Escort (A Standalone Romance Novel) (New York City Bad Boy Romance) (63 page)

Buzzed Girl takes this as
an opportunity to get one up on roommate and only rides me harder.

I pull the phone out of
my pants pocket, just hoping that it’s not my mom calling to see if I’ve found
a new place to live yet.

I’m not a total neophyte
to the city, but my last apartment, well, let’s just say things kind of got
complicated with the roommate.

“If you don’t get the
apartment, you can stay in my room,” Yoga Chick says, running her hands down
the front of my body.

“Oh, hell no,” Buzzed
Girl retorts. “If he’s staying with anyone, he’s staying inside of me.” She
giggles.

The slip was clearly
intentional.

“Shh,” I whisper. “This
is Dane Paulson,” I answer the phone.

I can only hope that
whoever’s on the other end can’t hear Yoga Chick lifting Buzzed Girl—by the
ass, mind you—off of my cock or the mostly-self-satisfied tone she exudes as
she works me inside of her.

“Dane, yeah,” an only
vaguely familiar voice answers, “I just wanted to let you know that my first
three choices were unavailable, so it looks like the room is yours.”

“Thank you,” I say,
trying not to sound anywhere near as relieved as I am to hear the news.

As fun as this whole
thing is tonight, I really don’t want to be anywhere near either one of these
women in the cold, sober light of day.

“Oh, that’s it!” Yoga
Chick gasps as I start working my thumb over her swollen bud.

“What was that?” the woman
on the phone asks.

I really need to get
better with names.

“Nothing,” I answer.
“When should I plan on moving in?”

“Screw it,” she slurs.
“Move in tomorrow.”

The line goes dead a
moment later.

I can’t quite be certain
with the amount of distraction going on at the moment, but the woman on the
phone sounded kind of drunk.

Oh well, verbal contract
and all that. Right now, I’m more interested in watching as Buzzed Girl places
one of her thighs over Yoga Chick’s shoulder while Yoga Chick, straddling me in
what amounts to a modified version of the splits, holds her roommate in place
with both hands on the latter’s ass and proceeds to go down on her.

All things considered,
life is pretty great.

Chapter Three

Resolutions

Leila

My head hurts.

I lie in bed for what
feels like an hour before I gather enough courage to open my eyes.

“Mike?”

There’s no response.

The brightness of the
tiny beam of light that’s made its way through the blinds is pinning me down
and keeping me sightless. I’m not even sure where or who I am right now.

After what feels like
another hour, I manage to sit up and scoot over to the side of the bed.

If this is what a
hangover feels like, I can’t begin to imagine how anyone in the world has ever
decided that getting drunk twice is a good idea.

I did something stupid
last night, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was.

I’m in my own bedroom.
There’s no one in here with me.

That’s a positive sign.

Still, there’s that heavy
pull in my gut that tells me I’m going to regret something just as soon as I
remember what the hell happened.

I’m naked. Somehow it’s
taken me this long to realize it.

I’ve never slept naked in
my life. I’m way too uptight to feel comfortable without some sort of clothing
on my body at all times; showers and sex excluded, of course.

I lean toward the floor
and feel my pants pockets for my cellphone, but it’s not in them.

After the long, nearly
impossible task of standing up, I check the rest of my room, but the phone’s
nowhere to be found.

Not knowing if there’s anyone
sleeping on the couch, I wrap myself in my bath robe before I open the door.

Empty.

I would think that
something happened with Mike last night, but I’m confident that he’d stick
around for a while if that were the case. Then again, that would be weird
enough that I might never see him again either.

Huh.

I give up on the phone
for a while and try to remember what cures a hangover. Apparently, though, even
thinking hurts.

Coffee, whether it’s
going to help or not, sounds like a great idea right now, so I head into my
kitchen and start a pot. The clock on the microwave reads: 11:36.

“Great,” I mumble to
myself, “even after getting hammered, I still can’t sleep past noon.”

I was trying so hard to
be one of those derelicts who throw caution to the wind and, whatever.

There’s a knock on the
door, and I’m almost at the peephole when I realize what I did last night. It’s
worse than I could have imagined.

