The Thrill of It Read online

  “I remember everything about you. I remember you’re a junkie for your diet pop. And maybe for what I got going on again too?” He raises an eyebrow.

  I give him a coquettish shrug. This is what I miss most. The banter, the back and forth, the chase.

  “C’mon. You miss the biz, don’t you? You miss the way we played them all. You wore my favorite outfit after all. You wore the outfit they all wanted you in,” he says and trails off to look me up and down.

  He holds me tight with his dark blue eyes, the color of the early-morning dawn before the sun breaks. His eyes are like a tractor beam and I can’t let go. I know I shouldn’t be looking at him like this, or letting him look at me like he’s doing, reeling me in with reminders of power, of playing, of the game being on our terms. But I’ve taken the pill, I’ve swallowed it once again, and now the effects are kicking in.

  I finger the hem of my skirt — my admission that I came to play.

  Then the low whistle from between his lips, the shake of his head, the grin that won’t stop. I’ve been ignited again, a sweet rush of what once was is now draped over me, and the past is no longer the past. It’s the present once more. I am back in time and it’s all so familiar and safe in its own way.

  “You were easy,” I say. “You always liked the schoolgirl in me.”

  He cocks his head to the side. “So I’m easy, babydoll. So sue me.”

  “I know a good lawyer,” I tease.

  “I couldn’t represent you. Conflict of interest.”

  I laugh as Tom plunks down my glass of Diet Coke. I tell him thanks, then take a drink. “That’s a good way to describe me.”

  “I like conflicts of interest,” he says. “But somehow we found the loopholes, baby.”

  “We were all loopholes,” I say because Cam and I covered ourselves in secrets. Like pulling a blanket over our heads, we were huddled in our fort, never letting anyone know we were running the numbers, making a mint, playing all the strange men in Manhattan who wanted a pretty young thing to look at them, talk to them, spank them, or tell them how big they were even when they were tiny little men.

  Never more than that. He kept me clean. He never wanted anything to happen to me. Never wanted anyone to touch me below the waist. One of his clients tried to slip a hand up my skirt when I met him at a bar, and Cam made sure the guy had trouble walking the next few days. He protected me.

  “Look at you,” Cam says, his eyes gliding over me, cataloguing every curve, every shape. “Back here at Bliss with me.” This was our spot and no one ever knew we were here. The place where I was Layla, Cam’s top earner, not my mother’s daughter, not the pretty pony she pawned off on her suitor’s sons. I was the player, I was the one who decided. I could say yes or no to anyone Cam brought to me. I could turn down the clothes he picked up for me at Bloomingdale’s. I had veto power over everything. He gave me choices.

  “Just like old times. You by my side.”

  “It’s not like old times, Cam,” I say, but I don’t mean it, because it is like old times. Meeting him after a job. Toasting, like we were painting the town red because we’d figured out the trick. We were like con artists, and our marks were men who liked girls.

  “Tell me you miss it, baby. Tell me you miss the way we pulled them in,” he says again, moving closer to me, trying to nuzzle my neck.

  “Not a bit,” I say, keeping my hand on his chest. Familiar ground—his chest, the game. He’s playing too. He loves it too. We are cut from the same cloth.

  “Not one tiny little bitty baby ounce?” He holds up his thumb and index finger to show a sliver of space. I press my index finger between them, shake my head and bat my eyes.

  “Harley,” he says softly. “You know I missed you.”

  “Don’t call me Harley,” I say sharply.

  “Harley, you’re my Harley,” he says. “I missed you more than anyone. You know that right? Nothing’s been the same without you.”

  “You know who I am to you.”

  He sighs and says, “Come back to me, Layla.”

  I let him come closer, especially now that he’s used the name he gave me, the name I took when I was his. “Layla,” he says again. “My Layla. You know I missed you.”

  My Layla.

  All the months melt away. I fall back. Back into pre-Miranda, pre-meeting, pre-Trey, prehistoric Layla before I shed all this, before I learned what I’d been doing was bad for me. Because nothing is bad now that the past is here again. Everything feels right, how it should be, how it was.

