Masochist: A Contemporary Young Adult SciFi/Fantasy (Swann Series Book 4)

by Schow, Ryan

  “I keep wondering how bad it has to be for a person to choose suicide,” he told his father. A lot of people come to Las Vegas to suicide themselves. After what Maggie did, as quiet and unhappy as he usually seemed, he couldn’t help wondering if he was going to end up like that, too. “Did I say she was raped?” he asked in a faraway voice.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Yeah.”

  His father took a moment to consider this before saying, “Is there anything I can do?”

  What he was really asking was if Brayden needed money, or if his son wanted him to investigate the music executive. Lloyd James, when given a task, was a pit bull of a man in that he refused to leave something like rape and suicide unanswered for. Brayden wanted neither. He was just talking, not even because he needed to be heard.

  All Brayden really wanted was to check the evening news and maybe the L.A. Times to see what got said when Demetrius and Bryn Giardino’s shot bodies were discovered. And he wanted to know the moment the cops found Giardino’s computer files containing all those desecrated girls. Brayden prayed the detectives on the case would get so bogged down in suspects they would just rule it a murder-suicide and be done with it.

  “I’m at the Wynn right now,” he said to his father’s question. “I guess I’m running a little low on money.”

  “It would be great to see you,” his father said. “Your mother misses you.”

  “Mother or step-mother?”

  “Both.”

  Brayden flipped on the flat panel television to the local news and muted it. If there was anything about that dead scumbag and his homicidal/suicidal wife, it would be on all the networks. Which it was not. In that moment, nothing about them was even known.

  The thing about high-profile murder/suicides was they wore you out because, once released, they hit the radio, the newspapers, the TV, the social media, everywhere.

  Mass media overkill.

  The big unknown was Abby’s blood. The big unknown was how much time the police would spend on all the unanswered questions when the guy killed by his wife was found to be raping teenage talent for a living.

  This could be an open-and-shut case if the cops were horrified enough.

  Or they could dig for the truth without reservation or prejudice, which he hoped they wouldn’t do. At this point, anything could happen. Not that he was scared. He wasn’t.

  Not yet, anyway.

  He just didn’t want this blowing back on Abby. It was a brave thing she did, trying to avenge her friend. Admirable beyond measure, in his book.

  His father cleared his throat and Brayden snapped out of it. “I want to be alone for awhile, you know?” Brayden said. “With my thoughts.”

  “I’ll wire some money into your account,” Lloyd announced.

  Brayden practically fell into one of the white chairs at the pedestal table. He felt weak, totally drained from so much driving. From the mental strain of the last few days. For a moment, all that he wanted was to let his body acclimate to the change of scenery. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, couldn’t help thinking about the past.

  Astor Academy to Las Vegas to Palo Alto to Los Angeles back to Palo Alto back to Vegas. He felt worse than exhausted. No more travel. The furthest he was willing to go in the next few days was maybe the bathroom, and if he felt like it, downstairs to one of the Wynn’s various nightclubs.

  There was XS and Surrender; there was Tryst. All amazing clubs. And the women, they were off-the-chart beautiful. Romeo and Titan took him there before. He had the best time.

  Thinking of being with other women made him wonder if he and Abby would ever get together. They were so close, but he was officially trapped in the dreaded “friend zone.” He could see her naked and she could see him naked, they could plan a murder together and nearly die, but they’d never have sex and she’d never be in love with him. This thought alone had him thinking about going downstairs and losing himself in someone who would never matter.

  “Brayden?”

  “Sorry, dad. You should see this view out here. It’s amazing.” The way he said it was the same way guys in drug movies said it when they were so hung over the next day they had to pick their face up off the floor just to breathe.

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “I really appreciate how you’re always taking care of me, dad. How you’re always doing nice things for me.”

  “Will twenty-five grand get you through the summer?”

  “Yeah, that’ll be just fine.”

  “I’ll make it thirty.”

  “That’s too much.”

