The Blind Date

by Alice Ward

  I started to speak again, but the hand remained up, and the man called to me again. I couldn’t just let him linger, or else my presentation would be ruined.

  The light from the camera was shining into my eyes, blinding me from getting a good view. I strained to see the source of the voice, but my eyes remained unfocused. “Yes?”

  “Hi. I’m so glad you’re presenting today. Can I tell you what I would like to see?”

  I frowned. “Yes. All right, go ahead.”

  “I’d like to see your tits.”

  More murmurs in the crowd. I looked around. This couldn’t be serious. Who the hell was this guy, and why wasn’t someone coming forward to remove him from the auditorium?

  “Can you show them to us?” he continued.

  The more I squinted at him, searching through the shadows, the blurrier it got. I turned to look at the podium for someone to help me, but I was alone on the stage. “Could someone please remove this gentleman from the auditorium?” I asked, hoping to see one of the other doctors who’d organized the event.

  Then I realized that several of the people in the front row were nodding as if his question was perfectly legitimate. They craned their necks to get a better view around the podium.

  They wanted to see my tits.

  I started to cover my chest with my crossed arms, but when I looked down, that’s not what I was doing. No, I was unbuttoning my blouse. I easily tore it open, then unhooked my bra, letting it fall to the stage. The cool air braced against my bare skin, and my nipples peaked instantly.

  People nodded as if what I was doing made perfect sense. I stood in front of them, topless, as my supervisor, Dr. Irwin, licked his lips and said, “Don’t stop there. Take it all off.”

  I found myself, without wanting to, unzipping my skirt. It felt wrong, but deliciously right, because dammit, I was horny. I let it fall to the floor, then slid my thong down and stepped out of that too. Now I was just there, in my sensible high heels.

  Suddenly, the room was filled with men. Leah was gone, as were my friends. One of the men let out a wolf whistle. I looked down and realized I was now touching myself, running my hands over my breasts. Both of my nipples were engorged, and as I lowered my hand between my legs, I realized I was soaking wet. I started to rub my clit ferociously, getting hotter as the men’s cheers grew louder. They started to chant, “Come for us! Come for us!”

  “She’s ready for you,” Dr. Irwin said to the man in the back of the room, the one who had started all of this.

  “Of course she is. She’s always ready to fuck,” he said, striding down to me. He already had his pants open, his monster cock protruding from the opening, wagging toward me as he climbed the stairs. Zachary.

  He turned the podium to give the audience of cheering men a better look. Then, he came at me from behind, running his hands up my waist, cupping my breasts. He bent me over the podium and slowly entered me from behind as I gasped and swayed against him. I pushed my backside up until I was flush against him, his cock buried deep within me.

  He pulled out and pushed back in, slapping my ass. “You have a fucking perfect ass,” he murmured into my ear. “I’m going to fuck you hard.”

  “This is really going to help the cause,” my supervisor called to me as Zachary pounded into me. “I’m giving you a promotion!”

  The men only cheered louder. For some reason, I felt proud of myself, as if I was giving a stirring presentation that would change school lunches forever.

  I screamed, I moaned, I came, and came, and came.

  I woke with a start, panting like an animal, twisted in my blankets, covered with a sheen of sweat. I was still coming, shuddering in waves of slowly lessening intensity.

  Oh, sure, let time pass. You’ll forget him eventually!

  What a dumbass I’d been. No, the dreams about Zachary were only getting longer, more erotic, kinkier, and more… real. They’d started with him coming to the edge of the bed, touching my cheek, looking at me with those intense emerald eyes. But they’d evolved, and soon we were fucking in the Great Hall of the Met, in cabs, on the city street, everywhere. Sometimes he had me tied up, sometimes we had an audience, but one thing was always the same… he made me come, thunderously, every time.

  I laid there, spasming inside, my body still wracked with the subsiding waves of orgasm. The boy had made me sex obsessed. To think, a week ago I hadn’t thought it was possible for me to achieve orgasm. Now, I was doing it just as easily as I breathed.

