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“I have to try,” she replies, frowning even harder.
She so young, I realize. Twenty-eight. She’s only six years older than I was when Constance broke up with me—only six years older than I was when I experienced honest to god heartbreak. There’s no way she can comprehend the pain of losing someone who you loved so much that you don’t know how to exist without them.
Love and the demands of reality don’t always coexist. Sometimes, the person you love doesn’t share the same life philosophy as you, the same goals, or the same wants. The sooner she learns that, the better. But I won’t be the one to teach her. I live in Montana; she travels the world. She desperately wants to be loved; to me love is secondary. But what I can offer her, I know, is everything she craves. Sex. Affection. That I can do.
“Stay,” I finally whisper, putting my hands back on her.
Julia looks up at me, her expression illegible.
“Stay,” I repeat. “Through Christmas at least. Let me make you come a hundred times between now and then. Anything you want. Any wild shit you’ve never tried, we’ll do. Anything you’re game for, I am too.”
Her expression remains stony. I’ve made her a hell of an offer, and yet she seems completely unmoved by it. “You want me to stay here so you can fuck me,” she clarifies, lifting an eyebrow.
I nod.
“I shouldn’t,” she says, pulling back her lip with her teeth like temptation dares to sway her. “I need to go.”
My heart sinks, but I manage to keep my tone even. “Go where?”
“Boston. Away from here.”
“Why?” Did I misread her? I thought she wanted to stay. I thought she wanted more of this—more of me.
Julia takes a step back, putting space between us. She pulls her arms in front of her body, clasping her elbows with her hands. There’s a glossiness in her eyes—a note of sadness. She raises both shoulders. “It was a deal, August. Let’s not make this harder than it needs to be.”
***
So I make it easy on both of us by escorting her to her own room and her own bed. It takes her thirty minutes to climb into mine, naked and so damn warm. She crawls over me, pushing down my boxer briefs with unbridled urgency. She doesn’t even take them all the way off. She just works her cunt around me, accepting my length full-hilt right off the bat. It’s nothing creative or daring or quite like anything the two of us are accustomed to. On the contrary, it’s efficient—borderline transactional. It still feels incredible.
I finish on her stomach again. She rubs my hand through it, coaxing me to massage it into her. Filthy. Intimate.
When we’ve both caught our breath, she rolls off me and drapes herself against my side, my cum mingling with her juices. Her breathing grows heavy and her weight relaxes into the mattress. When I place a hand on her stomach, she rests her own hand atop mine.
And when I awaken in the morning to an empty bed—yet again—I don’t bother being angry. Instead, I get up and strip the sheets, hoping to erase every reminder that Julia Ridgeway was ever in my life.
Part II: Closing Costs
Chapter 17: Julia
One month later
I’m not allowed to do cocaine anymore.
Or ecstasy, for that matter, but cocaine comes up far more often. When you’re as rich as I am, it’s not a question if you use it, it’s a matter of how often and what kind.
In high school I was a chronic user, mostly this and that, mostly given to me by boys who made lines with their fathers’ credit cards. In college I was strictly a Thursday and Saturday night user, until Davis found out and went all pseudo-father on me and made me stop. I didn’t, of course. Up until a few months ago, I never did anything Davis told me to. But after his freak out in the Yale dining hall during my freshman year, when I meant to hand him a stick of ChapStick and accidentally handed him the tube with my stash (yeah, admittedly not my finest hour), I did pare down my usage.
Jay likes the French stuff. The stuff so airy it’ll have you hearing your heartbeat in your eyeballs. We don’t actually know if it’s French, but he can only buy it from a guy in Paris and he doesn’t ask questions about it.
Now, tonight, he inhales a line of it off the back of my hand, which he has commandeered for the last three minutes purely for this purpose. I have a fresh manicure and I’m wearing a ring so valuable I could make a Habsburg weep, and yet my hand is only useful for a rich boy to snort off of. I usually like it when Jay holds my hand, but tonight I pull back the moment he’s done, not a second longer.
Peter, as usual, is so high. Like, so high. He’s hammered too, but it’s only obvious to people who know him well. He’s looking at the stars scattered across the clear Cartagena night, smiling to himself. He’s humming this stupid song he loves—something by the Pixies.
“That’s delicious,” Jay grits out while he pinches his nose, trying to make the hit stop stinging. He briefly looks disheveled, but he eventually fixes his eyes on me and he’s back to looking like a perfect American prince.
He thanks my hand with a pat and then reclines on his pool lounger, sighing with contentment. We don’t have a private pool here at the Sofitel, so doing coke out in the open is the epitome of recklessness. But naturally, nobody says a word to us.
After a few minutes, Jay reaches over and takes my hand again, running his fingertips over my skin. “Missed you,” he murmurs, his voice low and gentle. “How were the holidays?”
