by Gabi Moore
I wanted to cry.
“What! You haven’t even cleaned it up yet!” I rushed over and found a guilty-looking Tigger nervously cowering beside the fridge.
“Yeah, he only did it just a moment ago,” Jeremy said.
“Well, when?”
“Uh… I don’t know? I was in a game, babe, so I didn’t actually see him do it, you know?”
I glanced my eyes over to his Xbox, a half open bag of Dorito’s spilling onto the floor. I glared at him, fuming.
This was my boyfriend, the kind of man who would play Call of Duty for five hours straight, spew Doritos all over the floor and then when feeble old Tigger ate them, would literally watch him shit himself and think, well, Katie will just clean it up. When she gets home. From her job.
Anger shot through me. I was too tired to deal with this.
“How long have you been home, anyway?” I asked, slowly and not without a bit of poison in my voice.
He looked away.
“Oh come on, not this shit again, Katie. I didn’t realize I had to check in and out of my own house everyday.”
Something in me snapped. His house? I’d had enough. I kicked the fridge with all the energy I could muster, sending poor Tigger scampering away.
“I want you to leave!”
He started to protest, but one angry look from me shut him right up. He stormed out, banging the door behind him.
I stood there and waited for the throb in my big toe to subside, and felt my eyes filling with furious tears. Tigger poked his head round the corner to see if it was safe to come out again. I had had a long, stressful day and this is what I came home to? I crumpled down into a heap on the kitchen floor, defeated, and instantly felt my phone bleep.
It was from him.
“Don’t bother apologizing, I’m not coming back,” his message read. I nearly laughed out loud. Apologize? My first thought was to hurl the phone against the cupboard, but somehow I found myself doing something else. I rubbed the tears out of my eyes with the back of my hand. With a few easy swipes of my fingers, I was staring at my phone, at him again. Why had I saved these pictures? That’s easy: research. He’s a public persona, and one who probably loved the attention anyway, so there was nothing unethical about me having these images. And looking at them. Right?
I stared for a long time at the last picture in the series, the one that had appeared just a few weeks ago across the pages of every junk tabloid in the country, the one that had brandished (large!) black censor bars all over the only parts that people had wanted to see anyway. I stared at his face. At his body. At his face again.
Three lean supermodel types were in the background, frolicking, mid-giggle and each probably no older than twenty. With bleary eyes I focused on a woman in the center back – she was all catwalk model limbs and jet-black hair extensions, some kind of music video whore, probably. But at least she’s not wasting her evening cleaning up cat shit, now is she?
I sighed.
I allowed my eyes to fall on his body again. Surely people didn’t really look like that. Not really. I stared for a long time at the almost comically large cock hanging loosely between the two toned, tanned thighs. Was it photoshopped? It was the look of a Spartan still pumped up from battle, but the face was all wrong somehow and didn’t match: it was an easy, mocking face, too comfortable, arrogant even. Familiar somehow. It was the face of someone who’s never struggled, never had to fight for a thing in their lives.
My hand found its way into my pants. Fuck that stupid idiot for taking advantage of me. I wanted all his dumb gaming equipment out, and I never wanted to see him again. I slipped a noncommittal hand into my underwear, still looking at the picture. What was her life like? Did she have to put up with a man-child for a boyfriend? Or was it champagne and Gucci, all day, everyday?
I closed my eyes and felt ugly threads of tension slowly leaving my body. The kitchen floor was cold and hard, but I deflated with a huge sigh and try to calm down. It would be OK. I would be OK. It was hard now, but I was working for something. I had a purpose. Men could wait.
My fingers found the old familiar sensations as I began to stroke my clit, still staring at the same picture I must have looked at a million times already today. I imagined something easy, soothing, something outrageously hot. Why couldn’t I be the sexy girl on the yacht with the celebrity? Who would stop me now if I imagined myself laid down on a bed of money, lavished with attention by some airheaded stud with a big cock? Why not?
