Broken Girl(32)
Fear thrashes through my body. Suddenly I’m that lost little girl, the one that’s so scared.
His hands are hot, the tips of his fingers scratch my waist when he pulls my pink shorts and flowery panties down and off my legs.
“Is this what you want Rose? A man who will just take from you and leave you with nothing?” His voice echoed down into my gut.
‘You’s making me do this my little Rosalie. You give me this sickness . . . you keep causin’ all of this in my body and you’re gonna help me with it.’
“No,” I whisper as I squeeze my eyes closed trying to clear my mind.
‘Shhh, Rosalie, don’t cry, you’s gonna fix me up. Make me all better, you’s about ripe for the pickin’ girl.’
A single tear collects in the corner of my eye before it breaks free and rolls down my cheek. An instance of resolve shoots through my body as he traces the tip of his nose across my cheek.
His breath is hot against my skin as he continues. “You think I don’t know who you are and how I make you feel inside?” He pushes his fingers deep inside me. My legs sway and my muscles clench as he pushes deeper and draws a long pull back, before he thrusts again. “I will never be that guy for you, my Rosebud. I will never take what I didn’t pay for; I will never take what isn’t mine.”
His other hand catches the side of my neck as he pulls my head toward his. Still holding me from behind, he strokes his ever-ready cock across the bend of my ass. “Let me take care of you,” he whispers against my cheek. The guard I carry, holding men at a distance crumbles as he spins me around and dips his tongue between my lips. I push against him, our tongues tangle forcefully as the colors that burst from the desire to feel something more than the broken that taints my heart. For the very first time in the couple of years selling my body, I let a date kiss me. He kisses me and I am his . . .
THE THICK FOG of emotion coupled with the vivid images of being lost and betrayed by Mr. C weighed heavy on my mind. This time it wasn’t the butterflies that had swirled in my stomach when I thought about Mr. C, but the sick burn of betrayal as I thought about Shane and how much I wanted to see him. It was the garbage truck’s squeaky brakes that plucked me from my dream and thrust me smack dab in the middle of my reality. Today was garbage day, and that also meant it was Thursday, the same day that I would spend with Shane doing our laundry. It had been six days since I heard from him. I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was f*cking killing me and I hated it. But, after I bailed on our hike, I had asked him to give me some space.
I resented the fact that Monday rolled around and I craved his conversation and the spice of his favorite Cajun food. I couldn’t stand the fact that instead of being with him, I had spent the afternoon in my shitty apartment eating a bologna sandwich as I watched some f*cked up Spanish soap opera. I missed his random texts that he’d send me with his dorky jokes and one-way conversations that made me laugh. It wasn’t fair where a lifetime of f*cked up situations kept me going in the same circle over and over again.
Sure, Shane and I had only hung out for a cluster of Thursday afternoons to do laundry and a handful of Mondays for lunch, it shouldn’t have been that big of a deal . . . but it was. I got used to it, goddammit—got used to him and his crazy texts on the days we didn’t see each other. He had become my comfortable sharing my Thursdays and filling my Mondays with conversation.
Pulling my phone from my purse, I did everything short of crossing my fingers and toes, in the hope that Shane had texted me. Needing any type of confirmation that he was okay or surviving without our laundry and lunch days, I looked at my phone, he still hadn’t texted me . . . not once in the six days. Maybe he was done with me. If I had to guess, I was just too complicated for him.
It was probably better that Shane never called me, it made it a little easier to move on from our friendship. Obviously, he didn’t have a problem letting go of whatever we had. Yeah, it was better. Besides, I really didn’t need to deal with the extra pressure.
There were several conferences that had come to San Francisco over the weekend. When I had to pull extra tricks on my six squares, knowing Shane didn’t want anything to do with me made it an easier pill to swallow, so to speak.
Sybil and I had worked it systematically and raked in some good money with a handful of extra suck and plucks from the Chinese Plastics and Paints Conference on Friday and Saturday and the politicians from the Clean Energy Summit on Sunday and Monday. We had four busy nights and it gave us a nice little stack of cash we hid under our mattresses.
Okay, so what if I had used the fact that Shane didn’t call me as motivation to make as much money as possible. I just took all my feelings for him and stuffed them into the emotional vault I had buried deep in my body. It was the same space where I hid every other f*cked up situation that shaped who I was. I’d been trained by circumstances to be the girl that looked like she didn’t give a f*ck. I’d been down that road so many times . . . I knew where every crack, bump and pothole was and the damage each one did when I didn’t steer clear.
The problem was, even though I threw myself into my work over the weekend, it really didn’t help as much as I thought it would have. Like they say, appearances can be deceiving, and boy did I deceive everyone when it came to Shane, especially myself.
Ever since Shane and I had begun spending so much time together it had become harder and harder to do my job. I used to take on anyone without a second thought, I’d strip my mind of any emotion and work the dates into doing whatever the hell I wanted them to do. I could f*ck and play into their kinky fetishes because I was damn good at turning the whole thing into a game in my mind.