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“Yep, you do, but then you get naked, and I forget why I was mad.” I laughed, too, feeling her pretend punch on my arm. “Actually, I come from a family that discusses stuff, so if I’m mad or something feels off, I say it.” Even as I was saying that, it occurred to me that my family never really talked about Melissa’s twin, my brother, who had died before I was born. My mom kept a picture of him in her room by her bed, and I knew the story, but that was about it. I’d thought about asking Melissa but wasn’t sure she would want to talk about it and I didn’t know how much she’d remembered.
“Talking about everything…” She slurred a bit before giggling again.
I could almost hear the roll of her eyes when she said everything. “Hey, that’s not fair. I just like to know what people are thinking instead of guessing.”
“I suppose, but it’s not something I’m used to. As an escort, I was always acting, and I knew the role ahead of time. If I wasn’t sure, I just smiled and kept my mouth shut; I would never express an opinion about anything, really. Even when clients would ask seemingly innocuous questions, I didn’t express an opinion.”
Okay, that made me curious. “Like what questions?”
“Well, if I preferred wearing a green gown or a gold gown, or did I want the ruby necklace or the sapphire and diamond necklace? I always answered the same way.” She sat up in the bed, staring straight ahead like she was preparing to go on stage. “I prefer wearing what you would like to see me in, sir.” Her voice was theatrical, in an overly sweet yet precise way. “Oh, I would like to eat whatever you think is good on the menu. Yes, I trust your taste.”
I cleared my throat, processing my next words. “Okay, so agreeable was always the motto. Man, that would get boring.” I wanted her to know that I insisted on the authentic Rakell. Would I like things to be a little smoother between us? Yes, but not fake; that I didn’t want for sure. But as she talked, I got the distinct feeling that she was still discovering how to be herself. I wasn’t sure she even understood exactly what she was saying, but she was clearly figuring things out, and now she was fully immersing herself in an industry that would further dictate her every action. Ugh, that thought made my jaw clench.
“Oh, and to the question they really wanted the answer to,” she started, her voice shifting again, this time sounding like she wasn’t sure she should be telling me this, “did that feel good? They didn’t ask while they touched me during sex or before, like you do because you're trying to figure out what to do to make me come. Most of them asked after they came, like an afterthought or an ego booster.” A couple of seconds ticked by, neither of us moving or saying a word. The light in the room dissipated to only the flickering from the embers in the fireplace, but I didn’t shift to put more wood on it. Instead, I sat up next to her. Her knees were pulled into her chest, her chin resting on it, her eyes shifted to the side. She looked at me and smiled softly. “I always said it felt amazing,” she added in a thin voice. “Men need to know that there’s been no one better than them before, so it was actually something the company trained us to do. To always act like each man was the first to make you come, even if you didn’t come at all, which is fairly standard if you talk to other escorts.”
I rubbed her back and looked at her. I had no response; what do you say to that? My first thought was to say, don’t ever fake it with me. But shit, that sounded like an ego response, just like all the other guys she was talking about. I mean, I knew I had been with women who’d faked it, but I didn’t call them on it ‘cause I wasn’t sure how to do that without sounding like a pathetic asshole.
As if reading my mind, she whispered, “Lana warned me that I may be faking it with guys who aren’t paying for it, but then I met you, and well, I think you know what you're doing…” She barked out a laugh, as if she’d caught herself by surprise by thinking out loud. “I mean, you're very good at sex.”
That made me laugh. “Well, hell, I hear a compliment in there,” I said, pulling her into me, both of us flopping back onto the bed, snuggling before falling off to sleep and completely missing our dinner reservation.
She was still sleeping when room service arrived, so I set the tray on a small table in the living room portion of the suite before I woke her. When I walked back into the bedroom, she was sitting on the bed, staring at the bracelet I had given her. “Hey, we have food here. I got you an egg white omelet and some mixed berries.” I carried the tray into the room, setting it on the bed, and we ate, both of us starving; we’d slept through dinner last night, and when we woke, it was too late to order anything, so we picked at some of the leftovers from lunch before falling back to sleep.
