by Ada Scott
“Not the one who…”
“No, this is the one after that. It was a… pretty bad day. I blamed myself at the time, thought I must have needed more patience than any man had. Later I found out that he never thought being my boyfriend was any reason for him to stop sleeping with other girls. So, unbeknownst to me, I was kind of a joke in certain circles for my entire time at that school.”
“Motherfuckers.”
“Hmm. Yeah. So. Do you have a… home?” she asked.
I gave a vague gesture to indicate my penthouse and raised an eyebrow.
“No. You live here, but you haven’t been here long, you said you’ve got a lease on it so you know when you’re probably going to leave. What about, like, a place where you grew up? A home home.”
“Nah, my parents were lifelong renters until I bought them a house a while back. We moved around a lot while I was growing up. It sucked.”
“Oh. Well, maybe you won’t get this, but the farm… that farmhouse, is magic. There’s all these marks on the doorframes.” Amy held up her hand and did little sideways chopping motions, each higher than the one before. “They go up until somewhere between four and five feet and then, mostly, they stop. These are the marks left by my family, showing how high this or that kid was when they were various ages. I can see how tall my great aunt was when she was three and a half years old by going to the right door in my house.”
“Wow.”
“I can feel how proud her parents were, how proud she was about being such a big girl, I can imagine how she must have compared herself against her brother, who’s marked on the same doorframe.”
Amy’s eyes were getting glassy as she explained, and I held her all the tighter.
“There’s one doorframe that shows how tall I was when I was growing up. The first mark says ‘Amy – 1 Year’ and the handwriting is different than all the other marks, because it’s the only one written by my dad. I only learned how to stand and walk a little while before he died. There’s nowhere, nowhere, in the entire world like that house.”
“It sounds… beautiful,” I said.
Amy let a few tears fall freely, then wiped one eye with the back of her hand, and the other on my chest.
“My family built that house, they lived and loved in that house forever, and that night, the day the letter arrived from the bank and I was all alone because my boyfriend is a motherfucking asshole, I was like ‘No, no, no, no!’” Amy’s fist beat on an invisible wall. “‘Not on my watch. We will not lose it on my watch.’”
“So you stumbled across the Innocence For Sale site?”
“Not yet. I tried to shop around with other banks to buy us some time, but they wouldn’t touch us with a fifty foot pole, I set up a crowdsourcing page to ask for donations, but the only people who cared enough were my aunt and uncle who donated, like, fifty bucks to hopefully get the thing rolling and they’re still the only contributors, they have their own financial problems. It took a couple weeks before I found IFS. That’s what we in the biz call it, IFS.” Amy joked and wiped her eyes.
“Wow. What was it like, you know, signing up for all that?”
“So, so, weird. Ada’s got all these forms. For personality tests, personal history, general information, whatever. I remember this part of one form, it was like… a checklist of all the things I’d be willing to do with a... um… winning bidder. Some of them were pre-checked, like, compulsory things like ‘Vaginal Intercourse’, and it was such a technical term, but then there was another one pre-checked and it was ‘Creampie’ and I had to ask her what on earth that was.”
I laughed so much that Amy had to push herself up on her elbow because her head was getting shaken around too much while resting on my shoulder.
“I guess you know what that is then,” she said.
“Yup.”
“How?”
“I’m a guy who has the internet,” I said.
“OK, so your internet is different to mine. Why on earth do they call it a creampie when a man cums inside a woman? No! Don’t answer. I don’t want to know!”
I laughed some more, but managed to settle down when she rested her head on my shoulder again and pulled my arm around tightly.
“I bet you would have had problems creating a business if you had to use that word from that random word generator,” she said. “Annoying Creampie Jamming.”
I absolutely lost my mind laughing, but this time Amy joined in.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Half of the commerce on the internet seems to have something to do with creampies, so it’s a popular… uh… product.”
“I weep for humanity.”
“So, problem solved now. Does your mom know what you’re doing?”
“Hell no!”
“How are you going to explain how you came up with all that money?”
“I’m going to tell her that some Good Samaritan gave us everything we needed on the crowdfunding site. She doesn’t really get the internet, so I probably won’t have to face an expert, shall we say, cross-examination.”
I slipped my free arm under the sheet and curled it around the small of her back, pulling her into a hug, and kissed her on the forehead. Say what you wanted about the escort industry as a whole, this was a sexy, brilliant, determined girl who did what she had to do to save what was important to her.
Admirable was too weak a word to describe her. She was exquisite. Too good for just one week. Too good for any finite amount of time. It terrified me to sense the fight inside myself, trying to avoid putting a label on the emotions I felt when I looked at her, or touched her, or thought about her. Fuck. I loved this girl.
The seed planted by her pure beauty had been nurtured by everything she said and did. Despite our situation not being what you could call fertile ground, despite me not being fertile ground, for love, there it was. I fucking loved this girl.
“Amy?”
“Hmm?”
“I was thinking… after tomorrow… I don’t want you to go.”
