“Charlie?” Taio’s voice, soft through the bathroom door, chases my mother’s warnings away. He follows with a gentle knock. “You okay in there?”
No. I am absolutely not okay. I am the opposite of okay. I am the dictionary definition of not okay, illustrated with a picture of my raccoon face.
“Fine,” I manage. “Just…technical difficulties.”
A pause. Then, he asks, “Can I come in?”
I should say no. I should fix my face, find something silk to wear, emerge looking like the confident, sexy woman I’m pretending to be. Instead I hear myself say, “Yeah.”
The door opens. Taio takes one look at me and his expression does something complicated. Something flickers across his face, frustration that melts instantly into softness. Now there’s only pity in his dark eyes. He doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t tease. Just walks toward me like he’s approaching a wounded animal.
“Here,” he offers quietly. “Let me.”
Before I can protest, his hands are on my waist, lifting me onto the bathroom counter like I weigh nothing. The marble is cold on my bare legs. He’s standing between my knees now, close enough that I can smell him—something warm and clean, soap and skin with a rich, spicy hint underneath. Intoxicating. Teasing. Yet, so familiar for some odd reason.
He reaches past me for a washcloth, runs it under warm water, wrings it out. Then he cups my chin with one hand, tilting my face up toward the light.
“Close your eyes,” he murmurs.
I close them. Feel the warm, damp cloth against my skin as he gently—so gently, you’d think he was cleansing a butterfly’s wings—wipes away the mess I made. His other hand stays on my chin, steadying me. The bathroom seems to shrink around us, the air growing thick with something unspoken as he traces the cloth along the curve of my cheekbone.
This is more intimate than anything I’ve ever experienced. A man I barely know, cleaning mascara off my face in a penthouse bathroom, treating me like something precious instead of something broken.
I don’t know what to do with that.
“Why tonight?” he asks, still dabbing at the smudges under my eyes.
“I normally wear mascara. I was trying to?—”
“No. Sex, Charlie,” he clarifies with a little chuckle. “Why do you suddenly want to have sex tonight? You’ve waited how many years?”
“Twenty-three.” I don’t offer anything else right away. The question feels bigger than he knows.
“You can open your eyes.”
I do. He’s close—so close I can see the flecks of gold in his dark irises, the slight furrow between his brows. He’s looking at me like he actually wants to know. Like my answer matters.
“I let it get too big, I think.”
He cradles my knee so gently, I find myself craving the pressure. A new kind of desire bubbles beneath my belly button. Something definitely different. Far more powerful than my usual anxiety and nerves around the opposite sex.
“What does that mean?”
“The idea of sex. I let it get to be this big, scary, ugly, hairy monster of nightmares. Honestly? I don’t really understand the appeal. Getting that close to someone has to be the most awkward, uncomfortable thing. I never understood why everyone is so obsessed with it.”
He blinks at me like I just said the world was flat. “I think once you try it, you’ll see why everyone seems to like it.”
“Not the physical, Taio,” I whisper-whine; it sounds like a deflating balloon animal. “I’ve orchestrated my own standing ovations, thank you very much. It’s the whole…soul-naked thing. Trusting someone enough to let them see you…really see you. I thought all the stuff my mom wrote me was lived experience. Like she understood love on a deeper level and wanted me to experience that too. I’ve had my mom on this pedestal for so long. I wake up every day, and when the internet hates me, or I’m splattered across some tabloid nonsense that is so ridiculous everyone gobbles it up without thinking twice, I remind myself that the only person I have to impress is her. If my mom is proud of me, I’m all right. But then I found that letter.” I duck my head, shaking it slowly.
A teasing smile gleams on his face. “Let’s circle back to that part about orchestrating your own standing ovations, because I’m dying to hear more aboutthat, but in the meantime…what letter?”
“I found a letter,” I hear myself say. “Three months ago. From my biological father.”
Taio’s hands still, but he doesn’t pull away. Just waits.
“I never knew him. My mom told me he didn’t want me. That he was just some guy who got her pregnant and disappeared. My whole life, that was the story. Unwanted. Abandoned. And fuck, I hated him. I thought he was a selfish, cowardly piece of…” I swallow hard. “Then I found this letter, and it turns out, he begged her. Begged her to let him be part of my life. He wanted to leave his wife, raise me, be a family. And my mom said no. She kept me from him.”
The words are coming faster now, spilling out like water through a crack in a dam, then a broken levee, then a biblical flood that could drown cities. I get it’s ridiculous—like wearing-a-ball-gown-to-buy-milk ridiculous—but isn’t that the whole glorious point of an escort? For one night, he’s mine. All mine. My personal emotional hazmat team, contracted to wade through my radioactive feelings without judgment. We’re bound by the beautiful secrecy of it all, two strangers passing like ships in the night, except one ship is paying the other ship an obscene amount of money to solve its ship problems.