  All I had to do was think of him.

  Cursing myself for ever deciding to let fate take the wheel, I rolled over in bed and looked at the clock. Six a.m. Time to start the day.

  It’d nearly been a week. Fate had made its decision. The Zachary Vaughn chapter of my life was over. The end.

  Tell that to my subconscious. It felt like he lived there, in my dreams, ready for me to fall asleep so he could taunt me.

  I couldn’t even begin to pretend it didn’t sting like a mother. Maybe that was why I hadn’t bothered to even google his name. Because that, at least, was something I could control.

  I had something to distract me, today, at least. The open forum on school lunches was this morning. The old Juliana probably would have had nightmares last night about giving a presentation in the nude. Instead, I’d had that crazy sex dream, pumped up with Viagra. Whatever it was. It felt so real, I didn’t know how I’d ever face Dr. Irwin again. How I’d ever make it through my presentation without getting the urge to undress.

  Oh god, please don’t let me undress.

  I needed to practice. Just to make sure I didn’t subconsciously do anything while standing up there that could potentially get me fired. Or unwittingly posted onto Pornhub.

  I packed my presentation supplies, and as I was taking the subway to the Children’s Hospital, group texted Leah as well as my friends Avis and Bianca, who were also nutritionists at the center with me. Avis and Bianca were both working at the center, and Leah was in Vegas, so none of them would be there. No, it would just be a sea of strange faces. So I asked my friends if I could get online and present to them, just to make sure I had it down.

  They all agreed. Leah texted me privately at what must have been five in the morning, her time, and said, Why, what’s up?

  I didn’t want to tell her about my dream. It was all too embarrassing. I texted, I just need all the help I can get.

  My heart was going a million miles an hour when I got to the Children’s Hospital. I checked in with the event organizers, then asked for a room so I could practice. They put me in a tiny room in the back of the auditorium where they kept extra supplies. I opened my laptop and started a group chat with my three friends. They were already in there, waiting for me.

  “Thanks, guys!” I said to them when I got on, smiling and waving. “I’m just so nervous.”

  “You’ll do fine!” Avis said, ever the cute cheerleader. She was just a year older than me, had come from California, and didn’t have a mean bone in her body.

  Bianca was the grandmother of my friends. She could be a little stodgy and blunt. I knew I could count on her to give it to me straight. The two did a good job of offsetting each other.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “Now, just imagine me walking up to the podium. And here goes.”

  I took a deep breath. Don’t undress, don’t undress, don’t undress, I chanted to myself as I began.

  I finished, exactly twelve minutes later, to their polite applause. “Now, I’ll open the floor to questions.” And I will not call on anyone who even sounds remotely as sexy as Zachary.

  “That was fantastic!” Avis said. “I couldn’t even think of a way to do it better! You’ll knock ‘em dead!”

  Bianca said, “Don’t read from your cue cards so much. Look up from the podium now and then.”

  I nodded. “Right. Okay.”

  I admitted that I probably had been reading from the cue cards a lot of the time. At least I hadn’t taken off my clothes. That was
a good thing.

  Leah said, “It was fine the first hundred times I heard it.” She was exaggerating, after all, I’d only put together the PowerPoint a few days ago. But yes, I had gone on and on like a broken record about this subject. I opened my mouth to apologize as she added, “It’s great, girl. You’ll slay them.”

  “Right.” I exhaled slowly, wishing I could just stay in there with their kind faces for the rest of the day. But I couldn’t. I checked my phone. The forum was about to start. I waved at the screen. “Bye, guys, and thanks! Wish me luck!”

  The screen went dark. I packed it up, took my flash drive with my presentation in my hand, and closed my eyes, praying I could get through the next hour unscathed. Then I smoothed out my cashmere sweater and slacks — I’d purposely worn something different from what I was wearing in the dream, just in case I got any ideas — and stepped outside the room.

  The presenters were already congregating in the hallway outside the auditorium as guests began to arrive. I noticed Ella Greer, the woman who was organizing the event and waved to her.

