by Robin Hart
“Great. I look forward to it.”
“Me too.”
“This time, if we see your ex, can I rough him up a little?”
“Hm.” She said. “I’d rather my escort didn’t end up in jail.”
“If you could have one without the other?”
“Then I’d say go for it.” She laughed, hiking her purse up on her shoulder and sending a glance at Melanie, who was waiting by the door, waving goodbye to Justin. “But since you can’t guarantee that, I’d prefer you didn’t play hero.”
“Well, maybe I can’t resist.” He said.
She scowled. “I can take care of myself.”
“Alright. You’re the boss.” He smiled and threw up his hands. “You can kick his butt then.”
She grinned. “I’m good with that. Let’s just hope we don’t see anyone.”
“Okay.” He said.
“But keep clear on who gets to take care of it if someone is.”
“Alright.” He said. “I’ll try to squash all chivalrous impulses.” He shrugged. “Speaking of which, would I be fired if I told you to drive safely and have a good night?”
“No, that’s fine.” She smiled. “No jail involved.”
“Good. Drive safe. Make sure one of the guards walks you out.”
“Will do.” She said, leaning in and whispering. “Cause even if I am a tough cookie, Melanie needs someone watching out for her.” She laughed at her own joke and turned to join Melanie, sending a last wave to Sean, who stuck his hands in his pockets and sighed.
“You need someone too, Nicole.” He said to himself quietly. “Someday, won’t you let me watch out for you?”
“So Nicole just scheduled a second date with you?” Hope said. She leaned against the wall with her date book in her hand.
“I guess so.” Sean said, folding up a shirt. “It’s kind of awkward having you in the dressing room.”
“No one else is changing.”
Sean shrugged. “Did you need something?”
“Did you want to know the date of your date?”
“Sure.”
“You don’t seem that excited about it.”
“What is there to be excited about?” Sean said, stuffing his clothes into his bag. “I’m tricking my best friend. She’s going on a date with me as a male escort, not as me.”
“You’re really selfish, you know that?”
Sean stopped, looked up at her, glaring. “I did all of this for her.”
“You did it for yourself.” Hope said, arms crossed. “You had your own ideas about what was best for her, and you asserted yourself as the solution to her problems. As if she didn’t survive for years on her own.”
“I was just trying to help.” He said.
“You were trying to help yourself.” Hope said. “You know, you come on with this good guy shtick, but when it comes down to it you want just as much as anyone else. And you don’t care about anyone but Nicole either.”
“That’s not-”
“When have you done anything that wasn’t for you, or for Nicole, which is basically by extension, you.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“You’re right.” Hope said, following him as he left the dressing room. “I only know what I’ve seen from you here, and I’m not impressed.”
“Then back off!” Sean said. “No one asked you to interfere. I applied and you hired me. I didn’t ask you to get involved in my personal problems.”
Hope stopped. When Sean heard that she wasn’t following him, he stopped as well. They were both about 10 feet from the exit. The club was dark, shadowy shades of blue everywhere.
“I need to tell her, don’t I?”
“Probably.” Hope said.
“I’m sorry for being rude.” Sean said, still facing the door.
“I think you can shove it, Sean.” Hope said, passing him and going around him and out the door. Sean rushed forward and caught her arm.
“Come back in, Hope.” He said. “Let me apologize.”
“No.” She said. “I’m sick of your attitude. All of us have only been trying to help you, while putting up with your attitude that you’re too good for this.”
He moved to a couch and gestured for her to sit across from him.
“The guys here work really hard. I work hard to provide a good service. You hang around here with your ‘I’d never do this if it weren’t for Nicole’ attitude that was cute at first, but now seriously chafes.”
Sean drooped. It was true.
“It’s like you’re living in this fantasy world where all that matters is some girl from your childhood.” Hope said, sounding a little less irritated as all of her issues with him flowed out. “You need to grow up. Either you want to protect her and don’t want anything from her, or you have to admit you want more.”
“I don’t know if I want more yet.” He said. “I was naive. I was a teenager with nothing but emails when I convinced myself I was in love. Meeting her in person…I don’t know what I want anymore. Other than to not hurt her.”
“Then maybe this isn’t the place for you.” Nicole said. “Maybe you should just tell her, and pursue her like a normal dude.”
“She’s never seen me like that.” He said. “I guess it was easier to just assume she needed me, and that overrode everything else.”
“And now you see that she’s fully capable of taking care of herself.” Hope said. Sean sensed that the poison in her tone had more to do with something else rather than him, but didn’t mention it. He had enough problems of his own, like figuring out if protecting Nicole had just been an excuse to get close to her.
“I don’t think anyone is.” Sean said.
“Even you, mister big, selfless protector?”
The words hit like knives, and Sean hated her. “I did what I thought was best. If I was protecting myself as well, well at least I’ve learned a lot from this. If I’m selfish, then at least I know so now. But I had thought I was more than that.”
“Ha. Men always like to think so.”
“You are seriously off tonight.” He said. “I’m grateful for everything you’ve done, but I’m just not going to listen to this anymore. You aren’t talking to me anymore.” He stood. “Do you have someone to walk you out?”
