by Nikki Wild
Sherry scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Tell your boyfriend here he doesn’t scare me. And he’s paying for that dish. Also, bit of advice, he looks old enough to be your dad. Date a little younger, sweetheart.”
I pulled out my business card.
“You quite obviously have no idea who the hell I am,” I told her. “Here’s the thing. Me? I’m a fucking millionaire. My company either runs the finances on half this fucking city, or is about to buy the ones who do. And believe me, running everyone’s books comes with certain influence…”
I rose from my chair; I took her by surprise, snatching her palm and pressing the card inside.
“The guy who signs your checks? Show him this card, and ask him how well he knows the name ‘Damian Clarke’… And if you ever come into my sight, or speak to Chloe like that again, I can personally guarantee that you will never work above minimum wage in this goddamn town ever fucking again.”
Sherry swallowed, nodding quickly.
She didn’t even give Chloe a second glance as she rushed off towards the back, the card held tight in her hand.
I angrily took my seat once more, glad that the large group still hadn’t shown up yet. As I whipped my table napkin open, setting it in my lap, I turned to Chloe.
She was staring miserably out the window.
“Princess?” My head turned. “Are you okay? Look, I’m sorry about the angry display, I promise that I won’t do that again around you–”
Chloe shook her head, wiping at her eye. “No, that was okay. I knew you were making a point. But she’s right about me. It’s all true.”
“No, it’s not,” I insisted. “That was just some total bitch who had no right to speak to you like that, and she knows it.”
She sadly looked over at me. “Before this semester, I had a lot of great friends here. They made me happy, and they all liked me. When I was picking my classes, they all tried to talk me out of it. They knew I’d be too busy for them if I went through with it. But I thought I could just look at them through Facebook every so often, at least just until summer came.
“I hoped that might be enough…”
I thought on that for a moment. I didn’t want to insult her intelligence by claiming some cliché about her friends, even if it was true.
“Your roommate,” I noted. “Christa. You two have been friends for ages. What does she think about all this?”
Chloe sniffed quickly. “She doesn’t mind me being busy, either with school or you. But she sees me all the time, and I’ve made room for her now. You two are the honestly only people I really talk to in my life these days.”
That angle clearly wasn’t going to work.
“So, your friends are assholes,” I noted. “You know what? Fuck ‘em. If they’re unwilling to understand that your education and your career comes first, then they have no place in your life.”
She looked over at me with a smile. As she briefly sniffed again, I handed over my beverage napkin. “But that earlier bit, you only talking to Christa and me, that can’t be completely true. What about your father?”
Chloe looked even guiltier now.
Then it dawned on me.
“You two haven’t been talking?”
She shook her head. “Not often. I mean. I call him sometimes. He had always wanted me to go to school back home in Pittsburgh.”
“Carnegie Melon University,” I remembered, thinking back to how often he brought it up. “It’s true that Patrick always had a hard-on for you enrolling in our old alma mater…”
“He was really angry about it,” Chloe told me. “Especially when he found my acceptance letter, and I told him I’d turned them down.” She paused for a moment, reflecting on what must have been tough conversations. “Dad and I are on speaking terms now, sure. Even though he’s friendlier now, I don’t think he ever really got over it.”
“Your dad was always tough when it came to you,” I noted. “When your mom passed, you were all he had left. Patrick always wanted the very best for you.”
“Yeah, well, it was my choice,” she insisted, her voice trembling with anger. “That’s the whole freaking reason I chose a university in the next big city over. I just needed to get away from him and how stubborn he could be.”
“Don’t I believe it,” I agreed, thinking back to my own troubles with my former partner. “When he has his head set to something, he doesn’t like to accept a compromise…”
Chloe was clearly about to ask questions I didn’t want to particularly answer, but our server suddenly arrived and saved me.
“How is everything?” She asked cheerily.
We looked at our untouched plates.
“Delicious,” I sarcastically told her. “But I think we’re gonna take these to go. Can you bring us some boxes? Oh, and the check, too.”
“Certainly, Mr. Clarke!”
She ventured back off the way she came.
Chloe turned to me in confusion. “Wait, how did she know your name?”
The server pushed through a pair of saloon-style doors and into the restaurant’s kitchen area. Glancing towards the swinging door, I grew a smile at the sight of the terrified foodrunner, being told off by who looked to be the storeowner.
I recognized him as one of my firm’s clients.
“I suppose word travels fast…”
Chloe
Once Damian was in the driver’s seat, he turned to me and stroked my thigh for a moment.
“Where to now, babe?”
I shook my head. “I don’t care.”
His face was a sympathetic one. A small silence fell in the car as he turned forward, briefly losing himself in thought.
Thanks to Sherry’s unexpected arrival, it was hard to not feel like my entire night was ruined. She’d instantly found my weak spot and driven her vicious sword straight into it, twisting the blade with every word.
