Escort (A Standalone Romance Novel) (New York City Bad Boy Romance) (8 page)

“I’m not home,” she says, out of context.

“Where are you?”

“I’ll be home in a few hours,” she says. “Then,
I think we should talk.”

“I think that would be a good idea,” I
answer.

The line is quiet and, for a few seconds,
I’m thinking that she’s hung up.

“You watched the video,” she says.

“Yeah, I watched the video,” I answer.

“How did you-”

“You know,” I tell her, “I think you
should probably head home now. I’ll meet you there.”

The line’s quiet again.

“Melissa?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says. “I’ll be home soon.”

I hang up the phone and turn to Grace,
saying, “I should probably-”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “Go.”

My mind isn’t doing me any favors right
now. All I can see when I blink is Melissa’s mouth moving and that little
one-sided smile she gets when she knows she’s getting away with something.

I shouldn’t have put Grace in the middle
of this. She was right — I
did
know
what Melissa was saying, but I didn’t want to believe it.

Adrenaline is surging through me as I pull
into my parking space and get out of the car.

I give Melissa a quick call to see if
she’s here yet, but she doesn’t answer.

Not knowing where she is right now, it’s
impossible to know how long it’s going to be before she gets home.

When I get upstairs, I let myself in and
just sit on the couch in the silence, waiting, hoping that nothing’s actually
happened. I’m still holding onto the hope that I didn’t see what I know I saw
and that Grace just happened to have the same delusion.

It’s ridiculous, I know, but it’s all I’ve
got to hang onto right now.

The key enters the lock after a few more
minutes and I get up to greet Melissa at the door, just hoping she’s alone.

“Jace,” she says, startled at the sight of
me. “I didn’t-”

“Let’s talk,” I tell her and walk back to
the living room.

Everything’s quiet for a very long time.

I can’t be sure, but I do get the feeling
we’re both holding our peace for the same reason: once we talk about it, it
becomes real.

Finally, I’m sick of waiting in limbo.
“Want to tell me what you were saying on the video?” I ask.

“First off,” she says, “I don’t even know
how you saw it. I deleted it off of your phone after I sent it to mine.”

“You didn’t delete the message itself,” I
tell her. “Deleting the video from my gallery didn’t
unattach
it from your message.”

“Right,” she says. “Look, I can explain-”

“And, you didn’t just send it to your
phone, did you?” I ask. “If I call the other number you sent it to, who do you
think is going to pick up the phone?”

“Why are you being such a baby about this?
It’s not even what you think.”

“I’d love to hear what it is, then,” I
tell her.

“It’s stupid,” she starts.

“Of that, I am certain,” I answer.

She gives me a dirty look, but her
expression softens into the face she pulls when she’s trying to talk me into
something.

“It’s only happened the one time,” she
says. “It happened yesterday after he gave me the promotion. I don’t know, I
felt like I had to.”

“You’re saying that he made you have sex
with him?”

“No!” she answers quickly. “I don’t know.
Just…”

“Just what?” I ask. “If he forced you,
then we need to talk to-”

“I wanted to do it,” she says. “I came
onto him.”

“Did he tell you he wouldn’t give you the
promotion if you didn’t? Because that’s still-”

“I came onto him,” she repeats.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yeah, that’s not nearly good enough,” I
tell her.

“I guess I was just so grateful for
getting that promotion — you know how I’ve always been overlooked in the past
and everything. I guess I just-”

I interrupt, saying, “You’re doing a lot
of guessing for someone who initiated the whole thing.”

“That’s not fair,” she says.

“In what way is that not fair?” I ask.
“I’m just parroting back what you’ve already told me.”

“Look, the fact is that it happened and
you saw the video. I wish that hadn’t happened, but we are where we are,” she
says. “It is what it is.”

“What does that even mean?” I ask. “Are
you sorry that you screwed your boss or are you sorry that you got caught?”

“I’m sorry that I-” She stops short. “I’m
just sorry.”

“So, this is something that’s probably
going to happen again, isn’t it?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “I realized something
today. I realized that whatever short-lived fantasy I was cooking up in my
head, you’re the one I want to be with. I don’t want to be with him and I wish
I hadn’t made that stupid mistake in the first place.”

“How stupid do you think I am?” I ask.

