by Blythe Reid
“Yeah,” I said. “But don’t sleep with him.”
She laughed. “I won’t. But he’s an old client, and he’s very, very cute, so maybe when I’m not pretending to be his fiancée, we’ll find something to do with our time. Off the books and on the bed.”
I laughed. I was glad she called now because she was exactly the kind of person who could make me forget everything. Chris would have been nice to have around too, but I didn't feel bad about Melody not knowing my past. I felt compelled to tell Chris everything, but I couldn't be certain about how he would react.
Melody and I chatted about her family and her plans for Christmas. The whole conversation reminded me of why I loved being Melody’s friend. Her whole life seemed impossibly easy, though I knew it couldn’t be as good as she made it out to be. It was just who she was. Even after learning she might lose her lucrative job, she shrugged it off. I was certain she had made some connections through being an escort that could provide her with some sugar daddies, but still, I was astounded by her ability to carry on.
By the time I hung up, I had made and finished my hot cocoa. I knew I should start looking for new jobs, but I felt this strange feeling in my chest. I supposed some people would call it joy.
My doorbell rang.
I opened the door. I wasn’t completely surprised to see Chris standing there, holding a pizza box in his hands and a plastic bag in the other.
“I brought pizza and wine,” he said. “I figured it’s a Chicago-style of romance.”
I let him in. As he moved past me, it occurred to me that I let him in my life the same way I let this happiness into my life, slowly and then all at once like floodgates had broken. Maybe that was the best way. Maybe everything good happened with one coincidence followed by a leap of faith.
Chapter 17
Christopher
After having learned our lesson from our last experience of spoiling takeout food, we ate the Chicago-style pizza right away. It wasn’t easy. Sarah’s hair swayed in front of her face in the most seductive way, and she was wearing a hoodie that was only zipped part way, so I could see the curve of her breasts. There was nothing I wanted more than to put my hands on them, feel the heat of her chest and pretend her heart was the cause of all that heat.
I cleared my throat, lifting my gaze up to her face. “You seem a bit distracted.”
“Do I?” she asked, taking a sip of the wine.
“Yeah.”
“Mmm.” She took another sip of the wine, staring past me. “Okay. I guess you should know.”
I waited. She rearranged her grip on her plastic cup a couple times. I wasn’t sure how I should prompt her forward. Saying something might cause her to change her mind, but she might change her mind if she didn’t have any motivation to keep speaking.
“I don’t remember,” she started. “I don’t remember a time when I had any delusions about my mother’s addiction. When I was seven, she was fired from her job as a nurse for stealing opioids. After that, she bounced around from job to job, cashier, food sample lady, waitress, whoever would take her. After I moved back in with her when I was fifteen, she was working as a waitress, and it seemed to be going well because she knew how to charm people, especially men, which allowed her to get better tips. She got me a job there, and everything seemed to be going the way I thought life should have been going. Maybe my standards were incredibly low, but I loved it. I don’t remember exactly how much time passed by, but it was around a year later that I noticed her paying special attention to this one guy. I was a little worried about it because a lot of her trouble seemed to happen after she got involved with a guy. Either he would cheat on her or leave her, causing her to spiral back into drugs, or he would get her into worse drugs, or he would steal all our stuff. It’s not like our stuff was that great, but when you’re pretty much living paycheck to paycheck, it’s a bit of a strain to buy another microwave or restock the whole kitchen.”
She paused, taking a deeper drink of her wine. She stared down at her hands like her past was written on them.
“So,” she said, “my mother introduced me to this guy Linc.”
I felt myself stiffen. I’d suspected the guy she had been talking about was Linc, but hearing about his slow approach toward her like a lion stalking its prey was enough to make me want to get up and storm over to his office.
“I liked him a lot when I first met him. I was suspicious as I was of all the men she brought home, but he wasn’t obscene. I never saw him act sexually toward her when they were together. He bought things for our house, and he was nice to me. If he told me he had wanted to marry my mother, I would have given him my blessing. But after about eight or nine months, I noticed my mother was exhibiting the same behavior she exhibited when she was high. She was frantic, paranoid, overemotional. I was mad at her at first because I thought she was ruining her chance with this great guy. I continued to think he was a saint until I saw my mother begging him for another hit. I wasn’t supposed to be home. It was prom night, but my date and I had gotten into an argument, but I saw him give her the drugs. I heard him remind her how much he owed her and how the gang wouldn’t be as forgiving as him.”
She ran her tongue over her teeth, and her voice started to waver.
“After my mother had gone to work the next day, I confronted him about it. I was so angry. I was naive. I thought my anger would cause him to apologize, to change his ways, and go back to the man I had thought he was. But he showed me his anger could be so much worse. I thought he was going to hit me that day. In my stupid mind, I was thankful he didn’t. He convinced me I should be thankful. He told me my mother had been using his drugs—the Ouroboros drugs—since they had initially met nearly two years prior. He told me she had been accruing a debt with a huge interest rate. He told me she’d be paying it off for the rest of her life, and it would likely be passed to me.”
