James
I looked out the window as the sun came up. The roads outside were empty, just like my apartment.
I’d just had the best night of my life, and true to form, I’d managed to ruin everything.
Audrey was gone. She’d gotten up as soon as I’d said those horrible words. She left in her sweatpants and a tank top, leaving the wardrobe that Elena had packed for her behind. I’d followed her out of the bedroom and silently watched as she’d thrown on a pair of aviator sunglasses and grabbed her pocketbook.
“Do you want to take the car?” I asked just as she was almost out the door.
She turned, pushing her sunglasses down on her nose to look at me. “James.” She looked as if my name tasted like poison in her mouth. “Go fuck yourself.”
Then she slammed the door behind her.
I didn’t blame her. And even though I had forced her to leave, I hated that she was gone.
I hated myself even more.
I got dressed for the gym. I was going to punish myself, starting right now.
Audrey
I was sitting in the common room at New Horizons, watching dust motes fly through the early morning light. Tommy was drinking orange juice and reading a graphic novel. He’d been happy to see me, and now we were just sitting together, both comfortably lost in the silence—me in my thoughts, him in his novel.
James had broken my heart. I had given myself to him last night. For the first time in quite possibly forever, I hadn’t held anything back. I was with him because I’d wanted him. And when he took me, every single cell in my body told me it was right. That I belonged to him.
I was his escort. His hired plaything. But there was something else going on between us. Something real that you couldn’t pay for or pretend.
I’d thought he felt it, too.
So. Fucking. Stupid.
Tommy reached over and patted my shoulder. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I lied. He watched me for a second and then went back to his book. I went back to my study of the dust motes. I loved Tommy. He was the one person who loved me and now I was sure, the one person in the world I could trust.
And now I didn't know how I was going to be able to keep him safe.
“Elena, I’m sorry,” I said, fighting back tears. I paced back and forth inside my apartment. “I told you, I don’t know why he did it.”
“He must have had a reason to fire you two days before the wedding,” she wailed. I held the phone back from my ear and winced.
I fucked his brains out, and then he told me I was fired, I wanted to say. That was the truth.
I was his escort, and he hadn’t wanted to fuck me.
Then he finally did.
Then he fired me.
It. Made. No. Sense.
“I’m sure you can keep the deposit,” I said, trying to be upbeat. James had paid her one hundred thousand dollars, cash, up front. “That’s decent payment for one week’s worth of work.”
“I was pretty interested in the other half, too,” she said.
“Maybe you could offer him one of the other girls,” I said over a large lump forming in my throat. “Someone more to his liking.”
“I thought he liked you,” she said.
“I thought he did, too,” I said, and I could feel the tears about to come. I bit the inside of my cheek to stop them.
Elena sighed again. “I’ll call him now.”
“Elena—one more thing,” I said. My stomach flipped nervously; I didn’t want her to be any angrier with me than she already was.
“What?” she asked.
“I left all the clothes and the jewelry over there,” I said, the words tumbling out on top of each other. “I had to leave quickly and I just… did. I left. Without taking them.” It was thousands of dollars’ worth of clothes, shoes, bags, and jewelry. A lot of it was on loan from a luxury goods company. Elena was going to kill me.
I took a deep breath. “And I sort of told him to go fuck himself. So he might be a little angry.”
The silence on the other end of the line was deafening.
“Dre,” she said finally. Her voice was flat.
“What?” I asked, bracing for it.
“You’re fired.”
Fired twice in one day, just when I thought things were finally turning around.
I should have known better. In my twenty-two years, things had never turned around for me. I curled myself up into a ball on my futon, watching as the sun came up over the sky. I hate the sun, I thought, and I did. I hated the sun, the sky, my futon, and James Preston. Not necessarily in that order.