  “Hello, Juliana,” she said to me with a smile as I greeted her in the hall. “Are you all set?”

  I nodded. “As set as I’m going to get,” I said brightly, trying to push away the nerves that were threatening to tangle my vocal chords. I handed her the flash drive with my presentation.

  “Well, this is going to be one of our biggest forums yet,” she said enthusiastically. “We have a thousand people who RSVP’d to be here in person, and would you believe, another ten thousand from around the country will be joining us via closed caption television.”

  I swallowed. Eleven thousand people. Holy. Cow.

  “Like I’m sure you’ve read, today you’re going to hear lots of viewpoints, some that may be in direct conflict with what you’re arguing. But that’s the reason why we have these conversations. To open up the line of communication and make people aware of other views.”

  I nodded. I knew there’d be other people here who didn’t share my viewpoint. I knew that things could get heated in these debates. But as far as I was concerned, there was only one viewpoint that mattered in this issue. The right one. Mine.

  “Shall I introduce you to some of the other presenters who will be on the panel with you?” she asked.

  “Yes. Thank you.” My voice quivered as I followed her. I needed to stop that and remember the children. They were depending on me.

  She led me to the group of presenters. I shook hands with a tall, gray-haired lady named Dr. Scarborough, who was the head of pediatric endocrinology, and a man named Dr. Flange, who was a clinical nutritionist. They were on my side, I knew, so I smiled warmly at them. Then she led me down the line, to two men dressed in suits.

  “These men are major suppliers,” she explained, her voice low. I could tell she was secretly on my side. I mean, who wouldn’t be? “They provide the food that makes up most of our school lunches. Franklin Marsh from Marsh Distributors, and the CEO of Yum! Foods, Alexander Wideshall. Marsh is better known for their pizzas, and Yum, of course, specializes in ethnic-based foods and revolutionized the Taco Tuesday that most of our schools have adopted. This is Juliana Hurley, a nutritionist at Healthy Steps, who specializes in treating young people.”

  They were cordial, but I shook just the tips of their hands. Tacos and pizza, two of the worst offenders, right behind the packaged desserts and snack cakes that were sold in vending machines. Jerks.

  “Oh, and of course, to keep things even. Three per side,” she said, looking down the hallway, seeming perplexed. “We have another individual who is a supplier, somewhere… oh, there he is!”

  I turned and… oh, my god.

  This wasn’t happening.

  I came face-to-face with him.

  Zachary.

  “Mr. Vaughn!” she trilled, sounding like a schoolgirl with a crush. She was clearly on his side. “Come meet our other panelists!”

  At first, I thought my eyes were deceiving me, that I was so obsessed with him that I was seeing his face on somebody else’s body. But as he came closer and his face didn’t change, my knees locked, my palms dripped, and my throat went dry.

  Dressed in a three-piece suit and carrying an expensive looking briefcase, he strolled up to me, leaking nothing from his expression. He offered me his hand smoothly, and those green eyes bored straight into my soul, doing a tap dance on my insides. Suddenly, the urge to undress was back.

  I reached out to take his hand but stopped as Ms. Greer said, “Zachary Vaughn, Vaughn Industries. Famous for, among other things, the most popular snack cake in the country, the Heigh-di-Ho!”

  My hand fell back to my side.

  How could I shake the hand of the devil himself?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Zachary

  It’d been over a week since I’d been with Jewel. I’d resigned myself to thinking I’d have to forget her, move on. Obviously, I couldn’t roam the streets of Queens aimlessly, hoping I’d catch her while putting out her trash, or hang out in front of Ugolino and His Sons, hoping she’d come back to the scene of our first date. I had a company to run.

  So I had no choice.

  As much as I hated it, the only option was to move on.

  It was easier said than done. Of course, I thought about that night. I thought even more about it now that I knew it wouldn’t be repeated. I thought about going out, finding another woman to replace her, but it seemed damned pointless. I knew I’d just compare whoever she was to Jewel, just like I’d compared that escort.

