Stories From The 6 Train 2(25)

Fucking Cheryl.

She doesn't even say hello to Brit. She just treats her like a piece of furniture.

“Brittney,” I say to her as I take a step closer.

“What was Cheryl doing here?” Brittney asks me, her eyes big. “And who does she think is trying to steal your I.E.?”

I stop and take a deep breath. Brittney waits for a second and then her face gets serious.

“Tell me, Ethan,” she says, coming close to me and putting her hands on my robe. “I need to know.”

This is way too much fucking drama for this early in the morning. I swear to fucking God. I’m about ready to tell her to fuck off.

But then I look into her face. She’s looking up at me, her eyes wide, open, trusting.

Is Cheryl right?

Is she playing me?

Only one fucking way to find out.

I sigh, and take a sip of my coffee, and start.

“I started this company shortly after I quit working in marketing,” I say, and Brittney looks at me as her gaze softens. “I didn’t work for someone else anymore, and I don't know how, but I got into representing models at first.”

She nods to me. “I started porn through a modeling contract,” she tells me.

I nod back. “Same here. Before you knew it, I was selling pictures for models that agreed to magazines and websites, getting paid royalties. It seemed like easy money, and I was good at getting the girls paid more than they would have modeling for Baby Gap or whatever the fuck was hiring.”

Brittney is silent, waiting for me to continue.

“It was only a few steps away from eventually moving into shorter movies and videos, and I began to dabble in creating my own content,” I tell her, thinking back to those days long gone by.

It’s a fucking cliché that I’m some idiot bad boy if that’s what you’re still thinking. Sure, I say ‘fuck’ every other sentence. Maybe I talk about my foot-long cock too much. And yes, I produce pornography. But I’m a fucking hard worker. Everything that I have, everything that I own, I built on my own. No one fucking handed this to me. I built this. All of it.

But I had help.

“But I needed money to grow,” I continue, and Brittney narrows her eyes. She must have heard this line before. “I got into business with some people. Nothing permanent at first, and for a while it was good.”

So far, she hasn’t given me anything other than the fact that she’s listening.

“But as time went on, I began to work more and more with one man. Simon Connors. He had the money and he was willing to invest it in me. We got along great. And for a time, our growing pains were behind us. Things were looking good,” I tell Brittney.

She nods. “But?” she asks and I smile.

“But that was at first. When we were small,” I say with a smile. “We had some huge hits eventually. Got big. Became wealthier than we thought we would ever be. He started getting jealous. Never got over the fact that he was a minority investor.”

Brittney nods. “You guys didn’t part well?” she asks me.

I shake my head. “It’s not that. He let the success go to his fucking head. Started getting caught up in shit that I stayed away from,” I say to her. “Drugs. Self-destructive shit. More self-destructive than me. He was pulling in hundreds of thousands of dollars in his investment and ending up broke each month.”

“What did you do?” Brittney asks me, coming closer.

I shrug. “At first I looked the other way,” I tell her and pause, thinking back. “But eventually it got to be really bad. He started embezzling money. It got to the point that one month the company couldn't pay its employees without taking a loan because Simon had taken the money for himself. That’s when I knew he needed to go.”

I pause again. Brittney looks at me and takes another step closer, putting her head on my chest.

“We had a huge fucking fight. He told me that I’d be nowhere if it weren’t for him. Tried to pull a gun on me, but eventually I bought him out,” I tell her as I wrap my arms around her. “He took that money and tried to clean up, but he also started a porn company with the express intention of taking me down,” I say.

She nestles her head into my chest and I think back to all the times in the past Simon has tried to fuck me over.

“The entire business plan of Connors Media is to take me out,” I tell her. “He’s using hate to chase after me. He used his hate at being thrown out of the company to become the second largest pornography distributor in the world. And it’s likely that he’s using hate now to try and stop me from ascending to another industry altogether.”

I sigh, finishing my sentence. Brittney is holding onto me, not looking at me, but comfortable to be close.