by Hazel Jacobs
“A mother knows, dear,” she says. “My son adores you. Be good to him, won’t you? He deserves it.”
Harper feels a long, slow lump rising in her throat. “I’ll be good to him,” she assures her.
Martha inclines her head and gives Harper’s hand one more squeeze before taking her drink and disappearing into the crowd, aiming toward the main table. Harper hadn’t even realized that the drinks were waiting at her elbow.
She turns to the bartender, but he’s moved on. Taking the drinks, she turns back to the crowd. Slate is still sitting at their table with his uncle and they’re both grinning as they talk. Martha had been so happy to see that. Harper wonders what kinds of family gatherings Slate has had to endure in the past, and what this wedding would have been like if she hadn’t been here to force the interactions between the family members.
Slate looks over his shoulder and makes eye contact with Harper, his smile still in place. Harper returns the smile, though her mind reminds her almost immediately of what Martha had said, “My son adores you. By good to him, won’t you?”
But he’s only known me for a day, she’d wanted to say.
Letting out a sigh of her own, Harper takes the drinks over to her date.
Angelica: How is it going?
Harper stares at the text from Angelica. Her boss—madam? Harper still isn’t sure what to call the woman.
People are finishing the last of the wedding cake and getting up to dance, but Harper is sitting this one out. ‘Jump Around’ by House of Pain is playing, and she bops her head along with the music as it plays. The first dance between the bride and groom had been just as awkward and wholly lacking in chemistry as the rest of the evening. Though Harper had seen Peter tearing up when Grayson had thrown Kayla into an ill-timed dip that the woman had only just managed to recover from. Now, everyone has the chance to get up and make fools of themselves. Slate is dancing with his mother, spinning her around like they’re in a waltz despite the upbeat music. He promised the next dance to Harper.
Angelica had been hesitant to hire Harper. She remembers that quite well. She remembers the woman looking her up and down through flawless fake eyelashes, turning her head just slightly so Harper could get the full effect of the perfect wings of her eyeliner, sharp enough to cut a man.
“You think you’ll enjoy this kind of work?” she’d asked, her voice a smoky mist with an edge that told anyone listening that she was more formidable than she let on.
Harper remembers shrugging. “It’s just sex, right?”
Angelica hadn’t frowned. She’d looked almost amused. “There’s no such thing as just sex, Harper. For some men, it’s a release. For some, it’s comfort. For you, well… that’s something you’ll have to figure out for yourself.”
But Harper had been determined to make it through that interview. She’d needed the money, goddammit, as well as the freedom to continue her studies on the side, and no nine to five job at a gym or even—God help her—a fast food joint could give that to her.
“I’m sure that I’ll enjoy it,” she’d said firmly. Or I’ll learn to, was left unfinished.
Angelica had hired her despite her clear misgivings. But Harper had always gotten the feeling that she was waiting for her to come to her senses. As though there were an expiration date to Harper’s interest in prostitution, which was half-true—since there had never really been much of an interest in the first place.
When Harper had heard that she’d been assigned to a weekend-long job, she’d assumed Angelica was testing her. Now she’s had some time to reflect, Harper wonders if the woman had actually been trying to give her an easier time of it. Instead of spending an hour—maybe less—letting a man paw at her, Harper had been given the task of helping a man bridge the gap between himself and his family. Angelica had also been sure to choose a very attractive man for her first job. She probably hadn’t known that Slate would be so particular about sleeping with people he’s paying.
Harper: Very well. The client seems happy.
Harper texts back. She’d written Slate but then deleted it, because she thought Angelica wouldn’t like the sound of that.
Angelica: He used a condom?
Angelica texts back almost immediately.
Harper nearly groans aloud. Angelica is a stickler for safe sex—one of the many reasons that Harper felt comfortable applying for the job in the first place.
Harper: No sex. The client only wanted me to help him make a good impression.
Angelica: No sex at all?