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” she says.
“I think you’re mad, and I don’t blame you.”

“You’re right,” I tell her, “I
am
mad.”

“And, you have every right to be,” she
says. “Look, I made a stupid, terrible mistake and I wish I could take it back,
but I can’t.”

“Where were you today?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“You weren’t here when I got up,” I tell
her. “You weren’t here when you called me. Where did you go? I know you didn’t
have work today.”

“I had to run into the office,” she says.

“And it took you five hours to do it?” I
scoff.

“I had to get my office packed up.”

“Sounds like this worked out pretty well
for you,” I snap.

“It’s just sex!” she shouts. “Why are you
so fucking uptight about it?”

“We made a commitment,” I tell her.

“You’re the one that’s been going out with
other women almost every night,” she says.

“That was
your
fucking idea!” I return. “You had to talk me into it, and
every time I’ve told you that I think I should quit, you always find a way to
convince me not to.”

“We don’t have to talk about this right
now,” she says, her voice softening again. “We’ve both made some mistakes, and
I think that we should just forgive each other and move on.”

I’m dumbfounded.

“Let’s just move on,” she repeats. “We’ve
gone through some hard times before, but we’ve always worked through them. Do
you know why?”

“Because I’m a blind fool,” I answer.

“No,” she says. “It’s because we love each
other, and when you love someone and they make a mistake, you find a way to
work it out.”

“So, let me get this straight,” I start.
“You’ve already admitted that not only did you screw your boss, you got me to
make a video for you to send to him where you’re mouthing about how much you
wish it was
him
inside you, and now
you’re saying I should just suck it up and deal with it because that’s what
people do when they love each other?”

“Yeah,” she says.

“I really can’t believe you even agreed to
that. Why did you even make that video? What was the fucking point of that? If
that’s what you wanted to do, why didn’t you just take it on your phone? You
might have even gotten away with it if you’d done that.”

She doesn’t answer.

“Melissa?” I implore.

“What?”

“Answer the question.”

“I don’t think we’re accomplishing
anything right now,” she says. “I think we need to both take a little time and
think about what’s happened so we can approach it later with calmer heads.”

“I think we should talk about it now or
you can start getting your shit out of my apartment,” I rejoin.

“It’s
our
apartment,” she protests.

“I’m the one on the lease,” I tell her.

And, of course, this is the moment that
she starts crying.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I know that
what I did was wrong, and I don’t expect you to ever forgive me.”

“Yeah, I think that’s going to be a tough
sell,” I tell her.

“See?” she bawls. “You
hate
me.”

“I know what you’re doing, and it’s not
going to work.”

“And, what am I doing?” she asks through
her tears.

“You’re trying to make me feel bad so I
end up not only letting you stay, but actually trying to make you feel better
about the fact that you fucking cheated on me and only came clean after it was
clear that you didn’t destroy all the evidence.”

“How can you think that?” she asks, laying
it on even thicker now. “I wanted to tell you as soon as it happened, but I was
scared that you’d leave me. I don’t know what I would do without you. I love
you. I want to spend my life with you.”

“That’s a little harder to believe today
than it would have been yesterday,” I tell her.

“If I can’t be with you, I don’t know
what’s going to happen to me.” She decides to top it off with a cliché, “I
don’t know how to not be with you!”

I roll my eyes, but that just makes her
bottom lip start quivering. She’s laying it on, but whether the pain on her
face is real or not, we’ve been together long enough and I’ve given enough of
myself to her that it still affects me.

“This isn’t okay,” I tell her.

“I know,” she says. “I know I messed up.
I’m not going to let anything like this happen again.”

“Would you have told me about this if I
hadn’t seen the video?”

“Of course,” she says, straightening her
posture. “It was eating me up inside.”

“Seriously, did you buy a book of ‘I just
cheated on you’ clichés or something?”

Her expression turns again. “I can’t
believe you’d say that,” she says. “You’re behaving like I’m putting on some
kind of act. I feel terrible, but if you’re not willing to work through this, I
understand. I’ll grab my things.”

She gets up and starts heading to the
bedroom.

I don’t know if it’s a bluff or if she’s
actually ready to walk out the door, but even knowing that she’s playing me,
it’s still a reflex for me to say, “Stop.”

