by C. L. Donley
Mya’s words chipped away at her ego.
It was entirely possible she was being played, but she couldn’t figure out why or to what end. Was this really some bizarro Misery re-enactment? Why wouldn’t he just be honest with her?
He was brutally so about their arrangement as it was. That and the volatile way he could melt her heart one moment and punch it the next had her wanting to pack her bags before it got any worse, damn the money.
But then…what would she do?
If she up and left him he’d resent her for sure, maybe go all power trip on her and blackball her around town.
He’s not like that, she tried to assure herself.
Don’t be your mother, she countered.
She was convinced that she simply couldn’t know for sure. She had no choice but to stay.
There were plenty of perks to keep her buoyant for another three weeks. Like his mouth, for one.
“Whatever,” Amara dismissed, feeling cold. “Slavery or none, I agreed to four weeks. Eyes on the prize, ladies.”
That evening they had another gourmet meal by candlelight, courtesy of a personal chef on loan to him from a mere millionaire, the owner of a small trendy airline. Nothing like stuffed duck breast to lift a girl’s spirits.
She did, however, eat her dinner in silence.
“You’re mad at me,” he suddenly said.
Sensitive Grayson was back, she thought.
Amara shrugged. “It’s not that deep,” she dismissed. “Just thinking about something Mya said today.”
“The friend that hates me.”
“That’s the one.”
“Enlighten me.”
She sighed. “You don’t wanna hear.”
“Your silence is frightening enough. Go ahead; I won’t break.”
“Basically… she keeps bringing this whole arrangement back to slavery.”
His big blue eyes were like planets in front of the candlelight. They were thoughtful.
“Isn’t slavery by definition unpaid?”
“Which is always Kim’s point,” Amara interjected, “but Mya is more looking at… the gestalt of it.”
He sat back in his chair. “Amara, your vocabulary gives me a boner.”
“See, that right there. Mya would kick your ass if she were here.”
He huffed a laugh, his mouth full of food.
“I shouldn’t be turned on by your intelligence?” he took a sip of wine as he looked at her, giving her the smolder. It wasn’t studied, it was real. Her eyes moved to his Adam’s apple, which she always found gross when they were too pronounced but his was beautiful.
Amara managed to continue, though she was now aggressively thinking about sex. “The implication is that an African American woman with a large vocabulary is sooo rare— ‘exotic’ to use your word— that to come across it causes your circuits to overload.”
“Is your friend also a virgin?” he psychically predicted.
Amara smirked. “As far as I know,” she admitted.
“You’re like a flock of geese,” he said smiling.
Amara laughed.
“There she is,” he said.
No, there you are, she thought. When he talked like that it felt like they were a couple. It was a sweet nanosecond that she tried not to savor.
“Oh, I’m not done, hotshot,” she challenged.
Grayson made a summoning motion with his hand.
“She really took issue with the idea of me walking around half naked every day.”
“Ah.”
“Because on some plantations slaves were only allotted a stark amount of clothing a year, and if they didn’t make it last then they were made to walk around half naked even in winter.”
“Frederick Douglass,” he said.
Amara looked at him, appreciative. She wanted to swipe everything off the table right then and there, and maybe she would have, but the chef and his two man crew were still there cleaning up.
“I’ve read a few books in my life, Amara,” he retorted, refusing to be flattered.
After a moment he continued.
“I don’t know what to say to that, or what you want me to say. I would say ‘You’re free to leave,’ but it’s not as though I feel the need to prove that I’m not, in fact, a slavemaster. Is that what you think of me?”
Aw man, now he was feeling guilty. He probably wouldn’t let her go down on him now like she wanted.
“It’s not about what I think of you, it’s about what I think of me,” she assured him.
Another silence.
“And if we’re being honest, I really can’t say ‘you’re free to leave,’ because contracts go both ways, Amara,” he blurted out, sounding agitated.
“No one said anything about leaving,” she eased. It dawned on her that he was very sensitive about others’ opinion of him. He had a panicky energy, and he was quiet. He seemed to be wondering how long she’d been feeling this way, and it was quickly becoming exaggerated.
“I didn’t peg you for the type that’s constantly bringing up slavery,” he couldn’t help adding.
Yikes. He was turning on her.
Amara’s eyes went wide. She wasn’t worried about his feelings anymore. Which was perhaps a good thing because gentleness seemed to agitate him further.
“Well, first of all, I don’t, and secondly, if you had your listening ears on, I said Mya brought it up, not me. Of course, I like, that you like, that I’m naked all the time. It makes me feel very sexy.”
The cleaning commotion in the kitchen seemed to get louder as if to remind them that other people were privy to their conversation.
His demeanor softened. She continued.
“But do I think it could be construed by someone on the outside as a little creepy? Yes. I mean, I get slavery was a long time ago, but it’s a bit like if your great great grandma got kidnapped by Pennywise the clown alien when she was a kid. Sure it was a long time ago, but if clowns kept coincidentally showing up in your gutters generations later, it would be stupid not to be suspicious.”
