by Anna Lewis
No one asked you.
“Thanks,” Shawna said, taking the magazine and quickly loading her groceries in the back seat.
The cashier stood there staring at Shawna for a minute, and Shawna awkwardly smiled at the woman.
“Thank you again for bringing that magazine to me.”
“You’re welcome,” the woman said.
“I have to leave now. You have a great day.”
She didn’t wait for the woman to respond before she closed the door and started the engine. Shawna pulled away, careful of the woman who finally turned and walked back into the store. The rain had stopped some time when Shawna was inside, and the surprise storm had moved on. Only a light drizzle remained, and like most Texans, the cashier didn’t seem to mind as she walked unhurriedly back into the store.
Shawna couldn’t get out of that parking lot quick enough. Even though she knew it was silly, she felt like everyone was staring at her.
Suddenly, she felt self-conscious and wished she’d worn underwear. She headed straight home grabbing as many groceries as she could in one trip, then changing into yoga pants and a loose shirt before going back out to the car to unload everything else.
This time, she put underwear on.
***
Shawna was almost to her apartment door when she looked up and froze. Her neighbor, Mrs. Caffey, was standing in the hallway, and in her hand was one of the tabloids with her picture on the front of it.
Their eyes locked and Shawna gauged the distance from where she stood at the door and knew that she didn’t have a chance of making it before Mrs. Caffey started in on her. Blue haired and so old that even she had lost track, she knew that the old biddy was going to have something to say about the tabloid and Eric, and Shawna wasn’t sure she was up for it.
“I guess we know who the mystery man in the limo was,” Mrs. Caffey said without preamble.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Caffey,” Shawna said sweetly.
“I hope that you’re being careful with this man. He’s known to be a playboy.”
“You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the smut magazines,” Shawna said wryly, remember something her mother had said years before. “I hope you have a beautiful day.”
Before Mrs. Caffey could say anything else, Shawna slipped into her apartment and shut the door.
She turned the lock and slid the chain on, even though she rarely used more than the thumb lock on the handle during the day. A knock sounded on the door and Mrs. Caffey’s muffled words came through the wood.
“Don’t let that man break your heart. You’ll never get over it,” she warned through the locked door, and Shawna had the sudden urge to throw something at the door just for effect. Who did that woman think she was and why was her heart any of Mrs. Caffey’s business?
At least it’s only the paper tabloids, she thought, but even that didn’t give her much comfort.
She looked at the clock and realized that the Dallas Celebrity News Hour was about to come on, which really was a thinly veiled attempt at honest journalism from the very people who created and printed the tabloids in the first place. Still, she should watch the talk show. Maybe knowing that she wasn’t on it would make her feel better. They certainly had much bigger stories to run than whether or not Eric Furst had a girlfriend.
Sure that she was right, she turned on her television and flipped the channels until she found the show, sitting on the edge of the sofa and watching each story with rapt attention.
She was thinking that she was home free when the camera panned to one of the men in the back row of low cubicles, and in his hand, he held a picture of Shawna leaving her bank Monday.
What the hell was going on?
“And what do you have, Steve?” the host asked off camera.
“I have a picture of the mystery woman dating Eric Furst, and we have found out that her first name is Shawna.”
“It’s nice to have a name to put to the face, isn’t it?” the host said.
“There’s more,” Steve said, almost giddy with excitement.
“Go on,” the host pushed in their carefully scripted conversation.
“My contact at the bank tells me that Eric Furst wrote Ms. Shawna a sizable payroll check, and there’s speculation that she’s not his girlfriend, but a regular escort. It seems he favors this one woman and has hired her often enough that it’s putting a pretty sizable dent in his bank account.”
Shawna stared at the television, her mouth hanging open and the conversation between the two men fading into the background as she grappled with what she had just heard. This couldn’t be real life. This kind of thing didn’t happen to Shawna, and what was worse was that the tabloid had it all wrong. She wasn’t an escort; she was just a woman who was hanging out with a rich man to help fund her dreams and—
She stopped. She was an escort. Not of the classic kind, but there was almost no difference between what she was doing and what an escort did. She just didn’t bear the title, but her actions were the same.
She ran her fingers through her hair, then realized that she felt weak and a little nauseous. She looked down at her hand, which was trembling violently at this point. They had been watching her this entire time, and they had even followed her to the bank. Were they watching her now?
She jumped up from the sofa, then went across the living room to the bank of windows. Carefully moving the curtain to the side, she scanned the streets beyond. That’s when she saw him; a man sitting in the car across the street with a telephoto lens attached to his camera. Shawna closed the curtain, but she knew that he’d already gotten the shot. He had been waiting who knew how long to get a picture of her in the window, and she had opened the curtains up and practically gifted it to him.