After breakfast, we packed up and headed out. As we were driving from the parking lot, she looked back toward the inn, then down at the bracelet. “This really was the perfect birthday weekend. Thank you again for everything, Jake,” she said, her big green eyes staring at me. “I didn’t know how much I needed this. I feel like I can breathe around you. Some of the anxiousness that is always hanging in my head goes away when you’re around.”
“Good.” I shifted my eyes to her and then back to the road as we hit the highway. “Good, I want that,” I said, feeling compelled to iterate that point. I knew her person was Matt, that when she felt overwhelmed, it was Matt she reached out to, and damn did I ever want it to be me. No, fuck, I needed to be her person for everything, the way my dad was for my mom.
I smiled, hearing her soft breathing from the passenger side. Her head was back, her eyes closed behind her sunglasses; she was lost in sleep. Her phone buzzed a few times in her purse, and I was grateful it wasn’t waking her up. It rang and buzzed a couple more times before she shifted against the seat. We were about thirty minutes outside of Sacramento, and I was looking for one more uninterrupted night with her before she left again for another potential job. I had more meetings scheduled tomorrow to revisit our draft pick discussions. I hoped Dwayne was right about the kid from LSU. We were prepared to take a chance on him. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be drafted before we got to him since there was an active whisper campaign that the kid was mentally unstable.
She twitched, then sat up straight, her eyes fluttering open. “Oh…I really fell off. I think it’s the remnants of all that red wine.”
“Well, we’ll be at my house in less than thirty minutes. We can stop and pick up something for dinner, steaks or…”
“Can we get something lighter?” she asked, fishing around in her purse.
“Sure, grilled salmon, would that work? I wanted one more night without…” I started to make a pitch for not responding to messages, but she cut me off.
“Oh, Ana texted me, asking if we finished our weekend in Napa, and Vee texted ‘sorry’…that’s weird. Sorry for what?…that’s odd. Vee almost never texts me. Ana also called a couple times. I should call her back, okay?”
“Yeah, okay, of course.” She crossed her fingers and kissed them before tapping the screen.
“She might have information. Here’s to a wish come true,” she hushed, the phone ringing against her ear.
“Let’s hope,” I threw out, trying to sound as earnest as possible.
“Hey, Ana, I saw you called and…so they made a decision. I’ve got my fingers crossed…I, oh wow, he said all that. I’m so honored, flattered…Well, so does that mean—?” I heard a short sigh leave her mouth, then her tone altered, her voice thin with confusion. “But, but? I don’t understand. If he thought I was the most convincing, that I played the part perfectly, and all the stuff he said to me that day about being impressive…then to the casting director, then why…”
My eyes flew to her, but she was looking out the window, her fingers pulling on her bottom lip, the color in her skin draining. “But I thought, so then why? Ana, please tell me…no, I need you to be honest. How can I improve if I don’t know why? Please, I just need to know what they said. I won’t take it wrong. Come on, I’ve been turned down before.”
My shoulders started creeping up my neck from the desperation in her voice. Listening to her pleading to hear the truth, it was exactly what I would do, but I had a sick sense that the truth was going to cause a fissure in her psyche. God, please don’t, Ana, I thought.
“Wrong body type, what does that mean? He knew they all knew what I looked like before the audition; the fucking world knows, for God’s sake, so what specifically? It’s a sexy part, and they’ve seen my Sports Illuminated photos, hell, and the video segment for the Leather and Lace commercials, so they know. What exactly is the wrong body type?”
I could feel bile splashing around in my stomach.
“Ana, tell me their exact words.” She turned her body so that half her back was to me as she murmured into the phone, listening in silence. Then she spoke again, her words sputtering, her voice wet. “Too developed…I mean, I’m, the girl is supposed to be twenty-two. I look…but he’s playing the role of a man in his young forties and he’s in his mid-fifties. I don’t get what developed means…because of my fucking tits?”
Her voice pitched higher when she said fucking tits. I just kept driving, trying not to look her way.
