by C. C. Piper
And letters. He might as well have aimed a knife at my jugular. All those notes we used to share. I reached into my clutch, pulling one out. I’d kept this single missive even now because of what it said. I’d been so happy to find it forgotten in a drawer after he’d vanished into thin air. Other than Callie, it was one of the only pieces of him that I had left.
It said:
R,
I was so proud watching you give that speech in econ today. I know you were nervous, not that anyone else could ever tell but me, but you nailed it anyway. Yours was better than anyone else’s, I swear. I love you more than you could ever know, and nothing will ever change that. See you tonight.
Bear hugs and tongue kisses,
J
It was such a stupid, saccharin little note, one amongst countless others, but I’d saved it because of that fourth line. At the time, I’d believed him unquestionably. I’d known he loved me. I’d known nothing would ever change that. Just like I felt the same about him.
And the closing. Bear hugs and tongue kisses.
That signature developed from a private joke of ours. Anytime we snuck out to be together – usually for some naked time – we’d start off with a tight hug and a steamy French kiss. This amounted to both our welcome greeting and our goodnight/goodbye. We did it every single time. Where had all that tenderness and fun gone? Where had that Jax gone?
Could that boy and the man I’d had dinner with be one in the same?
If so, what happened to him? To what we’d had? What had happened to us?
Everything became too blurry to drive, and I pulled over. It took a long time for my crying jag to pass, despite me just having promised myself that I would no longer give him any more of my sorrow. It hurt so much, even after all this time. All the mean stuff he’d said tonight didn’t match up at all with what he’d said back in high school. What he’d once promised me. So much so that I wondered if alien body snatching might actually prove to be a thing.
At least I had tissues in my glove compartment.
Once I calmed down and cleaned up, I went on a long enough drive to allow the puffiness of my face to decrease to semi-non-crying levels. I even went to the grocery store and bought some cucumber slices to put over my eyes. After I felt reasonably satisfied with the result, I went back to the apartment.
“Your client behave himself tonight?” Raina whispered in the darkness. She was watching a movie with the lights off and the sound turned low so it wouldn’t wake Callie. Which was perfect.
“Yep. So far, the woman’s kept her word.” I couldn’t help being impressed with how breezily unaffected I sounded.
“Good. I was really worried for you those first few times, so I’m glad you’ve found your comfort zone.”
Comfort zone, ha! Nothing could be further from the truth, but Raina thinking I had made pretending easier.
When I’d first gone to work for the Wish Maker three years ago, I’d been between a rock and a hard place. Raina had been laid off, and I’d recently gotten fired. My Callie girl had been so sickly as a baby. I couldn’t do anything about missing work, but the company I’d been employed with was ruthless and cold. The second time I’d called in, they’d given me a pink slip when I returned. It was right at Christmas, too.
Bastards.
So when Raina heard from a friend of a friend of a friend that there was a job opening, I applied without really knowing anything about the position or what it might entail. When I discovered it was an “escort” job, I did an about-face and marched right back out, or I started to. Turned out the Wish Maker could be exceedingly persuasive.
She’d sworn that I could be what she termed a “sexless escort,” meaning while I’d go on dates and spend time with these men, I’d never have to perform any type of sex act with them. I made her sign a contract before I caved. And even then, I was quivering with trepidation.
But she always sent me to these elderly men. Most of whom were so baffled or lost in their memories that they rarely even touched me, much less tried to initiate something as physical as the wild thang. Only one, the elderly gentleman known as Charlie, had wanted to pat my hands. Which while creepy, wasn’t a deal breaker.
The whole date had been fairly benign. He never touched me anywhere else, so I put up with it. Getting paid several thousand dollars for every two hours meant I could handle some pats, even if the dude did smell like mothballs and that ointment you use on arthritis. Willingly taking these dates meant I kept a roof over our heads and Callie’s medical check-ups up to date. I couldn’t complain.
Well, not about that aspect of my life anyway.
This would’ve been so much less complicated if I didn’t have the memories of the Jax I’d once known floating through my mind. If he was just some conceited little asshole who’d bedded me then left, it would’ve been painful when he’d gone, but I wouldn’t have been suffering like I was now. That Jax, the one I considered my Jax, had seemed to adore me. Hell, he seemed to worship the ground I walked on.
But apparently not.
If he had, he never would’ve abandoned me. Maybe he’d decided to lie to himself and to me in order to make himself feel better for ripping my heart out. If things had gone down like he said they had, I couldn’t blame him. I couldn’t be angry with him because they wouldn’t be his fault. He wouldn’t be culpable for his sins. He would have been off the hook.
I’d never imagined him going so far to appear innocent when he was clearly guilty. As I looked in on my daughter, my feelings of being let down transformed into ire. The emotion was so strong that I bit into my thumbnail to calm myself.
How dare Jaxson Liddell upend my life like this? He could have left well enough alone, but he didn’t, and now I didn’t know what to do.
Why hadn’t he just stayed in London where he belonged?
8
Jaxson
The next week dragged by like an injured snail, remarkable only due to its refusal to end. I hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything since meeting up with my former flame, my brain had been too scrambled. So many aspects about that night tormented me. The hating seafood thing. The not believing me thing. The escort thing.
