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“You got paid to fuck me.”
“Sex was never part of the damn deal! I wanted you in my bed. I was paid for the companionship.” I know how horrible it sounds as soon as it leaves my mouth. It sounds like I’m one of those “escorts” that gets hired for “companionship.”
I can’t believe that I’m having this conversation in front of my mother. She stands against the wall, looking between Wilder and me like this is a movie or something we’re acting out in front of her. I’m furious with her, but I have bigger fish to fry.
“Do you know what that makes her?” he asks, pointing at my mother but never looking away from me.
“Do not…” My voice trails off, and I shake my head.
He chuckles and steps forward, moving his head until our jaws touch and dropping his voice to a saccharine-sweet tone. “She’s your pimp,” he smirks. Heather gasps behind me.
“Get out!” I yell.
“It’s the truth, but I guess I’m just a john, huh?” he asks, scooping up the rolled tent at his feet and throwing it over his shoulder. “I’m just a way for you to get money. That makes you a whore!”
“And you’re a man slut that will plow anything that will spread her legs for you and then runs away like a scared little boy without a care for who it hurts!”
His face reddens even more, and he jerks back like I slapped him. I’d love to leave my handprints all over his face, but I don’t. I would never hit him, and I know he’d never hurt me. I’m just so damn angry that I could put my fists through the drywall behind him.
His chest heaves as he looks at me like I’m an insect, something gross that he stepped on and is now stuck to his shoe. He grits his teeth and glances at Mom, as if suddenly sorry he called her a pimp.
Part of me wants them to battle it out with each other. She’s the idiot that mentioned I got paid for cuffing with Wilder. He’s the jerk that made me sign a contract that we’d break up today when he’s done the same to who knows how many women. Neither one of them are virtuous, and I’d like nothing more than to walk away and let them fight it out like alley cats.
“Go,” I mumble, pointing at the door. “I know you want to. That was the agreement. You leave now. In fact, you’re late for getting ready for your next cuffing season.”
He steps toward the door and freezes, his face suddenly going pale. He squints and clenches his fist as if fighting with himself more than with me.
After a few moments, he picks up his duffle bag, throws it over the shoulder not holding the tent, and gives me one last look from head to toe. He opens the door with a sigh and steps out of my apartment. “Goodbye, Savannah.”
As soon as he crosses the threshold into the communal hallway, I step forward and grip the frame, willing my hands not to reach for his shirt to pull him back inside my apartment so I can apologize to him. Why would I apologize? I may have done a dishonest thing, but what he did was dirty, too. I think of the other women he’s probably left like this the day after. Does he even remember their names? Will he remember mine? Or, more likely, will I be a shadow memory to him in a few months when he starts a new cuffing season with a fresh partner?
The things I did to him and for him. The parts of my body that I showed him in full light, and the things I’ve tasted on him with my tongue. I’ll recall those moments forever, but now they’re dirty memories and something to be ashamed of. And he’ll find another woman in mere months and do those same things with her. My stomach heaves at the thought of his familiar hands on an imaginary woman’s breasts and the sound of his voice moaning only for her, never for me again.
He walks to the stairs, and I stick my head out of the apartment building to watch him go like I need to watch him leave to make it real. I can’t see his face, but he wipes it as he takes the first stair down to the lower level. Is he trying to wipe me away? Wipe my last kiss from his face?
I slam the door and whirl on Mom, my rage letting loose and wild. “Why did you do that?” I sob and can hardly form the words. I pull at my hair and cover my face with my shirt, letting the anguish wrack my body.
She backs against the wall, scared of the fury she’s never seen from me. “I didn’t mean to. I thought he knew. Why wouldn’t you tell him that I was giving you money for school?”
“Because I didn’t want him to think someone was paying me to be with him!”
“But I was.”
The way she says it is typical Heather. Breezy. Like it doesn’t matter he’s gone and that I can just meet any other man capable of opening me up and letting me enjoy life. It matters to me, though. He mattered to me, and now he’s gone.
I sob more, my vision blurs, and Heather tentatively reaches out to touch my shoulder. I shrug her away and glare. “Just go, Mom.”
I slide down the wall and sob into my shirt.
“Not like this, Savannah. I’m sorry. I thought you’d have figured it out about the other women. Where did you think he stayed during the winter?”
“I didn’t ask specifics. Dumb Savannah. Just go. I want to be alone.”
She nods and unwinds her scarf from my coat rack where she left it. “I’ll be here when you’re ready to talk. I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, Aiden dumped me. Said I was too old for a long-term relationship with him.”
“You’re kidding,” I sarcastically chuckle, my face still buried in my shirt. I inhale the smell of my skin. It still has his scent on it from our sex last night, and I take sharp inhales to consume the smell like I can consume him.
She holds her hands up again and walks to the door. “I love you and would never intentionally hurt you. I thought you and Wilder had everything out in the open. Call me when you’re done being mad.”
