“Well, um, will I see you later tonight or tomorrow?” I timidly ask.
“Tomorrow…well, probably. Maybe. I don’t know.” He’s still not looking at me.
“Did I do something, James?” Might as well get it out there.
“No, baby, you’re perfect,” he softly replies, finally turning to me. There’s something incredibly painful below the surface, and I want to grab him and hug him and tell him to open up to me.
“James, can we just talk about this? Maybe if we talk—”
“I can’t, Lo,” he whispers. “I just need to think about some shit right now, get my head right, okay? Let me just have some time to myself so I can figure all this out.”
“Okay, well, I’ll see you soon…I hope,” I say as I awkwardly leave the bedroom.
I’m on my way back to my apartment when unwelcome tears make their way down my cheeks. I wipe them away quickly, ashamed at my own emotions. I can’t help but feel like it’s something I did, something I said, that put James off having sex with me. I’m replaying everything in my head, trying to figure out what I did wrong. The more I think about it, the more I feel distressed and humiliated. James can have thoughtless sex with a zillion girls on movie shoots, but he can’t have sex with me? What’s wrong with me?
I sit in the bathtub in total silence, trying to will my tears away, but I feel wretched. When I finally get out of the tub, I crawl into my bed and feel the tears on my pillow. Something went horribly wrong tonight, and I’m completely baffled as to what it was.
I don’t think I want to see James tomorrow. I don’t think I can face him. I feel mortified, hurt, disappointed, and ashamed, and I can’t look him in the eye, not for a while.
I decide that, tomorrow, I will get up, go to work, have lunch alone at my desk, then go meet Stacey after work. I’m thinking she might be willing to go to the police station as long as I go with her. I can focus my mind on helping her and channel my sadness into rage at Eva. If James calls me, I won’t answer. If he texts, I’ll just tell him I’m busy. I need distance; I need to be away from him for a few days so I can process this miserable evening.
I take a Tylenol PM to help me relax, and then I switch off my light and try my best to fall asleep.
Chapter 18
James
I HATE MY LIFE RIGHT NOW. Last night with Lola was fuckin’ amazing, so intimate and loving, but I couldn’t get past the idea of recording her like that. When she was looking at me, so eager and willing, it tore me up inside. She trusted me and I was going to take something special for her and make it all corrupt and twisted. I couldn’t go through with it. I couldn’t imagine doing that to her. I freaked out, and I put the brakes on it. Now she’s probably assuming I got turned off by her—which couldn’t be further from the truth—and she’s probably all pissed off at me.
I’m on my way out the door to go to Lola’s house to make an attempt to explain things when Eva calls and demands to meet with me in twenty minutes. Fuck! She’s expecting the video of me taking Lola’s virginity, the video that doesn’t exist because I came to my senses before I did something awful to the woman I love.
My only hope now is to give Eva what I have. If she looks at it, she’ll see me in bed with Lola and she’ll hand over the money and the contract before she has a chance to watch it all the way through. If it’s not the whole enchilada, she won’t be able to use it anyway. I can trick her. I can make off with the money, get released from the contract, and try to mend things with Lola. I grab the memory card from my camera, and I’m out the door.
Eva looks obnoxiously pleased with herself as she sits cross-legged on the bench. The sun is shining on her hair, which gives away the purple-blue tone of her hair dye. Her tits look ridiculous in that cheap bustier top, and her knee-high boots just add to her cartoonish appearance. As I walk closer to her, I think about how bad I’d like to slap that little smirk off her makeup-encrusted face.
“Do you have something for me?”
“Yeah.” I hold up the memory card. “But I want the money and the contract first.”
“I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy,” she says with a little laugh.
Laughing? She’s laughing. Fuck her!
She takes out a briefcase and pats the bench beside her for me to sit down next to her. I do. She gives me a little grin as she flips the briefcase open. Holy shit! Inside are stacks of cash. A lot of them.
“The twenty thousand you were promised,” she says before grabbing a white piece of paper on top, “and a signed agreement to release you from any contractual obligations with me in exchange for a video of you having sexual intercourse with Lola Caraway and visual confirmation of the loss of her virginity. There’s another document here, signed of course, stating that I will pay you a total sum of two hundred thousand if the video meets my specifications after review.”
Review. That’s the part that worries me. Maybe I could grab the twenty grand and take off to Mexico with Lola before Eva realizes that there’s no actual sex in the video.
I can’t show a hint of weakness. Eva will pounce on me if I waver even a little bit. I keep any and all expressions off my face as I take the briefcase from her, gripping the handle as tight as I’d like to grip her throat.
“SD card okay?” I ask, holding up the little plastic case and the memory card.
“That should be fine,” she says with a wicked smile.
She takes the card from my hand and the deal is done.
When I get in my car, I shuffle through the briefcase. I’ve never seen this much cash in one place before, and I automatically assume it’s some kind of trick. I’m looking for anything, a tracking device, those exploding ink packets like banks use, a whole row of fake money under the real money, but it’s legit. Eva Satana just handed me twenty thousand dollars cash for a video of me and Lola. Suddenly, I feel sick again.
I just sold out the love of my life for twenty thousand dollars cash.