She turns around, her eyes sad but
hopeful. “I’m not going to stay if you don’t think I’m worth it,” she says.
“I’d certainly understand if that’s the way you feel. I’d probably feel that
way right now, too.”

“I know what you’re doing,” I tell her.

She turns back toward the bedroom, hanging
her head.

“But that doesn’t mean I don’t still love
you,” I tell her.

Half of me is relieved that the status quo
is still in effect, at least for a while. The other half of me wants to curb
stomp the first part.

What the hell am I doing? This isn’t me.

Before I met Melissa, I was a very
different person. Yeah, I was a lot rougher around the edges, but I also
remember being a lot happier.

Now, the only one that ever has a smile is
her, and that only seems to happen when she’s successfully manipulated me in
one way or another.

Like right now.

“You’re not going to regret this,” she
says. “I’m going to prove to you that you can trust me. I’m not going to let
you down again.”

“Uh huh,” I answer, apathetic.

“In fact,” she says, “I don’t know about
you, but I could go for some makeup sex right now.”

Although I’ve already made the mistake,
the damage has already been invited back to do its thing, something clicks in
my head, and I’m starting to feel a lot more like my old self.

“Go ahead,” I tell her.

She furrows her brow, but her confusion
only lasts a moment.

“Where do you want to do it?” she asks.
“We could do it right here on the couch, or in the bedroom, or in the kitchen
or, ooh, we could do it in the shower. We haven’t done that in a long-”

“You didn’t understand me,” I tell her.

“What?” she asks.

“When I told you to go ahead,” I answer,
“you didn’t understand what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“I meant that you can go ahead and fuck
yourself.”

Holy shit: that felt good.

Chapter
Seven

New Friends in Old Places

Grace

“No,” she says, “you’ve got to pull the
carton almost all the way out of the water.”

Yuri’s helping me get rid of my remaining
stash of buds and is attempting to instruct me on the proper use of a gravity
bong. The process is pretty interesting, but I’m having a bit of trouble with
the finer points.

“Here,” she says, “I’ll get it prepped
again, but this time,
you’re
taking
the hit.”

We’ve been at this a while.

Yuri’s apartment was a little…I guess the
polite way to say it is that it’s cluttered. The not-so-polite way to say it is
that that place is a fucking hellhole.

Needless to say, we’re back at my place.

It’s been a couple of days since I’ve seen
Jace, but he called me yesterday to give me an update on what’s going on with
him and the town skank...I forget her name.

He sounded a lot more confident than I’ve
ever known him to be, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s whipped like a
little bitch. I think it’s my duty as a kind, caring human being full of empathy
and puppy farts to do what I can to extricate him from his royal blunder.

For now, though, Yuri’s got the bottomless
milk jug full of smoke and she’s unscrewing the bowl.

“Put your mouth over it, but not before
you exhale everything from your lungs,” she instructs. “You’re going to need
every bit of space in there to take all of this.”

“I love it when you talk dirty to me,” I
tell her.

Toward the end of my conversation with
Jace, he was kind enough to remember that he’s my doctor and I still haven’t had
that scan he seemed to believe was so important, so he’s got me scheduled for a
few hours from now.

Let’s just say that my tolerance is
starting to grow.

“Are you going to be good to drive me?” I
ask.

“Quick,” she scolds, “before the smoke
gets out.”

I put my mouth over the opening at the top
and, once I’ve got a good seal, Yuri starts pushing the jug down into the
water, forcing what amounts to a metric fuck ton of smoke into me.

Somehow, I manage to get it all in, and I
lift my head, holding my breath.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

I can’t really answer right now.

“You don’t need to hold your breath,” she
says. “Word has it that something like ninety-five percent of the THC gets is
absorbed into your lungs in the first few seconds. You can blow it out.”

I’m not sure where she’s getting her
information, but she seems to be an old hand at all this, so I let the air out
of my lungs with a surprisingly large, seemingly never-ending plume of smoke.

“That’s the way to do it, girl!” she says,
holding her hand up and just staring at me until I give her a high five.

“Holy shit,” I tell her. “I feel like I
just breathed out a pine forest fire.”

“I know, right?” she says. “Now, load me
up one more. I like to be good and baked before I get in to work.”

