by Schow, Ryan
In his head, he heard Titan saying, “Dude, you need to turn and burn, unless you have an HB10 who thinks she’s an HB6 and feels all cherry about getting railed by you. You need to date that one for a bit because there’s nothing better than an HB10 with low self-esteem. That’s the crown jewel man, a real keeper.”
Becky was an HB9 with emotional issues.
Abby an HB11.
Georgia, she was…something or other…something way outside the hot bitch ratings scale because who knew what she’d do if she climaxed? Probably burn his dick right off, and that’s not the kind of turn-and-burn Titan was referring to.
An Aniela? She was an HB8 who pulled the David Copperfield act so really, who gives a crap anyway? In truth, he did.
But still…
That brought him to Netty. Oh, Netty was a curious one. So curious, in fact, that when he laid eyes on Becky, when she came and pressed her gorgeous yoga body into him and planted a kiss smack dab on the center of his mouth, he felt like he was cheating.
Which was stupid.
Everything he was doing—having sex with Aniela, enjoying Georgia’s nudity while gazing upon her with a deep seated carnal hunger, doing whatever he was about to do with Becky—was a disagreeing force. His moral center was way off.
No, it was gone.
Her kiss should have dizzied him; instead he felt soured. So much so it made the food and drink in his system congeal.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I think I might be a little shitfaced.”
“I guess that’s a start,” she said. Her mouth had that cinnamon flavor he loved so much, but not from Schnapps’ or some other liquor. She didn’t smell like alcohol. And her pupils weren’t the size of saucers like they once were after she did a few lines of blow off his erect…well, you know. Point was, he wanted to be somewhere else, not trudging through the muck and mire of a once licentious tryst.
When he didn’t respond, she said, “Let’s go to my place. It’s ten minutes from here. Unless you have another idea.”
“I’m closer, but I have someone here.”
Her face darkened and he saw the Becky he once knew. The Becky who hated her husband, who felt abandoned to his job and his disintegrating love for her. “So why did you come then?”
“I wanted to see you,” he said. “I’ve missed you.”
“Let me be honest,” she said, “I just want to get laid, and you’re good enough and young enough, and I know you won’t steal my shit, but if you’re thinking this is going to be romantic or—”
“I wanted to tell you something,” he interrupted, his mind trolling back to his failed evening with Aniela. “I’m younger than my fake ID suggests.”
“How much younger?” she asked, her concerns now heading in a different direction, to curiosity perhaps. By this time, they were alone, waiting by the elevator with the glowing DOWN button.
“I’m seventeen, almost eighteen.”
Her face gave nothing away. And her eyes? Blank slates. Like the hamster running the wheel just fell off and had yet to get back on and reboot if only it wasn’t such a retarded lump of fur.
“Are you kidding me?” she finally asked. He looked for her tell, an obvious emotion to let him know what was coming next. She gave him nothing.
“No, I’m not kidding.”
Saying something like that, it gets you what you want if what you want is to be a coward and not say the truth. Like how you met a girl your own age and she surprised you with the promise of a normal life that was also legal in every single state.
“So you’re seventeen,” she said, looking around to make sure no one was listening.
He nodded his head just as the bell chimed and the elevator doors opened. He walked inside, turned and said, “You coming?”
She stepped into the elevator, all but sucker punched the DOWN button, and then waited for the doors to shut. When they were closed, she said, “That’s so hot,” and practically threw herself at him.
God, she tasted good.
She tasted like the holidays, or some really hot stripper who had yet to get hooked on the smack and find herself doing gang bangs or pornos or—heaven forbid, in Vegas—staring in a snuff film where she’d soon be the one on the back of a freaking milk carton under the giant heading: MISSING.
His instincts were purely sexual. Then he thought of Abby, and how she was like some entirely different person. And he thought of Netty, whose virginity he stole. And Georgia who was so twisted up she had to leave home because her mother couldn’t take her any longer.
He detached his face from hers. Felt their steaminess evaporate. His heart was a force of will inside his chest. It wanted the sex. It wanted to kick and kick and kick for that which young boys want so much in their youth: sex from an older woman who wasn’t his mother, his aunt, or for Christ’s sake, his grandmamma.
Looking at her, her chest heaving, the question of why in her eyes, she said, “Don’t stop, man. My God, don’t stop.”
“I don’t want to,” he said, breathless as well, “but I have to.”
“Why?”
By this time they were at the garage level. She wanted him tonight. He wanted her, too, but he didn’t.
“I hate who I’m becoming.”
“Which is what exactly?” she said. The mood was lost to her irritation with him, but he didn’t care. He knew how this would effect her. He expected it.
“A man whore.” There, he said it. The thing he was thinking; the thing he didn’t want to be but had somehow become.
“You’re a kid. You couldn’t be a whore if you tried.” She took his hand, and said, “C’mon, come remind me what it’s like to be sexually destroyed. I miss it so much.”
He pulled his hand away, stepped back into the elevator. “I’m sorry, Becky. I am.”
“Seriously, come meet my cat,” she said, so seductive and sultry Brayden damn near caved.
“Didn’t you hear me?”
