“So did he actually grovel?” Taylor asked.
I nodded. “Got on his knees and everything.”
She clutched my arm and gave a dramatic, full-body shudder.
“Did you just come?” I asked.
“I think I might have.”
On her other side, Ryan rolled their eyes and tightened their hold on Walter’s leash. There was a pigeon on the sidewalk up ahead, and Walter had proved he couldn’t be trusted around them. It was an absolutely beautiful midsummer day. The cornflower-blue sky was dotted with fluffy clouds, there was a slight breeze, and it was like everyone in the city was out enjoying the weather, dressed in as little clothing as humanly possible.
Several days had passed since my run-in with Junior at Velvet, and in that time, my roommates and I had been like ships passing in the night, each of us busy with our own schedules, especially with the added stress of trying to book so many building tours for this afternoon. So far, we’d seen one with a central location that needed more renovations than we could afford, and another closer to our own neighborhood with great transportation links that was stunningly appointed but too expensive. Now we were taking a midafternoon break to grab coffee and catch up.
“How hard did you make him beg?” Taylor asked.
“Pretty hard,” I said, “and I hate to admit it, but the man gives good grovel.”
Ryan shook their head. “It’s always the scariest people who have the secret begging kink.”
Taylor’s eyes met mine. “I’m going to need the whole sequence of events that led to you getting hand-fucked in the stairwell.”
A passing gym bro heard her and nearly tripped over his own feet. Taylor had never learned how to moderate her volume in public, and it was one of my favorite things about her.
“It started before the show,” I said. “Junior manipulated the guy I’d been sitting next to out of his seat and then apologized to me about church and what happened in high school.”
“How’d he even know where to find you?” Ryan asked.
I kept my lingering suspicion about demonic summoning to myself and instead gave them a much more rational answer. “I think he must have followed me home after Mass.”
Taylor perked up at that. “And where do we think that falls on the creepy versus hot scale?”
“Creepy,” Ryan answered.
She nodded. “Cool, yeah, I was totally going to say that.”
“Liar,” Ryan said.
Taylor laughed. “Okay, fine, but it’s a little hot that he went through all that trouble just to apologize.”
It was, but . . . “I don’t know if I’d give him that much credit,” I said. “It felt more calculated than that. I keep thinking of Junior as the kid I grew up with, and I need to stop. He could be much more dangerous now.”
Ryan nodded. “Especially if he’s spent the past decade in the mob. Who knows what kind of fucked-up shit he’s capable of.”
They had a point there. “Exactly.”
Taylor’s expression turned contemplative. “Did you feel unsafe with him at any point?”
I thought back over that night. I’d been surprised and worried when he showed up, and even a little afraid, but the fear was more about Junior embarrassing me than harming me. And after the show, when he’d told me to run in the hall, all I’d felt was excitement. It was like I was back in high school, racing through a corridor to get to our latest meeting spot before we got caught.
“No,” I admitted. “I never felt like I was in danger.”
“But what if your instincts are wrong?” Ryan pressed.
“I’ll be careful,” I said. “We can stick to the buddy system, and if he shows up at Velvet again, I can, I don’t know, find some way to avoid him.”
“Is that really what you want to do?” Taylor asked. “After he, you know . . .” She formed a circle with her left hand and then proceeded to jam three fingers from her right one in and out of it while making suctioning noises with her mouth.
I slapped her hands out of the air. There were children nearby. “Yes, I’m sure. I was horny, and he was there. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that.”
Ryan narrowed their eyes at me, seeing right through my bullshit like always. “Yeah, but is it more than that?”
We’d reached the coffee shop, and I used the excuse of holding the door open for them to delay answering. Sure, Junior turned me on, and it was fun to banter back and forth with him, but I wasn’t looking for anything other than a casual hookup right now, and nothing about our shared history was casual. Nothing about the way he’d begged me to forgive him was casual.
“It’s nothing more than that,” I told Ryan when we got in line. And I meant it. Junior had been my first and worst heartbreak; I wasn’t going to give him a chance to do it again.
Taylor rolled her eyes. “Fine, then at least give us all the juicy details about what happened between the two of you.”
“When we sit down,” I promised. There were too many ears close to us to go into detail in line.