Where had the Roxy I’d known gone? How could she doubt me? And how could she agree to sell her body? I couldn’t stomach the fact that the girl I’d once loved had turned into a – well, let’s not sugarcoat it—hooker, no matter how high-end.
And knowing that she’d chosen that instead of staying with me…
It made my throat ache and my chest hurt.
For two days after the date, I’d regretted arranging it. When I’d run into her there at that nightclub, I should’ve wished her well and moved on. I shouldn’t have met with her. I should’ve let bygones be bygones. I knew what curiosity did to cats. Now, all my old wounds had been ripped back open, and the pain I thought I’d left behind had taken up residence in my heart all over again.
But as the days wore on, I registered the fact that I was unable to think about anything but that date. About anyone but Roxy. Though it hadn’t gone well and I hated to think of her in her current…occupation, I’d felt a zip of awareness while in that restaurant with her that I hadn’t felt with any other woman. Not ever. It was one of the few comparisons between the past and present with Roxy that remained the same. I could still feel her. Just like always.
The acknowledgement of this only made me surlier.
All these conflicting emotions reached a crescendo when Trevor stormed into my office with that cocky grin he liked to wear. “So…Roxy, huh?”
I grunted in reply. Too bad I’d confided in him about my plans with her.
“Please tell me you two did the horizontal mambo to celebrate seeing each other again. A piece of ass that fine should never go to waste.”
I knew he was just being his dickhole self, but his comment made me think of her with all these other men. Clients. Customers. Johns. Whatever she deigned to call them. It caused my nausea to rise so high, I
thought I might barf all over Trevor’s priceless Italian shoes. I should’ve told him to shut up or at least flipped him off, but I didn’t. I was too close to puking in the floor.
“Hell, I’d pay good money for a woman that fine.”
Before I even comprehended moving, I had Trevor up against the wall by each of his designer lapels. He didn’t know that Roxy was working for the Wish Maker as a prostitute. He had no way of knowing just how repulsive I found his endless innuendos, and I lashed out without conscious permission.
“Don’t talk about Roxy that way,” I growled at him with deadly intent. “Not ever again.”
“Jesus, dude,” he sputtered out, looking taken aback. “I was just making conversation.”
“Make more like that and you’ll find yourself going through that plate glass window.” We were on the tenth floor, and the window was probably made to withstand such an attack without breaking. Still, he must’ve understood the authenticity of my threat because he raised his hands open-palmed in surrender.
“I get it, okay. I’m sorry.”
I let him go, and after making some excuse, left my office. I didn’t usually brutalize people, I never gave my temper carte blanche enough to do so, but Trevor had hit my sore spot dead center. Several minutes later, once I calmed back down, I approached my assistant’s desk and told him to cancel any appointments or calls for the rest of the day. Taking the stairs in an effort to expel some of my pent-up rage, I trundled out of the building and into the warm afternoon.
I pounded the pavement for hours after that, losing all track of time. I clipped through the Central Business District and headed east through the iconic tourist-filled streets of the French Quarter. Then, I went on past the many restaurants and bars in the Marigny and Bywater areas along the Mississippi River, the recognizable smells of muddy water and fish filling my nose.
At last, just as the sun dipped low on the horizon, I reached the neighborhood of the more impoverished Lower Ninth Ward, the part of the city where Roxy had once lived. The residences were even more rundown than I remembered. This location had been one of the hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina, and they had yet to recover, even after all these years.
Big empty rectangles of muddy land still lay where homes had once stood, and as I meandered by the trailer park where Roxy used to live, I saw that the place had been largely abandoned. The windows of the motor homes there were broken and the cheap material that made up their exteriors graffitied.
When Roxy lived here with her mother, the park hadn’t been the Taj Mahal or anything, but it’d been in better shape. Those who resided here had cared enough to plant flowers in their yards and put Christmas lights up for the holidays. I’d spent a lot of time here myself, especially during our senior year. Most of it in her bedroom.
Now though, her trailer was a mess. There was a sign on the front door, showing that it was for sale due to foreclosure. Many of the neighboring trailers had similar signs, and one a few doors down had clearly been burned up in a fire. All that remained was a scorched foundation and part of a single wall.
The stench of motor oil and cigarette smoke wafted through the air, and the noise of traffic nearly drowned out the calls of katydids as they sang their evening tunes from a nearby brush pile. The environment gave off tangible vibes of squalor, desolation and despair.
Looking up at Roxy’s old bedroom window, it was almost impossible to imagine myself inside with her, whispering secrets back and forth, passing notes, and later, making love as quietly as we could in her bed.
The trailer home was an apt metaphor for what had happened between the two of us, especially considering the dismal aftermath left behind.
Seven days had passed since my little jaunt down memory lane, but I didn’t feel any better about things. My past and my present were like two diametrically opposed objects destined to crash with spectacular consequences, the bad memories crowding out any positive ones.