“Do you really think that’s wise?” I ask.
“I mean, you’re working in a doctor’s office.”

“A reticulated giraffe could do my job,”
she says. “Hell, it could do my job after smoking more than I do.”

“Yeah, but you’ve got to figure in body
weight,” I explain, feeling very proud of myself for being able to contribute
so wonderfully to Yuri’s hyperbole.

“Oh, and I’m not driving,” she says,
replacing the screw-on bowl, formerly the lid, onto the milk jug, loading the
bowl faster than seems possible and flicking her lighter, the flame just above
the cap.

“I really have to do this scan,” I tell
her. “I’ve been having these headaches and my vision goes weird sometimes.”

“I’ll get you there,” she assures as the
container fills with thick, silvery smoke. “We’re just going to have to take a
cab.”

“Shouldn’t you be there?” I ask. “I mean,
I’m going to the doctor’s office where
you
work to have a procedure done.”

“A test,” she says, unscrewing the cap.
“Not a procedure, a test. But that couldn’t possibly make the slightest
difference.”

She sets the cap on the side of my tub and
takes what really seems too large to call “her hit.”

When she comes back up, smoke is coming
out of her nose in little ringlets and I’m really not expecting it when she
grabs the back of my head, presses her lips against mine and breathes the smoke
into me.

It happens so fast and I’m already pretty
baked, so by the time I really process what just happened, she’s already back
on her feet, checking her hair in the mirror.

“You’re the only patient today,” she says.
“It’s Sunday. Besides, I called Dr. Churchill, and he knows we’re hanging out.”

“What just happened?”

“It’s called
shotgunning
,”
Yuri answers. “Oh shit, I didn’t even bother asking you if you were cool like
that. I promise, I wasn’t trying to get fresh with you. I just noticed that
your eyes were still pretty clear, and I don’t know about you, but MRI machines
freak me right the fuck out, and I figured you could use a little extra to get
you through the procedure.”

“The test,” I correct, and we both start laughing.

Yeah, I think I’ll be nice and calm when
it comes time to have my brain bombarded by the magnetic field.

“Shit,” she says, looking at her phone.

“
Wh
-” I start,
but before I can get the “at” out, Yuri’s grabbing my hand and pulling me to my
feet.

“We’re running late,” she says, “and I
don’t know when the next open slot with the MRI is going to be.”

I don’t have time to respond, as she’s now
dragging me out of the apartment. It’s all I can do to grab my purse and keys
on the way. Yuri doesn’t bother stopping, so it’s quite the feat.

When we get outside, she sprays us both
with about half her spritz bottle, and I’m coughing when the cab pulls up.

Yuri does the talking, which is just as
well because that last hit is really starting to get on top of me.

We show up at the hospital either three
hours or fourteen seconds later — I can’t be completely sure which — and as
soon as Yuri pays the driver, she opens her door and, just like she had back at
my apartment, she grabs my wrist and is pulling me out of the cab.

I’m jogging, trying to keep up with her,
but we somehow manage to get into Dr. Churchill’s office when the big hand is
touching the twelve.

The doc is in his office proper, but he
sees us come in. He’s on his way out to greet us, but he’s not even to the door
to the waiting room when he stops and plugs his nose.

“Yuri, for fuck’s sake,” he says. “How
many times have I told you to go easy on the perfume?”

“It’s not
perfume
,” she corrects, still gripping my wrist, “
it’s
spritz.
”

“Whatever,” he says. “Seriously, is there
anything you can do about that?”

“They don’t let me into the doctor’s
locker rooms anymore, so it’s not like I can just jump in the shower,” she
says, then turns to me. “Long story,” she mutters and releases her grip,
seemingly for no other reason than to give me a “get going” pat on the rear.

I’m seriously starting to get some mixed
signals from her, but what’s even more on my mind is the fact that we didn’t
bother with eye drops, and I can feel the dryness of my eyes.

“Are you ready to go?” he asks.

“Why is it that you always like to be
there during tests?” I ask.

“Call it a control thing,” he says. “If
I’m there, I can tell the radiologist to take thinner or thicker cuts as
needed. I swear, they have no instinct for it at all.”

I’m not sure if I respond or not, but
we’re walking down what I’m sure at one point was a familiar hallway, though I
don’t remember it being so eventful.

