Love Online(13)

***

I couldn’t watch the public show anymore. I didn’t want to see Eden taking her clothes off for those assholes, and I couldn’t deal with some of the disrespectful things guys said to her. If I’d known where some of them were located, I would’ve tried to hunt them down.

So instead, I took a hot shower, watched an episode of Stranger Things, and chilled until it was time for our private chat.

A couple of minutes before midnight, I logged into her room to catch the tail end of her shift so she could connect me to the private room.

She granted me access without my having to pay. Eden looked tired as she waved. “Hey.”

“Fancy meeting you here.”

“I know.” She sighed. “I thought this night would never end.”

“I’m still floored you would want to come back on with me after a long shift.”

“Well, I don’t have to put on an act around you, so it doesn’t feel like a continuation of work.”

“Your refusal to let me pay sort of blew me away. I guess this was the first night I really believed you liked talking to me as much as I like talking to you.”

“I love talking to you,” she said as she pulled a sweatshirt over her head and lay down on her mattress.

The white Christmas lights were still on, and all of her props were strewn about.

“I’m not gonna keep you up too long,” she said. “I just wanted to hear your voice before bed.”

On camera, she was always so giving of herself, but the person she showed me now was vulnerable, needy—maybe even a little lonely. I wondered how long it had been since someone offered to do something for her.

“What can I do for you, Eden?”

“What do you mean?”

My voice was more of a whisper. “Tell me what you need.”

She seemed to ponder that, then said, “Tell me a bedtime story.”

A story.

Hmm…

Okay.

She curled into her pillow and stared into the camera, blinking, waiting. In moments like this, it was always hard to believe she couldn’t see me.

I thought about what kind of story to tell, then decided to wing it.

“Once upon a time, there was a little boy. He lived a very charmed life. He grew up in a huge mansion in California. His father worked all the time. His dad was never around, so he was a mama’s boy. His mother tried her best to teach him values despite the excesses surrounding him. She sang songs to him sometimes and showered him in love. He was a lucky kid, took things for granted. And his life continued like this uninterrupted for many years.”

I took a deep breath in and continued. “When he was in his twenties, he met a girl and fell in love—or so he thought. Everything in his life was perfect until his mother found out she had cancer. She fought for a good year before she died. Losing her crushed him. Then shortly after that, he fucked things up with his girlfriend, and she left him.” Closing my eyes, I paused. “In a short amount of time, he lost the only two women who had ever loved him. This boy—now a man—who’d been lucky enough to never deal with tragedy until that point, was left devastated and lost for the first time in his life. For two years, nothing and no one could break him out of this perpetual state of emptiness. Everything in his life seemed superficial, from the women he slept with to the shallow, Hollywood types showing up at the many lavish parties he threw. It was a meaningless existence. But that all changed one night when he clicked on a photo of a girl playing the violin.”

She lifted her head from the pillow as if to listen more closely to my story.

“And there she was, one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen. She was singing. When he heard her voice, it brought back so many of the feelings and emotions he thought were dead. And he felt things he’d never experienced before. Even though he didn’t fully understand why, night by night this girl replaced the emptiness in his life. A beautiful distraction. And for the first time in a long time…he was happy again.”

Holy shit.

Eden had tears in her eyes. She placed her hand up against the camera as if to touch me. I placed my hand on the computer screen as if to touch her back. It was an incredible moment, one that made me ask something I hoped I wouldn’t regret.

I forced the words out. “Do you want me to turn my camera on, Eden?”

She put her hand down and seemed taken aback. “Really? You want to?”

“Only if you want to see me. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

She licked her lips, seeming a little freaked out. “I do. I really do. But I’m scared.”

I laughed nervously. “Not as scared as I am.”

“Not because I care what you look like,” she was quick to clarify. “I’m just so used to things the way they are, and I feel like seeing you will take it to a different level. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, just something I’ll have to get used to.”

“Yeah.” Okay. Bringing it up was a bad idea. “I mean…I don’t have to.”

“No! I really want you to.” She’d said it fast, probably before she could change her mind.

“You sure?”

Expelling a shaky breath, she nodded repeatedly. “Yes.”

I sat frozen for a bit. Think this through, Ryder. There was no coming back from this.