The Thrill of It

by Lauren Blakely

  I open my fist. “I guess we should cancel our plans to see a movie with Jordan and Kristen tomorrow night. I see you have a prior engagement.”

  I toss the note at her. She doesn’t even try to catch it. It hits her chest with a thud and falls to the ground.

  “What are you talking about? Because I have had literally the worst day of my life. All I want is to see you and try to forget the things my mom said to me.”

  “You’d probably have an easier time when you’re Mr. Stewart’s girlfriend tomorrow night. That might help you forget your mom and me. Oh wait, you’ve already forgotten me seeing as you’re going back to Cam.”

  I point at the bag, the gleaming, beating body of evidence before our very eyes.

  Irrefutable.

  She bends down, opens the balled-up note, and reads quietly.

  I push both hands rough through my hair, pull on it in exasperation. “You fucking told me you ended it with him.”

  “I did end it! This is a mistake. I texted him the night on the subway. I’ll show you. I swear.”

  She grabs for her phone from her back pocket and scrolls through her messages. She finds it quickly and jams the device at me, showing me the note saying she’s done working. I tap on the screen to open it.

  “Oops,” I say when I see the message is in draft mode. “Looks like you forgot to send it. Guess that was a Freudian slip.”

  Then I walk the fuck out before I say something I will regret for the rest of my life, even though the word is forming in my throat, on my tongue, on my lips. But I can’t, I won’t, I refuse to give that word voice, even if she’s acting like one right now.

  * * *

  Harley

  I stare at the window in the door, unable to move, even though he’s long gone.

  I close my eyes briefly, wondering if this is the end of my penance, if this is how I finally escape my past. If this is the moment when I am finally good again with the universe, when I have paid back all that I have done. Maybe this is my final amends.

  Losing him. Losing Trey.

  But was I really that bad?

  Yes.

  The answer is always yes.

  I will always pay for what I did because I sold myself. I can try to hedge it, I can sugarcoat it by calling myself an escort, by having laid down limits, but in the end, I did what I did. I chose what I chose. And unlike the girls my mother covers for her articles, I wasn’t forced, I wasn’t coerced. I willingly walked men like dogs, dirty talked them, and told them lies about lingerie. Then I took the money and laughed with my pimp.

  My man.

  My Cam.

  I collapse in a cross-legged heap on the floor, the dirty, faded, yellowed, linoleum floor of this apartment building, and I clutch the bag Cam sent me, my arms wrapped around it, a life preserver in the shitstorm of my day, my life. I hold it tightly and re-read the note, lingering on the last lines.

  Who takes care of you?

  That’s right. Who does?

  Has there ever been any question? Has there every been any other answer but Cam? He is the only person who has ever been here for me. Who doesn’t cringe or sneer or judge my past. Cam accepts me for who I am. Cam loves me for me. And he doesn’t even try to fuck me, or fuck with me. He is the only person I can ever rely on. When my world spins wildly into the sewer, he alone can pluck me out.

  He is the choice in my life. I chose him once, I can choose him again. Joanne has urged me to take ownership of my actions. I damn well will take ownership of this one.

  Of this choice I’m making that is mine and mine alone.

  I reach into the bag, open the box, and gasp when I see a long, flowy dress in the color of champagne. It’s gorgeous and it’s nothing a whore would wear.

  I run my tired hands over the dress – it is the only thing beautiful in my ugly life. I can’t rely on my mother. I am wrung dry from her, worn out and tattered from her cruel words. Nor can I lean on Trey. I thought I was falling in love, but he walked out without giving me a chance to explain.

  I rest my cheek against the soft chiffon. This. This is all I can depend on.

  Power. Control. Manipulation.

  Because there is no such thing as love. Love is a fiction, a fable, an ode spun by poets and drunks, a fantastical tale told across one thousand and one nights. It is the genie in the bottle, it is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it’s the lie designed to seduce you.

  My almost-now-ex-boyfriend doesn’t love me, my father never did, and the woman who raised me didn’t want a daughter. She wanted a sister, a confidante, a friend.

  And she wound up with a whore.

  This is who I am.