“And then your mother passed away two years ago,” I said quietly.
“Yes,” I said. “He approached me a week after the funeral. I was still grieving. I was confused. He had me sign this agreement that said my mother’s debt would be paid by me working for him. He never gave me a copy of the document, but from what I remember, my mother’s debt was around eight hundred thousand dollars. Maybe higher than that. The document had all these stipulations, but I signed it because I thought I’d work with him for a couple years, and then he’d be out of my life. It was in the first year that I realized he was only paying me a small percent of his profits, and I began to question how long I’d have to work for him. He would dock my pay for stupid things. If a client had any kind of complaint, he’d consider it a good reason to not pay me anything.”
I clenched my fist. “You should get out now. Just walk away. I’ll make sure he doesn’t come around.”
“I did,” I said. “I quit today. Apparently, he was flipping out afterward, and the police arrived after a noise complaint.”
I felt a wave of tension leave my shoulders and something in my chest unclench. “Good.”
Like a dam breaking, her shoulders started to shake. I pulled my chair over to her and wrapped my arms around her. She pressed her face against my chest, and I could feel her tears soaking into my shirt. I held her like she was a thousand pieces I needed to hold together.
It was amazing to me that she could hold so much sympathy for my stupid family drama while she was holding this in. I didn’t even know these kinds of things still happened. It was so impossibly cruel of Linc to manipulate a teen girl into seeing him as a father figure and then turn on her so quickly. It seemed like a cruel joke by nature or God to give someone enough intelligence to pull it off while only using that intelligence to hurt people.
I held onto Sarah for so long, her body started to feel like it was part of me, something always meant to be under my arm. When she sat up, she wiped the tear streaks from her face and smiled at me.
“Thank you.” She stood up. “I’m going to take a shower. Maybe it will make me
feel better.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll clean up here.”
She kissed my cheek and went to the bathroom. I heard the water turn on as I put the pizza box in the refrigerator. I threw out the plastic cups and put the wine bottle beside the pizza box.
“Chris?” her voice floated from the bathroom.
I turned toward it.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Come here. I don’t think the shower is helping.”
When I opened the bathroom door, a wall of steam hit me. It took me a second to see Sarah, naked in the shower.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, trying to not look at her breasts.
“The water isn’t getting warm enough.”
I somehow doubted that from the steam, but I moved closer to the shower. As I lifted my hand to check the temperature of the water, she grabbed me by the front of my shirt, jerking me into the shower.
My immediate reaction was confusion, but as she stripped me of my shirt and her body was so close to mine, any confused thoughts I had left my mind completely. All I could see was her. All I wanted was her.
As my shirt and pants fell toward the drain, I only had my boxer briefs and a very noticeable erection between us. She tugged on my boxers, freeing my cock. Her hand wrapped around its length. I had to concentrate very hard to talk.
“If you’re just doing this because you’re emotional right now, I don’t know if we should do anything.”
“Chris,” she cut in. “I’m not upset anymore. I’m great. I’m free, and the first thing I want to do with my freedom is to be with you.”
“But—”
“I’m tired of Linc affecting everything I do. He’s not going to control my life anymore, and that includes who I sleep with.”
She lifted my hand and then pressed it between her legs.
“This is all you need to think about,” she said. “If you want me, despite all this crazy shit, you should prove it to me right now.”
I grabbed her by the waist, pushing her against the wall of the shower. Her hands gripped my hair as I lifted her thigh, rubbing my cock against her entrance. She made such a sweet noise, I would have done anything to hear her make it again. I lifted her leg higher, feeling her shift her weight to her other foot. My other hand guided my cock into her pussy, the warmth of it putting this shower-turned-sauna to shame.
We kept our eyes locked as I moved inside her. Her hips rolled as I thrust in and out of her. Where our other experiences had been energetic, this was different. I took in every part of her, the way her hair seemed darker when it was wet, the way it clung to every bit of her skin, the way her breasts moved as her breathing quickened, and the way she looked at me like I was the only good thing left in the world. I wanted to be worthy of that. I wanted to be someone she could always look up to and always look for, knowing I’d be right where she needed me to be.
Her hands moved to my shoulder blades, gripping me as her movements became faster. I held onto her waist, praying she didn’t slip and fall. This felt like a metaphor for our relationship, dangerous, reckless, and mind-blowing.
I wanted all of her, forever.
I kissed her throat, tasting the water on her skin. Her nails were digging into me now, and the deeper I pushed into her, the more enthusiastic she got. As I felt myself getting to my peak, I tried to think of every nonsexual thing I could, but all I could see was Sarah. I just wanted to make her feel good.
I pulled out of her, grabbing her hips to spin her around. I thrust back into her from behind, sliding my hand against her wet skin to her clit. I rubbed my fingers in circles over it until I felt her pussy squeeze my cock for all it was worth. I came, the river of bliss crashing through me like white water, while her body quivered from her orgasm.
