Take Me

by Anna Zaires, Pepper Winters, Skye Warren, Lynda Chance, Pam Godwin, Amber Lin

  “I have never eaten anything quite like this,” Bridgett said. “It’s amazing.”

  We shared the remainder with me feeding her chunks of it alternated with my own bites. When it was gone, Bridgett excused herself to wash the sticky jelly off her face where I kept missing her mouth.

  “What the hell, Evan?” Michele with one “L” stepped up in front of me from the other side of the bar.

  She was giving me one of those looks that, despite my other observation skills, I had never understood. It was a look I’d only seen from women, and though it seemed to coincide with something whatever guy she was with did, I never understood what it was actually supposed to mean. It always ended up with the husband or boyfriend in trouble, though. Often, he ended up alone.

  “What?” I asked.

  Michele leaned over the bar on her elbows and looked up at me.

  “That’s a hooker,” she stated.

  “So?”

  “So, what the hell?”

  “I always fuck hookers.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Do you always dress them up like they spend half their lives at Saks for a night on the town?”

  I glared at her.

  “What difference does that make?” I leaned back on the stool and folded my arms across my chest. “If I’m paying for her, what the fuck difference does it make what I do with her?”

  “You are such a man.” She tossed her hands up and started walking away.

  “Well, yeah!” I called back. “You want to check out my dick?”

  She looked quickly over to Patrick, her manager, to make sure he wasn’t looking in her direction, flipped me off, and then moved to the far end of the bar to serve someone else. Bridgett came back, and I never did get the chance to ask Michele what she was going on about.

  Bridgett and I still spent a couple hours at 676 just talking and hanging out. At some point we moved over to the more comfortable chairs near the windows overlooking Michigan Avenue. I put my arm around Bridgett’s shoulders, and we watched the traffic go by. When the fascination with the view seemed to have waned, I took her by the hand and led her back downstairs to the valet.

  Bridgett was quiet as we drove back to my place and continued her silence as we parked the car, went up to the apartment, and then took Odin out for a walk around the park. Though technically closed in the later hours of the night, we made our way over to the dog run where I could let Odin off his leash so he could run around a bit.

  I leaned against the fence at one side of the park and tried to ignore the beeping sounds from the parking garage behind me. Ever since the day the damn garage went in, the electronic warning signal when the parking garage door went up had been driving me nuts. When the balcony door was open, I could hear it from the living room.

  I glared at the large metal door as the wind from the lake picked up and blew some trash down the street. Bridgett shivered and pulled the shawl tighter around her shoulders. Reaching out, I took her by the waist and pulled her back against my chest. My lips found her neck as I began to remember the feeling of her tight ass gripping my shaft. My hand moved from her hip to her stomach and then farther up to palm her tit.

  Odin raced from one shrub to the other, watering and fertilizing as he went.

  “Did you have a good time?” I whispered into her ear.

  Bridgett nodded quickly.

  My tongue flicked out over her skin.

  “You look so good tonight,” I told her. “I thought I might have to kill one of the guys at the bar for staring at you.”

  She stiffened and took a step away from me. Her hands pushed at my arms until I let go of her, and she moved out of my reach.

  “What are you doing, Evan?” Bridgett turned and glared up at me with tears streaming down her face. “What the fuck is this, huh? What happened to all that ‘it’s just fucking’ garbage? Is that what this is?”

  She ripped the bracelet from her wrist and shook it at me.

  “You going to fuck me with this?”

  I took a half step back as my insides began to feel as if they were slipping down into my feet, leaving the top half of me cold.

  “I just…I thought since you…” I stopped and shook my head to clear it. “You took care of me when I was sick – I wanted to thank you.”

  “Thank me?” she scoffed. “Why did you even have that guy come and get me, huh? What made you think I’d come and take care of you, Evan?”

  Another half step backwards and I hit my back on the fence. The tension that immediately flowed through my body was familiar and frightening. Bridgett was too close to me to get around her effectively, and I couldn’t turn and jump the fence without hitting her in the process.

  I looked up towards the skyline to try to free my head of the enclosed feeling, but it was a cloudy night and I couldn’t see any open space. There were high rise buildings all around us.

  The closed-up feeling increased, and then the fucking parking garage door began to beep again.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” I growled at her. “You said you had a good time!”

  “I did have a good time!” she yelled back at me. “Don’t you see? That’s the problem!”

  My mouth probably dropped open as I tried to figure out what the hell she was talking about. Though normally pretty apt when it came to reading people’s body language, the combination of the claustrophobia and Bridgett’s sudden change in behavior completely took me aback.

  Not a feeling I liked.

  Not at all.

  “Damn, you bitches make no sense!” I snapped at her.

  Odin was suddenly at my side, snuffling at my hand. I grabbed it away from him and pointed a finger at Bridgett.

  “I told you what this was,” I snarled at her, “and you know full well what I am. I give you money, and you let me use your body for whatever the fuck I want. That’s what this is, and that’s how this works.”

  “You are so full of shit,” she snapped back. “Who sends for their favorite whore when they have a tummy ache?”