Harper: He insisted.
Angelica doesn’t respond for a moment, and Harper takes the opportunity to gaze out at the dance floor. Slate is twirling his mother around, smiling at her like she’s a princess. The bride and groom are sitting at the head table with their heads turned away from each other, talking to members of the bridal party.
Harper’s phone dings with Angelica’s reply.
Angelica: The customer is always right.
A brief pause, then another text comes.
Angelica: Unless he wants blood play. Always say no to blood play.
Harper is concerned that Angelica feels like she needs to specify that particular sex act.
Beside her, Slate’s phone starts vibrating and the tune to Mr. Big’s ‘To Be With You.’ Harper half-recognizes it from the airport when Slate had answered a call—Tommy, she remembers, the band’s bassist and lyricist. She watches as the call rings out.
The music winds down and Slate walks with his hand in his mother’s back to their table. Harper turns in her seat to greet the pair.
“You’re quite a dancer, Martha,” she says.
Martha has pink cheeks and a pleased expression on her face. “Thank you, Harper. It’s lovely to be out on a dance floor every once in a while.”
“Are you going to drag Peter out later?”
“Oh no, he doesn’t like to dance.” She shrugs and waves her hand as though she can wave the thought away.
“You coming to dance, babe?” Slate asks, bending at the hip so he can speak to her as the music starts up again.
It’s a slow song. The plucking of acoustic guitar strings is a pleasant change from the techno. Harper nods, barely containing the eagerness, as she pushes herself to her feet and leaves her phone on the table behind her. Nobody’s going to steal it here—this is Pella, not Manhattan.
She and Slate leave Martha behind, walking hand-in-hand toward the dance floor. There are a handful of couples. Older married men and women, one father with his young daughter, and Harper and Slate. The bride and groom make no move to join the dancers, and Harper sees Martha joining her husband at the main table.
Slate’s hand snakes around Harper’s waist and she forgets everything that’s happening around her.
“You dance?” he asks.
She shakes her head. “Never learned.”
Slate hooks her arms around his neck and she goes unquestioningly. He guides her into a very simple dance. There’s no real pattern to his steps. Instead, they seem to be moving with the gentle rhythm of the music. Harper recognizes the song ‘Lights Down Low’ by MAX, and she decides that it’s perfect for their first dance. Especially, when Slate is looking down at her with his strong arms on her body and his chocolate eyes blazing into hers. His scent fills her up like she’s a starving woman and Slate is a feast.
“You’re kind of a hit at this wedding,” he says. They’re a decent distance from the rest of the couples but he still keeps his voice low.
“It’s what I’m here for,” she replies. It’s not just the fear that someone will overhear that keeps her from saying, ‘that’s what I’m paid for.’
Slate’s smile slips by a fraction. “Yeah,” he says. Then his smile returns in full-force. “But I couldn’t have asked for a better date. You’ve been so great, Harper. You have no idea how much I appreciate it.”
She never asked Angelica if escorts get tipped. She thinks that they probably should be.
“Wel
l it’s easy to talk you up,” she says. She moves forward slightly to press their chests together, hoping he doesn’t notice. “Can you imagine if I’d been here with Grayson?”
He grins. “Are you kidding? His ten-year plan is motivational gold.”
They snicker together, then quickly check over their shoulders to make sure that no one can hear them shit-talking the groom. A father and daughter pair are dancing nearby, but the father is just swaying with the girl in his arms, her legs wrapped around his torso and her head on his shoulder. It takes Harper a moment to realize that the girl is asleep.
“My mom has a picture of me and my dad like that,” Harper says, nodding her head toward the pair. Slate looks over at them and smiles softly. The man is a second cousin, which makes the girl a… third cousin? Second cousin once removed? He would know, he’s had family trees drilled into him the way other kids get multiplication tables. “Dancing. I can’t remember if it was at a wedding, though. They don’t know I’m here. They think I’m still in Manhattan.”