I moved my fingers more quickly.
My boyfriends had always been kind of weedy, nerdy types. And I liked it that way. Men with big dicks usually are big dicks, right?
A soft wet bead of moisture grew at my fingertips as images flitted through my mind. I bet he had so much sex he was bored of it already. I bet a big idiot like him could fuck for hours, like a machine.
Hovering over the edge of a warm, friendly orgasm, I held myself suspended there for a moment, still staring hard at the picture. Each pixelated fold and vein. The small pleat between his hard thighs and the flat of his stomach. What if it was me, perched there on his lap, with every last inch of that cock buried inside me? Curling my spine, I squeezed my eyes shut, shuddered smoothly and came, with long, easy twitches.
Damn. Ok. I stood up, flustered. Buttoned my jeans up again and looked with fresh disgust at the picture. I swiped the screen with slick fingers.
“Are you sure you want to delete Image 05?”
Yes!
Delete it all.
I was done with this shit.
I was finally getting recognized at work, finally making strides in a career that took many people decades to get off the ground. I wasn’t going to let some rich jock take up any more space in my mind than he strictly needed to.
Chapter Three
Looking back, I’m pretty sure my body knew what was up long before I did. Had I been paying attention, I would have noticed that I took just a little longer getting dressed the next morning, and picked an outfit that admittedly, I wouldn’t have worn otherwise.
I pretended this was all necessary, all part of this game I was playing wherein I was a professional, and people took me seriously. I would have to meet him at an expensive, up-market hipster hole where I would be forced to put fussy drinks and snacks on Penelope’s credit card and act like I did this all the time.
And he was late.
It was 11:00 am on the nose that I began to sweat in my low cut silk blouse and skirt that was just a few threads long enough for plausible deniability. My feet were killing me in my heels. Ten minutes disappeared and then another ten. I began to get annoyed. Possibly by the realization that even I, professional cynic and hard ass, was a little buzzed to be meeting the Tom Hood.
What an asshole.
Just as I had mentally condemned him forever, and resigned myself to trying to look busy and not stood up, a hidden number flashed across my phone screen with a buzz.
I froze and then snatched at it, nearly knocking over a glass of water on the table.
“Hello?”
“Is this Katie Mack?”
For a while, I actually didn’t know the answer. It was a deep, familiar accent, but instantly new somehow. It was him.
He repeated the question, this time with an extra lilt; it was a strange voice, rough and silky at the same time, like old velvet.
“Yes, this is she,” I said and instantly felt like a dumbass. “This is she”? Nobody but my grandmother spoke like that, what on earth was I thinking.
“Oh, hi. It’s Tom. We were supposed to have a meeting today, right?”
Without thinking, the full-blown image of his thick, unapologetic cock sprung into my head. I violently shook it out of my head.
“Oh, yeah, no. Um – of course, yes! You were supposed to meet me at 11, I think.”
I think? Why the fuck was I apologizing?
“I am so sorry,” cooed the velvet voice from inside the phone. “I’m just, uh, I’m tied up with som
ething right now, you know?” This last part came out strange somehow, and the voice warped a little at the end and trailed off.
“Oh? Umm… no problem, do you want to reschedule then?”
The line was silent while I waited for an answer, and all of a sudden, a nervous burst of laughter. Then, a woman’s voice, a panicked giggling followed by a loud “shhhhh!”
My face dropped.
“Is this a bad time? I’ll get the secretary to reschedule with you if -”
“No, don’t!” he said, a little too loudly.
I could still faintly hear the giggling in the background. Was this guy for real? Did he just have a bevy of sluts following him around 24/7?
“I mean, I’m sorry, yes, let’s reschedule. My apologies.”
What happened next was, in hindsight, probably the turning point, the big crazy hinge around which everything turned. It was almost imperceptible. I almost didn’t notice it. But I heard it – a quiet, quick growl under the breath, followed by a single, desperate gasp as a counterweight. It was the softest, tiniest sound imaginable …but there was no mistaking it. I knew that sound anywhere. It was the sound of a man coming.