I go straight to Lola’s apartment when I arrive home. Maybe I can convince her to run away with me. I can explain all this in the car on our way to our new lives in Tijuana. We can live as outlaws, like Bonnie and Clyde. It’s a cool idea, but completely unrealistic, and I know that. Instead, I think I’ll just tell her I’m sorry, make up some excuse about why I couldn’t sleep with her last night, and hope that she doesn’t ask me about this shiny new briefcase.
When I get to her door, I can see that she’s not home. I guess I just assumed she’d be ditching work again today and that she’d be around for me to sit down and have a big heart-to-heart with her. I feel antsy having things unresolved like this. I want to know where she is; I want to talk to her. I just want to see her face and make sure she’s okay and that Eva didn’t lure me to an outside location so her team of goons could come in and take my beautiful angel.
I’m frustrated when I storm back to my house. I’m all pissed off as I call Lola’s cell phone. She doesn’t answer, so I leave a message. I don’t know what the hell I’m pissed at her for. She’s not the one who betrayed her best friend for some cash and an easy out from a contract.
Really, I’m just mad at myself. I’m mad that I couldn’t figure out a way around this, a solution that didn’t involve putting Lola in harm’s way. I’m mad that I let Eva talk me into making the video, mad that I submitted to all that other shit she forced me to do to Savannah, mad that I never refused or fought back hard enough. I’m especially mad that I left my stupid phone on Rick’s desk that day when Eva came in. If I’d just kept it in my pocket like I usually do, she never would have seen Lola’s picture and I never would have ended up here on my couch, praying that my best friend isn’t being tortured by some psychotic dominatrix in a sex dungeon somewhere.
I call Lola again. It goes straight to voice mail. Now she’s doing it on purpose. Fine. I’ll text her.
Are you okay? Where are you?
I wait for a response, staring at my phone like I can will it to chime with a text alert.
Finally, after a couple minutes that felt like a couple hours, she replies:
Fine. At work.
That’s pretty short. She’s pissed. Who am I kidding? She has every right to be pissed! I probably confused the shit out of her, and I don’t know how I’m ever going to dig myself out of this hole.
I take a deep breath and try to calm down. She’s fine. She’s at work. She’s not in any danger, so at least I don’t have to worry about that.
It’s after five, so I call her again, still no answer. I’m frustrated that she won’t even talk to me. I text her again, and she just replies that she’s going out with a friend after work and that she doesn’t want to have dinner together. She always loved having dinner with me. Now I’m sure that I completely fucked up.
I turn on the TV and try not to think about her, but everything reminds me of her. There’s a commercial for True Blood on HBO that makes me think about the day I went down on her. It was so awesome and I was so happy to be able to do that to her. Fuse is playing some kind of countdown show and Alicia Keys is belting out “Fallin’” as she looks into the camera. That was our song, the first song we ever slow danced to way back in high school. As if I needed any more signs, Run Lola Run is playing on one of the movie channels. Angrily, I turn off my TV and decide to just sit in silence so I can try to figure out how the hell I’m ever going to fix this.
Chapter 19
Lola
WORK IS AWFUL. Peter has already yelled at me about calling in sick, and he seems to be taking it out on me by piling up an endless stack of menial tasks for me to complete. As I stuff envelopes and make copies, I think back to James saying he wanted me to quit this job and that he’d take care of my bills. That offer sounds pretty tempting right now—but I’m too upset with James to even consider it.
What the hell went wrong last night? I thought everything was perfect. He seemed so into me, so into what we were doing, then all of a sudden, it screeched to a halt. Why? For the life of me, I can’t decipher what the hell stopped him, what made him turn on a dime like that.
At this point, I’m glad I never told James how I feel about him. I loved him, and I still love him so much, but I should have been a lot smarter about this. I knew that James couldn’t love me, that he didn’t possess that romance gene that makes you want to spend the rest of your life with someone. I was an idiot for thinking that we could actually be in love with each other and live happily ever after. I was an idiot for even getting my hopes up about it.
My phone buzzes. It’s James. I send it to voice mail. I need time to talk myself out of loving him, and I certainly don’t want to hear whatever bullshit explanation he’s going to try to give me. The point is, he freaked out on me. He froze up, he got all weird, and then he told me to go. He basically kicked me out of his house about two seconds before we would have started having sex.
Maybe I’m lucky that I didn’t go through with it. James has been so different these days. I can still see that carefree, kindhearted, charming guy underneath, but he’s piling the layers of dark depravity on pretty thick, and maybe it’s too late to save him.
He sends me a text message asking if I’m okay. I scoff to myself. Now he’s worried about how I’m feeling? Now, after he’s seduced me, rejected me, and humiliated me, this is when he chooses to be concerned? What a crock! I fire back a brusque response and decide that I’m not talking to him again today. I need time to get my head straight, to show myself that I don’t really love James, that I just thought I did because loving James seemed so easy to do.
I get out of work after that excruciatingly long day and go to pick up Stacey. She’s agreed to go to the police, but she doesn’t want to take her car for fear that someone would see it parked outside the station, so we’re meeting at the B&N again and I’m driving from there.