After drifting off into a fitful sleep, I’d dreamt about Roxy. In my dream, she was the way she’d been before I was whisked off to London. Young. Gorgeous. Love in her eyes whenever she looked at me. I’d been wrestling with my memories of her, wondering if I’d somehow been recollecting everything with rose-colored glasses. If maybe I’d been more into her than she’d been into me.
Still, no matter how preoccupied I was, the world continued to turn.
I’d purchased a sprawling home not far from my parents’ estate, and my mother had shipped my childhood belongings to my new house. My housekeeper had been busy putting all these items away. I now had a closet full of pressed clothing, and the tall bookshelves lining one wall were no longer bare. Without paying much attention, I glanced along the leather-bound spines and caught a telltale gleam of silver.
It couldn’t be, yet it was.
Tucked between several literary classics sat the high school yearbook from my senior year. Once upon a time, I kept every note Roxy had ever given me inside this single volume. With a less than steady hand, I reached out and palmed through the glossy pages. And there they were. The notes. Dozens of them. I’d kept them there in one place for easy access.
As I went through them one by one, I was transported back to being eighteen again. I took the time to read over all of them, letting myself get caught up in the past. Then, I sternly brought my mind to the present so I could search for evidence of Roxy’s lack of interest, for proof that our past hadn’t been as loving and idyllic as I’d thought.
But that wasn’t what I saw.
Instead, each slip of paper showed me the reverse. Each of her notes had ended with our silly closing, and each had been covered in hand-drawn hearts along the edges. Roxy always did that. The messages, though obviously written by a young teenage girl, were full of sincerity. And no matter what, each one contained those three little words.
I love you, Jax.
My memory wasn’t faulty. She really had told me she loved me every day. She’d touched my face when she kissed me. She cried out in ecstasy when we joined our bodies in passion, particularly during our later less vanilla sessions. None of that had been fake, I was certain of it. Back then, she loved me.
Just as I loved her.
The problem was that I still loved her, even after all this time and that debacle of a dinner date.
I needed to see her again, to find out what had transpired in the intervening years of our separation. Adult Roxy had been so much more distant, so much less trusting. She believed that I’d left her without looking back, and I needed to know the reason why she was so convinced of this.
Before I could change my mind, I dialed the Wish Maker’s number. I wished I could contact Roxy directly, but after the unfortunate evening we’d shared, I had the feeling she might not consent to speak to me, even if I could. I made the appointment for the following night. This time, I’d try to do a better job of keeping myself in check, which wasn’t exactly my forte. Still, I had to make the attempt.
This time Roxy would come to the French Provincial home I’d purchased on Richmond Place. Though it had cost over 1.3 million, it had a cozy regional feel to it with weeping willows and palm trees established in the front. A smooth cement walkway welcomed visitors and a series of patios festooned with potted ferns and hanging flowers gave it an almost park-like feel. The place was as relaxed as my parents’ manor home was stuffy, and I adored the contrast.
The outside walls were made of carefully constructed stones that were artfully laid with a dark slate roof on top. All the many windows throughout stretched from floor to ceiling, and matching stone chimneys jutted upward into the hazy blue sky. One of my favorite elements of the residence was the lawn sweeping outward from the home itself. I loved the whiffs of green grass I caught as I walked through it. This residence was so unlike the high-rise flat on the fortieth floor back in London my father had provided for me.
There, everything had been sleek and modern, and a little too pristine; it had been like living in a museum. This home, w
hile exceptionally clean, had a lived-in quality to it. It would be a place where I could walk around barefoot with the windows open to the soft breeze and maybe do something crazy like grill outside on one of its patios or skinny dip in the swimming pool tucked away in the back.
My workload had meant I’d barely spent any time in my flat except to sleep a few hours. It never once felt like a place I could call home. It had been a tightly strung existence with no reprieve. This house was the kind of place I’d always wanted but never had, and now I had the privilege of calling it mine.
When Roxy arrived in one of the Wish Maker’s limousines, I watched her get out from the balcony of my third-floor bedroom. I’d decided to request casual attire this time around, and she wore a buttery yellow summer dress that fluttered around her legs. I’d decided to come at this get-together with a friendlier approach, hoping she would see this as the olive branch I meant it to be.
Yet as she stood there in the hot sunshine of mid-afternoon, I reminded myself to keep my libido in the backseat. I wanted to understand Roxy and her decisions, not stare at her much more abundant cleavage and lose my ability to think. Besides, if I handled this right, maybe we could avoid slamming doors this time around. I hurried downstairs to welcome her inside.
“Hi,” I greeted her as I held open my front door, and she nodded stiffly at me. Her posture stayed rigid as a golf club, but I needed for her to relax. “Care for a drink?” She blinked at me through those long lashes of hers, and I knew I’d captured her interest. “I have some merlot mellowing on the counter, a pitcher of strawberry margaritas made up in the freezer, or if you want, I’ve got plenty of cold beer in the fridge.”
When we were together, we hadn’t imbibed all that much. We were underage for one thing, not that this would prove to be much of a roadblock to most teens, but we were more interested in getting high on each other rather than anything else. We’d gone to a couple of parties and had been exposed to a keg or two, but Roxy had never cared much for beer.