“You men are all the same.” Hope said. “You think you’re taking care of us, when you are really just using our dependence as a way to care for yourself.”
“No.” Sean said. “You are confusing me with something painful. I’m happy to listen if you are willing to admit this isn’t about me.”
“Of course it’s about you.”
“Goodnight, Hope.” He said. “This was pretty unprofessional.” He grabbed the door handle, took one last look at his boss, but she sat with her arms crossed, not watching him. As he was about to shut the door, he heard her shout one last retort.
“Even if it wasn’t about you Sean, it applies to you. Don’t ignore a woman’s strength when you are offering your own. It’s okay to need someone. It’s the epitome of arrogance to try to make someone need you while insisting you don’t need anyone.”
With that final dagger in the back, Sean let the door slam, and bypassing the elevator, took the stairs. He needed the thudding of his shoes, the steady balance of his swinging arms, and the rush of hard breathing at the end of 4 flights.
He fled out the stairwell exit and stopped at the dark parking lot. There was his car, and suddenly he felt like he was suffocating. He looked around. Everything, from the glistening black pavement wet from a night of rain, to the black sky in the distance, seemed cold and unwelcoming. He didn’t want to go to his car, didn’t want to go home, didn’t want to go anywhere, because he couldn’t escape Hope’s words.
He wasn’t useless. He wasn’t useless. He wasn’t a little boy anymore that needed Nicole’s help. And despite what Hope said, he wasn’t one of those jerks that he’d heard about from Nicole half his life and done his utmost not to be. What was it ab
out the women in your life that their opinion seemed to black yours out like a cloud over the moon, especially when it was an opinion about you?
More frustratingly, why did women not notice anything you did for them until it rubbed against a nerve and made them think you were a jerk? He wasn’t perfect, could never be, but he wasn’t just using Nicole for his own self-satisfaction. It’s true that this whole thing had started getting overwhelming, that it had moved faster than he had had a plan for. Like a video game where the screen is moving and if you don’t keep up you get squashed by an obstacle and die, the whole thing had started to feel suffocating, and headed for doom.
He thought of places he did want to go. The beach. The dojang. But both needed the car, and he felt he just couldn’t lock himself up with his own thoughts like that. Stifling, alone.
Everything had seemed simpler, if lonelier, before. Calls on Sunday to the family, time at the dojang, reading at home, and of course Nicole’s emails to assure him that he was involved in the world, had something going socially. Sean crossed the street and walked in the darkness. Why did he feel that Nicole wouldn’t want him outside of as a protector? He thought about Hope's advice that he pursue Nicole for real. But that seemed impossible. What would she be interested in?
He saw himself now as a perverted, obsessed cretin, someone who had nothing else going on but her. But that wasn’t him. He crossed the street and headed in the direction of the nearest beach, which was still about 5 miles away. He wished it was colder, wished it would rain again. Sean relished sensation, enjoyed being more aware of what was happening externally rather than internally. But between Nicole and Hope and their displeasure with him today, he felt like he couldn’t keep his finger on his unraveling self image without searching a bit for the loose thread. It must have been hours before he finally came to a barrier that separated beach from road, and he stepped over it easily. His feet sunk into the sand and he didn’t care that his dress shoes would probably be beyond repair after this.
He walked out until he had a good enough view of the ocean and sat down, watching it. He took a few breaths in, the let them out, trying to calm his racing thoughts and feelings, and asked himself the main question of the night. Why had he done all of this in the first place? How selfish was he really?
He’d been bored. He’d been wondering how to take another step with Nicole. He’d been empty. But he could swear that wasn’t it. He’d felt something, a yearning, an anxiety, when she talked about hiring a host. But was it really because she was unsafe, or because he felt slighted by being skipped in her options of guys? Perhaps he’d always used her as his ruler of what he wanted in a woman, maybe he’d always wanted to please her, and he’d done all of this as a misguided way to finally do that.
As another wave crashed in navy blue on the dark sand, he thought about how the sea made him yearn to be out on it. He was a good man, he realized. And he would be, whether she wanted him or not. It was a thought that made him feel like he was expanding inside. It didn’t make him love her less, it just made him realize that he’d given her too much power in his life. In some ways, no matter how he denied it, he was still that 11-year-old boy begging to be the hero. Well, now he was the hero, even if he wasn’t her hero. He was the hero of his own life. He treated women well, worked hard, had a business, had accomplishments. And probably would have had a wife and family by now, or at least be on the way to one if he hadn’t been so focused on her and why she didn’t want him.
He made a decision in that moment. To let her go, so that if she came to him it would be on her own. He pulled up a handful of sand and smiled at it as it fell through the gaps in his fingers. He would tell her everything, and then he’d give her space, emotionally at least. And he’d go to poker night next week. He was looking forward to it. Thank you God, he murmured, for waking me up.
