Acquired

by Charlotte Byrd

  He pushes forward, opening my thighs with the touch of his hips. He holds himself up with one hand and with the other, gently pushes a strand of hair away from my face. The next moment, he pushes inside me. I stifle a gasp as he keeps going, deeper, deeper. Finally, his hips press up against my legs. Then he pulls out slowly, and then back in. Long, slow, sure strokes. I am desperate for him to go faster, to slam me down into the mattress, but he keeps a steady, disciplined pace.

  Then, when I am almost ready to explode from the tension, he shifts gear. The long stroking intensifies, increasing pace and power. I almost forget to breathe. He leans back and takes my hips in his hands, lifting me up, and changing the angle of his thrusts. My vision goes white and pleasure explodes out from my center. I lose control of my muscles. Almost outside my own body, I hear grunts, moans, and screams that I barely recognize in myself.

  Moments later, I feel him shudder and spasm inside of me and the room is filled with a deep, velvety silence, broken only by the distant sound of music from the main hall.

  Chapter 11- Emma

  I lie awake in bed for a long time the next morning. Everything that happened last night still feels like it was some kind of long, detailed, exquisite dream. In fact, I would assume that I had dreamt everything if not for the very real, very pleasant soreness between my legs. Oh, man was he good. I can’t remember an evening with such wild swings, from excitement, to fear, to unease, to passion. I feel like I jumped into a rushing river and have only now crawled out onto the shore where I can take stock of my journey.

  A notification is flashing on my phone. I flick it on and notice it is from my bank. A deposit has been made to my account. Even though I know how much it is going to be, I still open it and check my balance. I close the app and open it again, to make sure I haven’t misread it. Yep, there is over seventy thousand dollars in there. Holy crap!

  I lie back and stretch my body out, trying to convince myself to get out of bed and start the day, but my tired body wants nothing more than to just wrap the blanket tightly and laze about in bed all day long. I have a long time until I need to start getting ready for my date. I can’t believe that I am going out with Blake again. I was sure that it was going to be a one-time thing. When he asked me, in the glow of the best sex I can remember, I said yes immediately. But lying here in bed, now I’m starting to have second thoughts.

  Blake is handsome, charming, and amazing in bed. What possible reason could I have for feeling uneasy about going out with him again? Well, because we never ‘went out’ in the first place. He bought a night with me. I have had one-night stands before, but none of those were ever going anywhere further. All of my relationships, by contrast, had started out as friends, or at least as acquaintances. I don’t know how to think of a relationship that starts on the auction block. Or is it even a relationship he is looking for? Maybe he just wants another night with me. Dinner is likely a lot less expensive, after all.

  But can I really let this go past the one night? I am happy for the money, to be sure, but I don’t know if I want to have a constant reminder of it. How do I respond when people ask us how we met? I mean, Hannah knows, but Hannah was there herself. I can’t possibly tell anyone the truth. Do I even want to have the hassle? Is he worth it?

  The image of him leaning over me pops into my head, unbidden. I feel him inside of me again. Ugh, yeah, he is probably worth it.

  Another notification appears on my phone. A text from April. Crap! I agreed to cover her shift this morning. I send her a quick ‘thanks’ for reminding me and then jump out of bed and into my work clothes. I make it in the door just as my shift is starting. Thankfully, Sundays are a little slower in the early morning than the weekdays, so there is no crush of people demanding their caffeine. I stifle a yawn and get to work stocking the pastry display.

  The morning is crawling by and I long to be back in bed. I chat idly with my co-workers and engage in the mindless, repetitive tasks that make up the majority of my job. It occurs to me that I am sitting on a huge pile of cash and, if I wanted to, I could just quit on the spot. But, for some reason, that doesn’t seem right. I am planning on applying all of the money from last night to my student loans, bringing them down to a semi-reasonable amount. Then I could go back to my normal life, my normal job. I mean, that debt had shown up out of nowhere and then, just like that, the solution. It was a one-time thing, a way for the universe to offer a correction when it dealt me a blow. It wasn’t exactly a career path.