I’d never put any thought or effort into finding a girl who was good for more than one night of fun before they were cast out of my life. The words hanging on my lips now had always been considered the ones suckers said to women when they couldn’t get any other pussy. It was different with Amy. She made other girls irrelevant.
“I love you,” I said.
Amy raised her head and looked at me like I’d told her the pilots had bailed and it was up to her to land the plane.
“Stay with me,” I said.
Amy
I opened and closed my mouth like a fish out of water when Kris told me he loved me and wanted me to stay with him. What he was asking ran contrary to every scrap of common sense I had and every warning Ada had given. If I could find a way to let him down gently, I should.
That was a good reason to stay silent and choose my words carefully, but it wasn’t the real one. He said he loved me. I didn’t know how much I’d wanted to hear that until the words hit my ears.
I’d heard it from my mom, my aunt too, but I’d never heard it from my previous boyfriends, or any man. It was different somehow, the way he said it.
His voice was so deep, I could feel his chest rumbling when he spoke. His words had a physical presence, and I didn’t want to speak, to banish those special words to a memory. I wanted to bask in them for as long as I could. I waited over eighteen years to hear words like that for the first time. Who knew how long I might have to wait to hear them again?
The words were scary, even more so because they’d echoed in my own head earlier. What chance would an odd couple like us have?
It wasn’t easy to judge time under the circumstances, but a reasonable person could probably describe it as an awkward amount of silence by the time Kris spoke again.
“It’s alright, you don’t have to decide now. Just think about it. We’ve got to start getting ready for the party anyway.”
“OK. The party. Right.”
Whatever time was doin
g now, it had certainly flown while Kris had taken my virginity all over the penthouse. Heading back to my room to figure out what I was going to wear, I was painfully aware of the need to walk a little bow-legged. I hoped that would ease off before the party.
With a little soothing moisturizer and my silkiest pair of panties, my problem was solved by the time we arrived. I felt like a celebrity when the car pulled up and we stepped out on to a red carpet. Some people, Obvius.ly employees who had walked from nearby I supposed, even cheered jokingly.
The party was being held in the function room of the Grand Altier Hotel not too far from Kris’ building. It had a stage, a dancefloor, a buffet-style selection of food along one wall, and several tables with assigned seating.
We sat at the main table, of course, due to Kris’ position in the company. To my embarrassment, though, that meant the other founders, Kevin and Daniel, were also placed there. The other two people in this world who knew exactly why I was even here this week. Assuming they hadn’t told anybody else.
Kevin had a date, but Daniel didn’t, and every time I looked in his direction I saw him quickly glance away. There was something about his expression that made me really uncomfortable. I tried to stay as close to Kris as I could, but on a night like this, he was being pulled in a thousand different directions.
We danced, we drank, we talked to that guy from the boat who liked to dress up like a cowboy. Kim and Jane talked with me for a while. It was a really nice party.
When Kris told me that it was almost time for the speeches, I decided it would probably be a good idea to excuse myself to the bathroom so I wasn’t squirming in my seat during them. The ladies and gents were located outside the main function room, with both coming off a short hallway.
I did what I needed to do, and when I opened the door leading back into the hallway I almost ran straight into somebody. A chill went down my spine when I saw it was Daniel, who had walked straight past the men’s room to wait near the door to the ladies’.
“Oh… excuse me,” I said, trying to step to the side.
Daniel stepped into my path. “Hey, what’s your hurry? I just wanted to apologize for the other day. I can see how that might have been out of line.”
“OK… thank you. Apology accepted.”
“There you go. See? We can get along just fine, you and I.”
I took a step back. “What do you mean?”
He took a step forward, reaching inside his jacket to produce a wad of cash. “I’ve got a thousand bucks here.”
My face screwed up and I tried to push past him again. “No thanks.”
Daniel grabbed my upper arm and shoved me back. “What do you mean ‘no thanks’? A person like you doesn’t say no to a man like me.”
I took another step away from him, but there weren’t many left before the end of the hallway. My stomach started to churn.
“I-I’m still with Kris,” I stammered.
“That’s not what I heard. The way I hear it, your job is done. It’s my turn, and since you’re not a virgin anymore, a thousand dollars is actually pretty generous. Took long enough, that stubborn bastard almost lasted the week.”
My back hit the wall. “He told you? Wait… what do you mean he ‘almost lasted the week’?”
The smuggest look ever to grace a person’s face crossed Daniel’s. “You mean he didn’t tell you? I was in on it from the start, remember? Kevin told me today, I thought Kris’d have the decency to fill you in after he… filled you in.” Daniel laughed at his own joke.
“In on what?”
“It was all a big joke. We bet him double the cost of your pussy that he couldn’t last the week without fucking you.”
For the second time in as many confrontations with Daniel, I wanted to shrink down and scuttle away. The memory of that magic moment when Kris said he loved me seemed to shatter and start falling apart at the edges. My heart felt the same way.
“So, now you can come back to the real world. You’re not going to get a million bucks every time you do your job. A thousand bucks is a real compliment, so take your money and let’s go.”