He was silent again for a spell, calm again as he said, “I’m Pennywise the clown alien?”
“No, slave owners are the clown alien. You would be one of the subsequent clowns that followed,” Amara laughed.
“One that is, supposedly, not related at all to the initial alien clown incident,” he clarified.
“Right.”
He looked across the table at her after a thoughtful moment.
“…You’re right, that’s totally sketch,” he said. Amara giggled.
“Now imagine said clown was offended to his core that you would ever suspect he was there to eat your fear.”
“Your entire life is a psychological thriller right now,” he sympathized with a grin.
“And that’s why Mya hates you,” she smiled.
“Now I hate me,” he said.
“Aww,” she laughed, covering his hand with her own.
When he looked down at her hand, she quickly withdrew it, focusing on the task of pouring more wine into her glass. He watched her carefully as he said, “We were gonna venture out, eventually. Obviously. It just… snowballed so quickly.”
“Can’t we just… get whisked away in a helicopter somewhere?” she suggested, remembering Mya’s words.
“Where? I have 500 million connects, globally. I’ve always wanted to go to Antarctica, but it doesn’t seem like your kind of place.”
“Oh my God, why do rich white people love Antarctica,” she half-joked.
“And I’ve got one day to finish this confounded speech, but you walking around half naked is incredibly distracting—”
“Would you let me see the damn speech,” she insisted.
Grayson didn’t want Amara seeing his heartfelt, idealistic words about stopping bullying forever on planet Earth, because he was sure Amara saw down to his marrow like an x-ray, and it was excruciating. In fact, he was never more aware of that fat ugly teenager with bad acne than when she
was looking at him. But, he simply had no strength left to turn down another pair of eyes.
“Fine,” he said.
Besides the rearranging and fleshing out of a few paragraphs, Amara had to do very little to Grayson’s speech. He was an eloquent, learned man no doubt about that. But it was a bit too clinical to be about the optimistic future of a world without bullying, and it contained nothing of his sense of humor, which explained why he struggled with it so long. Once he was satisfied with it he sent it off to his assistant, and his mind was free to focus on… other things.
They had sex on the terrace in front of a fire that wasn’t warranted in summer, but it was romantic, and like she predicted, he’d stopped her when she tried to give him oral sex. They lay under the duvet from the bed, for which the weather was also too hot.
“I wish I could be there to see you give the speech,” she told him.
“You can watch it online,” he consoled her, his eyes closed.
“Yeah…” she replied.
“You’d just make me nervous,” he made the excuse.
Amara was silent.
He was starting to hear her voice in his head.
“The story will go spiraling out of control if you show up there,” he appealed to reason.
“Because it’s doing so well now,” she dug sarcastically.
“We’re not trying to improve it; we’re trying to choke the life out of it,” he protested. Did she think he was purposely holding back on a better solution? Why did he care so intensely what she thought about what he thought, he wondered.
“Only problem is, the more you deny something is happening, the more you fuel it,” she offered.
“Is there a better idea in my future?” he sniped.
“As a matter of fact, smartass, there is,” she shot back.
A potent rush of blood hit his groin.
“Hit me,” he said, using her vocabulary.
“Give the people what they want.”
It sounded like a terrible idea of course, but he played along.
“I’m listening…”
“You’re a billionaire, dating one of your lowest employees, who happens to be black. When everyone knows blondes from other countries are your m.o.”
The fire danced along her sharp features. She tucked her hair behind her ear adorably.
When he was stone-faced, she continued, “People are allowed to be intrigued. It’s kind of a cool story if we’re being honest. People always equate this type of thing to Cinderella.”
She stopped to see if he was following her, but apparently, he wasn’t, because he’d locked onto a single word, the fourth one she’d said.
“‘Dating…’” he quoted.
Amara sighed and rolled exasperated eyes, “In the public’s eyes, you know what I mean.”
“And when it’s over in three weeks I’ll never live it down,” he predicted.
It seemed to her that he was bashing her over the head with it.
“Not if they’re already tired of it before then,” she posited.
“So I should just feed you to the press?” he concluded.
“Forget the press; you’re the CEO of Webster for goodness sake. You should be the poster child for oversharing.”
“…Post every waking moment on Webster?” he said.
Amara nodded. “Share our half-eaten breakfast.”
“Water directly from the source,” he agreed, the idea slowly dawning.
“Blow those grainy photos into oblivion; they’ll be worthless.”
“They’d have no choice but to go away. Maybe not completely but…” He looked down at Amara, and she thought he was going to call her a genius, but instead, he said, “You know, if I weren’t so distracted, I would’ve thought of this myself.”
Amara stroked the fine hairs of his arm which was cradling her head.
“Jeez, you’re sexist too?” she ribbed, smiling.
Eleven
Chapter 11
A week into their arrangement, Grayson realized his second mistake, which was carrying on their affair at his personal estate.