Once we were seated at one of the café tables outside, I filled my roommates in on the rest of what happened, sparing no details, because Taylor threatened me with bodily harm if I did.
“And you’re really going to avoid him after he made you come that hard?” Taylor asked when I was done.
I eyed her over the rim of my latte. “Did you already forget about the stalking?”
“Pssh,” she said. “Who amongst us hasn’t stalked someone?”
“I haven’t,” I told her.
Ryan coughed, and I swiveled my gaze to them. They lifted a brow at me. “Are you forgetting that time you helped me follow my senior crush home after school so we could see how close her parents’ house was to mine?”
I grimaced. “Not our best moment.”
Taylor leaned forward in her chair. “Or when Jackson and I became exclusive, and you made that fake Instagram account and slid into his DMs to test his loyalty?”
I pointed at Ryan. “It was as much their idea as it was mine!”
Ryan turned beet red and swiveled toward Taylor. “Only because Brett had hurt you so bad, and we wanted to make sure Jackson wasn’t another fuckboy!”
“Also,” I said. “Technically, that was catfishing and not stalking.”
Taylor grinned. “And that somehow makes it better?”
Well, this conversation was going sideways. Time to bring us back on track. “Regardless of whether or not we condone stalking, no, I don’t plan on seeing him again.” My mind went back to the other night and what might end up being our final encounter. “To give him credit, his apology did seem sincere.”
“I thought you said you didn’t need him to apologize?” Taylor said.
I smirked. “I don’t. I just wanted to see him beg a little.”
Ryan shook their head. “You diabolical little bitch.”
I nodded, unrepentant, and took a sip of my latte.
They sobered. “I think you’re right about needing to be careful around him, though. Aside from the stalking, that confession about framing your old friend and attacking the principal is next-level.”
“I know,” I said. “He didn’t sound at all remorseful about either one.”
Taylor shrugged. “I think it’s romantic.”
Ryan let out an exasperated breath. “Of course you do.”
“No, think about it,” Taylor said, and for once, she seemed serious. “This has star-crossed lovers written all over it. By lying about hooking up with Lauren, he thought he was saving her, and then he punished the other people who’d wronged her. Guerrilla justice.”
“That’s so fucked-up, though,” Ryan argued.
“I didn’t say it wasn’t. But two things can be true simultaneously. It can be both fucked-up and deeply romantic.” Taylor turned to me with hearts in her eyes. “Like he was trying to protect his fair maiden from afar.”
I glanced behind us, looking for the maiden she was referring to. “Oh, you meant me?”
“Yes, you,” Taylor said, leaning forward to grab my arms. Her pastel hair swung into the space between us, dark eyes wild as she started to shake me. “Why won’t you let him love you?!”
People around us turned to stare.
“Will you quit it, you lunatic?” I said, pulling out of her grip. “I just . . .” God, how to explain all the things I was feeling? “I can’t let him back in, because I know he’ll only hurt me again, but I won’t deny the attraction is still there.” Understatement. The attraction had grown from a spark into a blazing inferno. I could practically see the flames creeping closer while I sat and drank my latte, a little text bubble floating above my head declaring that this was fine, everything was fine.
“So don’t let him in,” Taylor said. “What’s wrong with keeping it casual?”
I blew out a breath. “Aside from all the red flags?”
She nodded.
“Maybe I don’t want to get sucked back into the past,” I said. “I already knew Junior was going through some shit at the time, and I see his reasoning, even if I don’t entirely agree with it or understand what he was so worried about. And while I do believe he’s sorry, being around him reminds me not only of what happened, but what happened after. It was a really dark time in my life. I felt so lost, so let down by not only the kids my age, but by the adults meant to protect me. And the shame . . .”
The shame of everyone thinking I was crazy, of them ripping apart my fan fiction after Kelly told them my pen name, of them demonizing my fantasies, making me feel like I was bad or broken or disturbed just for having them.
I shook my head, needing a minute. Walter, sensing my distress, stood from where he’d been sprawled at Ryan’s feet and put his head in my lap. He really was the best boy. I reached down and stroked a hand between his ears, ruffling the fur at the back of his neck and scratching beneath his collar, just where he liked it. His eyes slitted in euphoria, tail thumping against the ground.