He tried to shove the wad of cash down the front of my dress, but I screamed and pushed his hand away.
“Feisty!” Daniel grabbed me by the arm, hard, and pulled me back towards the ladies’ toilets. “Fuck now, pay later. Fine by me!”
He pushed my back against the door and it sprang open, but he never followed me in. A huge fist crashed into his cheek and Daniel stumbled sideways out of my line of view.
Kris flashed past the open door before it swung closed. I heard the sounds of a brief struggle outside and, when I peeked out, I saw Kris with one arm wrapped tight around Daniel’s neck as he dragged him backwards towards the men’s room.
Daniel’s face was bright red, with blood pouring out of his nose, and his flailing arms seemed to be losing strength by the second before they disappeared through the door with the picture of a top hat on it. I tentatively stepped out into the hallway and braced myself with one hand against the opposite wall.
A woman I didn’t recognize came through from the party, smiled, and said hello to me as she walked, oblivious, to the toilet. I may or may not have said hello back.
Kris emerged from the bathroom and rushed over to me. “Are you OK?”
I nodded, numb.
“Did he hurt you?”
I thought about how he had grabbed my arm, but it was nothing compared to what he’d said. I shook my head.
“I’ll call the police,” he said.
“No!”
Daniel was right. I was just a slut. Who was going to believe my version of the story, given why I was here? I’d be tying myself up in painful legal proceedings. Worse… what if it delayed my being able to collect my money and square everything away with the bank and save the farm?
No. I only had one choice. I had to get through tonight and tomorrow, then go home.
“No?”
“You stopped him before anything happened. Looks like I won, huh?”
“What… do you mean?”
“You couldn’t last the week. You must have thought I was so fucking stupid.”
“No! No, I didn’t, Amy please. This is all a mistake.”
“Hmmph. Whatever, let’s get back to the party.”
“But… well… I can get security to take care of Daniel… but we need to talk.”
“We don’t need to talk about shit.”
“But you’re…”
“I’m fucking fine. As good as a girl like me gets, anyway.”
I stormed past him, through the door, and went back to my seat with my own personal thundercloud crackling away above my head.
Kris
I tucked what looked like several hundred of Daniel’s dollars into the front pocket of the security guy. If Daniel wanted it back when he woke up, he could fucking try it.
“There’s a huge piece of shit on the floor in one of the stalls in the men’s room. It’s wearing a tux and looks like it’s been in a fight. I need you to, discreetly, get it out of the building and put it in a taxi to anywhere.”
“Right away, sir.”
He signaled to his co-worker and headed towards the bathrooms while I raced back to our table. Amy was sitting in her seat, staring straight ahead at something a thousand yards past the far wall. I was no doctor but she looked like she might be in shock.
“Amy-”
“Don’t”
“We need to talk about this.”
“No. I’m fine. Please don’t.”
There was no way through her wall, especially when the music died down and Kevin took the stage to say a few words. I kept on trying until I heard my name and a light shone on me. I held still for a couple of seconds, but slowly rose to my feet and walked up on stage like a zombie.
Giving the worst speech since eighth grade, all I could see through the glare of the lights was Amy sitting all alone surrounded by people. She was hugging her own arms, squeezing herse
lf down to something small and hard.
Eventually, Kevin rejoined me on stage and brought Anson with him. We all signed the document we’d agreed on and I only hoped I’d written down my own name correctly. Fireworks displayed on the screen behind me and the DJ played “Celebrate Good Times” over the speaker system.
Hands were shaken, many more got in my way as I tried to return to Amy. We didn’t last long in the party after that. She stood up like a robot when I suggested we leave and stared out of the window the entire ride back.
Amy marched into her room, locking the door behind her while I paced back and forth outside, occasionally knocking and asking to talk. The speed at which everything had just turned to shit was making my head spin.
Just as I was about to knock on the door again, it flew open. She’d changed clothes, and I glanced down at her suitcase in her hand. Tears, ones she’d somehow managed to keep in check at the party, were flowing freely now.
“Amy please, I’m begging you, calm down.”
“Calm down? You risked my home on a stupid fucking bet? Calm down?” she yelled.
“I never would have-”
“I might be just a piece of meat to you, but this was important to me. This was important, Kris.” She dropped her suitcase and held her hands out in front of her like she was digging claws into a watermelon.
“I know it was. Let me make it up to you.”
She shook her head. “How could I have let myself think you were something…”
“Something what?”
“Something… nothing,” she said. “I have to go.”
“You’re leaving?”
Amy pursed her lips and looked like she might have been grinding her teeth too. She was on the verge of exploding.
“I don’t want to stay here, but if you say you want to fuck me and I refuse during our week then by the terms and conditions of our arrangement, I default on the fee. A girl like me doesn’t say no to a man like you, right?”
“Don’t say that, Amy. I meant what I said today. I don’t want it to be like that between us.”
“What’s it gonna be, Kris? Are you going to command me to fuck? Is that what you want?”