  Irrespective of the point made, I refused to back down. In fact, knowing she had such a good point made me have to take it that much further.

  “And what kind of whore falls for her hit man john? Didn’t it occur to you that the only way this ends is you with a bullet in your brain?”

  I stood there glowering at her as Odin whined by my side, and Bridgett stared at me for a long moment. Without another word, she turned and ran out of the park and up the stairs towards Columbia Drive. About half way up, she stopped, cursed loud enough for me to hear from where I was, reached down, and took off her shoes. A moment later, she was completely out of my sight, and I was left alone with the dog.

  My heart was still pounding in my chest.

  “What the fuck?” I muttered.

  I took Odin back up to the apartment, ditched the tie, and then went back outside.

  There was no way I was going to admit to myself or anyone else that I was looking for her. I wasn’t. I was only going for a nice walk in the evening.

  Well, nearly midnight.

  I walked between the buildings and past various sculptures on which the good people of Chicago spent a lot of money just so I could have the privilege of walking past them in the middle of the night. They were mostly modern art – swirly shapes and strange, metal animals. Modern art didn’t really make any sense to me, though some of it definitely caught my eye.

  No Bridgett.

  Not that I was looking for her.

  A homeless guy wandered out from between the metal animals and tried to talk to me. He didn’t have any teeth, and I couldn’t figure out if the napkin-wrapped beer bottle he was holding out was an offering or a request. I finally shoved past him and made my way back out to Michigan Avenue and the nearest bar.

  Unfortunately, that was Sweetwater and the place was a zoo. Without Jon’s mad skills and phone apps, I was going to have to wait forever for a table, which just wasn’t going to happen.
My least favorite dude was tending bar, and though the drink he made was fine, I wasn’t comfortable just standing around staring at the television screens showing games I didn’t give a shit about. I stood by the bar for all of five minutes before I gave up on my vodka, threw ten bucks on the counter, and walked out.

  My mind was still spinning, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I felt completely lost and out of control, and I was fighting the urge to pull out a gun and start shooting.

  Without any better ideas in my head, I wandered back to The Bean and stared at the skyline reflected in the shiny surface. The chilled wind from the lake picked up and blew my clothing around as the tourists took pictures of themselves.

  I wanted to pretend I didn’t know what I had done wrong, but I couldn’t quite manage it. I’d wanted her to have a good time. I’d wanted her to feel like it was more than it was. I just didn’t want her to notice it felt like more than it was because that would screw it all up.

  There was just no way this was happening.

  Chapter Ten

  Abrupt Change

  “You’re on edge today.”

  “Not sleeping.”

  My hands were jittery due to the lack of sleep, and there was absolutely nothing that pissed me off more than something that could affect my aim. Caffeine made it even worse. I was also ticked off at the dirt on my jeans, which I got courtesy of my shrink’s car. As I walked past it, I managed to bump the fender, which was covered in mud – just like the rest of the Land Rover. I’d seen the vehicle before but never all muddy and figured the driver usually got their car washed during their lunch hour; my appointment had been moved up from the afternoon when I usually saw Mark.

  I considered putting a bullet in the tires until I looked at the license plate that read “ID V EGO” and realized it had to be Mark’s. There was also a toolbox on the passenger seat containing a bunch of those Habitat for Humanity fliers.

  “I thought you had been doing better on that front.”

  I glanced up at him and scowled at his choice of words. His expression told me he hadn’t realized what type of metaphor he had used.

  “I was,” I stated bluntly, “and now I’m not.”

  “What changed?”

  My eyes dropped back to the area rug and its swirly, uninteresting patterns. My eyes followed a blue swirl around a green one. Did I really want to go into this with him? Did I want to tell him how apparently my pathetic, empty self had developed the need to share his bed with a hooker – not for the sex but for the sleep?

  Did I want to tell him she left me?

  How does a whore get the option anyway?

  A shiver went through my body, my stomach clenched, and I tasted bile in the back of my throat.

  “What’s her name?”

  “She’s no one,” I replied.

  “Yet you have someone in mind when I ask the question,” Mark said. “That pretty much makes her a someone.”

  I glared at him again.

  “It’s not what you think,” I said.

  “What do I think?”

  “She’s not a girlfriend or anything. She just…slept with me.”

  He paused and tapped his pen against his wrist before jotting something down.

  “A prostitute?”

  “Yeah.” I clenched my hands into fists a couple of times to try to get rid of the shaking. I couldn’t have been much worse off if I had been going through the DTs. “She’d stay overnight with me, and it helped to have someone else there. The dreams weren’t as bad.”

  Saying it out loud made it sound even more pathetic.

  “And she’s no longer in the picture?”

  “She’s not.”

  “What happened to her?”

  I ran my hand over the top of my head, mildly annoyed with myself for needing a haircut. I took in a long breath and figured it couldn’t really make it any worse to tell him.

  “I took her out, showed her a great time, fed her waffles, and then at the end of the night, when everything seemed to be going great, she took off.”

  “Why did she leave?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Seems like you missed some details in there somewhere.”

  “I don’t miss details,” I snapped.