“How come?”
Harper gives him a long look. “Oh, hey Mom! Yeah. I’m just flying to Pella because I’m being paid to escort and most likely fuck a stranger. Tell Aunty Jo I said hi.” She shrugs. “Not exactly the sort of conversation a girl wants to have with her folks.”
She looks back over at the father and daughter. The daughter has beautiful, curly red hair. It reminds Harper of one of the other girls who works for Black Orchid Escorts and the thought makes her so sick to her stomach that she has to turn away again.
Slate is frowning down at her. “They don’t know about your job?” he asks.
“I’m not proud of it, Slate,” she says. Now she’s wishing that she never brought it up. Why couldn’t she just keep her mouth shut and enjoy this dance with him? She might never get the chance to be this close to Slate again. But her mouth betrays her by continuing, “I went to Manhattan to get a degree, and they barely accepted that. It took them months to stop thinking I was going to get stabbed every time I walked out of the house. Me winding up as a sex worker is kind of their worst nightmare.”
She trails off and glances around again. Luckily, no one seems to be paying them any attention. Slate has drifted them over to the edge of the dancefloor, closer to the speakers, and their conversation is drowned out even more by the noise. He’s still frowning.
“I guess I can understand that,” he says. “But… you know there’s no shame in it, right?”
“Of course there’s no shame in it,” Harper replies. “None at all. But… I wanted something different for myself, I guess. I know Mom and Dad wanted something different, too. If they knew I was here, they would be on a plane to drag me back to Omaha like that.” She clicks her fingers behind his head.
Slate sighs. “Yeah, I can definitely understand that,” he says. Harper doesn’t understand what he means at first until his eyes drift over to the main table where his parents are sitting.
Harper follows his gaze. Martha is picking at her cake while Peter leans over to talk to Grayson.
“Did they try to drag you home?” she asks. “When you became a rockstar?”
“Nah,” he replies. “By the time they realized it was too late. Besides, it serves them right for banishing me to Jersey in the first place.”
Harper wants to ask. Her curiosity peaked the day that they met when he’d refused to tell her his name. But she remembers what Martha said about Slate—that he would trust her when he was ready.
This conversation has gotten too heavy anyway. The song is almost over and she’s hardly had the chance to enjoy the dance at all.
“Well, I’m glad they didn’t drag you back,” she says. “Then you wouldn’t have gotten so famous, and we wouldn’t have met.”
He smiles down at her. “Yeah. That would have sucked.”
Harper leans her head into the crook of Slate’s neck, just under his chin. His arms come around her without apparently even pausing to think about it. The song might nearly be over, and they’ll be returning to Manhattan tomorrow afternoon, but tonight, in this moment, she is Slate’s girlfriend. The woman he’d shared a passionate kiss with to the delight of his family. The woman who has successfully made a lot of them sit up and take notice of him. In this moment, she can enjoy the way he feels against her and the way he smells.
In this moment, she can be everything she’s pretending to be. A girlfriend, instead of an actress. A personal trainer instead of a prostitute.
It’s almost midnight by the time the party starts to wind down. The older people have already gone, but the bride and groom and most of the bridal party remain. Slate’s parents called it a night at around 10:00 p.m., but Peter had cheerfully told Grayson that he can keep the music going as long as he wants.
Harper thinks that Kayla is probably delaying the wedding night for as long as possible. If Harper were in her place, she would too. Harper doesn’t know how it happened, but when the clock strikes midnight she finds herself next to Kayla at the main table while Slate, Grayson, and the rest of the men in the bridal party have disappeared—probably to do some kind of macho, manly tradition. Some of the bridesmaids have disappeared as well. Harper heard some suspicious moaning from one of the bathrooms when she went into the house earlier.
At least someone is getting laid tonight, she thinks.
Kayla has stopped the champagne and has moved onto vodka and cranberry juice. Her mascara is still perfect, and Harper is impressed with that.
