Chapter 11: Ten

Confession #9: I lied a lot. But that night, with Reese, I didn’t.

My answer shocked her.

Hell, it shocked ~me~. I knew I had wanted to scare her off and somehow nip this…whatever it was…in the bud. But I never actually came right out and admitted what I was to people. That was like jail time just waiting to happen.

What the hell was it about this girl that made all my actions and thoughts the very opposite of what they usually were? It was freaking bizarre.

She shook her head as if confused. “What ~do~ you ask, then?”

Okay, weird. Was she really going to just roll with the fact that I’d pretty much admitted what I was? Alright then.

I shrugged, watching her with a slight squint. I had thought she’d be more horrified and disgusted. But she merely seemed curious.

“Not much,” I heard myself answer. “My clients aren’t exactly the shy type. They tell me what they want and typically don’t leave a lot of room for questions.”

Her lips gaped apart. “Oh, wow. So you’re actually admitting you’re a…a…”

Wait. Hadn’t we just established that? Oh, damn. I thought I’d ~already~ admitted it. But I guess I really was now.

“What?” I asked, shifting uncomfortably, trying to downplay the awkwardness by acting as if it were no big deal. “Haven’t you heard the rumors? As tight as you appeared to be with Eva Mercer on campus the other day, I would’ve assumed she’d told you every dirty detail about me by now.”

A blush bloomed across her cheeks as if she felt guilty. “I… Yeah… I mean, she told me some crazy gossip, but I’m not sure if I ~believed~ any of it.”

She sounded almost apologetic, maybe because she’d just admitted to talking about me. I don’t know. But Reese was definitely the complete reverse of everything I was used to.

“Does your mom know?” she asked in a somewhat hushed voice, almost as if she were excited about getting all the juicy details to a huge state secret.

But thinking about the answer to her question caused me to glance away. I didn’t want to make my mom look bad and let anyone know she willfully allowed her son to fuck women in order to get her bills paid. But I kind of dug this honesty thing I’d started. I always had to lie and cover shit up. It was a little relieving to just be open and honest. So I went with, “I have a feeling she suspects.”

Reese’s eyes bugged, and she shook her head. “This is just… Yeah.” She turned an almost accusative stare on me. “Doesn’t it ~bother~ you that she knows?”

Guilt flooded my veins and almost suffocated me. I’d been so worried about trying to protect my mom’s image that I’d made myself look like…well, like a filthy gigolo who probably broke his mother’s heart on the daily with his dirty, notorious deeds. Ashamed that she knew me for exactly what I was, all the regret came out defensively.

“No,” I muttered. “It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Jesus. How do you think I feel about her knowing?”

Reese pulled back, obviously startled by my response, and shit… Here came more remorse. Unable to deal with my own guilt, I held up a hand. “No. No more. The question and answer portion of this evening is over. You have your babysitting money, and I’m home to stay with Sarah. You can go.”

“I…” She looked at me as if I’d just beaten her. Shit, why was I treating her this way? I totally hadn’t meant to be mean and hurt her feelings.

With a nod, she squared her shoulders. “Okay,” she said and then turned away before darting off.

I opened my mouth to call after her and apologize for being an ass. I even lifted my hand, but then I dropped it.

“Fuck.”

When I heard the front door open and close at her departure, I closed my eyes and ran my hand through my still damp hair to curse at the ceiling, only to realize I was still only wearing a towel. I muttered a couple more obscenities and dropped the terry cloth to the floor so I could pull on a pair of boxer shorts for bed.

It was after one in the morning. My first class tomorrow started in less than seven hours. But when I flopped down on my bed in the dark and set the back of my wrist against my forehead as I stared up at my darkened ceiling, sleep grew elusive. In my head, I ran through the events of the night along with my conversation with Reese, and I concluded that I needed a do-over. I had handled everything wrong and just needed to manage it all differently. I should’ve refused to think about Reese when Monica had prompted me to. That way I never would’ve called out her name and then gotten myself in trouble and freaked myself out, then turned down a client for business and pissed her off.