I took a deep, soothing breath, trying to push it all out of my head. “Can we just go back to your office?”
Damian tilted his head, still gazing forward. “If that’s what you want, of course.” He looked over at me. “That’s really where you want to go?”
My eyes glanced away. “I don’t know.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “It’s pretty clear that a session isn’t what you need tonight. We’re in a major city on a Saturday evening; there are other options at hand.”
“I’m sorry,” I tried to lamely apologize. “I guess I’m just not really in that ‘out on the town’ mood anymore.”
Damian pulled us into reverse.
“I can take you back to your school if that’s what you’d rather,” he told me as we swung out of our parking spot. “But I’m thinking that I might have something else in mind to save tonight, if you’ll humor me.”
The compulsion to decline struck me.
But I pushed the impulse down.
“Okay,” I slowly agreed. “Whatever you’ve got in mind, we can try it. I trust your judgment.”
“Well, in that case…”
Damian was a significantly calmer driver this time, taking us towards our mystery destination at an easy, almost leisurely pace. I kept my eyes out the window, but I quietly appreciated that his hand never left my thigh.
“Where are we going?” I eventually asked.
He winked at me playfully, a smile on his lips. “Well now, Princess… I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise, would I?”
“Maybe I want the surprise ruined.”
“This one? Well, I’m biased, but I think you’ll like it. Even more so if you don’t know where we’re going first…”
We drove into parts of downtown that were totally unfamiliar to me. But it wasn’t too much longer before Damian pulled us into a parking garage below a tall residential complex.
I grew curious when he stopped us in a special reserved spot with his name on a plaque. Damian withdrew me from the Mercedes and walked me to the elevator. When the lift paused at our floor and scooped us up, he dialed in the very top f
loor of the building.
Even with as bitter as I was about my former friend’s interference in my night with him, I still had the leftover brainpower to piece together what he was probably about to show me, and my heart lit up.
With a ding, the doors opened up into a foyer that just shouted Damian Clarke – complete with lights that slowly brightened with our presence.
Elegant, refined, and stocked with amenities, Damian’s rooftop apartment was a fantastic sight to behold. Modern art tastefully decorated the hallway wall, and the den furniture appeared to be restored and reupholstered antiques. It was the magnificent, satisfying view from the den’s far glass wall, however, that stunned me the most. The single pane of glass overlooked Philadelphia with a sense of awe and power.
I wondered if he wamts to test my sexual bravery on that glass wall, too – not that anyone could possibly see us way up here...
The view overcame that thought, and I slowly approached it in captivation, gazing out over the city. We were so high up above the street that it was unreal. I could see the gardens and houses atop nearby buildings, almost as tall as ours, that would have always remained a mystery to me.
And all of it was lit up against the night sky.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered.
“Isn’t it though?” His reply came as he strolled up behind me.
I glanced to the right, seeing something out of the corner of my eye. Enticingly, the fully stocked bar drew my attention.
“I’m afraid not,” Damian chastised me, taking hold of my wrist just before I could reach the bottles of wine and liquor. “You’re not quite old enough just yet.”
“Yeah, well… who’s gonna know?”
He slowly let go of my arm. “Babe, I didn’t bring you into my home to just get you utterly trashed on alcohol,” he told me.
“Then why did you bring me here?”
Damian took a step closer, sliding his hand along my hip. “The best way that I could think of to salvage our night was to do something utterly crazy and unexpected,” he replied earnestly. “So, the craziest and most unexpected thing I could think of was to bring you here.”
“To your home?”
He nodded. “Keep in mind, sweetheart, that I am very protective of this place. This is my lair; I come here for peace and contemplation at the end of every single day. The closest thing to an address that almost anybody else gets is a post office box a few blocks over. I only really ever have people over in case of an emergency.”
“Oh?” I tilted my head curiously. “Not big on the sexual conquests then, I take it?”
“Not my style,” he replied casually. “I mean, sure, I’ve had a few one-night stands… but the bigger I got here in town, the more of a meal ticket I became. After the girl or two tried to get pregnant off of me or blackmail me, I swore off women for a while.”
“You’re that big a deal here?” I shook my head in disbelief. “You can’t just walk into a club and pick someone up? I find that hard to believe.”
“The last year or two, no. I’d chat someone up for a while, hit the dance floor, and already have figured out a private AirBnb before some drunken asshole would recognize me and want an autograph, or to become a client. After all, Philadelphia loves their millionaires...”
He shook his head softly. “But, like I said. Sexual conquest was never really my style.”
“Could have fooled me,” I teased him.
Damian raised an eyebrow. “Princess, that’s where you’re the exception that proves the rule. You might have noticed that I’m more or less married to the job.”
I turned away, glancing around his condo as I began to walk slowly along the den. There were a few large paintings on the walls with beautiful brushwork that gripped me. “You know, I guess I haven’t really thought about your sexual history or anything before…”
Damian casually watched as I admired his condo. His expression was hard to read. “Does that make you uncomfortable?”