  So in a tiny voice, barely a whisper, I say, “I miss it too.”

  Cam hears me, taking my cue, running his big hand through my hair. I let him, leaning into his hand, a cat arching its back to be pet. He closes his eyes, sighs and says, “You belong to me. Work with me again.”

  “I know,” I whisper, sliding into my old skin. It’s so easy, so simple to return to the girl I once was, the only girl I have ever known myself to be.

  “You’re mine. You’re not theirs. You don’t belong with them, those people in your group. You belong by my side. We can conquer the world again.”

  “I do. I do belong to you,” I say, and I feel the thing I missed, the thing that I’m terribly withdrawn from. The tug, the pull, the flip in my stomach that takes away all the confusion, all the uncertainty, that coats it over with a feeling of blissful nothingness. There is no more aching, no more wondering, no more worry as Cam leans into me, inhaling me. I close my eyes as he smells my hair as if I’m his drug too. And I know he’s not the only one who’s high right now. I am too as the night turns hazy.

  “Mmmm,” he says again, his voice a low moan this time.

  When my eyes flutter open I take in the scene. Cam’s still there, lingering on me like I’m long line of cocaine and he’s taking me in grain of powder by grain of powder. There’s Tom, mixing a drink. There are men and women, coupling and uncoupling, along the length of the bar. There’s me on a plush, velvet stool I’ve perched on too many times to count.

  I spot a woman at the other end of the bar. She’s with a guy and they’re wrapped up in each other. He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, then kisses her gently on her jawline, and something, I don’t know what exactly, but something in the way he touches her – soft, tender, caring – tugs at me.

  Reminding me.

  Not of Cam.

  Not of men.

  But of one guy.

  The one I kissed last night. The one who kissed me back like I was air, breath, and all the stars in the sky at once. Who tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear.

  I clench my teeth. Force myself to look away. I don’t want to think of Trey right now. I don’t need him invading my brain and burrowing into my unknowable heart.

  I want desperately to slip into my old clothes, my old comfort zone. I was fluent with Cam, I spoke our language like a native poet. Without him, without everything I was when I was Layla, I am clunking around without even a beginner’s dictionary.

  But Trey’s with me now in my head. Telling me to be careful, ordering my triple espresso, checking in to make sure I’m okay. Asking if I made it through another dinner with my mom.

  I am a rag doll yanked in one direction, then another, tossed and turned and twisted.

  I don’t know which way to go. But the moment – the promise, the hit – isn’t quite as good as it was a minute ago. Because now I’m thinking of what’s beyond the door of Bliss. I’m thinking of Trey and SLAA and whether the arrow’s coming or going.

  I place my hands on Cam’s chest and push him gently away. He’s flustered but he has this groggy sort of happy smile. His brain and body are still on other things.

  “I should go, Cam,” I whisper.

  “Don’t go,” he says in a soft whine, placing his hand on my thigh.

  I shake my head. “It’s not you, Cam. I swear it’s not you.”

  “Then don’t go. You make me feel like all the others when you go.”

  “You were
special. You are special,” I say, correcting myself. But the words come out flat now. Because now I’m here, now I’m present. I’m aware again, thinking again, catching myself again.

  “Don’t leave me again.” Cam wraps his hand around my arm. His touch is both possessive and gentle. Demanding, yet caring. “I’ve got jobs for you. No one can work them like you. You could be a partner in my business. Help me recruit others. Train up a new crew of sexy schoolgirls. We’ll be in this together.”

  “I don’t know,” I say in a half-hearted protest because I desperately crave what Cam offers me. He gives me the one thing I never had growing up. Control of love. Control of sex. Control of the men in my life.

  But yet, there’s a traitorous part of my hardened heart that longs for what I felt that one night with Trey. For what I felt in those seconds in the courtyard last night. For the possibility of the other side.

  “One more job then,” he says.

  “Let me think about it,” I say because I don’t know which side of me is strong. Which side wants more. Which side will win.

  Before Layla. After Layla.

  “Let me know in a week.”

  “Okay. One week.” I stand up to leave.