Shawna went through her second-story apartment quickly, closing all the blinds tight and drawing the curtains closed. By the time she was finished, the midafternoon light was blocked out by her efforts, and she was left in the dark with only the dim light that crept in around the edges of the window to light her home.
She left it like that, not even bothering to turn on the lights in the room as she climbed into her bed. Huddled in the middle, she wrapped her arms around her legs and put her head on her knees. Eyes squeezed shut, she tried to get the image of her face splashed all over the tabloids out of her mind. What was happening with her life? How could a simple date turn into a complete invasion of privacy?
She kept her head down, fighting the urge to cry. This wasn’t what she signed on for, and what if they had followed them to Vegas and had photographed what happened there? That would be ten times worse than the world knowing that he had paid her for her company. At least right now, they likely thought she went out with him and then came home. But what would they be saying if they knew what happened in Vegas? Would her activities stay in Vegas like the city motto suggested? Or would it follow her all the way to Dallas and would everyone know then what kind of woman she really was?
Stop it, she thought angrily. You did nothing wrong. And that was the truth. If their roles were reversed, no one would be judging the man for doing exactly what she was doing. But there was a huge double standard, especially in the south. Shawna hadn’t done anything wrong, but she was being judged as if she had. It wasn’t fair, and she wasn’t going to accept their criticism.
She felt a little better, but only marginally so. There was still the issue of her new “job”. She started in four days, and it was only going to create more fodder for the tabloids. That was something that she didn’t want. If the events of the past few weeks brought her so much unwanted attention, she could only imagine what her new job would bring.
It’s not fair, she thought miserably, sure that the only way to stop this was to end her working relationship with Eric. Then, she could go back to her lonely, miserable life and her dreams that were too big for her social status, and maybe find a job before her money ran out.
Drawing in a deep breath, her internal battle raged. Did she
want her dreams bad enough to ignore the paparazzo that was hiding in plain sight of her building? Did she smile and nod when her neighbors brought their concerns up, then disappear into her apartment to hide?
She realized she was exhausted, and she was in no mood to deal with this now. Getting up, she decided she was going to take a nap, but first, she was going to change her bedding. She wasn’t about to nurse this heartache on crappy sheets if she didn’t have to.
She wrestled the bed together, and when she was done, she almost felt better. Breathing hard, she stood back and admired her handiwork. Maybe there was a camera outside her home and people were wondering who the mystery girl was with Eric Furst, but Shawna was going to have the best nap of her life.
And then, she was going to have to figure out what in the world she was going to do about Eric.
***
The cell phone rang on the bed stand beside her, ripping her out of a tumultuous dream and sending her sitting straight up, groggy and blurry eyed.
She looked at the caller ID and groaned. It was Eric, and he had already called three times in a row. As much as she wasn’t ready to answer his call, she was even less interested in him showing up, worried about her. Talking on the phone was much better than giving the other apartment dwellers a show.
“Hello,” she said softly.
“Did I wake you?” he asked, a little confused.
“It’s fine. I was taking a nap.”
“Are you sick?”
“No, just emotionally exhausted.”
“I guess you saw it, then?”
“Which one?”
“I’m sorry, Shawna. I should have warned you that the attention might be an issue. To be honest, I was hoping that they were done with me, and that I wouldn’t have to worry about the paparazzi following us and taking an interest in you.”
“Well, there’s only one guy outside my apartment, so I guess that’s a blessing.”
Eric laughed.
“That’s one way of looking at it. So, what’s your plan?”
“I don’t know. I don’t really have any experience with this sort of thing.”
“You sound a little, I don’t know—” Eric said. “Can I come pick you up? Maybe we should talk?”
“Don’t you think that will just make things worse?”
“Is that what you’re afraid of?”
“I don’t know. I feel stupid saying that, but I just don’t know how I feel about this entire thing. I got dirty looks from an old lady in the grocery store, my neighbor stopped me to tell me what I needed to do about you, and I got so much crap at the bank, I thought they were going to rip up my check. It’s been a rough week, and it’s not even Friday yet. What’s going to happen when I work for you and they get wind of that situation? Is that going to be a conflict of interest?”
“Of course, it’s not. We were already in a relationship before I hired you. And, you’re on my private payroll and not technically a corporate employee.”
“Are you sure that’s enough to keep us from running into problems?”
“There won’t be any problems.”
“But the tabloids—”
“The tabloid attention is actually a good thing.”
“I fail to see how.”
“Because we have an established relationship before you started working for me. That’s a good thing. Look, if high-powered business men and women can give their children fluff jobs at their companies, there’s no reason you can’t work for me as a personal assistant. It’s not a tough job, but I’ll expect you to work an hour or two a day, and you’ll have things that you’ll need to be doing. It’s not just you sitting at the desk looking pretty, though of course, you would be phenomenal at that.”
