by Rome, Ada
Vaughan corralled the arms of the flailing girl. He dragged her away while she struggled with the ferocity of a wildcat, her white-blond ringlets bouncing cartoonishly. She emitted furious squeaks of protest that soon melted into the surrounding crowd noise.
“Nice to meet you, sweetie!” Marcie threw one hand upwards in a parting wave.
***
“A penny for your thoughts?”
Trent and I had returned to his apartment after seeing off Tony and Marcie at the entrance to the uptown subway. The calm summer night rested on the city skyscape outside his windows. Soft lights twinkled through a thin haze of humidity. He stood and stared into the deep blue firmament, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Hmm?” He turned at the sound of my voice. “Sorry,” he shook his head. “Just a lot on my mind tonight.”
“I understand.” I stood beside him and leaned my head against his shoulder. “Want to talk about it?”
He sighed heavily. “I really don’t even know what to talk about. I don’t know what to think. I’m hoping that Kill just fades away, gets another job, and leaves me alone. I don’t think that’s likely to happen. I have no idea what he plans to do next. I strongly suspect he was involved in the Hades fight, but I don’t understand why.”
I nodded and crossed my arms, unconsciously mirroring his posture. He reached out a hand and pulled my wrists down to my waist.
“Kat, I’m sorry for what happened in that conference room today. I’m sorry that you had to suffer that kind of humiliation. It’s my fault.”
“It’s not your fault, Trent. I am an adult. I made certain decisions. I will face the consequences of those decisions. But if you want to know the truth, I don’t regret a thing.”
He gripped my hips and pulled me toward him. “Neither do I,” he whispered. He smoothed a loose lock of hair behind my ear and pressed his cool palm against my cheek. “Kat, I need you to know something.” He paused and ran his thumb gently over my lips. “This isn’t easy for me to say.”
A lump of anxiety formed in my throat. I tried with difficulty to swallow it. My stomach coiled with fear. What is he going to say? Is he about to break up with me?
“I’m not good with feelings,” he continued. “I’m not good at expressing them, at least.” My stomach began to untie itself. “You are special to me. You’re brave and smart and beautiful and funny. You’re everything I have been seeking without even knowing it.” He tugged me closer, brushed his lips against mine, and stared into my eyes. “What I’m trying to say…what’s not really coming out the way I rehearsed it in my head…is that I’m falling in love with you.”
Tears formed at the edges of my vision. Trent dotted them away with a fingertip.
“I’m already in love with you, Trent.” My voice shook with emotion.
He took my hand and guided me to his bedroom. He gently undressed me, savoring the smooth slide of my clothes from my naked body as they slipped to the floor. We made love slowly and passionately, grinding and writhing in a matching rhythm and clutching each other in a tight embrace. He kissed me as we came simultaneously, groaning with ecstatic release as our mouths locked together and our bodies lifted and fell as one. He smoothed my hair from my face and stared into my eyes while our breathing and heart rates slowed together.
Neither of us spoke. Words could not adequately express our feelings in that moment. He lowered his head onto my chest and drifted off to sleep.
Though we did not yet know it, our whole world was about to crash around our ears and leave us broken in two.
Chapter 18
I turned the key in my dorm room lock and pushed open the heavy wooden door. After a homemade pancake breakfast, Trent had dropped me in front of my building with a warm kiss and a promise to pick me up again later that evening. I floated up the front steps in a lovesick haze, still dazzled by the depth of our emotional confessions the previous night. My mind drifted into pleasant memories of Trent’s body next to mine and the calming rise and fall of his chest as he slept soundly and peacefully.
“Whoa! Hey! Hold on!”
I snapped to attention on the threshold and looked up to see Tony standing at the foot of Marcie’s bed, naked as the day he was born.
“Holy shit! I’m sorry!” I shielded my eyes with my hand as if hiding from a glare, but not before I caught a momentary peek at Tony’s surprisingly well-endowed lower half. I heard a rustle of sheets, a soft thump, and a cranky groan from Marcie.