Taylor scooted her chair closer and slung her arm around my shoulder. “You don’t have to say anything else. I get it.”
I smiled at her, grateful. Taylor understood shame culture better than most. Like me, she’d been raised with a strict Christian upbringing, only instead of being Catholic, she was Mormon. And adopted. Her white parents had been unable to conceive and desperately wanted children, so they flew to Vietnam and welcomed both Taylor and her older sister, Tasha, into their lives. Tasha was the golden child, the perfect straight-A student turned trad wife with a bundle of kids. Taylor had been the “problem child,” though that was a relative term. For all intents and purposes, she was a normal kid, but to her super-strict parents and their borderline cultish faith? She was beyond saving.
We’d both put in a lot of hours with our therapists trying to heal from our experiences, and though we never, ever let anyone make us feel bad about ourselves now, the old scars were still there. Who could blame me for not wanting to reopen mine?
Across from me, Ryan fiddled with their empty coffee cup. “So, what are you going to do if Junior pops up somewhere while you’re there?”
“Hide,” I declared. “My hormones can’t be trusted around him.”
“That face of his is a problem,” Taylor said.
Relief rolled through me, knowing I wasn’t the only one affected by it. “Right?”
“He is pretty,” Ryan agreed, sounding like they didn’t want to.
I nodded. “He’s funny, too. Dry, sarcastic, but it works.”
Taylor leaned closer. “And the way he shielded you with his body when we busted down that door?” She eyed me. “I’m telling you, girl. The man has a white knight kink.”
Ryan tipped their head sideways. “Is that a kink?”
I met their gaze. “Literally everything is a kink if you think about it long enough.”
They looked unconvinced. “Is that true?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
Their eyes narrowed.
“How about a topic change?” I asked to take the heat off me. “I obviously need more time to process everything that happened.”
Taylor swirled the dregs of her coffee. “Well, I did get a kind of weird PPV request from a sub and was hoping to get your perspectives on it.”
“Weird how?” Ryan asked, and I was grateful they both let the Junior conversation go so easily. They truly were the best friends a girl could ask for.
“Weird like, they want a video of me naked, covered in olive oil and herbs, with vegetables spread out around me,” Taylor said. “They even requested that I put an apple in my mouth and baste myself.”
Ryan raised their brows. “Baste, like . . . baste?”
Taylor shook her head. “No, not shove a baster up my hoo-hah. They want me to baste myself like a turkey.”
“Oh, no,” I said, gripping her shoulder.
“So it is a weird request?” she asked. “Is it a food fetish or something?”
Ryan reached out to grip her other side. “No, honey. It isn’t a food fetish.”
Taylor looked between us, clearly confused.
I dropped my voice. “The man wants to eat you. And not in a hot way.”
Her expression flashed to shock. “No.”
Ryan nodded. “It’s a cannibal fetish.”
Taylor looked like she was going to be sick. “No.”
“Is this your first one?” I asked.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, IS THIS MY FIRST CANNIBAL?” she screeched.
Walter jumped up and started barking his head off. Ryan scrambled to calm him down. Deciding it was time to go, I hauled Taylor to her feet, and between Ryan and me, we got her moving, fleeing the scene of the crime. We were 100 percent going to get banned from this café if we stuck around any longer.
“Is he really a cannibal?” Taylor asked in a quavering tone.
“He might be,” Ryan told her. “Or he might just fetishize it. Either way, it’s super against the Me4U terms of service.”
“What do I do? Report him?”
“You immediately block him,” I said, because unfortunately, I’d been through this rodeo before. “And then, yes, report him. You’ll need to take a ton of screenshots to send to Me4U admin, but in my experience, they’re pretty swift to ban cannibals. I can help you when we get home.”
Sometimes I forgot that Taylor was still relatively new to sex work. I felt terrible for not warning her that this was a possibility, but I honestly thought she already knew about the darker side of what we did. Tonight, I’d sit down and talk to her about the other, lesser-known things to watch out for.
Ryan’s phone dinged, and they pulled it out of their clutch to check it. “Oh, whoops,” they said. “We’re late for our next appointment.”
We picked up our pace and hightailed it over to our third viewing for the day, all talk of stalkers and cannibals shelved until we were back in the safety of our own home.