  There is a long lull in customers around eleven. A handful of people sit at tables, working or otherwise occupied on their laptops. I space out for a little while, like the sleep mode on a computer. I’m ready to snap back to attention, but I have literally nothing to do at the moment.

  The door pulls open, letting in the noise from the street. A man enters with the bright mid-day sunlight behind him. When he walks forward, taking long, confident strides toward the counter. I recognize his face. I have seen him twice before. The first time he was sitting next to Blake at the bar, the next time he was at the party. Crap. I can’t believe my luck. I was hoping that I would never see anybody from that party again, except Hannah, of course. And Blake, I guess. But I definitely don’t need this guy, whoever he is, intruding on my normal life. It is an unwelcome invasion.

  “Hello, Emma.” The guy is tall, lanky, and good-looking in an overgrown frat boy sort of way. But there is something about him I find unsettling. Something beyond the mere fact that he knows what I had done last night.

  “Hello, can I get you something to drink?” I don’t want to engage this guy in conversation. I don’t know why he’s here and honestly, I am not interested in finding out. Hopefully, I can make that clear to him.

  He smiles an oily, overly friendly smile as he leans over the counter.

  “I’ll have a cappuccino. Thanks. My name is Trevor, by the way.”

  I turn to start making his drink. I’m grateful that the rest of my co-workers are on a break right now. It is just me behind the counter. While the extra attention might prevent this guy from saying anything…compromising, at the same time, he doesn’t look like the guy who cares about making anyone around him feel uncomfortable. I don’t want him spilling anything to my co-workers. Hopefully, I can get him out the door quickly.

  “So, I hear you are going out with Blake again,” he says to my back. I don’t respond. “I guess it isn’t ‘again’, is it? I don’t think last night counts as a date, does it?” He laughs, as if it were a very clever statement. In reality, he hits a little too close to the truth. “Well, have fun. Honestly, I hope you have a good time. Because you won’t last long. They never do, you know.”

  I turn around with the cappuccino in a to-go cup. He is still leaning on the counter, smiling at me.

  “I’m just trying to be a friend, Emma. Don’t get too attached to Blake. He’s not the kind to stick around. He’ll get bored with you…quickly.”

  I am taken aback. I doubt this guy came all the way down here and sought me out just to give me a good-natured warning. My instinct is confirmed a moment later when he continues, leaning further over the counter.

  “Hope I see you next month. Maybe I’ll get a chance to…well, we’ll see what happens.”

  With an unctuous wink, he turns and saunters out of the café. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

  Chapter 12 - Emma

  I arrive at the restaurant a little early. I guess I am a little over-excited. I couldn’t stand waiting in my apartment any longer. I had gone through all of my clothes multiple times before deciding on my outfit and once I decided, I didn’t want to just sit and wait. So, now I am sitting and waiting in a cozy, softly lit French restaurant, waiting for Blake to arrive.

  I’m still a little weirded out by that guy who came by the café. He obviously knows Blake. I mean, I’ve seen them together twice. But he had a very strange vibe. I have always made sure to listen to my instincts on things like that. I am surprised that Bl
ake would be friends with a guy like that. But then again, I don’t really know Blake at all. I will have to talk to him when he comes.

  But he hasn’t come, yet.

  The waiter comes by to fill up my water again. I have gone through nearly the entire basket of bread. I’m trying not to look around the restaurant, aware that my solitude is starting to garner some sympathetic looks.

  I check my phone again.

  Nothing.

  I texted him almost twenty minutes ago, but he has yet to even acknowledge it. I tell myself that I will wait ten more minutes and then I’m going home.

  The minutes tick by and still there is no Blake. He stood me up.

  I take my purse from off the chair back and look at my waiter, telling him with my eyes that I am giving up. He returns a nod and comes to clear the table of crumbs. I manage to keep my composure until I reach the street.