I dropped the phone on the table like it had suddenly sprouted spikes. I ended the call, dazed.
I had seemingly forgotten to breathe during the entire exchange and did it all at once the second the screen went dark. I was sitting there like a complete idiot, done up with three different kinds of foundation on my face and shoes that should have been banned for human’s rights violations… and I had been stood up by a jerk, an asshole who had the cheek to haul me all this way to give him an apology and then …and then …was he playing a game with me? I sat stewing for a few moments more.
The other, weirder thought came bubbling up in my mind. He was definitely having sex. Right now. I was busy being mad as hell for being messed around and he was…
I looked down at my phone again, ears burning. It was too outrageous to be true and yet it was: I had just had my first celebrity interview, and it was with Tom Hood, the Tom Hood, and he was on the phone, breathing heavy, dick in some giggling girl most likely.
‘Tied up’ indeed.
“Ew,” I said under my breath and immediately wondered whom I thought I was trying to convince. I got up to leave.
It wasn’t ew. In fact, it was all I thought about for the rest of the day.
Chapter Four
“Oh my God, Katie, there you are! Get in here and open this stupid letter, I’m dying to see what it says and they won’t let me open it!”
Clara, the new intern, was hovering excitedly over my desk, eyeballing a giant basket of blood red flowers with a small white card skewered on a plastic fork in the center.
When did my life become a sappy rom com?
“Didn’t you break up with what’s-his-name? Is it from him? What a douche,” she said, bouncing from foot to foot like a kid at Christmas.
The arrangement was overwhelming the entire surface of my small desk; the whole thing was unreal, the giant roses and lilies completely out of place in our minimalist chrome office. I felt worryingly conspicuous. I opened the card, gingerly; not quite believing this was really for me.
Miss Mack,
Please forgive my disgusting phone manners
67 Baltic Terrace, 9:00pm
You’ll have my full attention, promise
T
My eyes whipped over the lines again and again, trying to make sense of the letters.
It was an actual house address. An invitation. At night.
Clara looked at me with big eyes. “Oh God, it IS from what’s-his-name, isn’t it?”
I stuffed the card back in the envelope and buried it into the mound of stems.
“Uh, yeah, it’s from my ex. What a douche.”
I looked at my watch – it had just gone 3pm. Thinking twice, I grabbed the card again and slid it into my pocket.
“Hey, Clara, could you just let Penelope know I went out for a sec?”
“Sure. But she’s at the other office for a few days anyway. She’s been asking about your interview with what’s-his-name though – how’d that go?”
“Uh, yeah, the interview …if you see her just let her know I’ll have it ready for Friday, OK?”
I dashed out, not giving Clara the chance to pry any further. I only had a few hours. I would need time to think.
And I would definitely need a sexier dress. And shoes. Maybe.
Chapter Five
If you had asked 5-year-old me to imagine what the home of one of the country’s wealthiest personalities looked like – she would have accurately described 67 Baltic Terrace.
It looked like it was the scene of a movie. Flush with vaulted marble ceilings, dense green lawns folding into infinity pools, and a swooping grand staircase at the main entrance.
Tom Hood had made his fortune speculating on hot tech start ups, “angel” funding those two bit operations that turned into outrageous money-machines in a span of just a few years. He had a knack for spotting business diamonds so rough that it was almost as if his investment in them alone was the very thing to transform them, to make emperors out of the long sighted nerds in garages, and empires out of their impossible dreams. Tom Hood had made many people’s dreams come true, and he was living his own, clearly.
Coming down the staircase was a lithe, black haired girl in some kind of luxurious-looking kimono. A week ago, I would have laughed if someone had told me that this is what my dream magazine job would be paying me to do on a Wednesday evening, but by this point, I was getting used to the feeling that everything associated with Tom Hood had a sheen of unreality to it, a strange glint of power that he seemed to wear so well.
