by Nolon King
“It doesn’t help that you’re stuck in Cherry Hill.”
“Ah, it’s not bad.” Her back was still to me, but I could picture Slut Mom, smiling like a … slut. “There’s a lot to like about Cherry Hill.”
“Yes, of course. But it isn’t the easiest place to start over, or fit in. Not everyone is especially welcoming. The entire town is made of plastic, including the people.”
Slut Mom said nothing, probably agreeing with all the awful things Natalie just said about her neighborhood. Had she really been thinking this the whole time she’d been pretending to be friends with us?
“Just know that you can call me any time,” Natalie went on. “If these bitches get to be too much, or even if you just want a night out. I know how stressful it is, pretending to me the mom who has her life together.”
“I don’t want to bother you.”
“You won’t be bothering me, Theresa. I’m always happy to help a friend. You have my number, use it.”
Natalie touched Theresa’s arm. The sweet mocha tasted sour in my mouth.
“You’re just so different from the other moms. Thank you for that.”
Natalie didn’t respond. Probably giving Slut Mom a sympathetic and unfairly one-sided smile.
I had to say something. How could I just sit there, sipping my coffee and saying nothing?
Slut Mom continued. “I was optimistic coming here. Even though I’m on my own, Elliot agreed to pay for tuition. He went to Constellation when he was a kid, and really wanted for Emily to go there too. So I’m grateful, but yeah, I didn’t really expect the moms to be such a …”
“Nest of snakes?” Natalie finished.
And that was it.
I was up and out of my chair, the thought of a white chocolate mocha now making me sick.
“So, I was never really your friend, was I, Natalie?”
Then I waited for her to turn around.
“Lynette?” Natalie was obviously surprised to see me, but more than that, she was uncomfortable. I could tell she rewinding the tape on this conversation and asking herself what I might have heard.
Good. Let her wonder.
“Mind if I sit?” I pointed at an empty chair.
Slut Mom looked wide-eyed and worried. But Natalie was cool.
“Of course,” she said. “Did you want to get a coffee first?”
I didn’t want either of them to know about the one on the table behind me. “That’s okay. I’ll wait until the line dies down.”
Natalie looked at the line. “There’s only one person in it.”
“Then I’ll use the app. Even one’s too many when you could be sitting and waiting with friends instead, right?”
“Right,” the girls agreed uncomfortably.
“So, what are we talking about?”
“The culture at Constellation,” Natalie said.
“Ooh, sounds juicy,” I said. “Are we talking about how everyone is plastic, like all the people in Cherry Hill? And how all the moms are bitches?”
“No,” Natalie said, clearly unrepentant. “We already talked about that.”
But Slut Mom said, “Sorry,” while avoiding my eyes.
“Okay,” I said. “Then let’s talk about something else.”
I smiled at Natalie, then turned toward her friend.
“Theresa, did you know that one of Natalie’s good friends is sleeping with my husband?”
Theresa looked caught off guard, almost slapped. She looked to Natalie with questions in her eyes.
“It’s true,” Natalie said, neither denying the truth nor making excuses.
“I didn’t either. Not until recently. Because she didn’t bother to tell me.”
“That’s—”
“You can imagine how devastated I was by the betrayal. Not my husband sleeping around on me. That hurts, of course, but that stuff happens and after a while you maybe start to suspect. I’m talking about Natalie’s betrayal. It’s so important for us women to stick with each other. So it was devastating to learn that someone I thought was my friend didn’t share that belief.”
I looked into her eyes, drawing Slut Mom over to my side. “Women should be able to trust other women, right?”
Natalie opened her mouth, but Slut Mom spoke first.
“Do you think I can’t hear the things you say about me? I’m not deaf, Lynette. Or stupid. Some of the moms are perfectly nice, and not condescending or spiteful at all, but Natalie is the only mom who has gone out of her way to be nice to me. So whatever this is between the two of you, I’d believe her first.”
“You ready to go?” Natalie asked her.
She grabbed her coffee and said, “Yes.”
But before she stood, Slut Mom turned back to me with shoulders that were a whole lot straighter than they had any right to be. “Let me give you a little friendly advice, Lynette: Stop blaming other women for your problems, and find your own backbone. Then maybe things will start happening for you instead of to you.”
Then they were gone, and I was left empty.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Friday Evening …
NATALIE
I loved Theresa.
Lynette tried to make our morning miserable by intruding on our conversation, but all she ended up doing was bonding us further. It was a shame we had to cut it short, but I was back-to-back on my back after coffee and had to get going. Normally I hated two in a row, but these were both in the same hotel with a two-hour break between them. Victor made it easy with the two suites in the same place with that nice little window. He even sprang for a room where I could rest between parties.
One was a regular, and the other a new guy. Both were great.
Ryan didn’t believe my story that I was out all afternoon juggling a million errands, but I didn’t care. I didn’t even try to make it believable by embellishing with details.
He didn’t care enough to press me.
