mind after you spent all night up talking to her about absolutely nothing.
The perfect girl.
Everything about her is sweet—her smell, her smile, the sound of her laugh.
This woman is that girl.
A woman like Callie doesn’t need to pay for sex...
So, as you can imagine, it all makes me wonder why she’s here every Sunday with me naked and clawing at my flesh like she hasn’t been fucked in a century.
I keep the women I fuck far away, vowing I wouldn’t fuck any woman who lives anywhere near where I stay here in the city. But something tells me Callie may live close by. I’ve always wondered, but now I find myself oddly curious.
Most of my customers are women with habits, addictions, problems—which are often mental—and issues. They’re usually ugly and desperate. Some I only fuck from behind, or in the dark, because I just don’t want that image in my head for the rest of my life.
They cry. They beg me to console them. They blabber on about their vanilla lives and the struggles they might be having in the love department and in their long-dead marriages, or go on endlessly about the shitty dating pool of the Southeast. Much of the conversation bores me and sometimes even the sex is whack, full of awkwardness, miscommunication and no flow, but I push through it.
Clientele beg me to fuck them all sorts of ways—between their tits, in their mouths, in their asses. There’s no shortage of odd requests. But I grant all their wishes like a fucking genie, as long as I’m compensated for it. With one exception. I don’t eat pussy—random pussy that is, aside from the one I’ve routinely had my face buried in—the one who just left. And kissing costs them extra.
Callie is as normal as they come, which sounds ridiculous, because I haven’t met a normal woman in my life yet. If this line of business had taught me anything, it’s that women are complicated creatures, as complex as helping them to orgasm sometimes. But with a little bit of work and some cajoling, it could happen.
With that thought, the image of Callie’s contorted face when she’d come earlier pops into my head. It’s such a gorgeous sight—the prettiest face I’ve ever seen orgasm and the sweetest sounds leave her mouth, which always force me to moan like a bitch in her presence.
Fuck.
I pop the top of the beer I’m holding in my grip with my teeth. Taking a big swig of it, I savor the cool taste on my tongue. I take a few more sips as I watch her, partly out of curiosity, but mostly for safety reasons. This area isn’t exactly known to be one of the better ones, but it was the only place I could find far out enough, as she’d asked. We always do this at a different place and now we’re meeting so far out, I fear we’ll find ourselves in the next fucking state.
Callie is still sitting in her truck, looking in the rearview mirror, talking to herself. The engine starts up and the headlights switch on. Soon, she’s driving out of the lot.
I put the bottle to my lips and drain it.
I have this room until tomorrow, so I’ll likely sleep here tonight. The bed is comfortable. And the television has a few channels on it.
Dropping the curtain from between my fingertips, I move away from the window to sit on the edge of the bed. Snatching up the remote, I click the television on, finding the sound of the voices that come from it comforting. I lie back and watch it.
Eventually, I find myself staring up at the ceiling, thinking.
It’s something different when you don’t know what to do with your own freedom.
The weeks go by slow and the weekends, especially, snail by as I wait fo
r Sunday to come around again. The pace of this place is lazy enough to drive someone nuts.
My half-brother—who I haven’t even seen yet—convinced me that being here now is best. Reluctantly, I agreed. Besides, I’ve been running for far too long from the things I need to handle, or better yet, don’t know how to handle.
My brother and I aren’t close. Hell, we barely get along, but we’re brothers still. And I know he wants the best for me.
Years back, when most of my buddies were busy either going to college, starting families, or securing jobs that ultimately landed them in rewarding careers, I was busy doing other things that quickly kicked me off my life path.
And if I know one thing about life, it’s that it never goes as planned—mine sure as hell hasn’t.
I’ve traveled a bit around the Gulf, looking for work for a few months. Now, I’m here. So, in between the job I have restoring old man Morris’ house on Sullivan’s Island with a small crew, I do this.
You might ask: Why?
There’s only a short list of employment opportunities available for guys like me. I’m the type of man who believes in and certainly has no problem with good, honest hard work, but right now, I need to make fast cash and I need to make it like yesterday. I have a rock-hard body earned from countless hours at the gym, a semi-decent—though some beg to differ—personality, and a nice smile, as the women have told me. So, I thought I’d put it all to good use.
This little side hustle pays well since I charge by the hour. I get to have fun, no strings attached. I’ve picked up one or two stalkers along the way but nothing I can’t handle.
I keep a low profile. I don’t exactly advertise my services. There are no business cards. My name isn’t listed in the local directory under Dick on Demand. So honestly, I don’t even know how Callie found me.
I don’t usually keep the same phone for very long. I never let these women know my full name and certainly not where I live. I’m famous for jumping state and I’d do it again in a heartbeat if I had to.
But I want to put roots down here, finally call someplace my home. I have maybe another month or so before I have all the cash I need to fund what I really am here for.
The sound of my phone vibrating snaps me out of my daydream. I snatch it up and scroll through the messages, desperate to see if maybe one is from Callie, but it isn’t.
Besides, she never texts. She always calls.
Letting out a loud breath, I read through all the messages, which confirm endless appointments for the rest of the week. By the end of it, I’ll be in traction for all the fucking I’ll have done.
I stop when I get to a message I truly want to avoid, but I know I can’t. I shift to a sitting position and stare at the words from her: I want to see you.
Taking a deep breath, I sink so much into my thoughts, my stomach swims with nervousness and insecurity.