I paused, chuckling as I ran my hand along the top of one of his antique couches. “You’re an older man, Damian. Of course I expect you to have some history. Besides,” I turned to face him, “we got tested. Whatever your history might be, you’re clean, and that’s all that matters to me.”
If I didn’t know better, I would have said that he looked relieved.
Eager to close the distance between us, I walked across the room to him and slid my arms around his shoulders. He drew me into a deep, affectionate kiss as we held each other.
“The office is starting to get a little routine for my tastes,” I whispered between long, breathy kisses. “We should just start meeting here”
I instantly understood that was a bad idea.
Damian stiffened against my kiss, his demeanor turning cold and statuesque. I pulled back my face from his and realized that he was watching me quietly, his face a mask.
Oh shit.
“I didn’t mean that,” I told him quickly. “I just got a little too wrapped up in all of this… you bringing me here to your home, I mean… I guess I got the wrong idea.”
He turned away from me quietly.
“Damian…”
I watched his posture straighten as I spoke his name; he kept his back to me and sighed. “I’m sorry, babe. This was a terrible idea. I should have just dropped you back off at your school instead of trying to bring you here too quickly.”
“No, it’s totally fine,” I tried to reassure him. “I promise. This isn’t too quick for me. I mean, I’ve loved you all my life, I was hoping one day that–”
I gasped, pulling a palm over my lips.
Damian slowly turned, his eyes locking onto mine. “Wait. What did you just say?”
I shook my head.
He stepped closer. “Answer me.”
There was no going back now.
Sure, I could try to make up some excuse, or attempt to laugh off the slip of the tongue, but there was no point. I’d been lying to myself without realizing it, all this time.
I summoned every ounce of courage I had.
“I love you,” I told him. “When I was a kid, you were my first crush. All my teenage years, I fantasized about you. Now, after all this time,” I told him, pulling closer, “I have finally gotten to experience you. And you’ve been so incredible.”
Damian quietly studied me with his eyes. I saw affection in his gaze, but he wasn’t pulling me into a loving embrace or into a big damn movie kiss moment.
I smiled sadly. “Please say something.”
He stepped closer; his face was conflicted. Damian had a warm, caring look in his eyes as he smiled at me, but in that last second I felt something was wrong.
“Daddy…?”
Damian placed his hand on my shoulder.
“We should get you home, Chloe.”
Chloe
Two Weeks Later
Spring Break was the perfect excuse to get away from the total confusion of my life for a week.
I hadn’t heard a word from Damian since he’d sent me back home in an Uber. I’d called the day
One glance at my bank account meant that I had my pick of pretty much anywhere I wanted to go. That lifted my spirits, but then again… I didn’t want to just pick some distant, overcrowded beach and mindlessly party my tits off.
I needed to find solid ground.
And I knew exactly where to find it.
Getting my father on the line again took a few tries, but I was instantly relieved at the sound of his voice – even if he sounded surprised. I felt bad; I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I’d texted or called him.
“Baby? How are you? Everything alright?”
“Yeah, Dad,” I summoned a smile. “College is great. Everything’s great.”
“Glad to hear it, Buttercup,” he chuckled. That had been his little pet name for me ever since I was a kid, and I liked hearing it again. It brought me a little closer to home.
It was funny how talking to Damian about my
tenuous relationship with my father was what made me finally start thinking about contacting him again.
Better late than never, I suppose…
I realized that I’d faded out for a second. He was talking about his poker buddies for a moment, and how Steve still owed him half his pot from his last big win.
“Listen, Dad,” I interjected when he stopped for breath, “I was kinda thinking about coming back home for Spring Break… if that’s alright with you.”
“What?” He exclaimed. “Of course!”
I could hear the beaming in his voice, and I felt the knife twist a few more degrees.
“When is that, exactly?”
“In a couple of days… I’d leave Sunday night, come back the following weekend. I know it’s short notice, so if it’s not a good time for you–”
“Nah, that’s totally fine.”
“Awesome!” Relief filled my veins.
“…Actually.”
Well, until he said that.
“Actually what?”
My father hesitated. “Actually, I’m going to be out of town for the first few days that week. There’s a business opportunity I need to verify, something that could be big for the company…”
I was a little disheartened to hear that after putting myself out there again, but I knew that he was starting to feel the pinch on the business side of things. Something big could be exactly what he needed… and how could I fault him for that?
“Yeah, no problem,” I smiled sadly “I can swing by later in the week.
His chuckle came down the line.
“Oh, that’s not what I meant, Buttercup! Come on down! You’re just gonna have the house to yourself for the first half of the week, is all I meant. Promise you won’t throw any crazy college parties, and it’s all yours.”
“Promise,” I breathed in relief.
We chatted for another few minutes before he had to reluctantly take a business call, and we shared our I love yous.