“You may open your eyes again.” Tony sat upright in Marcie’s bed, his back against the headboard and the quilt pulled up to his bare chest. His face was redder than an apple.
“Umm, sorry about that. But, congratulations? To both of you.” I lowered my eyes briefly to Tony’s lap and cocked an eyebrow.
“Is that my Kitty Kat?” Marcie blinked awake. Her hair was a disheveled and knotted crown. Streaks of mascara smeared her temples.
“Good times were had by all, it seems.” I plopped into a desk chair and opened my laptop.
“Fuck yeah!” Marcie held her palm out toward Tony, an invitation for a celebratory high-five. He obliged with a grin and a chuckle. The red in his cheeks had subsided to a soft rose. “Do you want to have breakfast with us, Kat?” She patted and smoothed her unruly hair.
“Nah, but thanks. I already ate at Trent’s place.”
My phone chimed from within my purse. As I reached into the inner pocket, it chimed again, and then a third time. Simultaneously, Tony’s phone buzzed on the bedside table with four quick beats. We glanced at each other with quizzical expressions. My phone had become dislodged from its pocket and fallen into the cavernous depths of my floppy purse. I fished around the interior until I felt its hard corners. Before I was able to pull it out and check my messages, I saw the pink in Tony’s cheeks drain to a stark white.
“Uh, Kat.”
“What? What is it? What’s wrong?”
“It’s about you. Turn on the computer.” He grabbed a pair of shorts from the floor beside the bed and slipped them on under the covers.
With rising anxiety, I swiped open my messages. The first was from Trent.
We need to talk about this. I will pick you up in an hour.
The next message was from my mother.
Call me immediately.
The last was from a number I did not recognize.
Now everyone knows what a great “journalist” you are. You’re welcome.
“What the fuck is happening?” I asked. “What are these messages about?”
Tony leapt from the bed and stood beside my chair. He leaned over me and pressed the power button on my laptop.
“I don’t know, but I received a message that said something about you and a video and told me to check the Stawker website.”
“A video? A video of what?” My fingers shook as I typed in the web address for Stawker, a notorious celebrity gossip blog. The headline, blazing in bold black letters across the screen, stopped my blood cold and choked the air from my windpipe.
“EXCLUSIVE! TRENT MONTAINE SEX TAPE!”
Directly below the headline was a still photo from a video that showed my back, naked down to my waist. Trent’s hands gripped me tightly. I straddled his lap, my head thrown backwards in the throes of orgasm, my distinctive auburn hair cascading freely. The setting was Trent’s office.
“No,” I croaked weakly. “No no no no no.”
I scrolled below the picture and read the attached article.
Breaking news from Stawker! We give you one of the city’s richest and hottest bachelors caught on camera in a very compromising position with a very lucky young lady. Trent Montaine, founder of KTFO Magazine and certified fuckworthy stud, seems to enjoy bossing around his sexy new intern. Word has it, the girl in the video is Kat Raney, a 21-year-old journalism student who got more than she bargained for when she went to work for the media mogul this summer – a whole lot more! A source at the magazine says that Trent has been granting favors to Miss Raney
since hiring her last month and has even promised the fledgling reporter/lapdancer a cover story in the next issue. Well, we can see why. She is clearly very…um…talented? And she is clearly also very interested in pleasing her boss (cough, cough). Since we are a family site here at Stawker, we’ll only show you some stills from this exciting office fuck romp. But, we’re sure you can find the full video somewhere on this great worldwide web of ours (wink, wink).
I scrolled through a few more photos. One showed my naked behind as I stood with my legs on either side of Trent’s hips. Another showed the top of my head as I arched backwards, Trent’s face buried between my exposed breasts, my nipples ever so slightly blurred in a weak attempt at censorship. The last photo was not from the video, but was instead a shot of me in front of the entrance to Squirrel the previous night. My eyes were wide and startled amid popping flashbulbs. Trent’s tattooed arm was just visible as he pulled me toward the doors.