Nicole was toweling her hair when she happened to look out of her window to the beach. She saw a man there, sitting in the sand. She looked closer, trying to decide if he needed help, or the police called. Homeless people didn’t often find their way down to this beach, and there were plenty of shelters. Maybe the man was drunk, in which case he was a danger to himself near the ocean like that.
But as she stared at the man, a disturbed feeling came over her, and she could swear he was familiar. Nicole had sharp vision, better than 20/20 in one of her eyes, and she could swear that build and that hair were-no that was impossible. What was he doing here? Did he know where she lived too? Had he gone insane after she’d acted like such a crazy person at the club tonight? She decided to do something stupid. She ran her fingers through her hair, threw on a t-shirt and shorts, and headed downstairs and out towards the beach.
As she got closer, she could see the man’s shoulders rising and falling. Was he crying? No, laughing, it seemed.
“Can I help you?” She asked, and when he turned around to look over his shoulder, they both fell silent. Then she gasped.
“Sean?” She said. “What are you doing out there? Do you know what time it is? Where you are?”
“Not really.” He said. Then he seemed to snap out of wherever his thoughts were. He stared at her and then at the road. “What are you doing out this late? It isn’t safe.”
“Oh, but it is for you.”
“My hypocrisies in that area have already been pointed out tonight, thanks.”
Nicole came closer, though she was uninvited. “I know it’s you, Sean.”
He froze, and his eyes widened. He didn’t say anything, just waited for her to explain.
“I’ve known since the reception, the way you smiled when you saw me.”
“I see.” He said, not allowing it to make him feel stupid when he’d already resigned himself to telling her. “It was a stupid plan from the start.”
“I don’t know about that.” She said. “It was actually pretty well executed.” She sat by him in the sand, just a foot or two away, staring at the waves.
“I’m sorry I lied to you.” He said, not making eye contact.
She nodded. “I’m sorry I made it necessary.”
“We’ve both been pretty stupid huh?”
“I guess so.” She said. “Gosh, when we were kids, we had it all worked out right? We thought we were invincible.”
“I guess not, because we admitted we needed each other then.” He said, pulling up sand and throwing it to the side. “It’s easier to need someone when you’re a kid.”
Nicole was silent, thinking of what to say, of how she felt. “I’m not sure.” She said. “I don’t know if I was even okay needing someone then.”
Sean shrugged.
“I think I’m starting to want to need someone now, but I don’t know how to.”
Sean turned, his eyes met hers, and his expression was soft, truthful, and insistent. “I want to be straight with you Nicole. I love you, no not as a friend, as more. And I want you to want me like that.”
Nicole’s eyes went wide, even as she felt that she’d had known this all along, after all, why would a man go through all of this otherwise?
“Before you accuse me of being like everyone else who is just trying to trick and use you, you should know that I never wanted anything in return for being your friend.”
She nodded, her jaw tight, she would let him say what he needed to say.
“But I’m not going to chase you.” He said. “And I’m not going to protect you anymore, not unless you ask me to.”
She just listened.
“There are things I’ve been neglecting. Things that would make me a more well-rounded person, the kind of man that a woman would want to be with.” He said. “I’m going to get back to those things, and stop trying to interfere in your life.”
“Will you still come to the club?”
“Yes.” He said. “I’ve made friends there, and I think it’s been a good learning place for me. I’m not going to hastily quit there. At least if Hope wants me back, we had sort of a fight tonight.”
“Really?” Nicole said, finding this new, honest Sean easier to talk to and trust, even if he had just admitted to lying to her and wanting more from her than she was ready to give. She guessed it was that he was willing to go without it, even as he admitted he wanted it. That took bravery. More than she had ever had. How long had this man been stronger than her while she was protecting him?
“What did you fight about?”
“What else? You.” He buried both hands in the cool sand. “She hated that I was lying to you about who I was, and to myself about what I wanted.”
“They know?” Nicole asked.
“Yes.” He said. “They found out when I acted weird around you on your first visit to the club.
“I remember that. You were so awkward.”
“I know.” He said. “I think the club is improving my social skills. Plus it might be a way to meet ladies.”
Now she laughed. “I don’t know if those are the ladies you want to meet.”
“Ooh, are you going to pretend to be a woman who hires escorts to protect me?”
“Excellent idea, but no.” She said. “I know you can take care of yourself.”
They sat in silence for a moment, enjoying the sound of the waves.
“I love the ocean. I’ve always wanted to come out here at night.” Nicole said.
“You live near here?” Sean asked. “Ritzy.”
“My aunt does. I was shocked when I saw you out on the beach.” Nicole thought of the other night, when she’d imagined walking on the beach with him. “Want to walk for a bit?”
“Naw, I walked all the way here.” He said. “Tired.”
“Seriously?” Nicole said. “Can I give you a ride home?”
“You know, that’d be nice.” Sean thought lowering your masculine pride had some perks after all. He stood and brushed sand off his pants, and Nicole did the same. He turned to walk back to the street, but stopped when he realized she wasn’t following. She was watching him, her arms wrapped around her.
“Sean, we’ll still be friends after this, right?”
“Of course.” He said. “In fact, I think we’ll be better friends now.”