  It’d taken me thirty-two years of my life to find a woman to captivate me. What if I went another thirty-two years before I found another one?

  And now it was a week later, with a whole weekend looming. Before, I’d looked forward to my weekends. Now, I felt oddly uninterested by the idea of doing what I normally did — going out to a gala, drinking too much with Gavin, and carrying on the same old shit that left me with an empty wallet and a hangover.

  To make matters worse, I had a shit-stupid open forum on obesity or something to attend.

  The hospitals pulled this shit all the time on us. They invited us to be their “special guests” so a bunch of assholes in white coats could tell us how much we were destroying the fabric of America with our fatty foods. But the fabric of America was capitalism. After World War II, when sugar rationing ended, my grandfather had come up with a product that people wanted. They bought it. We’d sold four billion packages of snack cakes this year alone, and we didn’t hold a gun to people’s heads to get them to buy. They did it simply because they loved the stuff. If they wanted to curb obesity, how about if we encouraged people to take personal responsibility and moderate what they eat themselves? This was America, for god’s sake. Not some socialist country where the government told us what to eat.

  That was my general message. And I’d stuck to it every time I spoke at these things. Besides, Vaughn Industries provided one million free school lunches to Manhattan’s public school system this year alone. Free school lunches, the cost of which, over ten million dollars when all was said and done, was paid for by us. We were not the bad guy.

  Even though that’s what they made us out to be.

  The place was stuffy with people arriving for the forum. I’d gone out to get a breath of air, and when I came back, I saw Ms. Greer waving to me from down the hall.

  As I approached her, my step faltered.

  Standing beside her, looking so damn sweet in a soft pink sweater that outlined her perfect tits, was no other than my Jewel.

  This had to be a joke. Or a fucking miracle. I realized my face was transforming into a smile of unbridled joy as I approached, and stifled it, just in case we were on candid camera.

  Greer beckoned to me. “Mr. Vaughn! Come meet our other panelists! This is Juliana Hurley…”

  Her eyes widened, and there she was. My beautiful, sweet, now vaguely astonished Juliana. Her name was Juliana, not Jewel. Of course. No wonder I hadn’t bee
n able to find her online.

  And she wasn’t a professional escort. I knew it. She wouldn’t have gotten an invitation to be a panelist here if she didn’t have something to do with the school system and its lunches. But the first time Ms. Greer went over her qualifications, I was too busy gawking to register what she’d said.

  “I’m sorry. What did you say Miss Hurley did?” I said in my most controlled voice.

  No, she was…

  No. Don’t tell me…

  My mind whirled as Ms. Greer finished, “a nutritionist with Healthy Steps, specializing in treating children with eating disorders.”

  Something hit me hard in the gut. No, she wasn’t a professional escort. She was something far worse. My mortal enemy. A soldier for the dark side.

  Fuck.

  So what else could I do? I extended my hand, knowing that when I touched her fingers, I’d want to keep going and touch a hell of a lot more than that. I’d slept with the enemy before. Sometimes it made things a hell of a lot more interesting. And I could tell by the way her nipples started to press out against her sweater, that she was thinking of it too.

  Greer said, “This is Zachary Vaughn, Vaughn Industries. Famous for, among other things, the most popular snack cake in the country, the Heigh-di-Ho!”

  Her astonishment morphed in an instant. It went straight into disgust in two seconds flat. She stared at my extended hand and didn’t offer her own.

  “Mr. Vaughn.” Her words were icy, clipped.

  It told me everything I needed to know. Not only were we on opposite sides of the fence. We were in a battle to the death.

  I pulled my hand back, ran it through my hair. “Nice to meet you too.” I couldn’t keep the teasing lilt out of my voice as she backed away from me.

  The forum was beginning, so Ms. Greer had us line up to go onto the stage, where we’d be sitting at a long table. She lined me up behind Jewel, so close that I could smell her hair, cleanly scented with whatever shampoo she’d used.

  I leaned down, wondering what to say. Sorry I didn’t contact you, but I thought you were an escort sounded a little too harsh. “Hey. I tried to—”