About thirty feet ahead of us is an older
woman trying to corral six children into one of the rooms, while just a little
farther down the way is a teenager endlessly combing his fingers through his
hair.

That gravity bong stuff is bananas.

After an indeterminate amount of time, I’m
in a small room, changing into a hospital gown.

When I come back out, Jace directs me to
the MRI and I lie down.

I’ve never been claustrophobic, but I
think Yuri must have gotten into my head, because I’m closing my eyes, not
quite ready to be scanned.

“All right,”
Jace’s
voice comes tinny through the intercom, “just stay still and we should have you
out of there in no time.”

“All right,” I answer and the MRI springs
to life.

The only real difficulty I’m having once
the test starts is trying not to laugh. I guess I wasn’t having secondhand
claustrophobia, after all.

When the test is over and I’m slid back
out, I just lie there, waiting for Jace to tell me what to do next.

Before long, I’m back in that little room,
changing back into my spritz-drenched clothes.

Jace tells me to head back up to his
office, so I start on my way, though I have to make a quick call to Yuri to get
back to more familiar territory. Once I get near the elevators, it all starts
coming back to me.

When I get to the office, I’m smacked in
the face with the smell of Yuri’s spritz. Apparently, she decided to “freshen
up” a bit more while I was gone.

“What do you think?” she asks after I sit
down in my customary spot.

“About what?”

“About Dr. Churchill?” she asks.

“He seems like a good doctor,” I tell her.

“That’s not what I meant, but I think you
know that. I think he likes you.”

“He’s in a relationship with
what’s-her-skank,” I answer.

She smiles politely at my attempt at
cleverness, but shakes her head. “One of these days, he’s finally going to grow
a pair of balls and he’s going to leave her,” she says. “I think you two would
make a cute couple.”

Suddenly, I’m very self-conscious.

“Yeah, but he’s my doctor, and that’s kind
of weird for me,” I tell her.

“I don’t see why,” she says. “As long as
all he’s doing is running scans and giving you prescriptions, what’s the harm?”

I’m sure there’s an easy answer to that,
but right now, I’m having a little trouble getting past the statement that he
likes me.

“He
is
very attractive,” I concede, “but I really think it would be way too
complicated to make any kind of move on him right now.”

“Sorry,” she says. “I get a little nosy
sometimes when I’m baked.”

On the word “baked,” the door to the
waiting room opens and Jace walks in, saying, “Grace, would you like to step
into my office for a moment?”

“Sure,” I answer and I follow him into his
office.

He pulls up his computer and finds my
file. For a minute, he’s looking at different shots of the inside of my head.

Finally, he says, “Well, in comparing your
scan today with the earlier one, it looks like your
oligodendroglioma
hasn’t grown. That’s the good news.”

“What’s the bad news?” I ask.

“Well, the fact that you’re having the
symptoms you’re having,” he says. “How severe did you say they were?”

“I don’t know that I’d call them severe,”
I tell him. “It’s a little freaky when my mind goes blank on me, but it’s
nothing I can’t handle.”

He rubs his chin, and I can hear that
invigorating sound of his fingers moving over light stubble.

“Well,” he says, “it doesn’t look like
you’re in any immediate danger, but I would like to take another scan in a
couple of weeks. It’s best to keep an eye on these things. And if you notice
your symptoms getting any worse, do let me know.”

“That’s it?” I ask. “After all the
nonsense of the last few days, it’s just ‘come back and we’ll see if your
tumor’s going to kill you ahead of schedule?’”

“There’s not much else to do,” he says.
“How are you doing with your medication?”

“Oh, right now, I’m feeling fucking
spectacular,” I tell him.

He smiles and, with a chuckle, he says, “I
meant the chemo. You’re almost done with this round, isn’t that correct?”

“Yeah. It’s kind of hit or miss on whether
I feel up to getting out of bed, but the
other
medication does seem to be helping with that.”

“Are you having any nausea, vomiting,
diarrhea?”

That line of questioning right there is
precisely the reason I don’t think things with Jace would work out so well,
even were he to drop his baggage at the gate.

“A little of one and three,” I tell him.
“I haven’t puked, though.”

“That’s good,” he says. “What about body
aches? How’s your appetite?”