Shawna blushed, even though he couldn’t see her face through the phone.
“I would like to spend a lot of our time together teaching you how to invest your money so that you don’t need me to do it for you.”
“Then what would I need you for?”
“I have an idea,” he teased, and she blushed deeper.
“I just don’t know what I’m going to do. What if they find out about Vegas?”
“So?”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one that would be shamed for it.”
Sighing heavily, she weighed her choices, and wished that there was an easy answer.
“Look, I don’t know what else to tell you. You said you wanted to find your power, and this is part of it. People are going to judge you and push you around your entire life. You have to decide whether or not you’re going to give them that power. They can only shame you for things if you allow them to, or if you already feel shame. Are you ashamed of last weekend?”
“No,” she said quietly. “I have never felt more alive than I did then, and I’ve been thinking about it the entire week. I just don’t know if I’m as strong as you think I am.”
“You’re much stronger.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Don’t worry about the tabloids. They’ll be really interested in you and then they will find something else to be interested in. I give it a week, tops.”
“Really?”
“I do. I don’t know about your neighbors though.”
“They’re another story,” she groaned.
“Well, if we stick to the plan, you should have your dream in a year or less.”
“That seems so unlikely. How in the world can I go from living just above paycheck to paycheck, to owning land?”
“It’s easier than you think.”
“For you, it is.”
“Don’t let yourself doubt, Shawna. Dream big and believe that you can have anything in the world that you want. That’s the best way to do it. Any less and you’re not living up to your potential.”
“You make it all sound so easy.”
“It’s not easy, but it’s attainable.” He was silent for a moment, then he sighed. “I feel like you’re putting on a brave face when this is all really bothering you. I wish you would let me pick you up and take you somewhere, even if it’s just for the night.”
“It’s tempting.”
“Then let me pick you up for dinner and you can come with me afterward, or I’ll drop you back off. Your choice.”
She thought about it for a moment, then decided to go for it.
“Alright,” she said finally. “But no limo. Can you just come in a normal car?”
“Define normal?”
She sighed.
“Not the limo.”
“Alright, not the limo. I’ll see you soon?”
“Yes. About how long?”
“I’m leaving the office now and I drove myself today, so I don’t even have to go home and change cars. So, twenty minutes?”
“I can be ready by then,” she said.
“Good. I’ll see you then.”
He hung up before she could change her mind, and she went to her closet quickly, grabbing a pretty pink floral dress and a pair of flats to go with it, then she hopped in the shower. If she was going to be photographed leaving her house all the time, she was going to do it on her terms, and she was going to look her best. At least then, she felt like she had some control over what was going on in her life. It was better than nothing.
***
Shawna knew the instant Eric pulled up in front of her apartment, and she knew that the cameraman would know, too. The Audi SQ5 was out of place in her middle-class neighborhood, and it was obviously the latest model of the car. It looked pristine, and the blue luxury car stood out like a sore thumb in a place that where minivans and older sedans were commonplace.
She didn’t wait for him to come upstairs, grabbing her purse and locking the door behind herself as she hurried down the stairs. Her dress was short, but not too short, the hem almost brushing the backs of her knees. This time, she was wearing panties, but only because she wanted to, and not because the attention she’d been receiving had shamed her into it. At least, t
hat was what she had told herself.
He opened the lobby door for her, then went to the car and opened the passenger seat, taking her purse for her and putting it in the back seat, out of her way. As she buckled her seatbelt, he leaned over and kissed her tenderly.
“I’m sure my neighbors are watching,” she said, almost laughing but still perturbed. “I’m a little upset that people think that they have any business worrying about my relationship.”
“I’m just flattered you’re calling it a relationship. I was a little worried I pushed you too far last weekend. When I saw the Dallas Celebrity News Hour online, I thought for sure that you would never speak to me again.”
“I just wish you would have told me that something like this could happen.”
His hand was on her thigh and he was still only a few inches from her. How had she already forgotten how his nearness affected her? She was feeling flushed and she was sure that he knew she was already feeling the beginning of arousal just from a simple kiss. She was in trouble with this man, but she didn’t want to walk away. At least, not yet.
“I couldn’t have predicted their level of interest. They haven’t done this before, and I wasn’t expecting them to follow you like this.”
“It’s alright. I know that you’re not responsible for their actions. I’m just frustrated. I feel powerless to stop them.”
“Don’t worry. They’ll get their fill of us and they’ll move on.”
“I guess,” she said, but she wasn’t feeling too sure of it. “Until then, we have to put up with them.”
He smiled and kissed her again, then closed her door and went around to get in the driver’s side. He was about to put it in gear when she had an idea.
“Can you drive so that my door is by the door of the paparazzo over there?” she asked, nodding her head in the general direction so that she wasn’t obviously pointing at the man.