  “Apparently, you do.”

  The tension in my body had to be noticeable to Mark as I glared at him. I could almost see the crosshair on his forehead and figured I’d try a more mental shot than a physical one.

  “You do a shit load of charity work,” I told him. “You aren’t married now but you were once, or at least engaged. No kids. You drive a Land Rover, and you like off-roading on the weekends. You probably tried to get into the military, but because of your foot, you didn’t qualify for active service, and you used it as an excuse to go to school. Your dad probably hated the idea of you becoming a shrink, which is why you don’t speak anymore.”

  Trying to keep my breaths calm, I stared at him as he opened and closed his mouth a few times. Eventually, he cringed a bit and found his tongue.

  “Evan, have you been…spying on me?”

  “No,” I snapped. “You told me all of it, just not with your mouth. Don’t ever think I miss the details.”

  It took him several minutes, but he eventually gathered his wits about himself again and continued on.

  “I meant you might be missing some of the…nuances of female behavior.”

  “She was having a good time,” I said. “I know how to tell when a chick is happy.”

  “And then…what?” Mark asked. “You are obviously observant, so tell me what you saw.”

  My tongue ran over my lips as I conjured up images of Bridgett running across the park and away from me. Playing the whole scene in reverse, I brought myself back to the dog park and her back pressed to my chest.

  “I told her…I told her none of this shit was serious,” I paraphrased. “She already knew that.”

  “She wanted more.”

  My eyes moved from the rug to his face, and I stared at him for a long moment before shaking my head and returning my gaze to the swirly patterns.

  “There isn’t anything else.”

  “You don’t think you have anything to offer a woman?”

  “I don’t think anything I have to offer a woman is in her best interest. Seriously, you’ve got a better idea of how…of what I’ve…of what happened. How could I ever try to explain that to a date?”

  “Lots of people deal with PTSD every day, Evan,” he reminded me. “You don’t do too badly for yourself. I know working under the table isn’t ideal, but at least you’re not a criminal, right?”

  I tried not to actually laugh.

  “Tell me one thing,” Mark said as the session ended and I got up to leave, “how did you know about my father?”

  “Your jackets don’t fit right.”

  “What?”

  I took a long, deep breath.

  “You’re fine in jeans and polos, but whenever I see you wearing a button down shirt, dress pants, or a jacket, they’re wrinkled and they don’t fit right. Rich kids get taught that shit. You’re a blue-collar guy.”

  “You still haven’t said anything about my father.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “No blue-collar guy goes into a white-collar profession without pissing off his dad.”

  Mark laughed, and I took the opportunity to get the hell out before he asked me anything else. Besides, I had a little side trip I wanted to take, and I needed to do something first.

  I grabbed my phone out of my back pocket.

  “Hey, Nick,” I said when he answered.

  “Hey there!” Nick replied.

  “Am I interrupting anything?” I asked.

  “Nah,” he replied. “I’m just hanging out, shootin’ the shit with some buddies. What’s up with you?”

  “Just wondering…” I paused, suddenly unsure how to even ask.

  “You still there?”

  “Yeah.” I cleared my
throat. “I was just wondering…what’s the best way to apologize to a chick?”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Nick replied. “You gotta go down on her.”

  “Don’t I have to get her to speak to me first?”

  “It helps!” Nick laughed.

  “So, how do I get her to talk to me again?”

  “Just do something nice for her,” Nick replied. “It doesn’t even matter what, ’cause guys never do anything nice for chicks, so anything works. That’s why the flower business is so good.”

  “So, buy her fucking flowers? That’s it?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Or one of those fancy vibrators.”

  Yeah – not gonna happen.

  “I dunno.” I leaned back and stared up at the cloudy sky. “Flowers seem kind of…cliché.”

  “There’s a reason for that,” Nick said. “They work.”

  I couldn’t argue with him, so I stopped at a florist shop and wondered what kind of flowers said whatever it was I wanted to say. There were too many varieties – too many colors to choose from to actually come up with something that looked right. They all looked right. They all looked wrong, too. I couldn’t think of any words to put on the card, either. Maybe the basics were best.

  Roses are red,

  Violets are blue.

  I’m just a fucked up hit man,

  And nothing rhymes with that.

  It was entirely possible that poetry was not my strong point.

  Whatever I did, I’m sorry.

  Sorry.

  SORRY.

  The ridiculously simplistic note I left on top of the skewed sheets covering the worn out, twin-sized bed in Arizona fluttered down and landed at the forefront of my mind, mocking me. If there was anything I knew, I knew that I wasn’t any good at this kind of shit.

  I left the flower shop, ripped four daffodils out of the window box on someone’s deck, and drove myself over to Bridgett’s corner. Traffic was heavy since it was still the tail end of rush hour, but I was patient as I crawled along with the other travelers. I still wasn’t sure what I should say, so I let different scenarios clamber around in my head while I waited for people and cars to get the fuck out of the way.

  Once I reached the right corner, I saw Melvin, the pimp, leaning over the car in front of mine. My eyes scanned the area, but there wasn’t any sign of Bridgett.