by Madison, Mia
Choking back my anger made for a long Uber ride home, but once there, I made up for it. I kicked off my pants, pulled the blackout curtains in my room shut, and climbed into bed.
I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. At twenty-one, I’m too used to holding it together. But I could scream, cuss, and fuss. Surprisingly, once I let those actions occur, a few tears followed. It wasn’t the deep, cathartic cry my soul needed, but it was enough to wet my cheeks just a little and send me off to sleep.
A few hours later, I rose to see it was past sunset. Heidi wasn’t home, but I knew she was either at her best friend’s house or at work. That was fine by me. I wasn’t much for company.
I fixed a simple dinner and sat on the couch, perched in front of TV. Another season of American Horror Story had been released on Netflix, and my grim mood made it the perfect way to spend the evening.
Heidi texted me to let me know she was on the way home. I replied to acknowledge her, and then checked my email. I had a message from my Catfish.
“Really, asshole?”
I wanted to know what this infidel could possibly say for himself, so I opened the message.
Hi
“Hi? That’s the best you can say after what you did?” Who was he talking to? What kind of mess is that?
I sent him back a blank stare emoji. “Hi” wasn’t going to do anything for me, especially after the way he stood me up.
Heidi would have told me to curse him out, or better yet, to ignore him. She didn’t have the kind of patience I held for others, and preferred to be more cutthroat. I wish I was that strong, but I wasn’t.
Bobby was a perfect example. He’d come by several times since Trashbag Tracy outed their sex tape. I ignored his unannounced visits at first, but one evening I let him in.
He apologized profusely, telling me he’d made a big mistake. I would have asked why, but everyone knew Tracy was obviously willing to have sex. I wasn’t.
And I never would at this point.
I gave him a halfhearted hug and he attempted to kiss me. I pushed him away in disgust.
“Ew, Bobby.” I shrugged out of his arms. “We’re not together anymore, and even if we were, I’d never kiss you again.”
He didn’t take it well, but I didn’t care. He asked about staying friends. I didn’t lie when I said I needed time before we even attempted to salvage that.
You’re mad at me. I know. I fucked up. I’m sorry.
Sorry doesn’t cut it. I wished he could feel my anger claw the inside of his guts, so he could experience the level of rage I felt. I didn’t need you to waste my time.
He responded after a few minutes. I know. That wasn’t my intention.
Yeah, whatever. I wanted to ask what happened, because maybe there was a good reason why he hadn’t shown up. But I learned from Heidi that the more emotionally invested you appeared, the more it backfired.
After Bobby, I promised myself that no man would ever know how emotionally invested I was. Ever.
I had too much on my plate. Thinking of that — how busy I was — made me even angrier. As odd as the ad was — because who puts out an ad to hire a wife? — I answered because I needed the money and because I was strangely attracted to his raw honesty. A man who put himself out there like that was a man who didn’t have time to waste. Or so I thought.
There was a stupid last minute emergency at work. I tried to leave but wasn’t allowed to. Again, I apologize. Is it possible to reschedule? Would you like to go out tonight?
Nerves fluttered in my belly, like a billion butterflies were trapped in my guts. Frozen in place I re-read the words.
He wanted to reschedule - for tonight? As in right now?
I don’t think that’s a good idea, especially seeing as your plans change sporadically. I lead a very busy life, and I don’t have time to waste on your fickle behavior.
Fear knotted in my stomach. I wasn’t rude, just being direct. But I was never great at confrontation.
My breath drew shallow. I waited a few minutes, phone in my palm as I waited for a response. Five minutes passed before I put it face down and accepted that I’d kicked him away.
Then my phone alerted me. I had a response. My heart rate escalated. What if he cursed me out? Called me a bitch?
I took a deep breath before I read.