And I never would’ve been so rude ~or~ honest to Reese either.

When I finally drifted off, my dreams were a confusing chaotic mix. First, I was back in the bathroom, wearing nothing but a towel and bitching out Reese. Except, in the dream, she didn’t run off like a kicked puppy. She strode up to me, her eyes blazing with anger and life, and she poked her finger into my chest before telling me I was only treating her so badly because I was trying to hide how much I wanted to fuck her.

I stared into her blue eyes for a moment before nodding and agreeing, “Yeah. You’re right.”

Making an aggravated sound, she jerked her hands into the air and sputtered, “Then just get it over with and fuck me already.”

So I did. It all happened the same exact way I took Monica, except when I opened my eyes, I saw Reese’s face. I groaned from the bliss as I pumped into her.

But then this cackle, like the wicked witch’s from ~The Wizard of Oz~, filled my room and I looked up to find both Patricia and Monica standing over us, their faces painted green and noses long as they wore black robes and pointed hats.

Reese screamed and ran off, so Patricia and Monica jumped onto these vacuum cleaners and flew after her, yelling about how they were going to make her pay for going anywhere near me. As they sped through the clouds, they had to dodge these paper airplanes and flying candy bars that Reese kept chucking at them to impede their progress.

And that’s when I woke with a gasp to a hand bumping against my bare shoulder.

“What?” Blurry-eyed and half out of it, I lifted my head from the pillow where I had it buried and blinked my sister into focus.

Dude, what had I eaten last night to dream that kind of shit up?

When she asked if I was going to get up or sleep the day away, I checked the time and cursed fluidly. “Dammit, I forgot to set my alarm clock. Why didn’t you wake me up earlier?”

I flew out of bed and grabbed the first pair of jeans I saw, yanking them on over my boxers, grateful I’d taken a shower before going to bed last night.

“I tried.” Sarah moodily scowled at me. “You were totally out of it.”

Made sense. I’d been dreaming pretty hard. “Do you need a ride to school?” I asked as I scoured my drawers for a comfortable T-shirt to wear. “Or is Mom taking you again?”

“Mom,” Sarah said, watching me dress. “Ask me about last night,” she finally ordered.

I paused in the middle of pulling my shirt on and glanced her way.

~Last night~?

At first, my mind was blank. What the hell had happened last night? But then, ahh, it all came back in screaming, awful detail: stuck spying on Eva Mercer, botched appointments with clients, and encounters with innocent girls while I wore nothing but a towel.

Sarah knew nothing about the gory, awful parts of last night, though.

“The babysitter,” I realized, snapping my fingers. “Right. How’d she do?”

My guts tightened instantly, worried my sister hated Reese.

If she did, I’d get the glowing girl fired before her next night to babysit. But a part of me dreaded that possibility, even though it’d probably be safer for her to be far away from me ~and~ my home, where Patricia might accidentally discover her name and start connecting dots. Yet another part of me really wanted her and Sarah to, I don’t know…connect. Sarah needed someone to talk to and bond with, but still… It’d probably be best for Reese if I got her away from us.

Holding my breath, I waited nervously for the feedback. I would know for sure whether or not Reese had been worth spending even a second fantasizing over if Sarah told me she’d been treated awful last night.

But my sister’s face lit up with the biggest, brightest smile I think I’ve ever seen her make.

“I…~love~ her,” she gushed. “She is ~so~ cool. She put makeup on me and made a camp for me…in the middle of the living room. And she read me stories, and, and… And she acted like she might really like me. We ate cookies and s’mores. It was so awesome. Do you think she might really like me?”

“Hell, yes,” I answered immediately. “Why wouldn’t she? I mean, you’re okay, for a twelve-year-old.”

All the while, I mentally shook my head, amazed, because I’d never heard Sarah talk this much at one time before. Usually, she avoided long sentences because her speech patterns weren’t the best and she accidentally drooled more when she talked. The whole process made her seriously self-conscious, so she tended to not even try.