So here I was, making dinner, pretending that things were normal, doing math in my head like I had started to do whenever I was trying to quiet my mind, figuring out how many more times I would have to say yes, sir in some way before I would never have to say it again. The children were playing in the living room, together and well from what I could hear. Ryan was reading on the sofa, watching them without having to interact.
The doorbell rang.
I stopped sautéing my mushrooms.
“I got it!” I yelled, turning off the burner and rushing toward the door.
Unannounced visitors made my heart leap in my chest. But there was no argument from the living room, or scrambling toward the front door like I expected, despite their proximity. I guess having a lazy family occasionally paid off.
I opened the door.
Because, holy shit, Jade was standing on my front porch, looking like someone had just scared all the color right out of her face.
What was I supposed to do?
Ryan was home and so were the children.
A few feet behind me in the living room.
I stepped out onto the porch and quietly closed the door behind me, hoping that no one would come out to check on me. I had no idea how I would explain how I knew Jade — she was too old for Constellation and too young to be a mom.
“What is it?”
“I’m so sorry … about the way I treated you. The last time, when you were trying to help me.”
“You remember that?”
She looked embarrassed. “A little. Enough.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“And all the times,” she added. “I haven’t been very nice to you.”
“You didn’t come to my house to apologize, so what is it? Why are you here?” Even though I really wanted to ask, And how did you get my address? I finished with, “And how can I help you?”
“I was on my way to a party,” Jade said, firming her jaw. “As usual, Victor just gave me the time and a place.”
She stopped, hesitant to say more. But my family was rig
ht on the other side of the door, and I needed her to keep going. “What is it, Jade? Please tell me, so that I can help you.”
“I don’t know exactly,” she shook her head. “I just got this really terrible feeling. And then I had a full-blown panic attack. I couldn’t breathe and I had to pull over. I wanted to throw up. It took me fifteen minutes before I could get back in the car.”
“Are you running late?” I asked, because that was one of the no-nos.
“No. I always leave myself plenty of time because you never know. But I don’t know if I can do it.”
“Do what, Jade? What’s the job?”
“I don’t know.” Still shaking her head. “But I’ve been listening to some of the other girls talk, and I have a feeling.”
The girl was terrified, and tugging on every one of my heartstrings. It was easy to see how hard it was for her to ask for help. Showing up here told me that Jade didn’t have anyone else in the world she could turn to.
I couldn’t open my door, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything I could do.
“I’m going to help you,” I said.
She started to cry. “I’m so sorry I was so mean to you!”
“It’s okay, but you’re going to have to talk more quietly, okay?”
Jade looked at me with wide, glassy eyes then nodded.
“Do you know how to get back onto Leviathan?”
She nodded again.
“Great. I want you to get in your car, drive to Leviathan, then make a right. Four blocks down you’re going to swing another right when you see what looks like a big pink umbrella, about the size of a restaurant. That’s the Parasol. They have the best pie around. Get yourself a slice and a cup of coffee. You’re not working that job tonight.”
“I didn’t say no ahead of time. Victor will kill me.”
I felt ripped apart at the middle, because seriously, this was the second last thing in the world that I wanted to do.
“I’ll take the job. Just give me the information.”
“Won’t Victor find out?”
“Victor knew what he was doing when he booked these guys. If he’s mad that I took your place, I’ll deal with it then.”
“How can I make this up to you?”
“Go to the Parasol, order the chocolate silk, and forget about tonight.”
“Thank you.” I could tell that she wanted to hug me, but that was probably against her religion or something.
“I need to get back inside, to get ready. Text me the info and I’m on it, okay?”
When I went back inside, Ryan was waiting. “Who was at the door?”
“You want the short story or the long one?”
He eyed me suspiciously. “Surprise me.”
“Susan got into a fight with Steve, and he stormed out. She needs someone to talk to for a while. Girl stuff, but not the fun kind. I’m not sure when I’ll be home, so you shouldn’t wait up. Dinner’s ready to dish out.”
“Is Susan the uptight one?”
“That’s her.”
“I thought you hated her.”
“Her marriage is falling apart. She needs to talk to someone who knows what that’s like.”
Ryan didn’t like that at all. But he didn’t argue, either.
Was he as tired of lying as I was?
I was about to do the most dangerous thing I’d ever done. I’d offered to take Jade’s place with a false bravado that was now faltering under the weight of my swelling fear and growing apprehension.
There was a reason I hadn’t been booked with these guys. I was about to enter a situation that would surely be out of bounds. I wasn’t the malleable young thing these men would want, and it wasn’t going to go the way they expected.
I don't know why I'd believed that Victor would take care of this.
I was done with him. I didn’t know how I would go about becoming independent, or if it would be possible to find another agency, run by someone who actually gave a shit about its girls. Then there was Olivia — would she be fine with taking her cut from my new clientele?
Or if I left Victor and she could no longer keep tabs on me, would all my secrets come scurrying out of her Michael Kors?
