I trust her.
I trust her.
I trust her.
I repeat those three words as I walk back down the hall, focusing on the gray walls, the stairs in the corner, anything but the bag that seems to be ticking, like a bomb, a goddamn bomb that’s about to blow.
Screw mantras.
I have to defuse the fucking thing.
I pounce on it. Then I tell my frantic, jealous, angry, snake of a self to calm down. I at least need to open it carefully so no one will know I snooped. I undo the staple that clips both sides of the bag together under the handles. Then I open the bag and peer inside. There’s a box. The kind that probably holds a long dress. I wince and send a prayer somewhere to someone not listening because no one listens that this box is not what I think it is.
When I pull out the box, there’s a note card taped on the front.
I want to rip it open and tear it to shreds. Instead, I undo the tape and open the card. It feels like a filthy foul creature when I read the words.
For my baby doll tomorrow night. Mr. Stewart likes his girlfriend to dress in a subtle classy style. This dress should do the biz, and maybe even net you a nice fat extra chunk of tips. He’s that kind of man. My favorite kind – big-ass tipper for a job well done.
Who takes care of you? I do. Always.
I fall to my knees. No way. No fucking way. She’s going back to him. She’s working again. I can’t believe she duped me. I can’t believe I thought she’d changed.
“Trey?”
I raise my eyes and there she is, looking like she’s been battered in a hurricane, but I don’t care because she’s a liar.
“Are you okay?”
I clench my teeth. I can’t speak. I can’t breathe out a word. If I do, I will say something awful. Instead, I grip the note tighter, and soon I realize I’ve crumpled it up in my fist.
I open my fist. “I guess we should cancel our plans to see a movie with Jordan and Kristen tomorrow night. I see you have a prior engagement.”
I toss the note at her. She doesn’t even try to catch it. It hits her chest with a thud and falls to the ground.
“What are you talking about? Because I have had literally the worst day of my life. All I want is to see you and try to forget the things my mom said to me.”
“You’d probably have an easier time when you’re Mr. Stewart’s girlfriend tomorrow night. That might help you forget your mom and me. Oh wait, you’ve already forgotten me seeing as you’re going back to Cam.”
I point at the bag, the gleaming, beating body of evidence before our very eyes.
Irrefutable.
She bends down, opens the balled-up note, and reads quietly.
I push both hands rough through my hair, pull on it in exasperation. “You fucking told me you ended it with him.”
“I did end it! This is a mistake. I texted him the night on the subway. I’ll show you. I swear.”
She grabs for her phone from her back pocket and scrolls through her messages. She finds it quickly and jams the device at me, showing me the note saying she’s done working. I tap on the screen to open it.
“Oops,” I say when I see the message is in draft mode. “Looks like you forgot to send it. Guess that was a Freudian slip.”
Then I walk the fuck out before I say something I will regret for the rest of my life, even though the word is forming in my throat, on my tongue, on my lips. But I can’t, I won’t, I refuse to give that word voice, even if she’s acting like one right now.
Harley
I stare at the window in the door, unable to move, even though he’s long gone.
I close my eyes briefly, wondering if this is the end of my penance, if this is how I finally escape my past. If this is the moment when I am finally good again with the universe, when I have paid back all that I have done. Maybe this is my final amends.
Losing him. Losing Trey.
But was I really that bad?
Yes.
The answer is always yes.
I will always pay for what I did because I sold myself. I can try to hedge it, I can sugarcoat it by calling myself an escort, by having laid down limits, but in the end, I did what I did. I chose what I chose. And unlike the girls my mother covers for her articles, I wasn’t forced, I wasn’t coerced. I willingly walked men like dogs, dirty talked them, and told them lies about lingerie. Then I took the money and laughed with my pimp.
My man.
My Cam.
I collapse in a cross-legged heap on the floor, the dirty, faded, yellowed, linoleum floor of this apartment building, and I clutch the bag Cam sent me, my arms wrapped around it, a life preserver in the shitstorm of my day, my life. I hold it tightly and re-read the note, lingering on the last lines.
Who takes care of you?
That’s right. Who does?
Has there ever been any question? Has there every been any other answer but Cam? He is the only person who has ever been here for me. Who doesn’t cringe or sneer or judge my past. Cam accepts me for who I am. Cam loves me for me. And he doesn’t even try to fuck me, or fuck with me. He is the only person I can ever rely on. When my world spins wildly into the sewer, he alone can pluck me out.
He is the choice in my life. I chose him once, I can choose him again. Joanne has urged me to take ownership of my actions. I damn well will take ownership of this one.
Of this choice I’m making that is mine and mine alone.
I reach into the bag, open the box, and gasp when I see a long, flowy dress in the color of champagne. It’s gorgeous and it’s nothing a whore would wear.
I run my tired hands over the dress – it is the only thing beautiful in my ugly life. I can’t rely on my mother. I am wrung dry from her, worn out and tattered from her cruel words. Nor can I lean on Trey. I thought I was falling in love, but he walked out without giving me a chance to explain.
I rest my cheek against the soft chiffon. This. This is all I can depend on.
Power. Control. Manipulation.
Because there is no such thing as love. Love is a fiction, a fable, an ode spun by poets and drunks, a fantastical tale told across one thousand and one nights. It is the genie in the bottle, it is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it’s the lie designed to seduce you.
My almost-now-ex-boyfriend doesn’t love me, my father never did, and the woman who raised me didn’t want a daughter. She wanted a sister, a confidante, a friend.
And she wound up with a whore.
This is who I am.
I discard my soft side, my loving side, my vulnerable side. With my chin held high and my dress in hand, I march up the stairs.
I am, and always will be, a working girl.
“Where’s Trey? What happened?” Kristen asks when I unlock the door to the apartment. She’s draped over Jordan and they’re watching a Mark Wahlberg flick on her laptop. She’s compromising and it’s fascinating seeing what a boy and girl do as they come together. Fascinating like a science experiment I’m observing through a microscope. Because that’s all this closeness, this kind of compromise, will ever be to me. Something to take note of from a distance, to jot down on lined paper. But not to live. “Trey was supposed to come up thirty minutes ago. Did he get lost in the basement?”
I shake my head. “He left,” I say in a dead voice, then I head to my room and flop face first on my bed. I could cry, I could curl up in a ball, I could bang my fists into the bedspread until they turn blue.
But there’s nothing left in me. I have been drained of emotions, and maybe I never even had any in the first place. Maybe I’m missing the gene that lets you feel for real.