Audrey
We stayed in bed for the rest of the day. The Red Sox managed to win. I now knew where I stood with James. Even though I’d felt as if he’d broken my heart this morning, his clumsy explanation about his feelings put it back together again. And then subsequently melted it.
He was a John, but he was the best John ever. He’d fucked me like I’d never been fucked before, and I was going to make enough money to keep Tommy in New Horizons for the near future and then some. I had the next nine days to look forward to with James, nine days of luxury and pleasure.
In theory, I should be sitting back and relaxing, counting all my money and all my orgasms. In practice, I felt as if my heart was about to break all over again. And this time, all James’s money and all James’s sexual dexterity wouldn’t be able to put it back together again.
I was in love with him. The realization spread over me with sick dread as I was getting dressed for the evening and James was taking a shower. He was an assignment that was only going to last one more week, and I was in love with him. I looked at myself in the mirror and laughed. I sure know how to pick ’em, I thought. It just figured. I finally fell in love and it was never going to happen. That was typical Audrey Reynolds luck.
Not only that, but I was finally going to have enough money to make things okay, all the things I’d been wishing for. And now I wouldn’t even be able to enjoy it. Because I was in love with James Preston, and he was going to leave my world next week, and my life was going to be ruined forever.
Way to go, Audrey.
My phone beeped, and I got up to look at it. It was a text from my mom. Shit. It was never good when my mom came looking for me. She either wanted money, or she was in trouble, or she wanted money because she was in trouble. But I wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything wrong with Tommy, so I called her back.
“Audrey,” she said immediately.
“Everything okay?” I asked, not bothering to say hello either.
“No, it is not,” she said. “I got into a car accident earlier, and the Sentra’s totaled.”
“Was everyone all right?” I asked. I meant, were you high, and did you kill anybody?
“I’m fine,” she said. “I just ran off the road and hit some construction stuff that the stupid city workers left there. Can you imagine that? Just leaving concrete tubes and jackhammers and shit everywhere? It totaled my car!”
“It was on the side of the road, Ma. Not in the road.” I sighed. My mother always had a problem, and someone else had always caused it. I don’t think I’d ever heard her say she was responsible for one thing that had gone wrong in her life, not ever.
“So where’s the car?” I asked.
“I left it there.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at a bar,” she said. Of course she was. I knew my mother. She was going to have a few drinks and tell the cops she’d been at a bar, drinking—after she’d totaled her car. They’d never be able to prove that she’d been drinking before, too, although they would expect as much. The cops knew my mom, and my mom knew the cops.
“Did you call anybody?” I asked.
“No. That wouldn’t have been a great idea,” she said. That was as close as she would come to admitting she’d been drunk earlier. “So I’m just in here for an hour. I’m gonna have a couple of drinks and then I’ll call them.”
“They might find you before that, Ma.”
“Whatever,” she said. She was muffled for a bit, and I heard her lighting a cigarette. “Hey, I talked to the clerk at Tommy’s center. She said you’d paid ahead through August. Business must be pretty good, huh?”
“It was a one-off. There’s no more money,” I said, bristling. I was disgusted that my mother was happy I was making money as a prostitute. I was even more disgusted by her tone—the one that told me she was going to be asking me for some of that money soon. “I gotta run. Be safe.”
“Have fun,” she said, and it made my skin crawl.
James came in then, a towel wrapped around his waist. “Who was that?”
“No one,” I said, and I meant it.
James had on another dazzling suit, this time with a lavender tie. “What should I wear?” I asked, going through the racks of designer clothes in my closet. I wasn’t used to this many choices.