Beyond Victor, a part of me worried that whoever had booked this party wasn’t going to be happy with me. Sure, everyone was loving the MILF, and I was booked solid, so maybe they would see this as the upgrade I wanted them to.
Otherwise, I wasn’t sure what I’d do.
Same for if they asked me something that I didn’t want or wasn’t willing to do.
For better or worse, I wasn’t just another one of the girls.
I got to the assigned room and knocked on the door. A giant answered. The top of his head was above the doorway, and he had massive shoulders and a jaw like the front of a truck. He looked like his name might be Boulder or something.
“I’m here for the party.”
Without a word he let me in.
I was immediately unsettled. The hotel room had four guys, including Boulder, a blanket on the floor, a laptop, and a tripod with a camera.
The shortest one of the trio inside pointed at me. “Who the hell is she?”
“I’m Elle. Here for the party.”
“No you’re not,” said an ugly Ed Norton, younger and ganglier than the original. He turned to his buddy, a man who somehow had the body of a forty-year-old man and the face of a pre-pubescent child. “This isn’t what we ordered.”
Then Shorty repeated, “You’re not what we ordered.”
“Jade couldn’t make it. She’s really sick.”
I felt sick myself, seeing the laptop and camera. I wasn’t getting paid to be on video. I wasn’t getting paid to make a sex tape. The thought of anything intimate I was going to do getting streamed made me want to vomit.
“We requested someone young,” Eddie said.
“I’m not—”
“Younger than you,” Shorty clarified.
Chubby said nothing, and I got the feeling that was the norm.
We requested someone young.
Of course you did, you fucking monster. Young enough, and they’ll do whatever sick thing you want.
I wondered what they had in mind.
How far things would go before I said no.
And if I was going to refuse, and not see this thing through, why not just turn around and leave right now?
Except that I couldn’t do that because then Victor’s rage would fall on Jade. Unless I persuaded the clients to cancel the party.
The men started arguing among themselves, except for Boulder, who was still standing by the door, trying not to touch the ceiling with his head.
I was glad I stopped Jade from coming, but I didn’t want to be here.
And they didn’t want me here.
I should go.
“We’re live in fifteen minutes, so is this a go or what?”
Or what.
“Why don’t you tell me exactly what you’re looking for. I know a lot of the girls, and Victor listens to me. I’ll find someone perfect for what you need, then everyone will be happy.”
Not really. There wasn’t a chance in Hell I would send a girl here. There was a chance I was going to rip Victor a new asshole, though. If he couldn’t see that this kind of shit wasn’t just wrong, but that it was going to ruin his business, then I was out of there; I couldn’t be a part of it.
“We don’t have time for that,” Shorty said. “We go with what we got.”
He just said fifteen minutes, so there was still time to wiggle my way out of this. A win-win wasn’t out of the question.
“Ace,” Shorty nodded at Eddie, who then went to the laptop. “Jerrod.” The second nod was for Chubby. As expected, he found a home behind the camera.
I looked back toward the door where Boulder stood like a statue, then at the empty blanket on the floor. The camera. The laptop. The trio of men in position, and Shorty the bulldog leering at me.
“I should call for somebody els
e. I’m not right for this job.”
Shorty stated the obvious. “You’re already here.”
Boldly I said, “But I don’t want to be.”
“Well then, I’m sorry that it’s too late.” He looked at Boulder, then at me. “You want to get on the blanket, or do we have to persuade you?”
Maybe I would see my way out from the blanket. Since I had no other choice, I went to find out.
“Requests are coming in,” Ace announced. “Twelve minutes until we’re live.”
Shorty gave me a serpent’s smile. “Great.”
I misunderstood what fifteen minutes had meant, and ended up trapped in that blanket, feeling like I was about to make the biggest mistake of my life.
Were they really going to physically stop me if I tried to leave?
I wanted to think no, but every hair on my body stood on end. There were four of them and only one of me. Any of them could end me. Most people might have been most scared of Boulder, but Shorty had meaner eyes and a lot more to prove. I was much more scared of him.
Without preamble, Shorty came over and ripped off my trench coat, leaving me on the blanket in lingerie. I’d had clients rip that coat off of my body before, and I’d enjoyed it every time, because I liked the game. But this was different, and I loathed it to my core.
He laughed. “Want something to drink? You should probably stay hydrated.”
Then Boulder was behind me, holding my arms with one hand and tilting my head back with the other.
“We didn’t get a young girl, but we’ll make good with second best.” He made an ugly noise with his throat, then walked out of my line of sight — I couldn’t move my head with Boulder holding it in place — and back into view, this time holding a bottle.
I tried not to whimper or cry out, but the first one slipped out as a prelude to the second.
The liquid spilled down my throat. I thought it was going to be alcohol, but it wasn’t. Expecting liquid fire, I got some sort of sour syrup instead.
I tried to gag but they forced me to swallow.
I needed to cry and they let me, surely enjoyed it, better for the show to see my mascara running for its life.