“Are you all right?” she asks as she buckles up beside me.
“Yeah.” I nod, but it’s clear that I’m not.
“What’s the matter?” she asks with concern.
“Nothing, just a shitty day at work.” I attempt to brush it off.
She can tell I’m lying, but she doesn’t push for anything more. I’m glad because I should be the one comforting her in this turning-point moment in her life, and she shouldn’t be worrying about my problems. She’s got a box of evidence: her early videos, a fake ID that Eva made her, photos, contracts, all sorts of damning material that should be enough to put the nail in Eva’s coffin. Today could be the start of the Emancipation of Stacey.
We get to the station, and we’re led into a conference room. It’s very sparse in here, and I can virtually guarantee we’re being recorded.
Stacey is freaking out a little. She’s tense and jittery. People are going to think she’s on drugs—and honestly, I really don’t know that she isn’t on anything. I try to calm her down by asking about her favorite TV shows or Hollywood stars.
We’re greeted by Detective Charlie Reynolds, a wiry man in his late thirties with black hair and a goatee, and Detective Wanda Ramirez, a sturdy, middle-aged woman with a kind, motherly face. I called during my lunch break to set this up, and these two seemed very interested in anything that could snare Eva Satana. I get the impression that they’ve been trying to nail her for years.
I give Stacey a reassuring nod and head outside the room so she can talk to the detectives alone. Be strong, Stacey. Be strong. As I’m waiting, my phone buzzes. It’s James. I send him to voice mail again. A few seconds later, he sends a text. He wants to know what I’m doing and why I’m not home. I blow him off, telling him I’m having dinner with a friend and that I won’t see him at all tonight.
I’m not so sad about it anymore; now I’m kind of angry. I feel like an explanation is due, but I don’t want to confront him and demand one. Again, I replay everything in explicit detail, but I still come up short in the clue department. There’s just no reason for the sudden change in his behavior.
I’m so zoned out with this James situation that I don’t even notice when Stacey emerges from the room about an hour later. She looks…happy. She’s smiling, really smiling, and the detectives are smiling with her. Things went well, I take it.
In the car, she tells me that they were thrilled with what she brought them and that they were going to launch a full investigation. She thinks they might even do some kind of sting operation. It all sounds like something from a TV cop show, but I’m happy that there might be a light at the end of the tunnel for her.
“Are you mad at James?” she asks me after a brief pause.
“A little bit. How did you know I was mad at him?”
“You never get sad and you’re sad, so I guessed that it had something to do with him.”
“Good guess.” I chuckle.
“Is it about the video?” she asks innocently.
“What video?”
“The one of you and him.”
“Of me and him?” This has definitely got my attention.
“Yeah, the one where you guys were supposed to have sex, but you didn’t,” she replies plainly.
“Wait…what?” I’m so confused.
“The video that James made for Mistress so she’d let him out of his contract. You guys are on a bed with green sheets, and there’s a painting of some mountains in the background. He makes you come a bunch of times, and then he’s getting ready to fuck you, but he doesn’t,” she explains like I should be totally familiar with what she’s talking about. “He gave it to Mistress, but it wasn’t what she asked for and she was real mad. She wants him to make another one or she won’t give him the rest of the money.”
It’s like my brain won’t let me comprehend the words, like I refuse to believe they’re true.
“James made a video of that?” I say, completely thunderstruck by this news. I have to consciously focus on driving so I don’t lose control and swerve out of my lane with shock. “James recorded it?”
“Uh-oh.” Stacey tenses up. “Was I not supposed to tell you that?”
“Well, he told Mistress that you’re a virgin, and she said she’d give him a ton of money and release him from his contract if he made a tape of you guys.”
I’m so angry I can hardly see straight, but I pretend to be only mildly surprised so that Stacey will tell me more.
She elaborates, saying that James agreed to make a tape of us having sex as part of a negotiation with Eva. In exchange for a tape of him violating my privacy and my body, he would get a hefty sum of cash and he wouldn’t have to work with her again. A bullshit, cop-out solution to his own fucking problem—one of many shitty decisions he’s made in the past, but definitely the worst to date.
“But I thought your video was really pretty,” she concludes with a wistful smile. “The way he looks at you, you can see how much he loves you. And you make such pretty sounds, Lola.” The expression on her face looks like she’s imagining a fairy tale, something magical and romantic. “It didn’t even feel like a movie. It felt so real, like you guys were really in love.”
I can’t answer. My jaw is clenched so tight that I might chip a tooth. Thankfully, she doesn’t notice.
“It’s too bad that you guys didn’t do it because now Mistress is angry at James. She said she won’t pay him unless there’s real sex in the next one.”
The next one? Did James plan on doing this to me again? Was this first betrayal just a pilot episode?
Adrenaline courses through my veins, and I pull off an Oscar-caliber performance when I pretend to be just peachy keen as I drop Stacey off at her car.
I’ve got a Hannibal Lecter kind of calm as I walk up the stairs and head directly to James’s door. He opens it, and his face drops when he sees the way that I’m practically radiating anger. I step inside and prepare for World War III.
Captured (Vice, Virtue & Video Book 2) Page 18
