The Thrill of It(14)

He cocks his head to the side. “So I’m easy, babydoll. So sue me.”

“I know a good lawyer,” I tease.

“I couldn’t represent you. Conflict of interest.”

I laugh as Tom plunks down my glass of Diet Coke. I tell him thanks, then take a drink. “That’s a good way to describe me.”

“I like conflicts of interest,” he says. “But somehow we found the loopholes, baby.”

“We were all loopholes,” I say because Cam and I covered ourselves in secrets. Like pulling a blanket over our heads, we were huddled in our fort, never letting anyone know we were running the numbers, making a mint, playing all the strange men in Manhattan who wanted a pretty young thing to look at them, talk to them, spank them, or tell them how big they were even when they were tiny little men.

Never more than that. He kept me clean. He never wanted anything to happen to me. Never wanted anyone to touch me below the waist. One of his clients tried to slip a hand up my skirt when I met him at a bar, and Cam made sure the guy had trouble walking the next few days. He protected me.

“Look at you,” Cam says, his eyes gliding over me, cataloguing every curve, every shape. “Back here at Bliss with me.” This was our spot and no one ever knew we were here. The place where I was Layla, Cam’s top earner, not my mother’s daughter, not the pretty pony she pawned off on her suitor’s sons. I was the player, I was the one who decided. I could say yes or no to anyone Cam brought to me. I could turn down the clothes he picked up for me at Bloomingdale’s. I had veto power over everything. He gave me choices.

“Just like old times. You by my side.”

“It’s not like old times, Cam,” I say, but I don’t mean it, because it is like old times. Meeting him after a job. Toasting, like we were painting the town red because we’d figured out the trick. We were like con artists, and our marks were men who liked girls.

“Tell me you miss it, baby. Tell me you miss the way we pulled them in,” he says again, moving closer to me, trying to nuzzle my neck.

“Not a bit,” I say, keeping my hand on his chest. Familiar ground—his chest, the game. He’s playing too. He loves it too. We are cut from the same cloth.

“Not one tiny little bitty baby ounce?” He holds up his thumb and index finger to show a sliver of space. I press my index finger between them, shake my head and bat my eyes.

“Harley,” he says softly. “You know I missed you.”

“Don’t call me Harley,” I say sharply.

“Harley, you’re my Harley,” he says. “I missed you more than anyone. You know that right? Nothing’s been the same without you.”

“You know who I am to you.”

He sighs and says, “Come back to me, Layla.”

I let him come closer, especially now that he’s used the name he gave me, the name I took when I was his. “Layla,” he says again. “My Layla. You know I missed you.”

My Layla.

All the months melt away. I fall back. Back into pre-Miranda, pre-meeting, pre-Trey, prehistoric Layla before I shed all this, before I learned what I’d been doing was bad for me. Because nothing is bad now that the past is here again. Everything feels right, how it should be, how it was.

So in a tiny voice, barely a whisper, I say, “I miss it too.”

Cam hears me, taking my cue, running his big hand through my hair. I let him, leaning into his hand, a cat arching its back to be pet. He closes his eyes, sighs and says, “You belong to me. Work with me again.”

“I know,” I whisper, sliding into my old skin. It’s so easy, so simple to return to the girl I once was, the only girl I have ever known myself to be.

“You’re mine. You’re not theirs. You don’t belong with them, those people in your group. You belong by my side. We can conquer the world again.”

“I do. I do belong to you,” I say, and I feel the thing I missed, the thing that I’m terribly withdrawn from. The tug, the pull, the flip in my stomach that takes away all the confusion, all the uncertainty, that coats it over with a feeling of blissful nothingness. There is no more aching, no more wondering, no more worry as Cam leans into me, inhaling me. I close my eyes as he smells my hair as if I’m his drug too. And I know he’s not the only one who’s high right now. I am too as the night turns hazy.

“Mmmm,” he says again, his voice a low moan this time.

When my eyes flutter open I take in the scene. Cam’s still there, lingering on me like I’m long line of cocaine and he’s taking me in grain of powder by grain of powder. There’s Tom, mixing a drink. There are men and women, coupling and uncoupling, along the length of the bar. There’s me on a plush, velvet stool I’ve perched on too many times to count.