My fingers flew over the keys. I opened the browser and searched for “Trent Montaine sex tape.” A slew of links immediately appeared. The video was everywhere. With a sudden nagging nausea, I opened one of the links and pressed play.
The video began with Trent seated in his office chair. From the angle of the shot, I surmised that the video had been filmed from his desk.
“Close the door,” he said in the video. A door clicked shut in the background. “Lock it,” he said. A pause followed. “Now come over here.”
“Is everything alright?” My worried, high-pitched voice came from behind the camera.
“Everything is about to get a whole lot better,” Trent replied. After a few seconds, I appeared in the frame, clothed in a pink skirt and ivory shirt.
I couldn’t watched it anymore. I closed the link. I instantly knew when this video had been taken. I thought back to the day several weeks earlier when Trent had emailed me with supposedly urgent business that turned into a satisfying lunchtime quickie in his office. My mind raced. His laptop had been open on the desk the entire time. The angle was exactly correct. The video had been filmed from Trent’s computer.
***
“Hop on.”
Trent sat astride his motorcycle, parked at the curb in front of my dorm. He tossed me a helmet, lowered his visor, and gunned the engine. I settled behind him, wrapping my bare knees around his thighs and grabbing his stomach as the tires squealed with a burst of acceleration and tore away up Amsterdam Avenue.
Within minutes, we found ourselves in a quiet spot on the banks of the Hudson River in far northern Manhattan. On this sunny summer day, the river flowed calmly, a soft breeze now and then furrowing the smooth gray water. A few seabirds pecked at weeds between the seams of the cobblestone path. Trent parked the bike and dropped his helmet onto the seat.
“No one will bother us here. My apartment was swarming with paparazzi.” He jutted his chin toward an empty park bench that faced the water. “Come on. Let’s talk.”
His head was thrust forward as he walked. The muscles in his arms flexed with tension. I followed him to the bench in silence.
“The video was taken from your computer,” I said after several moments spent gazing at the sun-speckled river and watching the swift bubble and ripple of a surfacing fish.
“So? Do you think I took it?” His tone was angry and defensive. I flipped my gaze toward him and saw that his eyes glowered darkly.
“No! For fuck’s sake, Trent. Of course I don’t think that.”
A sob rose into my throat. I had so far been too stunned to cry. My mind still had trouble adjusting to the new reality. I was now the unwitting star of an internet porn video. Everyone had seen it – my friends, my classmates, my professors, even my mother. My life would never be the same. I would never escape this humiliation.
“Sorry.” He kicked at the thin tufts of grass with the toe of his boot. “It’s been a rough morning,” he said with an edge of sarcasm.
I reached into my purse and clutched my phone. I opened my messages and pointed to the unidentified number, thrusting the phone in Trent’s face.
“Whose number is this?” His features slackened with a budding realization. He nodded his head as if confirming a suspicion. “It’s Kill, isn’t it?”
Trent nodded again. “He has keys to my office. He must have set up the laptop to record in the hope of catching something incriminating.”
I remembered running into Kill that day in the hallway after I left Trent’s office, when he’d noticed that my skirt was askew. He had probably retrieved the video from Trent’s computer later that night.
“Lucky him. He hit the jackpot.” A jogger ran by, oblivious that she had just run past the centerpieces of New York’s newest and most salacious sex scandal.
“Kat, I won’t let him get away with this. I’ll make things right.”
“How?” I swiped at my tears in frustration. “How are you going to make this right? It’s too late. It’s already done. It’s over. There is no way to make this right anymore. My career is finished. No one will ever take me seriously again. I’m just the bimbo intern who fucked her boss. You’re the stud, but I’m the slut. That’s how these things work.”
My raised voice attracted the attention of a man dressed in a warmup suit and walking a golden retriever along the waterfront railing. He turned briefly in our direction and then resumed his walk without a backward glance. I sniffed and watched a single tear fall into my lap and leave a spreading blot on my blue linen shorts.