I know, and again, I apologize. I wanted nothing more than to meet you for lunch, but things didn’t go as planned. I’m very serious about meeting someone, as I spent a large amount of money to have the ad written and designed. Because I know I seek to compensate the woman I marry, I’m very aware that time is money. Please send me your PayPal information. I’ll send you some money to cover your expenses and pay for time wasted.
My eyes widened, and my neck jerked with shock. I’d never met or known a man willing to pay a woman for time wasted.
Well, Mariah Carey won billions from her ex-fiancé. But that’s Mariah. I’m not a world-famous pop star.
I use Venmo.
Okay. Send me your Venmo.
I blinked. This wasn’t happening, was it?
I sent him my information. Nothing more or less. Within minutes I had an alert. $500 received from Hollis X for “Sorry I wasted your time.”
I closed my eyes, took a breath, and re-opened them. He really sent me $500. My lunch was only $20. I might have spent $50 total on lunch and Uber.
Maybe he really had money. Maybe he really was sorry. Maybe he was really worth giving a second opportunity.
Received. Thank you.
Him: You’re welcome. Can we start over?
Sure.
Him: When can I see you?
I’ll have to check my schedule. I’m pretty booked this week.
Him: If I paid you again, would you meet me for drinks in an hour?
I gulped. This was insane. He’d just given me $500 like it was $50. And now he was interested in paying me again for my time.
Before I could answer, I received another Venmo alert. Hollis X paid you $250 for “tonight’s deposit.”
Hotel Theodore in an hour, I replied. I pushed myself off the couch and got dressed.
I hated to have my time wasted, but for $250, was it really a waste?
Who was this guy? Why did he throw money around like water? And besides the fact that he obviously had money, what else could he offer me?
I needed to see this mystery man. I wanted to look him in the eyes and get to the bottom of this. Even if I wasn’t keen on getting back out in the cold, I had more than enough incentive to find what was really happening.
* * *
I cleaned up quick on short notice, putting on a sweater dress with boots. I didn’t have enough time to completely style my hair, so I grabbed a curling wand to convert my lazy bedhead waves into something slightly more fashionable.
I thanked Heidi for pushing me to keep my eyebrows tinted. Between that and a lash lift, a clean eye with a classic red lip completed my look.
In the back of the Uber, I crossed my ankles and stared out the window. This was too much. It was all insane. But the crazier it got, the deeper I fell down the rabbit hole.
What was I doing?
Why?
Was it that serious?
And what I found even funnier was that the more I questioned myself, the less able I was to peel myself away from the madness. I needed to know, even if it was all a sham.
Heidi texted me to ask where I was. I said I went to a networking party with friends. I felt guilty for lying, but the truth was she would kill me if she knew I were meeting an anonymous man from a paper ad. It was 2018. We met guys at college or on Tinder, not from desperate personal ads in the paper offering us money for marriage.
The Uber driver tried to make conversation, but it died when he got an incoming call. I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t have much to say in terms of conversation.
My mind was racing. I felt like an American mail order bride meeting her husband for the first time. I the jitters. They weren’
t bad, just insightfully aware that I was swimming far beyond the confines of my comfort zone.
I didn’t know any way to handle it, except to get through it and see what happened.
With baited breath, I made my way to the bar section of the hotel. I said several prayers to God. I prayed he wasn’t too ugly. I prayed he wasn’t too old. I prayed he wasn’t some crazy reality show producer. I prayed every prayer I could pray that this turned out okay.
“Gigi?” A soft-spoken voice swirled into my right ear. I turned, inhaling the scent of crisp cologne, to face “Hollis X.”
My heart dropped dead in my chest.
I could have dropped dead right there in the middle of the bar. Oh my poor, heart.
Hollis wasn’t anything I expected.
He was, in a word, impressive.
“Yes, that’s me.” His green eyes held me with full attention. They were beautiful, but they held a very direct, unsettling gaze.
And something strange happened.