If Mike and I had slept
together, at least we could chalk it up to being such close friends getting
drunk and doing something stupid. It would be weird, but I think we’d both find
a way to live with it.

No, the truth is much
worse.

“Hey, is anyone in
there?”

It’s him.

“Just a minute!” I call
out.

There has to be a way for
me to get out of this. I know I told him that he could move in here but, in my
defense, I was drunk and drunken people should not be held accountable for
their phone calls.

Now that the generalities
of the mistake are clear, the specifics start to set in. I can’t really be
certain, but I think he was having sex while he was on the phone with me.

“I don’t have a key yet,”
Dane calls through the door, and I bite my fingernails on one hand while, with
the other, I unlock the door.

“Dane, look, I—”

“I’m glad you called,” he
says, trotting in. “Fucking thrilled is more like it, actually.”

“When I called you last
night,” I start again, but lose my train of thought.

He shrugs and says, “I
don’t have that much to move in, really. I’m having my mattress delivered here
today along with some other essentials, but I’m sure I’ll be all settled before
I have to go to work.”

“Isn’t it Saturday?” I
ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s my
busiest night of the week.”

“That’s right,” I yawn.
“You’re a
musician
.”

He shoots me a look that
I’m nowhere near interested enough to decipher and starts talking again. It’s
insufferable.

“Yeah,” he says. “In this
city, the two best jobs to have are also the ones that’ll kill your Saturday
night more than any other.”

I wait for him to expound
on his philosophy, but he either chooses not to or simply hasn’t thought it
through far enough to have decided what the other “best job” would be. Neither
possibility would surprise me.

“Listen,” I say. “It’s
Dane, right?”

“You’re good at that,” he
says. “I can’t remember someone’s name if we’re fucking.”

I get the feeling the
statement isn’t hyperbole.

“Charming,” I mock. “You
and I are going to have to talk about that little phone call last night, but
before that happens, I have
got
to
get some more sleep.”

“I can tell,” he laughs.
“Looks like you got hit by the drunkest train in the state.”

“Uh huh,” I say
dismissively. “Anyway, so, why don’t you help yourself to some food and make
yourself comfortable for a while? Just keep it down. I’d really rather not have
to kick you out before I’ve had a chance to drift into a hangover-induced coma
and die.”

“You know what helps with
that?” he asks.

“What?” I ask, for the
first time looking forward to hearing something that’s about to come out of
this idiot’s mouth.

“Hair of the dog,” he
says.

“What does that even
mean?”

“Hair of the dog that bit
you,” he says. “It means to have a couple of shots or a Bloody Mary or
something. Trust me, that shit fucking works.”

“Have you ever gotten
through a conversation without pumping it full of obscenity?”

“All the time,” he says.
“If you need to go lie down now, I can fix you up something to drink. Just tell
me what you like.”

“That’s okay,” I tell
him. “I think that would just make me puke right now.”

“Oh yeah,” he says,
“you’re going to need a vomit can. I’ll get one for you, roomie.”

I’m done listening to
him. That is, until I get to the door to my room and realize that I’m about to
pop.

“You look like shit,” he
says. “Think you can make it to the bathroom, or are we about to get to know
each other in a very new and disgusting way?”

“Just grab me a ‘vomit
can’, will you?” I ask, only hoping the phrase means what it sounds like it
means.

“All right,” he says. “Go
sit on your bed and I’ll bring something in for you.”

I sit on the edge of my
bed for about twelve seconds before I give up and lie down flat on my back.
It’s a long time before I move again.

Whether I actually fall
asleep at one point or another is hard to say, but the next thing I know, I’m
hearing what sounds like someone hammering a nail into the drywall in the other
room.

I’m about to get up and
tell my new and
very
temporary
roommate to “knock it off and, oh, by the way, get out, you’re not moving in
here” when I hear a woman’s voice punctuating the same rhythm as the banging
noise.

“You’ve got to be kidding
me,” I exhale.

I would love to go in
there and throw him out right now, but I’m really not willing to see whatever
it is that he’s doing to that poor woman. Either he’s killing her or they’re
having sex. Either way, I don’t want to be a witness.