  “Why are you going?”

  “I have stuff to do,” I say, and now the pull is coming from outside Bliss. It’s coming from the other side, from the things I’ve had a glimpse of, a fleeting taste of beyond this bar. Things I don’t know if I’ll ever have.

  Cam doesn’t like that pull. He feels it too, like gravity, me slipping out of his grasp.

  “Stay, babydoll. Have another Diet Coke. Hang out with me. Talk to me. Tell me things. I want to know everything.”

  “I have to go,” I say, my voice breaking, hurting, missing. I stand up, slinging my purse on my shoulder. My phone’s on silent, it can’t even vibrate, but I can sense it, red hot and boiling. It’s like an ankle bracelet on a criminal, a reminder not to cross a certain line. I give Cam a quick peck on the cheek, his forest scent filling my nostrils, a sensory reminder of the world he inhabits, the world he gave me. I feel a sliver of pain, like a phantom limb, shoot through me as I break the chaste kiss.

  “A week though. You’ll let me know in a week, right?”

  “I promise,” I say, then I leave, moving quickly past the other people, past the entryway, past Hugo as he says, “See you soon, Layla.”

  “Sure,” I say and raise my hand to hail a cab. But Hugo puts two fingers in his mouth and whistles. He’s faster than me at hailing cabs. I turn back to him briefly and meet his eyes. “Thank you.”

  I slide into my taxi, give the driver the address of my apartment, and practically rip open my purse. My hand dives down and I grab my phone. I missed two more calls from Trey and a few texts.

  “Hi,” I say when he answers.

  “Hey you. You okay?”

  “Yes. No. Maybe.”

  “Where are you?” he asks.

  “In a cab.”

  “Did you see Cam?”

  I nod again. “How did you know?”

  “Good guess. That, and it takes one to know one.”

  I hold the phone closer, glad I’m not alone, glad that someone else — one person at least — understands. “Where are you?”

  “Sitting on your steps waiting for you.”

  Memoirs of a Teenage Sex Addict…

  Page 167…

  Peter had a really small peter.

  Ironic, huh?

  And look, hey, it happens. Some guys are packing, some guys are lacking.

  But that’s why he needed Cam’s services. My job was to prop him up, give him pep talks, encourage him about his size. I’d use my fake ID, meet him at a punk dive bar in the East Village, all run down and luring the goth crowds with plugs in their ears, and piercings in their noses. I think it made him feel dangerous, especially as screeching music with indecipherable lyrics echoed in the bar. He was probably a product manager or an accountant or something. He never told me, and I didn’t need to know. But he hired me to dirty talk him, to have a drink, and tell him how big he was.

  “Have you ever seen a dick bigger than mine?”

  “No,” I said, with wide eyes, and a firmness in my tone. As if it were even possible for a dick to be bigger than his.

  “It’s huge, isn’t it?”

  “You have the biggest dick I have ever seen. It’s huge, and thick, and absolutely massive.”

  “Do you want to touch it?”

  I’d shake my head coquettishly because Peter knew the rules. Peter played by the rules. Peter paid top dollar to follow those rules.

  “But I want to watch you touch your huge dick,” I said.

  Then I’d lead him into the ladies room that probably wasn’t any cleaner than the men’s room. The sink was dirty, the trash can overflowed with tissues and the tiny stall smelled of beer and piss. He’d jerk off, and I’d watch, telling him the whole time how monstrous his dick was. Honestly, I couldn’t even see it in his hand.

  Poor Peter.

  But I will say this, Cam told me he was one of the happiest guys he’d ever known. So maybe all Peter needed to feel good about himself was a pretty young thing stroking his ego, rather than his dick.

  Chapter Nine

  Trey

  “You’re at my apartment?”

  She sounds shocked. As if I broke into her place.

  “Well, outside,” I say, half-defensively, because I’m not sure if she’s annoyed that I’m here, my ass parked on the stoop of her building, waiting for a girl who doesn’t want someone waiting for her.

  “I thought you were going to the meeting?”