“Did I mention I love your dress?” Harper asks. The DJ is taking a break so there’s plenty of silence to fill.
“Thank you,” Kayla says, slightly louder than she needs to. “I like yours, too. I can never pull off that color.”
“I find it hard to imagine that someone that looks like you has trouble pulling off anything.”
Kayla swats Harper’s arm and takes another swig of her drink. “You’re great. You’re lucky you got a guy like Slate. He’s great, too.”
“Yeah, he is,” Harper replies. “How long have you known him?”
“Aw, we went to school together. Elementary school. He went to high school in Jersey after that thing happened.”
Harper cocks her head and takes a sip of her own drink—pineapple juice and spicy rum. “What thing?” she asks.
One of Kayla’s bridesmaids returns to the table with her dress slightly in disarray and a suspicious red mark on her neck. She looks well-fucked, and Harper feels a shot of jealousy when she sees the woman. There are no men around with a swagger in their step, but when Harper gazes around the room she sees one of the women from the groom’s side of the wedding fixing her hair in the reflection of a metal vase. She’s flushed, she’s got similar red marks all over her neck as well, and a sly smile on her lips when she glances toward the main table.
“That thing… Shania, you remember sixth grade, when Slate did the thing?” Kayla asks the woman who just returned.
She looks surprised to be addressed. “Yeah, sure. That shit was hilarious.”
“What exactly happened?” Harper asks. She tries not to seem too curious.
“There was, like, a big ceremony at school… I can’t remember what it was for. Shania, what was it for?”
“Some sports thing?”
“Yeah, probably,” Kayla says. She takes another drink. “Anyways, Slate snuck a drum kit into the back of the auditorium, and about halfway through Principal Parker’s speech, he starts playing some drum solo. What was it?”
“Moby Dick,” Shania tells her.
Kayla snorts with amusement, nearly spilling a mouthful of vodka down her front. It would have been catastrophic if she’d dribbled cranberry juice over her front, but apparently, she’s hyper-aware of her looks even in her inebriated state, catching the liquid with her napkin before it makes it past her chin. “That’s the best name for a song I have ever heard,” she says.
Harper finds herself smiling along with her. “I’ve never heard the song.”
“It’s actually pretty cool. The drum solo is, like, really hard and Slate totally nailed it. We all thought Slate had ADD because he could never stop bashing away at shit. It was a pain in the ass in math class.”
“Wow,” Harper says. “I can imagine.”
“But he’s like, not ADD,” Shania adds.
“Yeah, no… he just likes making noise, I think.” Kayla sighs wistfully. “It did amazing things to his arms, though. I should tell Grayson to take up drumming.”
Harper jumps when the music starts up again. The DJ has returned, filling the room with more music, and most of the women flood the dancefloor as girly anthems start to play. The DJ clearly knows her audience. With half the men gone, it is now safe to play Spice Girls without being cussed out.
“You know, if you want Grayson to build forearm muscle, you could get him to wear wrist weights at work,” Harper tells Kayla.
“Seriously? That would work?”
“As long as he does it religiously.”
Kayla looks thoughtful. “Oh, he’ll do it religiously. If I have to work out my wrists giving him handjobs, then he can work out his arms while he’s typing his fucking reports.”
Harper had started laughing at the mention of ‘handjobs,’ and by the time Kayla has finished speaking all three women are snickering together.
“Does Slate like handjobs?” Kayla asks longingly once they’ve calmed down.
Harper wishes she had some real-world experience of Slate’s sexual preferences so she can answer honestly. She understands that the poor woman probably wants some kind of vicarious experience.
“Actually, Slate’s more of a… doer. Less of a receiver,” Harper says. She realizes as soon as the words are out that it might sound like bragging, but really the only thing she knows about Slate’s preferences is what he’d threatened her with when she’d walked into their shared bedroom naked.