Standing, I pad across the room and dig into my duffle bag, pulling out a wad of letters—the ones I’ve been collecting for the past two years. I remove the elastic secured around them, unfold the first one, and stare at all the colors scribbled across the page. It’s absolutely perfect and it earns a smile from me. I run a hand over my beard.
Tomorrow, definitely tomorrow.
I breathe again, knowing I’ve been saying the word, tomorrow, to myself since I’ve been here, but I’m yet to do it. I have to do it.
My thoughts bleed into one another and soon everything is cramming my skull.
I think about Callie and wonder how far she must drive to make it back home.
A small smile tugs at my lips when I think about her and the way those pretty blue eyes of hers raked over my body before she left.
And I know she’ll be back.
I’ll be more than happy to give her more.
Callie
I USED THE DRIVE back to clear my head.
Linda Ronstadt’s “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” sounds from the radio. I click it off as I ease into the driveway and park just outside of the garage.
Every single time I do this, nothing but guilt flows through my veins, making me feel heavy and sick with self-hatred. When I look at myself in the mirror these days, I loathe myself. I hate who I’ve become, who all this has turned me into. I no longer see beautiful, vivacious, happy Callie who used to stare back at me in the mirror.
The truck idles in the parking space for a moment before I twist the key and it shuts off.
Gripping the wheel, I lean into it and sniff the leather. I love this truck.
My father gave it to me as an eighteenth birthday present. He died a month later when he was stationed in Mogadishu during the Somali Civil War. And for the life of me I can’t let this thing go. Doing so would feel like I’m letting go of him.
And I’ve always had trouble letting go.
Over the years, I’ve sunk a ton of money into the restoration of this vehicle. It has been every color under the sun, until I settled on blue.
I stare up at the clear sky through the windshield. I yank on the door handle and pop it open, allowing the warm April air to seep in. The sound of the ocean in the distance instantly relaxes my frantic nerves. I take one last good look at myself in the mirror before I grab my things and head inside the house.
The walk is short. The sound of the crickets and the soft breeze outside fill my ears. The neighbors across the street are having a gathering. I stop for a second to look through the glass of their dining room at everyone surrounding a table singing Happy Birthday. I laugh at their squeals and applause then keep walking across the manicured grass.
The front of the house is in total darkness and it’s quiet.
I shove my key in the door. The lock disengages. It opens with a creak. The clock ticking on the wall confirms it’s two minutes away from twelve o’clock. I shut the door behind me and dump all my crap on the foyer table.
The light from the television just above the fireplace filters into the foyer. I step toward the entrance to the den and peek in.
“Hi, Mom,” Noah says quietly, jerking his head to look at me.
“What are you doing up?” I ask on a whisper.
“It’s not that late, Mom.” He laughs.
“Yeah, I suppose it isn’t.”
“I won’t stay up much longer.” He smiles.
“Okay, honey.”
“Um, Helen left a few hours ago. She said she’d be back in the morning.”
“Okay, no problem.”
“How was your night?” He runs his fingers through his dark hair that desperately needs to be cut.
“Good.”
He nods a few times. “Bowling, right?”
“Yeah,” I lie. “Bowling with Ivy and a few friends.”
“Sounds fun.”
“It was,” I tell him, letting out an exhausted breath. The back pain—the aftermath of Austen—that I always need a week to recover from, sets in as it always does before I turn in for the night.
I spin around and head out of the room, making my way through the dark house, then take the stairs. I peer at all the photographs lining the cherry wood staircase as I ascend them. Everything in this house holds so much history, from the colors of the walls now, right down to the nicks in them we carved there to keep track of the children and their height as they grew.
We’ve lived in this house for over twenty years. I love this place and everything in it, even with all the time that’s passed. It’s three stories complete with a small elevator if you don’t want to take the stairs, and located in a quiet neighborhood in Mount Pleasant where I grew up. Everyone knows everyone here, which can often be a bad thing because some of the people who live around here are nosy as hell. My best friend, Ivy Mattock, and her husband live a distance down the street from us.
But we look out for each other and the community here on the coast is as tight-knit as they come.
The sound of the television blaring brings me back to the present.
When I reach the top of the stairs, I debate
if I’ll go in—if I’ll disturb him. He doesn’t like to be disturbed if he’s watching TV. And I wonder what type of mood he’ll be in.
I take a few more steps and push the door open to find him sitting there, slumped over just a little as the television flickers with light, playing for no one because he’s asleep.
The door creaks and so does the floor beneath my feet as I walk in. I can hear him breathing before I even shut off the television. When I do, he stirs awake.
“Callie.” His voice is scratchy and tired.
“Yeah, it’s just me,” I say softly, stepping closer to where he sits.
He yawns and scrubs his face with a hand. Then, he pulls off his hat and runs a finger through his hair. “How was the bowling?”
“Fun. I had lots of fun.” I smile and touch his hand.
He grabs hold of mine and pats it a few times before he lets go. “That’s good. I’m glad.”
We stare at each other for a while.
“I’ll probably be watching TV the rest of the night.”
“Okay,” I breathe out, folding my arms across my chest.
He grabs the remote and points it toward the television. It comes to life again. He turns up the volume and disappears into SportsCenter.
I ease out of the door and shut it behind me.
~
I’ve been reading for the past hour, but my mind was someplace else. I can’t focus. My thoughts keep shifting to the past and I can’t get out of there. I never could.
The soft light from the lamp illuminates the large bedroom. I left the windows open, allowing the salty air from outside to seep in and settle around me.
I switch the tiny radio on the nightstand next to me on. Lady Antebellum’s “Cold As Stone” sounds from it.