“You’re not a whore,” she said, fast becoming a black hole of rejection. The way she switched over, it was uncanny. Angry at the push and pull, she said, “You’re a goddamn tease.”
“When I saw you, I wanted you so badly, but now that I’m with you, I don’t want to be one more asshole who passed through your life and tracked mud all over your soul.”
“Did you read that in a book?” she asked, hands now on her hips. “Was that something cute you read somewhere? That thing you just said?”
“I’m trying to become a decent human being.”
“You are decent,” she pleaded, walking toward him. The doors started to shut, and Brayden didn’t stop them. She stepped up and slapped the safety bumper, which re-opened the doors.
“Becky,” he said, like he was trying to talk her down.
“You little shit,” she growled. “Were you really just going to let the doors close?”
He took a breath, then: “I was.”
Now she just stared at him, looking at him like she couldn’t believe what he’d said, what he was doing. Tears gathered in her eyes, put an incredible shine on them. When the first tear rolled over the lid and dribbled down her cheek, his heart broke. He hadn’t realized how old she looked before, or how damaged.
She saw the pity in his face and stepped away. God she was beautiful. So beautiful it hurt. She was not an HB8; she was above such tasteless distinctions. She was a woman who knew what it meant to have her world obliterated, and he was just another tourist in her life. A tawdry distraction. Another stiff reminder that she could not trust men, and she could never put her guard down.
“You’re not who I thought you were,” she said.
“I’m an asshole,” he replied.
He was and he knew it. This time, when the doors began to close, she didn’t move to stop them. She merely watched him until she could see him no more. And then he hated himself more than ever.
Best Laid Plans
1
“Abby’s dead?” Margaret asked, h
er voice a rush of pain, the tenor liquid with disbelief. The look in her eyes ripped him apart inside. Did he really want to hurt her like this? For all she had done, she was still human, still a woman with a heart, still the mother of his child.
“For several days, yes,” Christian said, maddened by the fact that he remade her into something so exquisite, and now she was refusing to get back together with him. Did she not want a family again? Was she that selfish? He longed to hurt her for all the pain she caused him, but he wasn’t like that. No, he couldn’t be. You’re better than that, he told himself. So he followed by saying, “But she’s not like that now. She’s not dead…anymore.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” she pleaded. “Is she dead or not?” Now her voice was total and complete resignation.
Christian was baffled at how easily she had broken. He didn’t want to start a fight. There were just unresolved issues burning holes through him. He reminded himself she was a different woman on the outside, but maybe not so different yet on the inside. Her beauty, however, took a physical toll. To be so damn beautiful…she would have any pick of man she wanted. And she didn’t want him. Would she choose the novelist again? Would it be someone else now? Not the novelist, and not Christian? Is it possible she would never change no matter what she looked like?
On second thought, maybe hurting her was precisely what he wanted.
“You asked why I wasn’t there when you woke. Someone shot and killed our daughter. Gerhard brought her back, though. I’ve been with her a few days. There are things…not right with her.”
For a moment, as he was telling her this, Christian thought she was going to collapse. For him to say this out loud, to have the weight of it leave his mouth so brazenly, it was a cold reality even he hated acknowledging. They lost their daughter.
Dead or alive, she was gone.
In the private jet, Margaret went to the lavatory and vomited. It wasn’t pretty, but with as much vomiting as Savannah did with her social anxiety disorder, it wasn’t a sight that unnerved him.
He joined her in the toilet, rubbed small circles in her back and said, “In case you’re wondering, I think that’s nasty, and it’s only because I love you that I’m not sitting in the main cabin trolling dating websites right now.”
Wiping her eyes and mouth, blowing her nose, she said, “And who says romance is dead?” Back in the comfort of the cabin, she said, “You said things aren’t right with her, what do you mean?”
“She doesn’t remember us. Or you. I’ve been filling her in on her life as best as I can.”
“She doesn’t remember me at all?” Margaret asked. He wondered if she considered this a good thing or a bad thing.
“Only what her friends told her,” he said. “Although, they sort of got themselves caught in the trick bag trying to paint her life as this super-positive thing. Now she doesn’t believe half of the things they said. At least, that’s what she told me.”
“What did you tell her about me?” she asked. Her voice was nervousness. It was anticipation.
“Very little. I said you were a philanthropist, and that you’re busy traveling the world this very moment. What I said was, let you enjoy your getaway while we figure out the basics here. She seemed okay with that.”
“Does she know what I look like? The old me?”
Christian shook his head. No.
“Perhaps that’s good.”
“We need to talk about how we’re going to introduce you,” he told her.
“As a friend, I guess. I mean, we can’t introduce me as Margaret. Unless you have some other idea.” Then: “Do you?”
“I do,” he replied, his head spinning in a different direction altogether. “Sometimes the best laid plans suck ass through a straw, as Abby says, which is why my suggestion is we don’t introduce you to her at all.”
Brayden Unchained
1
Brayden couldn’t leave Becky like that. Not standing in the casino garage by herself while he rode the elevator up after having acted like such a bumpy cock. She was good to him. She taught him how to be with a woman, and she forgave him for his physical flaws when that was exactly what he needed.
She deserved better treatment.