  “I was at the meeting. And when I didn’t hear from you or see you there…” I say, but I don’t know how to finish the sentence. I sound like a stalker. Like I’m that pathetic stalker guy.

  “Sorry I didn’t go,” she says in a small voice. A skinny hipster ambles puffing on a cigarette as he walks a pug. The dude tugs at his shirt. The night is muggy and the heat in the air clings.

  “You don’t have to apologize to me.” There’s a part of me that wants to hang up on her, to get the hell out of here, and let her deal with her shit all by herself. But I guess there’s a stronger part that doesn’t want to lose her, because I came here after the meeting on a mad hunt for the girl I kissed last night. “Anyway, I had a feeling you might need someone to talk to.”

  “I didn’t do anything with him, Trey,” she pleads, like she desperately wants me to know this vital fact. I don’t know if it’s because we’re friends, or because of what happened last night. But I don’t want to ask.

  “Do you want me to wait for you?”

  “Yes, please. I want you to wait for me,” she says, and with her words, the stronger part wins out by far. I stretch out on the stoop, like the step is a couch, my backpack forming a pillow. I draw in my sketchbook, mapping out a new design of a dragon with spikes, a long, snapping tail and breath of fire, something a regular client of mine wants.

  A few minutes later a cab pulls up, and she pays the driver, then escapes. I squeeze my eyes shut when I see what she’s wearing. Then I open them.

  “Hi.” She offers a meek little wave as she sinks down next to me. I close the sketchbook.

  The cab races off, kicking up exhaust into the night breeze, mingling with all the other scents nearby. This is New York for you – I can smell Harley’s wild cherry lotion and I can smell garbage that needs to be picked up tomorrow, the fume from cabs, and the trailing scent of cigarettes. The ugly with the beautiful.

  “You look guilty,” I say. “But you don’t have to look guilty on my behalf.”

  “I feel guilty.”

  “Why? Are you going back to him?” I ask in a strangled voice. The thought makes me sick.

  She shrugs. “He made me an offer.”

  I recoil, then stand up quickly as if I can’t even be near her when she’s like this. When she’s in this zone. “Are you going to take it?” I ask with a sneer. I don
’t mask my disgust. I can’t mask my disgust.

  “I don’t know,” she says, and her voice breaks, and I fucking hate that she can be like this.

  Tempted.

  I push both hands through my hair, grabbing hard. “You’re not a fucking whore, Harley.”

  “It’s not like that,” she spits back.

  “Fuck that,” I shout through clenched teeth. I pace down the block, walking away from her, far away. To the end of the block, where I stop and slam a hand against the street sign. I take a sharp, deep breath, then turn around. She’s still on the stoop, and she’s fiddling with her shirt, shakily fastening the top two buttons.

  When I reach her I bend down and grip her knees. I stare hard at her, her brown eyes like pools. One lone tear streaks down her face. “You are better than that,” I tell her, never breaking her gaze. “You are so much better than that.”

  “But what if I’m not?” She chokes out in the tiniest voice.

  I wipe the pad of my thumb across her cheek. I want to kiss her tears away, but I can’t go there right now. For a million reasons.

  “You are,” I say firmly. I want to shake her. I want to smack some sense into her. “How can you even say you’re not?”

  She drops her head so I can’t look at her. “Because I’m not. Because I went to see him. Because you’d never do this. You’re stronger than me. You’re never even tempted.”

  “You think this is easy for me?” I crouch on the sidewalk, my hands still gripping her knees. I glance down at her socks, then shake my head. “I hate these socks,” I mumble, as I peel the right one down her leg. She lets me, lifting her calf for me. My fingertips brush her skin, but I manage to resist running my hands up and down those calves. The mission to get her out of this awful costume is stronger than my desire to touch her. I unbuckle one shoe and take off her sock. I do the same to the other leg, rolling down the white knee-high, undoing the shoes, and tugging the sock off her foot, ignoring how smooth her perfectly shaven legs are. I hand her the offending items, and she stuffs the white socks into her purse. Out of sight. Somewhat out of mind. “I can’t stand seeing you dressed like this. I wish you were wearing a t-shirt and jeans right now.”