  “Nonsense,” Lloyd said.

  The thing about Brayden’s father was, he was raised on a cattle farm in Texas. Brayden’s grandparents had money but they never used it for luxury. The old man was a hick through and through. His father only happened into the oil industry by his family’s association with the nearby Bush family. Lloyd left cattle for oil and never looked back. He loved the trade, but Brayden—like his dad—longed for a different future. Still, that didn’t mean Lloyd wanted to withhold luxury from Brayden the way it was withheld from him and his siblings. That’s why he was so giving.

  “I love you, man,” his father said. “Be safe. And call me if you need anything else.”

  “Love you, too, dad. And thanks…for everything.”

  They hung up the phone and Brayden slowly but efficiently slid right back into bed, and into an even deeper state of despondency. Eventually he pushed the button to close the drapes and the room once again fell into complete darkness. He shut his eyes, went to sleep. It wasn’t until just after three that afternoon that he opened his eyes again. And by then he told himself it was time to get his fake ID and head downstairs for afternoon cocktails.

  3

  Day game. It’s not exactly pick-up 101. Having day game is you as a pick-up artist taking your skills to the next level. Picking up women during the day at places like the grocery store, book stores, or the mall, it’s harder than you think. It isn’t like a nightclub where you use the cover of music and darkness to your advantage, or as a means of hiding the embarrassment of being rejected. Guys with day game, they don’t need wingmen. They go it alone.

  And the one thing they know—and they know this with absolute certainty—is you don’t just walk up to a woman and ask for her number. And asking for a date? When you’re a complete stranger? Talk about premature. Talk about putting the cart before the horse.

  Dudes with day game, their confidence is rock solid. It has to be. These guys, they weren’t born with skills or confidence, and chances were, when they first got into it, they had zero game. Chances are they were just AFC’s (average frustrated chumps) dying to elevate their skills. So they earned said skills one blistering rejection at a time. Just like he would earn it. Right now.

  Tonight.

  The more Brayden thought about it, the more he was like, what’ve I got to lose anyway? It was only a matter of crawling his worthless ass out of bed.

  As he laid there, in his ridiculously expensive room with the tall drapes closed and darkness his best friend, he figured he could do two things: one, he could get absolutely piss drunk at the downstairs bar, or two, he could quit being such a sad-sack-Sally and pull himself together. After nearly an hour of personal deliberation involving berating, chastising, name calling and a deep and lasting tirade of self-loathing, he decided to quit being such a bitch and just go.

  “Get up,” he muttered.

  Kick the legs out of the blankets. Push the blankets to the bottom of the bed, sit up. Move forward, slide your butt off the bed. Feet on the floor. Stand up, go to the bathroom.

  “Jesus,” he muttered.

  He walked into the bathroom, pulled out his hair trimmer, buzzed his head leaving only a shadow of hair. The glass shower was beautiful. The tiles inviting. He sloughed off his clothes and took the longest, hottest shower he could stand. Maybe he cried about his life. Maybe he cried thinking of what he did in Santa Monica, what
he saw when Bryn Giardino blew her head off, what he felt when he was naked with Abby. He thought about being with her, about Christian Swann telling him he had to leave, about Abby taking Rebecca and leaving without saying good-bye. The hole in his stomach, it made the state of Montana seem small by comparison.

  He shut off the shower, dried off and then got dressed. He stood in front of the mirror, wasted, staring at his reflection. “You suck,” he said to the face in the mirror.

  From his overnight bag, he pulled out his eyebrow pencil, used it to both darken (and strengthen) his eyebrows and to lightly line his lower eye lids. When you’re a straight guy using makeup to make yourself more attractive to women, artistry as well as subtlety is critical. Too much and you’re going to look like you’re into other dudes; not enough and what’s the point?

  When he was done, he took a deep breath, appraised himself, smiled. For a second, he actually felt good about the way he looked. His nose was perfect, his chin masculine, his face chiseled into something handsome.