So instead of riding the elevator back upstairs, Brayden hit the button to open the doors. It was the right thing to do. Becky was walking to her car. She glanced back at him. Stepping into the garage, walking after her with his resting douche face, he said, “I’m so sorry. I’m having an identity crisis right now and I’m kind of hating what I see.”
She stopped and turned to face him. He couldn’t stop thinking about how attractive she looked. With those bright eyes, that strawberry blonde hair that was once ginger red, and that sensational body (OMG, that body!), whatever discretion he was hoping to have eroded. He suffered the same weakness inside when he first saw her: an overwhelming powerlessness in the midst of her. And everything they did together? That sexual craving he developed for her? It was a baseline need imprinted on his mind, interwoven in his DNA like hunger or the need for sleep.
He was stupid for thinking he could leave her behind. Even more stupid for staying.
She looked different, though. Right now. How she looked, it wasn’t confident and sexy. Becky had that sad, sad face, but her expression said she was hurt and jaded. This was his fault. His and all the asshole men before him. Just another turd in the litter box of life, he told himself.
So be different, he told himself. Don’t be those guys. Don’t be that guy.
She sighed and said, “When you’ve already thrown so much of yourself away that there’s barely anything left to hate, what you’re desperate for most are small moments. Those morsels of happiness.” She gave him long eyes and a weighted sigh, then said: “And occasionally the company of a man, or a boy, who won’t treat you like shit or steal away that last bit of goodness in you. That’s what you were to me. Someone safe, someone enjoyable. But I think I put too much on you. Maybe you’re too young to understand. Jesus Christ, I didn’t know you were so young!”
“You were drunk or high a lot,” he said. “Never-the-less, I think I understand. But not like you. I’ve never been married, so how can I see things like you? I’m trying, though.”
“My marriage was good for a long time,” she said. She left it at that, as if saying any more might somehow dredge up a bevy of unwanted memories.
“I’m sorry for being a dick,” he said, breaking the silence. Moving in, he took her hand into his. He thought he saw her eyes sparkle in the dark, but she refused to cry. She was good at suffering.
A car door opened; a car door shut. Laughing echoing in the parking garage. A couple not at all flustered by problems. Walking hand in hand, they passed by him and Becky.
“Morning,” the man said. He was a playboy, and the girl with him…she had the look of a pay-as-you-go girlfriend. Not that he was judging.
“Morning,” Brayden replied. The hooker was attractive, but having dudes plow you day after day just sort of stamped out whatever natural beauty a girl once had. For a moment, he wondered how women could fake happiness so well. Then one look at Becky’s face, her expression, and he knew this was not something women enjoyed doing, it was merely a survival mechanism.
Eyes on her again. His full attention. He watched things moving fast through her gaze. Perhaps they were memories of all the ways she’d been let down, or hurt. The dying of dreams looked a hell of a lot worse than the memory of long dead dreams. Then something more fell through her eyes. This was something different, a memory she was hiding from. A memory she couldn’t seem to shake.
“I have a kid your age,” she finally admitted. “She’s her daddy’s girl and she won’t see me or return my calls. He’s successfully pitted her against me.”
Not a dead memory, but the feeling of dying. A girl rejecting a boy…manageable. Your own flesh and blood rejecting you? So much worse.
“Where does she live?”
“L.A. I’ve bee
n trying to call her all week, and tonight I got a text from her. It said she didn’t want to see me or talk to me, so stop trying. I got it earlier this evening.”
Now the tears spilled over and this woman, this sex symbol, this licentious creature that dragged things out of him he never knew existed, she became a mother. More than that, she became human. Not just some one dimensional object of his obsession. The reality Titan and Romeo didn’t warn him about was the depths of people, how there were so many defining layers to them, too many things to learn in a day, in a night, on a single date or a one-night stand. People satiating their sexual hunger…anyone with good lines and halfway decent game can do that. But really knowing someone? That’s what he wanted. Wasn’t it? To know what made a person who they were? Their delineating tragedies? Their hopes and fears and desires and flaws? That’s what he wanted to know. Yet here he stood, seeing the unvarnished insides of a meaningful, successful conquest, and it stung. Actually, it hurt like a son of a bitch.
He had trampled Becky’s heart. Made a mess of something fragile. Yet for some unfathomable reason, he wanted to know more. He needed to know more. About her life, how she came to be the way she was, what made her smile (for real), and what broke her. For the first time in his life, he thought he would forgo sex in favor of conversation. He wondered, what the hell is this?
Maturity, he decided. Perhaps it’s time.
2
They left the strip and drove several miles into the darker, less glamorous parts of the city. Her newish Chevy Malibu wasn’t a nice car, but it was all she could afford. He wondered what she would look like without makeup. He wondered about a lot of things involving her. This was a woman without a man, a mother without a child, another soul in the Vegas desert just trying not to get swallowed up and shit out by the miseries of such a life. He knew nothing of this world. As a future trust fund baby, he had never even had to pay a bill, much less scrape out a living. He had never been in love, had a child, then been left and rejected. His father would do anything for him, whereas Becky could do nothing for her child because her daughter wouldn’t have her.