  I discard my soft side, my loving side, my vulnerable side. With my chin held high and my dress in hand, I march up the stairs.

  I am, and always will be, a working girl.

  “Where’s Trey? What happened?” Kristen asks when I unlock the door to the apartment. She’s draped over Jordan and they’re watching a Mark Wahlberg flick on her laptop. She’s compromising and it’s fascinating seeing what a boy and girl do as they come together. Fascinating like a science experiment I’m observing through a microscope. Because that’s all this closeness, this kind of compromise, will ever be to me. Something to take note of from a distance, to jot down on lined paper. But not to live. “Trey was supposed to come up thirty minutes ago. Did he get lost in the basement?”

  I shake my head. “He left,” I say in a dead voice, then I head to my room and flop face first on my bed. I could cry, I could curl up in a ball, I could bang my fists into the bedspread until they turn blue.

  But there’s nothing left in me. I have been drained of emotions, and maybe I never even had any in the first place. Maybe I’m missing the gene that lets you feel for real.

  Seconds later, I hear my door creak open.

  “Hey,” Kristen says in a soft voice. She pads over to my bed, sits down and pets my hair. “You okay?”

  “I wouldn’t really use that word to describe what I’m feeling right now,” I say in a muffled tone into the bedspread.

  “What’s going on? Want to tell me?”

  I flip over, stare up at Kristen and shrug. “Where to start? Imagine your worst-case scenario. Double that. Multiply it by ten. And add one thousand.”

  “Oh, sweetie.” She squeezes my arm. “What happened? Tell me what happened. I want to know.”

  “You go watch your movie. I’ll be fine.”

  “No. Jordan can wait. You’re more important. I don’t even like this movie.” Then she calls out to Jordan, telling him to finish it on his own. He shouts back a victorious yes, and I hear the volume rise again on the film.

  “Talk to me,” she says. “You let me in the other night when you told me. Now I’m in. Let me be in. Let me help you.”

  I choke up because her words might be the kindest ones I’ve ever heard. Then I suck back the tears, and I tell her about my shitty day. When I’m done, she gives me the biggest hug a girl could get.

  I may not know love, but I am starting to grasp the concept of friendship.

  This is the only thing I know to be true.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Harley

  Slut is a dirty word.

  Slut is a loaded word.

  Slut is for microscopic miniskirts and tramp stamps and tottering red plastic high heels. Slut is for ripped t-shirts sliding down shoulders, for shots drunk off of bellies, for names written on bathroom stalls.

  Slut is for loose girls. For easy girls. And it is only for girls.

  That’s why I hate the word. As I shower and shampoo my hair, I think about how I want to eradicate it from the English language. I want to extradite it, handcuff it, lock it up in the backseat of a sedan and shove its head below the window where no one can see it. As I turn off the water and grab a towel, I think about a thousand billion Sharpies blotting slut from every dictionary that ever existed in any language.

  Just the word itself sounds dirty.
Even if it meant kitten or unicorn it would still sound like a guttural insult.

  As I zip open my makeup bag, I picture a counter revolution, I imagine girls taking back that word, co-opting it, owning it, declaring it theirs. “Oh, Sally! You’re such a funny slut!”

  But see, there’s nothing tramp-stampy or bathroom-wall-worthy about the dress Cam bought me, the event I’m going to, or the way I look when I am Layla. I blow dry my hair, apply my makeup and zip up the champagne dress. I am classy, I am a prize, I am worthwhile.

  The only slutty thing I’ve ever done was mess around with Trey.

  And he’s history.

  Grabbing the tattoo concealer I picked up this morning from the make-up counter at a nearby department store, I cover up the red ribbon on my shoulder.

  Erasing my mom, erasing Trey. I am back to me.

  * * *

  Kristen barricades the doorway. She presses her palms on each side of the frame, feet out wide, forming an X.

  “I can’t let you go,” she tells me.

  “Kristen, I’m fine.”

  “This isn’t you. You told me you were done with that.”

  “Well, I’m done with being done. I’m back. And I have a job to do, so I really need to go,” I tell her in a firm, clear voice.

  “Harley,” she says, sounding wistful as she shakes her head once. “Tell me how I can help you.”