“I understand that, Kat. But you’re not being entirely fair. This is terrible for me too. I’ve been working my ass off trying to build a serious magazine for the past three years. Now I’m nothing but a sleazebag who thinks that banging an employee is more important than running my business. KTFO was my dream. Now it’s a punchline.”
“Wow, I feel so bad for you. My life is completely ruined. You might lose a few magazine sales. Meanwhile, every hot babe in the city is probably lining up for a ride on your office chair. You’ll come through this just fine.
“Kat, come on---”
“I never thought I would say this, but I’m glad that my father is not alive to see this.”
The dam of restrained tears finally broke and sent rivulets flowing down my cheeks. I coughed with an escaping sob and buried my face in my hands. I lowered my head and felt the tears squeeze through my fingers and drop wetly onto my bare knees.
“Kat, it will be alright.” Trent spoke gently and placed an arm over my bent back. He pulled me toward him on the bench and pressed his palm against the side of my head as I continued to sob and hiccup, trying to gain control of my breathing. “I promise that I will fix this. I promise.”
He kissed my hair and rested his chin on the crown of my head. My chest shook with racking sobs. I no longer cared if I attracted attention. To anyone watching, we were merely two lovers in the midst of an emotional spat.
“You know the worst part of all this?” He hooked a finger under my chin and lifted my tear-dappled face. “The worst part is watching you get hurt. They can do anything they want to me. I can deal with it. But I let you down. I put you in a position that is not your fault, but it is a position that causes you pain.”
He lightly kissed my damp lips and wiped away my tears with the pads of his thumbs. I sniffed through a few final sobs.
“I will not rest until I have fixed this, Kat. You have my word. Do you trust me?”
I nodded limply and grasped his hand.
“You ask me that a lot,” I said in a weak attempt at humor.
“Have I disappointed you yet?”
He gave me a rakishly charming grin and another soft kiss. Somehow, despite all odds, Trent Montaine had become the person I trusted most in the world.
***
Later that night, I sat alone in my darkened dorm room. Marcie and Tony had kindly invited me to dinner. They understood when I expressed a preference for solitude. I’d turned off my phone hours earlier. The incessant ringing and buzzing was sandpaper on my
frayed nerves. The only illumination came from my laptop screen as I perched in my desk chair, my knees raised to my chest. With great hesitation, I typed my name into the search bar. My stomach flipped with queasiness when I saw pages and pages of results.
The speed with which the story of my tryst with Trent had reached all corners of the internet was truly astonishing. By the end of the day, it had shifted from the special preserve of porn-watchers and gossip hounds to the realm of social commentary about women in the workplace, and particularly women in the world of sports journalism. I clicked through one article and blog post after another, swallowing down a rising wave of panic as my need to know the true scope of my humiliation overcame my fear and reluctance to confront it.
Some writers and commenters naturally derided me as a pointless piece of fluff, a slutty piece of trash, or a gold digging reprobate who snagged the internship only to sink my dirty claws into the rich and famous Trent Montaine. I was a conniving traitor to the cause of female empowerment, an unqualified dingbat trading sex for professional advancement, and the reason that women should steer clear of the world of sports, which was and should remain strictly male turf. One blog even quoted someone by the name of Andy Hawker, whose name rang only the faintest of bells in my recollection, but who was apparently a classmate in one of my journalism seminars:
“We all thought Kat Raney only got that job because she’s a chick. I wonder if she slept with him in order to nab the internship in the first place. I wouldn’t be surprised. It explains a lot.”
Other sources were more forgiving toward me, but less so toward Trent. He was described as a cold womanizer who used his position to take advantage of a young and innocent girl. At one point in the video, my small voice could be heard saying, “I want to make my boss happy.” That clip played on site after site like a sick highlight reel. I’d spoken in jest at the time, but to the wider public, my words dripped with obvious insinuations of sexual harassment and the inappropriate leverage of a powerful man over a much weaker woman.