I slowly lowered us both to the floor of the shower, my chest heaving. Her slick body pressed against mine as she snuggled closer to me. Water poured down on us, though it seemed several degrees colder.
“Thanks for listening to me,” she murmured.
“I’ll do whatever I can to help,” I told her.
It was a perfect shower. We were both finally clean of everything.
Chapter 18
Sarah
I jotted down notes on the pad of paper I kept near my laptop. I had found several papers about the ingredients in energy drinks. I only needed to figure out the hook, the first line of the article that would encourage people to keep reading.
One study found that over seventy percent of people between the ages of twelve to twenty-four had consumed an energy drink at some point in their lives.
That wasn’t very interesting and anyone over the age of twenty-four would lose interest.
Energy drinks were part of everyone’s life. Even people who didn’t consume energy drinks were likely to see their advertisements in various sports events, such as UFC fighting, NASCAR, and soccer. They’d be even less likely to read anything about them from a scientific or medical point of view, which might make someone wonder if they actually worked.
I stopped again. It could be better.
The FDA didn’t regulate energy drinks.
That one could work well. Nothing gets people reading more than the fear of something dangerous entering their community.
I needed to hit this one out of the ballpark. Joseph was still a new client. Linc may not have paid me a lot, but he’d paid me enough to pay rent and enough food to live on. If I could keep Joseph as a client, it would cover rent and most of my groceries. I chewed on my lip. This tiny part of me wondered if I had made a mistake, but the rest of me knew I’d made the right choice by quitting the business. Escorting was always a dangerous business, and I never liked being someone’s doll for a night.
There was a knock on the door. I closed the laptop slowly. Chris was at work. I was certain Melody was just waking up. Nobody else would visit my apartment except Linc.
I peeked through the peephole. There was a woman in a police uniform standing there.
I opened the door.
“Miss Walker?” she asked.
“That’s me. Sarah Walker,” I said. She nodded.
“I’m Officer Lawrence. Can I come in for a second? I have some questions about your employer, Linc Johansson.”
I gestured for her to step inside. “Former employer.”
“Right.” Officer Lawrence walked over to my dining table and sat down while I sat down across from her.
“So,” she said. “You quit your job?”
“Yes. Yesterday.”
“Mr. Johansson mentioned that. He said you were the reason he became enraged and began to vandalize his own building.”
“Well, if he wants to blame it on me, that’s his own problem.”
She smiled. “Good. You’re a strong woman. Do you know what happened with Mr. Johansson yesterday?”
“I know the cops were called on him,” I said. “I don’t know much else.”
“After two of my fellow officers arrived, he refused to calm down. One of the officers tried to restrain him because they couldn’t be certain whether he had a weapon. Mr. Johansson punched this officer repeatedly in the face before he could be restrained by the other officer.”
I wrapped my arms around my waist. It seemed I was lucky I’d left. He had never gotten so violent with me. Still, he wouldn’t be in custody forever.
“This officer now has an orbital fracture,” Officer Lawrence continued. “Mr. Johansson has been arrested for his assault on an officer. Now that we have him, we are going forward with the charges we’ve been building on him about his escort business and other questionable dealings. Since you worked, or previously worked, with him, we were curious to get your statement on everything. How you met him, anything you witnessed, and anything that could help this case.”
I took a deep breath, and I told her everything. I told her about how I met Linc, about my mother, about his contract, about his claims that he was connected to the Ouroboros. I told her everything right down to the
day before when he’d tried to hit me and when I’d quit the business. She recorded the conversation on her phone. Telling the whole story again made me feel even lighter. It made me feel like the story could exist outside of me, and I didn’t have to wander in my own confusion and disappointment alone.
“Thank you for all of that,” Officer Lawrence said. “I’m sure it was difficult to talk about.”
“It was,” I said. “But I’m glad I did.”
“I’m glad too. The whole department will be glad. With your testimony, the other two testimonies we had, and the document we found at Mr. Johansson’s second house, we should have enough to nail him. There’s just one more thing we need.”
I swallowed. “Okay.”
“You’re going to need to testify against him. It will be very hard. I’m not going to lie to you about that. But it’s necessary. You were working with him, you had a longer history with him than anyone else, and as far as the law knows, you don’t have any addiction. Would you be willing to testify?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice firm. “Of course. Definitely. I don’t want him to hurt anyone else.”
“Thank you.” She stood up. We shook hands. “We will see each other again soon, Miss Walker. I hope you have a wonderful day.”
“I will,” I said. I walked her to the door. We said goodbye again, and I closed the door, locking it behind her.
I grabbed my cell phone from the kitchen counter and called Melody.
“Hey, Sarah,” Melody answered, her voice a little groggy.
“Did you just get up?” I asked.
“It was a long night. You know how I am. All I have is this face, so I have to get all my beauty sleep.”
“Well, how about we get some coffee together? I have some things I need to tell you.”
“Mmm,” she said. “Coffee.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. Let’s meet at that coffeehouse near your apartment. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes”