by Lexi Duval
And the pangs of feeling engulf me. Take over my mind and turn my lust and attraction into something more.
Because while the sex was amazing, there's no more perfect a moment than tenderly kissing him after, our bodies drained of fluids and our lustful fever. So we kiss, New York in the background, and I know that I'm in trouble.
And suddenly Randall's words are in my head, his warnings against Gray echoing inside me.
Because now I know what the warning was. It was a warning against falling for the guy, someone so irresistible that no girl could deter his charms. A warning against losing myself to him and letting everything else in my life slip away.
But unfortunately, it's already too late for that.
I'm already falling into his trap.
Chapter Three
I don't hear from Gray for an entire week.
When I do, I know for sure that I'm already in too deep. The reaction inside me when he calls is something I could never have anticipated. My heart seems to swell with twice the amount of blood as usual, and my pulse quickens to a point I'm not sure it's ever reached.
I look in the mirror when he's ended the call, and the beaming smile on my face also highlights the impact Gray is having on me. I'm already at the point where my mind is constantly thinking about him, and nothing else seems to get a word in edgeways.
Most affected seems to be my work. Or, should I say, my dream.
For the entire week I find myself unable to be creative, unable to focus long enough on any design to make any discernible progress. By now I've found a suitable studio, have filled it with materials and mirrors and equipment, and am all set to take the world of fashion design my storm.
But I can't.
Because Gray won't let me, always in my head, holding dominion over me to the point where I have no control.
So when he calls, and my body reacts the way it does, I realize that I'm in trouble. But I don't care. All I care about is seeing him again, experiencing his presence, the aura that seems to accompany him.
That night, I see him, and he takes me away once more to a world I've never experienced. This time it's the opera, a private booth at the Lincoln Center. He wines and dines me, shows me more of the world he inhabits, and leaves me desperate for more when we done.
But not before he's bedded me once more. Taken me to a luxury hotel suite and fucked me from one end of the penthouse to the other. On the bed, in the living room, up against the bookcase, the glass walls looking out over the city.
We stay the night together, and I wake up next to him for the first time, my head against his chest, his arm around me. I watch him sleep for a while, watch his chest rise and fall, and see him as innocently as a baby, his face so relaxed and beatific in sleep.
When he wakes, his eyes smile at me, sparkling under the morning sun, and we make love once more. We roll about in the sheets, laugh as we play with each other, and I feel like a girl who's inevitably falling in love.
And then I'm cast aside once more, and don't hear from him again for two weeks this time.
I return to my studio, to my apartment that now seems so cold and hollow and lonely, and try to focus on my work. But I can't. Everything is blurred outside of him. In the recesses of my mind, he's the only thing that shines up bright, the only thing I can see clearly.
When I check my bank account, however, I see that it's grown significantly. My initial thought – not being particularly financially savvy – is that I've made money in interest.
And then I check my transactions, and see that additional sums of money have been deposited each day after seeing Gray. I look back to the day after the experience on Liberty Island, and notice an influx of thirty thousand dollars. Then I check the date after our night at the opera and in the hotel suite, and see another deposit of the same amount.
He's been paying me for sex.
The thought makes me feel strangely cheap, even worse than before when I was performing in the show room. He had said I'd have to earn it, that he'd pay me if it meant me stopping working for Randall Taylor.
But, since then, we'd never spoken about it, and I'd assumed that such a thing was only words, never to be backed up with actions.
I was wrong.
And now it's growing clear to me that I really am nothing but a high priced whore to him. So here's me, falling for the guy like a fool, and he's just using me as an escort, paying me for sex.
Does he even like me at all beyond my body? Does he care about me at all?
The thought consumes me, and my work suffers even more. Soon, I find myself just sitting at home, waiting for him to call, ignoring every other part of my life.
I get calls from my mom regularly, checking how things are going with the new fake job I told her about. My replies are always grumpy and short, and that makes me feel even more guilty. When she invites me to come and stay for the weekend, I tell her that I can't and I'm busy.
In reality, all I'm doing is sitting around and hoping that Gray calls and takes me out again. I end up leaving every single night open just in case he gets in touch, and my life starts to suffer as a result.
Eventually, two weeks after our night in the penthouse, he calls me. My reaction, this time, is mixed, a feeling of euphoric joy at hearing his voice, but this time mingled with a sense of anger that he hasn't been in touch sooner.
Of course, I don't say anything, because he's likely to just toss me aside if I do. I just listen to what he's got to say, and once more await the car that he sends out to pick me up.
Yet, it feels different now.
I'm not his girlfriend. We're not dating.
He's paying me for this. We're going to fuck tonight, and for that I'm going to get paid.
I am a fucking whore.
When we meet for dinner in a private restaurant, the entire place booked by Gray so we can be alone, I try to keep my feelings at bay. But, I can't, and after several glasses of wine I'm about ready to spill my guts.