I felt a foreign tingle of strange, lusty warmth spill over my body. I was no stranger to sexual desire, but I usually needed Bobby to warm me up. Even then, the most we’d done is messed around. Aside of the very occasional blowjob, he mostly sucked my tits and ate my pussy.
That had all come to a stop over the past few months, mostly because I knew he was messing around, and I only wanted emotional connection from him anyway.
But something about Hollis made blood throb in all the right places. I was thrown off by the raw power of my attraction to him.
I expected the unexpected. But a bad unexpected. Not a secure, handsome unexpected.
“It’s nice to meet you,” he offered, extending a handshake. It was very weak, and slightly clammy. He pulled his hand away just as quickly as he’d extended it, and wiped his palm down the side of his slacks.
And the whole time he did that, he did’t blink once. What the…? It was weird.
“You too.” I looked around, breaking eye contact to regain composure. “Should we get a booth or would you like to sit here?”
“It’s up to you,” he said, eyes darting away quickly before he stared at me again. He still hadn’t blinked.
What the hell was wrong with him?
“Here’s fine,” I said, resettling into my seat at the bar. I crooked a finger for the bartender and order a strawberry martini. I wanted something sweet and sexy; a drink like that was sophisticated and feminine.
He ordered a whiskey on the rocks, and slid the bartender a burgundy credit card. I’d seen those cards before. They were hallmarks of financial distinction.
I sat, putting my phone away to avoid being fidgety. Amidst the low buzz of the bar, the silence between us grew uncomfortable. We were both waiting for the other to speak, and set the tone.
He parted his lips, but no words came out. I cocked an eyebrow. This had suddenly become so weird.
I waited for him to figure out what he wanted to say. Then I noticed his hand trembling.
“Are you okay?” I asked, growing concerned. Maybe this man had some kind of medical condition, and he needed a wife to take care of him in case something happened.
For better or worse, right?
“Uh, eh, yeah.” He jammed his shaking hand into his pocket and leaned forward to sip the whiskey with his free hand.
“Ooookay.” I nodded, as if I understood him perfectly. But I didn’t. Hell, I didn’t understand myself in this moment. “Well, thank you for inviting me out. I don’t often have time to get out and enjoy myself.”
“You’re welcome. Me either,” he replied. “And I’m really sorry about how things happened earlier. I work as a software engineer. We deal with codes and apps. Someone released an update of one of our apps and the code was bad. It was a disaster. I was headed to you and everything when we were told to order in.”
“Look.” He showed me his Uber history, including the penalty he paid. His eyes widened in an innocent manner. “I really didn’t mean to waste your time.”
I nodded and smiled. “Things happen,” I said. “We’re here now, so we can enjoy ourselves.” I don’t think he realized I’d been more forgiving ever since he put that money in my pocket.
He smiled. After taking a sip of my martini, I noticed his pocketed hand had stopped shaking. Nerves. He had a bad case of the nerves.
That made two of us.
I looked him over again. I was of average height, about 5’5” or so. He was 5’10.” For many women, that was the bare minimum, height-wise. He didn’t appear to be made of muscles, but his average build was well-dressed, and that was fine by me.
I didn’t need Fabio, but the fact that the was more handsome than I could have ever expected was a major plus for me.
“Since we’re both busy people, may I ask a question?”
He nodded, and his pupils dilated. I didn’t shift my eyes away from him, but I could see the hand in his pocket shake a little harder.
“You appear pretty healthy and attractive. I’m sure you have plenty of women who are after you. Why do you feel the need to purchase a wife?”
“I’ve never had a girlfriend.”
A sad, regretful look crossed his eyes, but never spread to his face. It lasted only a moment before he cleared his throat and assumed a neutral appearance.
“Really?”
He nodded silently.
“Well then why run and get married? Don’t you want to date first?”
He shook his head in a twitchy manner. “Dating hasn’t worked.”
This was getting even stranger. “Have you ever kissed a woman?”