Sure, I could knock and
call through the door, but it’s so much easier to just bury my head between two
pillows and wish for death. His or mine: it doesn’t really matter.

Even through the pillows,
though, I can hear the woman’s screaming moans, or whatever you’d call that
noise.

To me, it sounds like a
cat being nailed to a board. It’d almost be sad if it weren’t so infuriating.

“Oh fuck! Oh fuck!” the
woman is screaming, and I’ve got to get the hell out of here.

The man’s only been in my
apartment a couple of hours, and he’s already driving me out of it. If I had
any residual guilt about going back on my offer for him to move in, it’s being
drowned out by the woman’s howling.

She’s got to be faking
it. I wonder if he knows.

He probably doesn’t care.

I’ve had sex before, and
at no point did I feel the need to start making noises like a tortured rabbit.

Real or not, I’m done. I
start to think that I might not hear them if I get in the shower—a necessity at
the moment, I assure you—but the squealing is way too loud for me to hang onto
that illusion for long.

Luckily, I find my phone
and call Mike.

“Hello?”

“Mike, I’ve got to get
the hell out of here. Remember that idiot I told you about—the one who went
through my newspaper?”

“Yeah?”

“I called him last night
and told him that the room is his. Now, he’s in the other room, doing
unspeakable things to a poor woman, and I can’t even—”

“Is he hurting her, or
are they having sex?” Mike asks.

“Probably the latter, but
I have no way of knowing. You’ve got to get me out of here.”

“Just go for a walk or
something. When you come back, tell him that you made a mistake and that he’s
got to go. Wait, you didn’t sign a contract with him or anything, did you?”

“No.”

“There you go. I’m at
work right now, but just go get food or something. It’ll be uncomfortable, but
you’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure you can’t
do it?” I ask.

I’ve never liked
confrontation.

Mike sighs on the other
end of the phone.

“I’ll tell you what,” he
says, “if you can hold out until I’m off, I’ll come over and provide moral
support.”

Deep
breath
in. Deep
breath
out. “All right,” I sigh and hang up.

I had been so focused on
the phone call that I hadn’t noticed the disembodied grunting in Dane’s room
had ceased.

I go back to my room and
close the door. I don’t want to see him or the woman that’s in there.

Sadly, the two were
apparently taking a breather as that thump, thump, thumping of the headboard is
back and louder than before.

I get dressed in record
time, grab my wallet and am out the door. It’s not until the latch clicks
behind me that I realize I forgot my keys.

This is quite possibly
the worst day of my life.

*
                   
*
                   
*

I’m not going to lie. I’m
a little drunk.

Dane was right about that
whole hair-of-the-dog thing. This is fantastic.

That is, I feel fantastic
right up until I feel my phone vibrating in my bra and realize that I now have
to go home and deal with everything.

I order another drink for
the road.

Walking used to be the
easiest thing in the world. It’s been years since I’ve even given the task much
thought, but trying to keep a straight line down the sidewalk takes every bit
of concentration I have.

Mike’s on his way. At the
rate I’m going, I should get there about ten minutes before he does.

I just hope he relents
and does some of the talking. Sauced or not, I’m not looking forward to kicking
the guy out.

When I get to my
building, I don’t bother waiting out front for Mike like I told him I would; I
just go straight up there.

Maybe if I do this quick,
Mike can arrive just in time to throw Dane out on his ear.

That’s the dream.

I spend a few solid
minutes going through my pockets before I remember having left the keys inside.

I knock on the door and
wait.

While I’m waiting,
something triggers a memory within me. Something about my father, but I can’t
put a finger on it.

I knock again, but
there’s no answer.

He must be out.

I don’t have Dane’s
number in my phone since my call history automatically deletes itself, so all I
can do is wait for Mike to get here and then track down the super.

As I’m walking away from
my door, I realize what’s triggering the memory: someone's cooking confit de
canard. My dad used to make it in his restaurant.

This is just perfect. I’m
drunk, irritated and now starving.

As I walk down the
stairs, I pull out my phone.

“Hey,” Mike answers.
“Where are you?”

“He’s not there,” I tell
him. “Are you out front?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Are you
drunk?”