If it were anyone else, there would be no problem, because she would’ve likely spent very little time there. But they would’ve had no privacy anywhere else, thanks to his first mistake. And now that they’d been holed up there, his house was covered in her essence.
Her smell after a bath bomb, the floral scent that usually nauseated him but smelled like the garden of Eden on her. Her eclectic music playlist wafting through the kitchen while she trashed it making breakfast, or baking bread, which she was quite good at, or venturing on some elaborate french dish she’d never before dared to attempt. It never looked like the picture, but it always tasted great. The sound of her trying to get his smart house to talk back to her like it was an actual person, and her curse-filled rants as she failed, most of the time. She had inadvertently grown on him.
Moving on from her was now going to be exponentially more difficult.
She roamed the house like a half-naked ghost while he worked, because an entirely work free vacation was wishful thinking.
Sometimes she sat quietly in his room with her headphones in, listening to podcasts or going down pop culture rabbit holes, watching videos on MeTv.
But he did often take breaks. Erotic ones.
She liked to message him wild things on Webster while they were in the same room.
He would look over at her, and she would be watching something, looking completely oblivious. Then he would send something back that would shock his poor saintly mother into the afterlife, and he felt her energy heighten behind him. Sometimes they would wait and let the tension linger. Most times they didn’t.
Amara was working too. She became their social media czar, and it was indeed a full-time job. Documenting their every mundane moment, posting and tagging and posing as both of them. Her attempts to post things in his voice almost never failed to make him laugh.
The plan to become the nauseating couple on Webster got rid of the feeding frenzy, but it created another problem. Apparently, there was a celebrity couple vacuum, and Grayson Davis and Amara Riley were filling the void.
By the end of the second week, the media had given them the nickname “Gramara.”
Grayson was none too pleased.
“I was really rooting for ‘Amayson,’ Amara said from her side of the bed. Grayson was up working at his desk.
“It’s getting away from us,” he prophesied.
“Let the beast do its job,” said Amara sleepily.
She was starting to get used to her wardrobe. She was wearing a fancy satin pale pink dress that she thought would make a decent nightgown. Turns out it actually was a nightgown.
That night was to be their first public appearance. A movie premiere that he’d planned on skipping, but it was a convenient way to gauge the success of their social media experiment. Plus, once Grayson saw Amara’s face light up at the suggestion of dinner and a movie, he knew it was going to happen.
Grayson was a nervous wreck.
“There are a lot of weirdos out there,” he alluded.
There had already been five Webster pages dedicated to killing Amara Riley that had to be taken down.
Five seemed like a lot to her.
Grayson had a pretty intense row with Dale on the phone about it, who insisted they didn’t have grounds to press charges after talking to the lawyers.
“Amanda was probably behind at least one of those,” Amara joked. Grayson hadn’t laughed.
She was afraid he would change his mind on letting them leave.
“You said you hired security,” she reminded him.
Grayson sighed and lowered his head.
“If I would’ve known this would turn my life into a circus…”
Amara was silent.
She wasn’t worth the hassle.
It’d been awhile since she’d heard a callous word from him, but when she did it was always about the “arrangement.” He seemed to r
egret it endlessly, that is when he wasn’t reaping the benefits.
She, however, was having the hiatus of a lifetime. She was sort of itching to get back to her life, oddly. She planned to keep her lifestyle virtually the same while she invested the crap out of her money and she was excited about it. She came by it relatively easily and tried to use that attitude to keep her in the mood to take risks and not just hoard it. Of course, she would diversify between high and low risk. She had her eye on real estate for the high-risk investment. Yes, she did hope that he would still be in her life, if only as friends. But in the event Grayson made a calculated attempt to avoid her for life, she wanted to fill her world with enough excitement that she would be fine.
The energy in the room had plummeted while Amara was lost in thought, and she wondered if he thought she was angry at him. As Grayson kept his back to her, she felt his contrition about the stinging words, his inward struggle between making amends and staving off emotion. Should she put him at ease?
“If you would’ve just put the damn top up,” she accused, reminding him of their first kiss.
He swirled around in his chair with a glare, a grin of recollection on his mouth.
Sweet mother of mercy, he was a sex monster.
But then again, so was she, she was beginning to notice.
She shot him a look brimming with attitude and burning through him from all the way across the room.
She looked pissed, so he wanted her.
“Come here,” he said, as was his custom.
“No,” she simply said, getting out of bed. “I’m taking a shower.”
“We have an arrangement,” he reminded her from his chair, ratcheting up his rich jerk routine. He attempted to clasp her hand as she passed but she snatched it away, upping the ante.
“Fuck the arrangement, I’m dirty, and I need a shower,” she stated matter of factly, rounding the corner to the bathroom. Her heavy satin nightgown quickly fell with the slight pivot of her bronze shoulders.
Opening the glass shower door, she shut on the water with a smirk. She fiddled around with the temperature a moment, and before she could turn around Grayson had snuck up behind her and dug his long fingers into her soft middle.