  “I don’t need help.”

  “I don’t know what to do, but I know this isn’t what you want.”

  “Actually,” I correct. “It is what I want. It’s the way for me. And if you don’t move I’m going to be late for a very important fake date that will net me a few thousand dollars for rent,” I add, figuring that will convince Kristen to move.

  She doesn’t.

  I sigh heavily. “Kristen, I appreciate this. I truly do. You’re trying to stage an intervention or something, and I will grant you mega BFF points for that. Seriously, you have earned a big-ass friendship bracelet or something. So thank you. But this is my choice, and I am fine with it, and I really need to go because there is a car waiting for me.”

  She sags and relinquishes her post, holding her arm out in a defeated gesture.

  “Thank you.”

  “Wait. Tell me where you’re going. Just in case something goes wrong.”

  “What? You think Mr. Stewart is going to shank me?”

  “I have no idea! But it would just make me feel better if, god forbid, something happens to you.”

  “Fine,” I relent. “I’ll be at the Parker Meridien.”

  Then she wraps me in a hug. “I love you, Harley. I do. I know this is your choice and I don’t like it, but I’m still your friend and I won’t stop being your friend even if I disagree, okay? You need to know that. I will be by your side.”

  The back of my eyes sting and I suck in the tear that threatens to ruin my perfectly applied mascara. “Don’t make me cry,” I whisper and squeeze back. “Oh, and that was the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. So thank you for being a friend.”

  Her friendship is the closest thing I’ve ever felt to some kind of love.

  Inside the air-conditioned town car, it’s as if I’m in a capsule, transporting me in its secure, hermetically sealed spaceship to a better planet. One where these messy things called feelings no longer prick me like porcupine quills. On the planet I’m rocketing to, we strip ourselves of emotions. We are stronger, safer, better like that.

  * * *

  Cam shakes his head in admiration. He drinks me in from top to bottom and back again, that appreciative gaze operating at full wattage. Dressed in black pants and a bright purple shirt, he’s holding a worn paperback, and his grin is so wide he’s like a neon sign of Vegas waiting in the lobby for me.

  Seeing him is like a hit, an inhalation, a relief. A faint drifting off to someplace else, where no sounds permeate my ears, where no sights invade my vision, where I take a drink of something blue and sugary a waiter brings me, and nothing in this heartless city, no boys, no blackmail, no mom, no naked men in halls, no affairs I didn’t want to know about, no secrets, no empty spaces, can ever touch me.

  “Mmm. Perfection, Layla,” Cam says and hearing him say my name is like lightness, like a whisper that fades away into nothing. Into sweet oblivion.

  He plants a delicious kiss on my cheek, and it feels as if he’s transmitting bionic powers to me, and they’re surging through my blood, turning me invincible.

  “Mmm,” Cam says, taking a step back for another view. “I knew this dress would accentuate all the assets Mr. Stewart likes in a girlfriend.”

  “Speaking of, anything I need to know about the job?”

  Cam gives me the download. “He loves elephants. Okay? Elephants are his passion, and he is a huge supporter of Save Orphaned Elephants. He’s being honored as one of the Gold Level Givers. He has the head table and you’re his girlfriend. Anyone asks what you do, you’re a model. That’s all you need to say. You’re a model, you’re crazy for him, and you care so very deeply for the plight of the orphaned elephant,” he says, placing his hand on his heart.

  My lips curve up in a conspiratorial grin. “I can do that.”

  “I’ll be kicking it at the bar on the second floor. Nothing is going to go wrong, but just think of me as your buffer, if you need me.” He slaps the paperback against his other palm. “Now, you do your thing, I’ll do my thing. Because I just got to the good part in Bridget Jones’ Diary and I’m dying to see how it all plays out.”

  “You’re reading chick lit?”

  “It’s just a damn good story. Get your pretty ass upstairs. He’s waiting at the hotel bar and you’ll go up to the ballroom together. Arm in arm, baby. Arm in arm. You stay by his side all night long and make us proud, baby doll. Now, no more cheek kisses from me, because I don’t want you smelling like me, I want you smelling like a beautiful model who loves elephants.”