He was still a dick, though, obviously.
The black haired girl smiled broadly at me, slinking down the last few of the steps and gliding over to me as though she had been expecting me all her life. This, I thought, was some weird Stepford Wife nonsense right here. I made a mental note to take in every detail about her, knowing I’d find a place for her in my article, whatever it turned out to be.
“Are you Miss Katie Mack? Oh, welcome! It’s very nice to meet you,” she said with just a distant waft of an exotic accent, and then extended her slender hand.
I followed her all the way back up the staircase, eerie music seeming to come and go in pockets of air as we passed by rooms and corridors, finally reaching a wide conservatory style room at the end, and the source of the music.
The jaded part of me saw only the ill-gotten gains in the glittery tiles and disgusting privilege dripping in every giant mirror and painting we passed …but another, smaller part of me was quietly amazed.
Tom Hood was barely 30 years old. This was success, and there was no denying it. I was so used to seeing him surrounded by shocking red and yellow tabloid headlines that this neutral, expensive taste unfolding all around me was quite striking. He really was very wealthy.
By the time my black haired escort flung open the conservatory doors, I hadn’t yet decided if I was brimming with judgment or with secret admiration for all this opulence.
The black haired girl kept her kimono-ed arms spread open and floated over on her tiptoes to join Tom, who was seated on a cushion like a Buddha, bent over a carved chess board.
It occurred to me all at once that I should have prepared far more thoroughly for this interview than I had. I had spent too much time on my outfit, too little time on …well, I wasn’t sure yet. But I felt unprepared, already off-kilter.
A pair of small muscles was working in his bare, upper arms as he moved the pieces round before looking up and smiling cordially at me.
Great. He had decided not to wear a shirt.
The black haired girl had turned the music down and was flitting about with something in the periphery of my vision.
“Miss Mack! Welcome to my humble abode,” he said, and the girl giggled in appreciation.
She was busy fixing me a drink. Not Kool-Aid, I thoug
ht, although I wouldn’t be surprised if the story took that turn.
Again, there was something startling in how different he seemed in real life. How three-dimensional. He had that kind of vestigial dusty blonde-brown hair that some men seem to carry over from childhood, even though every other part of them had grown and matured. I guess I had always just written off male bodies of this exact kind: the predictable Calvin Klein physique in expensive lounge wear, the kind of deliberate all-American healthy tan, the boringly tight abs.
I had always shirked away from this kind of thing the same way I did from infomercials and ads – and for the same reason, too. I had had my beginnings in the advertising industry, and in my current job, I stared all day at men just like this. I was numb to this kind of beauty. I was just being pandered to, right? Just being sold something. Nothing sexy about it. Rampant objectification may work on men, sure, but I liked to think I personally was made of stronger stuff.
And yet… here was this body, this real-life flesh, and there was something immediately and obviously different in it. This body wasn’t an image, it wasn’t fake and forced and cheesy. The ease with which he held himself, his upright posture, the bridled strength that seemed to pulse in even his smallest movements …here was a man who was utterly and completely in control of his physical form.
And what a physical form it was.
He was more Robinson Crusoe than hedge fund kid. Not a Calvin Klein model but the inspiration for one.
This was very unexpected. I all at once felt small and became aware of myself slouching, of how cheap my haircut must have looked to him.
“Drink?” said the girl, and snapped me out of my daydreaming.
I thanked her, took the glass she was offering me and had a sip, noting how beautifully comfortable she looked, and feeling the lack of my own comfort even more strongly.
“It’s a pity we missed each other yesterday, I do apologize,” he continued, crinkling the corners of his eyes into a warm smile.
I cleared my throat.
“Well, it’s me that should apologize – I was made aware that you weren’t happy with my piece. I do apologize. Cache magazine is primarily committed to content that is fair, so we’re absolutely more than happy to issue another article with a more balancing perspective, and you’ll have the chance to weigh in throughout, and we’ll run each quote by you befo--“