It comes out suddenly, just when he's finished telling me a story about meeting some head of state in Europe somewhere.
“So I'm just a whore?” I start.
He's startled by my sudden question, as much for its randomness as for its content.
“Sorry?”
The wine has clearly gone to my head, because I'd never be so bold as to talk like this otherwise. And, even though I know that, right now my inhibitions are scattered to the wind and I have no censor on my mouth.
“I saw that you paid me for the sex. That makes me a prostitute, doesn't it?”
His eyes narrow in slight anger.
“Ashley, are you complaining about getting paid thirty grand to sleep with me?”
I retreat slightly, and duck my head briefly before lifting it back up defiantly.
“I just don't like the idea that I'm nothing but a whore to you, Gray...”
“So you'd rather I didn't pay you?”
I shake my head.
“Well then I won't.”
He takes a sip of wine, slightly more flustered than I've seen him, and returns to his meal.
“Maybe this wasn't such a good idea,” he says quietly to himself.
The words send a stabbing pain into my heart.
“What?” I whisper.
“You,” he says calmly. “I can't deal with another irrational woman in my life. Your complaints make no sense, Ashley, given how we met. You were only too happy to fuck different guys for money, while being watched by a bunch of men, but you won't take any money off me for sleeping with you in private. It's not logical.”
“So, you really do think of me as a whore. Or, maybe an escort, if that makes you feel better?”
“Me feel better? I don't feel anything about it either way. The money means nothing to me, Ashley. Clearly it means a lot more to you. I thought I was doing you a favor, helping you get your dream of being a fashion designer started. Clearly, I was wrong.”
He stands, suddenly, wiping his mouth with his
napkin and tossing it down onto the table.
“Look, I'm very busy with work at the moment. My driver will take you home. I'll be in touch.”
And with that businesslike and almost callous parting, he walks quickly out of the empty restaurant and into the night.
I'm left alone, a tear growing in the corner of my eye, my heart filling with cement.
Because right now, I don't ever expect to see him again.
Chapter Four
“Darling, it's so good to see you. How's work going? How's your new apartment? Is it exciting living over the river?”
My mom is rattling off the questions as if she hasn't seen me in ten years. Really, she's asked those same questions time and again on the phone over the last few months since I moved.
I guess, however, it's slightly different asking them face to face.
I'm back at my parent's house for the first time since I moved out, feeling the embrace of my mother and feeling altogether empty and depressed.
In fact, I feel worse than I did when I first returned here months ago after escaping from LA. Back then, I had no money, no job, and no prospects. I was at rock bottom. Now, I've got plenty of money, a dream that's alive and running, and all of the prospects in the world.
But still, I feel worse than I did.
It's been a month since I've seen or heard from Gray, and his impact on my feelings has never been more pronounced. I'm acting as if I've just broken up with a boyfriend of five years, not some guy I only really saw a handful of times.
Yet I'm still hurting like I've never felt before, the promise of what we had, and perhaps were going to have, now cast adrift in the ocean of my mind. The man has ripped me open and shredded me from the inside out, and still lingers in my head on a day to day basis, torturing me from afar.
The embrace of my mom, as when I first returned from LA, causes my eyes to water. But this time I don't let the tears fall. I hold them back, put on a brave face, and keep telling myself that my life is actually going much better than I could ever have expected.
Strangely, it gives me little solace.
“So, darling, come in and tell me all about your life.”
My mom is ushering me inside to the living room, where she's set out tea and cookies and various other treats she knows I like.
“Mom, you shouldn't have,” I tell her.
“What, this? It's nothing, just some things I had lying around.”
I know that's a lie. As soon as I told her I was coming to stay for the weekend, she'd have gone straight out and bought all of these little snacks and treats. I suppose she must have heard my downbeat inflection on the phone and thought I needed some cheering up.
“So, tell me darling, how is everything?”
She sits down on the sofa and starts pouring some tea, her eyes darting up to mine every so often with a genuine interest inside them.
“It's good mom, really good,” I lie. “The apartment's great, you need to come see it sometime...”
Actually, it's not great. It's a hollow shell, and I feel fucking alone there.
“And work?”
“Work's going well, although I'm thinking of quitting and trying to make my own designs.”
My mom still thinks I've got a regular job, but I'm tying to slowly set the foundations so that when I tell her I have a studio and, hopefully, my own label, it won't come as such a shock.
“Really?” she asks, eyes bright. “That's great honey. It's what you always wanted.”
Her smile is wide and makes me spontaneously smile too. But inside, I wish I could just tell her the truth...the truth about everything. I could do with some advice, and have no one to talk to.
We sit for a while and talk, and I take in the ambiance of my home once more, feeling altogether happy for being there and the distraction it's causing in my mind. But still, Gray creeps in here and there, jumping out of my memories at odd moments. Haunting my mind and never giving me a moment's peace.