I spot a woman at the other end of the bar. She’s with a guy and they’re wrapped up in each other. He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, then kisses her gently on her jawline, and something, I don’t know what exactly, but something in the way he touches her – soft, tender, caring – tugs at me.

Reminding me.

Not of Cam.

Not of men.

But of one guy.

The one I kissed last night. The one who kissed me back like I was air, breath, and all the stars in the sky at once. Who tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear.

I clench my teeth. Force myself to look away. I don’t want to think of Trey right now. I don’t need him invading my brain and burrowing into my unknowable heart.

I want desperately to slip into my old clothes, my old comfort zone. I was fluent with Cam, I spoke our language like a native poet. Without him, without everything I was when I was Layla, I am clunking around without even a beginner’s dictionary.

But Trey’s with me now in my head. Telling me to be careful, ordering my triple espresso, checking in to make sure I’m okay. Asking if I made it through another dinner with my mom.

I am a rag doll yanked in one direction, then another, tossed and turned and twisted.

I don’t know which way to go. But the moment – the promise, the hit – isn’t quite as good as it was a minute ago. Because now I’m thinking of what’s beyond the door of Bliss. I’m thinking of Trey and SLAA and whether the arrow’s coming or going.

I place my hands on Cam’s chest and push him gently away. He’s flustered but he has this groggy sort of happy smile. His brain and body are still on other things.

“I should go, Cam,” I whisper.

“Don’t go,” he says in a soft whine, placing his hand on my thigh.

I shake my head. “It’s not you, Cam. I swear it’s not you.”

“Then don’t go. You make me feel like all the others when you go.”

“You were special. You are special,” I say, correcting myself. But the words come out flat now. Because now I’m here, now I’m present. I’m aware again, thinking again, catching myself again.

“Don’t leave me again.” Cam wraps his hand around my arm. His touch is both possessive and gentle. Demanding, yet caring. “I’ve got jobs for you. No one can work them like you. You could be a partner in my business. Help me recruit others. Train up a new crew of sexy schoolgirls. We’ll be in this together.”

“I don’t know,” I say in a half-hearted protest because I desperately crave what Cam offers me. He gives me the one thing I never had growing up. Control of love. Control of sex. Control of the men in my life.

But yet, there’s a traitorous part of my hardened heart that longs for what I felt that one night with Trey. For what I felt in those seconds in the courtyard last night. For the possibility of the other side.

“One more job then,” he says.

“Let me think about it,” I say because I don’t know which side of me is strong. Which side wants more. Which side will win.

Before Layla. After Layla.

“Let me know in a week.”

“Okay. One week.” I stand up to leave.

“Why are you going?”

“I have stuff to do,” I say, and now the pull is coming from outside Bliss. It’s coming from the other side, from the things I’ve had a glimpse of, a fleeting taste of beyond this bar. Things I don’t know if I’ll ever have.

Cam doesn’t like that pull. He feels it too, like gravity, me slipping out of his grasp.

“Stay, babydoll. Have another Diet Coke. Hang out with me. Talk to me. Tell me things. I want to know everything.”

“I have to go,” I say, my voice breaking, hurting, missing. I stand up, slinging my purse on my shoulder. My phone’s on silent, it can’t even vibrate, but I can sense it, red hot and boiling. It’s like an ankle bracelet on a criminal, a reminder not to cross a certain line. I give Cam a quick peck on the cheek, his forest scent filling my nostrils, a sensory reminder of the world he inhabits, the world he gave me. I feel a sliver of pain, like a phantom limb, shoot through me as I break the chaste kiss.

“A week though. You’ll let me know in a week, right?”

“I promise,” I say, then I leave, moving quickly past the other people, past the entryway, past Hugo as he says, “See you soon, Layla.”

“Sure,” I say and raise my hand to hail a cab. But Hugo puts two fingers in his mouth and whistles. He’s faster than me at hailing cabs. I turn back to him briefly and meet his eyes. “Thank you.”