  All thanks to Abby.

  Titan and Romeo would be surprised. Perhaps even impressed. And Aniela? His previous wingman (rather, wingwoman) with that lovely face and that intoxicating body? Mmmmm. He knew exactly what her reaction would be. A vision of the busty Polish beauty sprung to mind. Her striking face, those big kissable lips, that curvy body, the way her breath smelled like candy. She would be so proud.

  “Time to go,” he said.

  He put on his pants, slipped on his best button-up long sleeve shirt, stepped into his Kenneth Cole shoes, then did the once-over. He opened one more button, checked himself in the mirror, then shook his head.

  Yes.

  The thing about him was, it would be easy to hook back up with Romeo, Titan, and especially Aniela. But he couldn’t do that. He left for Abby. She broke his heart and now here he was, back in Vegas, back to drown in the desert heat, the clubs and the immoral women.

  He couldn’t do that as a tagalong. He couldn’t ride on their coattails, poach their unwanted girls, feed on scraps. He had to get his own women and he had to know how, and the only way to do that was to open as many women as he could (into conversation), pull as many numbers as he could, get himself a few dates and maybe even get laid. At his age, losing his virginity was like winning an Oscar, sans the red carpet and all the freaking applause.

  Despite his clearly defined goals, he was a mess. He vowed not to save himself for Abby. He had to stop dreaming that sorry little dream. When he reunited with his Vegas friends, it would be as a man, not a love-struck little virgin boy.

  4

  The first thing Titan said to Brayden and the two other guys with him at their first session on the art of pick-up so long ago was this: “The idea of a soul mate is crap. Guys always think God created the perfect woman for them, if only they could find her. Me and Romeo are here to tell you she doesn’t exist. Soul mates don’t exist.”

  Back then Brayden’s young, influential mind was theirs. Back then there was something inside him—rather some other version of himself—waking up to their way of thinking. There was no perfect order; chaos truly reigned supreme. Brayden clung to the idea for dear life.

  “What you guys need to realize is there isn’t the perfect woman for time and all eternity as much as there’s the perfect woman for right now. Tonight’s catch might be a blonde stripper with bolt-on tits, a tight ass and fire-engine red lipstick. But tomorrow? We’ll hit a totally different scene. With girls of a different variety. The ending won’t be the same. The perfect woman tomorrow might be a housewife with small, fast tits and a big ass, but the kind of personality that tells you she’s ready to do it like her vagina’s being sewn up for good at midnight. A woman like this, you’ll find her buying vegetables or grocery store vodka, or taking her dog to the groomers.”

  Brayden smirked, but the other two students remained still. Like maybe they were scared inside.

  “Every night we’ll meet different women, perfect and imperfect women, angels and strippers and business women. You will learn to talk to them, to interact with them, and to eventually seduce them. It will seem impossible at first, but later, it will be much easier to imagine.”

  The goofy looking college kid who showed up around the same time as Brayden, Wendell Bryce, he said, “So you don’t believe in soul mates?”

  Brayden and the third guy—Peter Sidowski—they both tried their best not to hard-roll their eyes.

  Jesus, Brayden was thinking, is this dude even listening?

  “Bro,” Romeo said with a sly grin, “you’re going to see ten soul mates this next month alone and if you do what we say, you’ll be able to nail half of them.”

  “I haven’t even kissed a girl and you’re telling me I’m going to…have…that I’m going to have intercourse with five perfect women? This month?”

  “It’s up to you,” Titan said. Brayden couldn’t help but grin at the word intercourse. “Do what we say, and you’ll get all the vagina you want.”

  “But puss out,” Romeo warned, “and you’ll end up crawling back to your miserable life of hand lotion and girl-on-girl porn and absolute, crushing solitude.”

  Brayden developed the deepest admiration for his mentors.

  Titan said, “You’re here to change your life, and we’re going to help you with that.”