  I can’t believe he didn’t show up. A man who paid so much money to spend the night with me can’t even be bothered to text me to tell me he isn’t coming to dinner? I am so torn between anger and sadness that I don’t know what to do. I feel like sobbing while slashing his tires.

  Only I don’t know where he is.

  It hits me that the guy who came into the café today was right. Blake wasn’t a decent or reliable guy, after all. The connection I felt with him must have just been a product of one crazy night, a night where everything was a long way from normal. Why should I trust anything that happened, anything that I felt in such a bizarre environment?

  I open the Lyft app and order a car to pick me up. Five minutes away. I wait here on the curb in front of a romantic restaurant for a stranger to come pick me up and take me home. This is not the way I imagined this night would go.

  As I stand here watching the car coming ever closer on my phone, I decide that I am not content with letting this night end in such a depressing manner. I send a text to Hannah, telling her to meet me at my apartment with a few bottles of wine. I feel bad not inviting April over, but Hannah is the only person in my world who knows the situation. I want to keep it that way.

  By the time Hannah arrives, I have already popped open one bottle and I’m a glass and a half in. I realize I never asked her how her night at the auction went. I guess I was so wrapped up in my own issues that I didn’t even think about her. She gives a perfunctory answer, deflecting. I don’t think she is uncomfortable; she seems more concerned with how I am doing.

  “So, he didn’t give you any explanation, didn’t text, or call at all?”

  “No, I was just sitting there like an idiot.”

  Hannah purses her lips, contemplating for a moment.

  “And you are sure you were at the right restaurant?”

  I return a withering glance.

  “They had our reservation. He just didn’t show up.”

  We sit with our legs entwined, each leaning against one side. Hannah listens sympathetically to all of my complaining. She doesn’t offer advice or suggest ways I can improve my situation; she just listens. That is exactly what I need right now.

  “What I can’t get through my head is how he could pay so much money to be with me one night, and then not even return my text the next. I mean, he was clearly attracted to me. We had really great sex. Not just for me, it was objectively great sex. If there had been judges, it would have scored tens across the board.”

  “Can you think of anything that happened afterward? Anything that might give a clue?”

  “No!” I say, a little too heated. The wine is making me loose, demonstrative. My voice has gone up in volume with every glass we’ve downed. “He asked me out, he texted me the reservation. Everything was fine!”

  Hannah doesn’t offer a response. I continue.

  “Screw him. It was probably a bad idea to see him again anyway.” My confidence starts to grow with my volume. “You know, I just want to leave that whole thing behind me. It was great, I’m glad I did it, but that’s it. I will just move on and forget it ever happened. Forget that he…”

  My voice falters. Hannah leans forward and wraps me in a big hug. I start to cry lightly on her shoulder. Why did I drink so much wine?

  I slept fitfully. I woke up a few times to relieve the pressure in my bladder. By the time I was up for good, I was filled with regret and a splitting headache. I forgot to drink water. I’ve been out of college for a while and I guess I’m out of practice in preventing the worst of a hangover. Thankfully, I don’t have to be at Anchor until the afternoon.

  I stumble out of bed and grab a bottled water off the counter. I pop some Advil and wash them down with half the bottle.

  Like most ‘morning afters’, I spend most of the morning trying to understand why I allowed myself to get so drunk last night. It seemed like a great decision at the time, but present pleasures have a habit of extracting future payments. And man, I am paying dearly.

  I keep the curtains pulled and avoid turning on any lights that I don’t absolutely need to. The harsh, cold light of the refrigerator is stabbingly bright when I venture in to grab a jar of peanut butter. Then I return to bed and put on a podcast, at low volume, and close my eyes.

  I must have fallen asleep, because the light sneaking into my room has shifted. The podcast has ended. I think I listened to the first ten minutes before I dropped off.