“I’m not a virgin, if that’s what you’re asking.” He tensed, almost as if he were irritable. “I just haven’t been successful enough to actually go beyond a date or two with women.”
I had questions. “And what will getting married accomplish?”
Pointing to his pocket, he gestured to his shivering hand. It wobbled in his pocket like an old-school alarm clock.
“I suffer… terrible social anxiety.” He spoke so quietly, I almost missed the words. He appeared flustered, but in an endearing way. It was like he struggled to speak his mind, but took his time to explain his struggle. “I’m not good with meeting people. I tend to have some weird nervous habits. And it’s always turned women off.”
My heart softened upon hearing those words. He was a handsome, nervous wreck.
Hollis
“There’s honestly no need to be nervous.”
She smiled, a sweet, reassuring smile. Her voice was soft and delicate like baby’s breath.
Gigi was an angel in the flesh. Her smooth skin, tousled hair, and fresh gaze were feminine and soothing. And despite her fiery attitude, which I didn’t fault her for, considering I’d flaked on her, she warmed up pretty quickly to me.
She’s only doing that because you paid her, I thought to myself. There’s no way she would have come otherwise. There’s no way she would be interested otherwise.
I swallowed uncomfortably at the negative self-talk. That was another problem my anxiety came with. Having dated companions long-term, I always felt like a woman’s interest in me might always be tied to my ability to financially invest in her.
Some guys are confident. You can corner them at any time and any place, and they’ve got such a cool to them. They can work the room and finesse the woman they desired. In that moment, I wished I were that guy. He would know what to say instead of looking weird and uncomfortable.
He would also blink.
Because I could tell I was staring again. Intensely. And not bothering to blink. I had to be creepy as hell at the moment.
She’d never call me, or even see me again.
But then she did something I didn’t expect. She took control.
Gigi reached for my hand, the one on top of the bar holding the whiskey. I could hear the blood rush through my body and feel it throb through my veins. My pulse quickened with desire, and I wanted to melt in her arms.
“Ho
w about this?” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. I noticed the top of it was pierced. “This is a simple conversation with two strangers looking for the same thing, possibly with each other. We’ll enjoy ourselves, and there’s no pressure for you to say, feel, or do anything.”
She smiled warmly as she gave a questioning nod, her way of getting me to agree with her suggestion. Her eyes sparkled with mutual attraction, and I was surprised that I felt my erection surface instead of my hand jittering.
I was always nervous around new women, especially when they were beautiful. Gigi said she was told she was pretty, yet she was too busy to notice the word was an understatement in her case. She carried herself with casual elegance and glowed with intangible radiance.
“Hollis…” Her voice lightened with a pleasant whine. Her soft hands sandwiched mine, pulling it away from the whiskey glass I’d comfortably wrapped it around. Soothing heat made my skin tingle, and I felt my nerves melt. “Promise me you’ll relax. I can’t get to know you if you can’t relax.”
She spoke a love language of touch, and her words rang with genuine sweetness. I couldn’t explain how I knew she meant what she said; she just did.
My heart slowed in pace. I felt steady in my feet. My erection started to subside, but it wasn’t a bad thing. There was definitely a fire in my belly for her, however, it was born from a deeper place within.
I nodded. “Okay. I’ll relax.”
There was a lilt in my response that indicated my uncertainty in pulling that off. She squeezed my hand and yipped. I couldn’t stop staring at her flawless face. She had clear, beautiful skin, and gorgeous pouty red lips that easily spread into a friendly, warm smile.
Have you ever felt your body exhale from tension you didn’t know you had? My body, for the first time, relaxed in the presence of a new woman. Her spark of reassurance ignited a flame of self-confidence that allowed me to mellow out. I took another sip of whiskey and let it warm my senses.
We talked. She talked about her college classes and her sister. She shared memories of her parents — good ones, before they passed. She discussed her love of yoga, and American Horror Story, a series I’d heard of but never watched.