But why am I thinking about him so much?! Why can't he just leave me alone!
“So, anything on the boyfriend side of things?”
It's not the sort of question my mom would usually ask. In general, she'll wait for me to volunteer such information, rather than trying to extract it.
Her eyes tell me, however, that she's seen something in me. Some look of sadness within the shadow of my face, the sort of depression that can only be brought about by a boy.
“I was seeing someone, yeah,” I say. “But...it ended.”
“Ah, that's a shame, darling. Are you OK?”
I nod, and feel my voice caught in my throat. There's something about someone asking if you're OK that somehow brings out the emotion inside you. When it's your mother, staring at your with sympathetic eyes, it's even worse.
Before I know it, tears are running down my face, purging me of the emotion that's been building up inside me. My mother is immediately out of her chair and hugging me tight, which only serves to make me break down down more.
She brushes my hair with her fingers and tells me it's going to be OK, her voice reassuring and calming all at once.
But the flood keeps coming, the cathartic release unstoppable, until my eyes begin to sting and I start to wonder exactly how I'm so affected by all of this. How such a brief period of time with a man could elicit such a reaction from me.
Eventually, when I stop crying, my mom asks me more, mining to discover the truth. I don't give it, but lie once more, telling her it's just a guy from the office who I met and who dumped me soon after.
I suppose, in a way, that's true. If you count the show room as being my office...
Soon I pull myself together, and tell my mom it's just that time of the month and I'm being needlessly emotional over nothing. She accepts that version, or appears to at least, and sets about making dinner for when my father comes home.
“His case completed last week, so he's around a bit more now,” she tells me when I ask how things are going.
It occurs to me that I don't do that enough. That I never really ask my mom how she's doing, and that when we're together or she calls me on the phone we only ever talk about my life.
A feeling of guilt penetrates me, and I resolve in my head to be more sensitive to her needs. I've just seen her as this stay at home mom who's job has always been to make sure her husband and daughter are happy.
The realization disgusts me, the thought that what if my mom isn't happy? What if she's got her own issues to deal with that I never even ask about?
But no more. From now on, I'll be the first to ask her how life is going, rather than the other way around.
Chapter Five
The weekend at my parent's house is just what I need. As my mom told me, my dad wasn't quite so busy now, so we all manage to get out together and enjoy some time as a family over Saturday.
We go walking and have some lunch in a nice local restaurant that my parents used to take me to as a child. In the evening, we do something as simple as watching a film together back home with some drinks and snacks. I tuck under a blanket with my mom and feeling closer to her than I have for years, her warmth running through me and making me feel positive and enthusiastic about everything again.
I muse over the loss of my enthusiasm, a trait that I've always held in high regard for myself, something I've always been proud of. I was the girl to see the light at the end of the tunnel in any given situation. To look at the bright side when the chips were down. To build someone else up and make them see that all is not lost when they're feeling low.
And now, spending time with my mother and father again as a family, I'm beginning to rediscover that part of myself. As the film plays in the background I begin to marvel at just how brilliant my life actually is right now.
I push the last few months to the back of my head and take only the positives from it. The ridiculous amount of money I've earned. The reawakening of the dream I've had since I was a little girl.
I even think ab
out the great sex I enjoyed. With Brett, and Britney, and the others in the show room. I think about how wild that entire experience was, how it's set my life up in a way I could never have expected and given me amazing pleasure along the way.
But, most of all, I think about the sex with Gray, his perfect form, the way our bodies reacted to each other in a way I've never experienced.
But I don't think about him with a heavy heart this time. I look back on the experience with a smile on my face, thankful for everything I got out of it.
And when I go to sleep that night, my mind is filled with the promise of the future. I see my name in lights, my designs sold all over the world. I wake to new ideas, new creations. And I know that my creative side, long overpowered by my melancholy, is beginning to fire up again.
On Sunday, I take lunch with my parents, and we take another walk in the late summer sunshine. As we go I let my mind run wild, the promise of the future completely awake in me once more.
I smile and watch the kids playing in the park and look at the leaves as they gradually shed their green coats and prepare for Fall.
My mom comments on my change of state, asking me what's changed. My answer is merely: “me, mom. I've changed.”
And then I tell her I love her.
And throughout the entire weekend, I don't look at my phone. My time staring at it, hoping for Gray to call, has now passed. So I shut it down, keep it locked deep inside my purse, and forget I even have it.
When Sunday evening dawns, I go to my room and prepare to leave. A part of me wants to stay, to spend some more time with my mom and dad and enjoy my regression to my childhood days.
But another part of me is desperate to ride the wave of this renewed feeling of enthusiasm inside me. To go back to my apartment and studio and set about changing my life, taking the bull by the horns and directing its path without any outside influences.
So I pack the small bag I came with, go downstairs, and kiss my mom and dad goodbye.