  That was the Christmas break following Savannah’s amazing transformation from beastly to gorgeous, the very same Christmas his dad said he couldn’t get the treatment Savannah blackmailed for him from Gerhard. Naturally, he was depressed. Naturally he’d been thinking, thanks for nothing dad.

  So there he was, back then, sitting in the living room of some upper middle-class bachelor pad with these two men, Romeo and Titan, who could probably pull the kind of women he would never let himself dream of. What Brayden didn’t say, what he wanted to say, was the girls he liked never liked him. Ever.

  Nope. Couldn’t say that. Not with his awful Tobey Maguire hair. Not with the pale, scrawny body full of scars. And certainly not with that Toucan Sam beak of a nose and that ridiculously weak chin.

  He wanted to say, the thing about having a geek parade of mismatched body parts is that you eventually start thinking of your soul mate the same way you think about Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny: as non-existent.

  So nurturing the idea of there not being a soul mate wasn’t a hard concept to swallow. The idea of getting laid on a regular basis, however, began to tumble through his already distressed mind like an idea of someone else’s. The problem was, their idea for him never really got traction.

  Him meeting ten soul mates and bedding five of them? What a laugh! The horrible cliché, that beggars can’t be choosers, he was the beggar who was always too ashamed to beg.

  In his mind he was practically screaming that guys like him always got the fat chicks, the beastly chicks, the most self-loathing of sopping wet wildebeests. Basically, he was thinking, guys like him got the girls no self-respecting dude ever wanted.

  At that moment in time, during that fateful Christmas break, he was at his lowest point in life. Back then, he felt worthless. Hopeless until he met Titan and Romeo. That’s when he found he could breathe again.

  Titan said, “First thing you have to do is learn to talk to women. To do that you need a handful of solid openers.”

  “What’s an opener?” Brayden asked.

  Titan said openers are essentially conversation starters. He told Brayden, Peter and Wendell that having a unique opening line is what will keep girls from telling you to piss off. Basically, it was a way in.

  “Saying ‘hello’ and praying for the best will only get you so far,” Romeo said. “Most times, it’ll get you nowhere. Hello is not an opener. It’s a word. You seeking out a girl’s opinion? Now you have the makings of a solid opener.”

  He remembered thinking, that’s exactly what I need!

  And it was.

  5

  Now standing in the lobby of the Wynn, telling himself the
world was not coming to an end, he took a moment to reminded himself Abby was not in love with him, nor would she ever be. Brayden reminded himself to just get over her, to get on with life. And get back in the damn game already!

  He thought about the right opener, thought about the right situation, then realized, it didn’t really matter. He had openers. He just didn’t have a reason to use them. Until now.

  “Just start,” he told himself.

  For a minute or two he scoped out the scene, then ended up wandering. It didn’t matter where he went, he just started talking to girls, to women, to dudes with girls.

  “The key to good pick-up,” Romeo once told him, “is not to get attached to a specific outcome. Just start meeting people.”

  Brayden talked to anyone and everyone, worked his lines, figured out what went well and what bombed. He even started approaching couples, just to be able to understand the dynamics. The thing about most women in relationships is they’re already bored with their man. They’re already tired. What Romeo said was most women are already out hunting for the next guy to save them from the monotony of the current guy.

  Titan said he couldn’t agree more, and he’d bagged plenty of taken woman.

  In the first hour Brayden did ten approaches, used ten openers. It all went bad. Embarrassment was his foremost emotion. Physical sickness was what he felt roiling through his gut at the start of each approach. One girl told him not to try so hard, another ignored him all together (which was worse than being told to piss off), and a few giggled and told him they weren’t the right girls, but good luck on the next girls.

  The next hour he approached twenty. Then only five in the third hour because the way things were going, he wasn’t so scared anymore. He was determined. And maybe a little bold. The thing about rejection is it gets old. Pretty soon you figure shit out, you get reckless, you say screw it and push hard for what you want. Halfway through the third hour, he found his girl.