But she was so excited to tell me about her night, she didn’t even care about any of that as she gushed on, telling me everything. Her CP kicked in more when she was animated like this, too, making her body waver and jerk. But this morning, that couldn’t even bother her. She was just a girl, eager to tell her brother about the amazing time she’d had with her new babysitter.

I almost burst into fucking tears to see her so happy and carefree. In the middle of telling me about the junk food she and Reese had snacked on, she paused to frown. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

I shook my head, too overcome to speak just yet. Then I cleared my throat. “I just…” I flailed out a hand. “I don’t know.”

Would it be weird if I pulled her into my arms and bawled into her hair right now because I was so happy?

Yeah, probably.

So, I managed to refrain.

Sarah stared at me, her eyebrows furrowing. “You ~don’t~ think she likes me, do you?”

“What?” I cried, immediately waving my hands. “No, no, no. That’s not what I was thinking at all. Of course, she likes you. Who wouldn’t like you? You’re the sweetest little goober there is.”

She frowned. “I’m not a goober.”

Chuckling, I ruffled her hair. “Of course you are. And I was just happy that ~you~ liked ~her~.”

Sarah let out this sound. I swear, it was like a dreamy sigh. “I love her,” she swore with an adoration that made me shake my head slowly.

So the glowing girl had somehow managed to enthrall my sister too. Maybe there’d been a reason why I’d been instantly drawn to her after all.

As I dug up some socks from my drawer and pulled on a pair of Vans over them, Sarah continued to tell me about her evening until Mom popped her head into the room and jiggled her keys at us impatiently, announcing it was time for her and Sarah to go.

I hugged my sister goodbye and kissed the top of her head before murmuring in her ear, “I’m glad you had fun last night.”

She looked up at me, grinning. “I can’t wait until she comes back again tomorrow.”

I smiled into her gray-blue eyes and touched her hair before she wheeled herself away and rolled her chair from my room.

Damn. That girl. Seeing her smile was my kryptonite, I swear. I’d probably lay my soul at the feet of the devil just to make Sarah happy. So keeping the babysitter around was a must. I’d just have to figure out how to conceal her identity from a couple manipulative, conniving clients of mine in the process.

I was so busy trying to figure out how I was supposed to accomplish such a feat that I hurried off toward college without eating breakfast or thinking about what I might need to finish—homework-wise—before my first class.

I didn’t remember until I made it to campus that I was supposed to read the first chapter of my ethics textbook because we were going to discuss it today, and I just ~knew~ that if I didn’t even glance over it, I would be the first person the professor called on for input. It was Murphy’s Law.

So I found a free bench outside and plopped myself down. I’d just started Chapter One on why it was so important to even study ethics and was jotting down notes when it struck me how much I probably should’ve taken this damn class two fucking years ago. Because now my public image was mangled all to hell. There was no way to recover from what I’d become. Unless maybe I went somewhere new where no one knew what I was. But I couldn’t abandon Mom and Sarah, so that idea was out.

With each note I wrote, my spirits sank. I’d fucked my identity all to hell, all because I’d never seriously considered the ethical side of my actions. I mean, I ~knew~ I wasn’t being moral or virtuous, but it’d been for a good cause. For my family. So I did it anyway, except, now everything in me had suffered because of it.

I was about to slam the book closed because I wasn’t sure if I could take much more of this torturous guilt when a small, to-go cup appeared in front of me with a brown paper sack dangling beside it.

“Here,” a familiar voice said.

Like a shot of adrenaline straight to the bloodstream, my body reacted. I looked up and brushed my bangs out of my eyes with the end of my pen so I could clearly see the girl holding out the cup and bag. She was glowing again; the sun was shining in around her, making her silky dark hair sparkle to an almost blue hue.

“This is my apology,” she said, looking as serious as I’ve ever seen her, “for being such a rude, nosey bitch to you last night. I’m really sorry. I mean, what you do in your personal life is totally none of my business, and I shouldn’t have been meddlesome. Please believe me when I say I never meant to offend you.”