  I hear a knock at my door. I’m not expecting anyone and I’m not in a mood to see anyone, so I ignore it. Whoever is there knocks again, a little louder this time. Still I lie here, unmoving. They don’t knock again, so I set my alarm and go back to sleep.

  Finally, I can put off getting ready for work no longer, so I take a long, hot shower and get dressed. The headache has subsided for the most part, but my muscles are still sore.

  I look at my phone. I’ve been waiting around for so long that now I’m almost late. I open the door and almost trip over a bouquet of flowers. Gorgeous, deep red roses. I pull the note from the side. It reads “Sorry about last night, Blake.”

  Chapter 13 - Emma

  I take the flowers back into my apartment and put them in water before I go to work, but now I am regretting having done so. The flowers are beautiful and fragrant, but flowers and a brief note are not sufficient to make up for standing me up on our first date. Maybe I should have just thrown them out. Standing behind the counter at Anchor, I shrug to myself. No use wasting flowers.

  There is a lull before people get off of work and I take my break. I make myself a latte and grab a scone from the pastry display. I know I should probably not be having a breakfast pastry as a mid-day snack, but I feel like my whole body clock is off. Odd, I can justify eating junk food because I got drunk and slept in late. Maybe I should have gone to law school.

  Sitting at one of the empty tables, I flick through pictures on Instagram, trying to zone out. Even joking to myself about law school brings the issue of my student loans up to the front of my head. I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do. For a while, I was sure that I would just put the money I got toward my debt and continue on with my life. That way, I could just forget about the whole thing and have a more manageable amount to pay off.

  But as I thought more about it, the less attractive that option became. Did I really want to keep working at Anchor, making people coffee for the rest of my life? I needed to pay my loans off, to be sure, but maybe there was some way I could use the money to put myself in a position to make more. I had always heard ‘it takes money to make money.’ Well, now I have some money, shouldn’t I try to make more from it?

  The problem was, I had no idea how. If I knew how to make money, I wouldn’t be working at Anchor. If I had been serious about making money, I probably wouldn’t have majored in Classics and then not gone to grad school. I wasn’t even really qualified to teach. There aren’t a lot of schools with a Latin program. This cash had fallen into my lap, as it were. I can make payments on my loans for years, and an opportunity like this might never come again. Or at least, I wasn’t planning on it com
ing again.

  No, I have to make this count. Seventy thousand isn’t nearly enough to buy an investment property, and I don’t have the credit to qualify for a mortgage on anything more expensive. Buying stocks seems like too much of a gamble. It isn’t like I know anything about businesses. I might as well bet on sports. Although, I had won a March Madness pool by picking the winners based on their mascots, so maybe that was an option.

  My break is ticking by and I am no closer to a solution. I sweep my eyes across the patrons scattered around the room, hunched over their laptops. Then it hits me. The solution has been in front of me every day for years. The regulars who spend hours a day at Anchor are making money with something and it clearly doesn’t require them to go anywhere in particular. All it takes is a laptop. Maybe I could just do whatever they are doing. Surely having a chunk of cash would go a long way to getting an online business started. I don’t know very much about building websites or coding, but now I can pay people who do. I decide to go talk to one of them and find out what they do. But before I work up the courage to start talking to one of them, my break is up and a few newcomers trickle in the front door. Back to making coffee.

  I feel a vibration in my pocket. A text. When there is a break in the growing stream of afternoon customers, I check the message. It is from Blake.

  Hope you liked the flowers. Are you free tonight?

  I harrumph so loudly that one of the regulars sitting near the counter looks up from her laptop with an arched eyebrow. I smile politely at her and she turns back to her work.

  I can’t believe he would just write that. No explanation, no apology. He thinks because he bought me one night that I am his forever? That I will just be available whenever he wants? That wasn’t the deal and I am damn sure not going to give him another chance to stand me up. If he wanted to see me, if he wanted to be with me, he would at least have let me know he wasn’t coming last night. I put the phone back in my pocket without responding and greet the next customer.