  * * *

  At five-eight, I tower over the squat and balding Mr. Stewart, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He’s hooked his hand possessively around my waist, and he taps my hipbone now and then, as if this is our longstanding little lovers gesture. We are at the front of the ballroom, near the stage, and we don’t have to mingle because everyone wants to mingle with him – the guest of honor and his model girlfriend. Black-tied waiters circle and offer sparkling drinks in champagne flutes. I politely decline. Mr. Stewart does as well, then returns his attention to a portly businessman next to him who’s discussing a recent news story about elephants. I nod thoughtfully as they chat, squeeze Mr. Stewart’s arm now and then, bat my eyes, and gaze adoringly at him like a proud girlfriend. I am giving it more than 110 percent and Cam will be thrilled with my report card, since Mr. Stewart is clearly besotted.

  “It’s terribly sad, isn’t it?” the portly man says.

  “That’s why we want to earn as much as we possibly can to save the African elephant from extinction,” my date says. “It’s so sad how close they are to being wiped out. It’s a genocide of animals and all for their tusks to be made into useless little trinkets and statues.” He turns to me. “Don’t you agree, my sweetheart?”

  I nod wholeheartedly, bring my hand to my heart. “I want to live in a world where I don’t have to say to my kids someday, ‘This is where the wild things were.’ I want to say ‘This is where the wild things are.’”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” the businessman says and wipes a small tear from his eye.

  Someone clinks a fork against a glass and the sea of glamorously attired men and women in tuxes and evening gowns turns to the stage.

  “Thank you so much for coming,” a woman in a modest black dress says after clearing her throat. “We are so grateful for all of you, and we hope you are having a wonderful time. Before we sit down to eat, we want to extend a heartfelt thank you to one of our most generous supporters, Mr. Stewart.”

  The crowd claps and the chandeliers cast a warm glow around the cavernous ballroom as all eyes tu
rn to the man next to me. He takes a quick bow, waves, and then slips his hand around my waist again. I plant an adoring kiss on his cheek.

  He looks at me and smiles, a wide, happy, gooey smile that tells me I’ve earned that big-ass tip since he believes so thoroughly in the illusion I’ve created for him. I am his girlfriend. For tonight, I am absolutely his girlfriend.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Trey

  When I reach the sixth floor, I race out of the elevator and down the hall, praying Michele is still here. I called her once, but it’s Friday night, so who the hell knows if she’s still working.

  I yank open the door to her office suite.

  “Trey,” she says with surprise. A black purse is slung over her arm, and she’s dressed in a pencil skirt and a sleeveless top. Weird – she’s not wearing her shrink uniform and it’s jarring to me to see her like this, as if I ran into a teacher at the mall, outside of her natural element. “What can I do for you? I’m just on my way to the theater.”

  “What are you seeing?”

  She flashes a quick smile. “Crash the Moon.”

  “Oh. Cool. I’ve never seen it, but I heard it’s good.”

  “It’s amazing. I’ve seen it several times. This will be my first time seeing it after it swept the Tony awards - best show, best director, best actress. But enough about me. What can I do for you? We’re going to need to talk and walk so I don’t miss curtain.”

  “I fucked up big time,” I admit as we head back into the hallway.

  “Then unfuck it up,” she says, as if that’s the easiest thing in the world. She hits the down button on the elevator panel.

  “How?”

  “Well, considering I don’t know what you did, the answer may vary. But it almost always starts with a heartfelt apology.”

  On the ride down, I tell Michele what happened yesterday with Harley, how I freaked out when I saw the bag from Bloomingdale’s. “I didn’t even give her a chance to explain, but the fact is, she doesn’t have to explain. I believe her. I know I overreacted, because that’s what I do.”

  We reach the lobby and leave the building together. “You need to work on that Trey. You have a lot of anger and you have some insecurity, but most of all you let fear of feeling control you. You can shut off and shut down, but none of those reactions are ultimately going to heal your heart. What will help you is speaking your truth. But don’t jump to conclusions. Don’t make assumptions. Say only what you know to be true,” she instructs me as I keep pace with her down Lexington Avenue. She looks at me as we slow at the crosswalk. “What is the one truth you most want to speak?”