Xander

I follow Elsie through an employee-only door, watching her ass sway as she walks and wondering if she’s still wearing the thong. She doesn’t say anything as she leads me down a plain white hallway and stops in front of a service elevator.

“This only goes to the third floor, then we have to take the stairs to the roof,” she says, still not looking at me. Is she going to be all business on me? I can’t let that last for long.

“Sounds good to me. I was getting cabin fever in that room.” Besides, on instinct I stuffed a condom in my pocket before I left my room. I’m a regular Boy Scout, I come prepared.

The elevator door clunks open and we step inside. She pushes the big glowing three and examines the buttons as we wait for the door to close. There’s a grinding noise as we start to move but Elsie doesn’t react to it.

“Thanks for keeping me company tonight. I was getting bored,” I say.

She turns and looks at me, and our eyes catch. My dick gives a little nod of approval and I will it to behave itself. Something tells me I need to take the slow approach with Elsie. That’s fine by me, I have no other plans tonight.

“It’s my pleasure. I hope you got pepperoni,” she says.

“Of course, one pepperoni, one vegetarian and one Hawaiian.”

“All the classics, you have a real imagination.”

I shrug and say, “I picked the right one. You’re the one with no imagination.”

“Maybe I should make Mongolian barbecue my go-to flavor?”

The elevator stops moving and the door rattles open. We walk into another small service corridor and pass through a black door into a stairwell. Elsie climbs the flight of steps and I hang back so that my head is eye level with her ass. I’m already enjoying dinner.

“Here we are,” she says, pushing open the door to the roof. The roar of traffic from the highway fills the air.

“Nice. Very VIP.” I really don’t care that it’s some kind of disused area with a plastic table and chairs in it. I’m not here for the comfort.

“It’s private, I figured you’d prefer it to the lobby.”

“You know me too well,” I say and smile coyly.

Setting the food and drinks on the table, I sit in one of the chairs and Elsie sits in the seat across from me.

“Here’s your pepperoni,” I say, nudging the pepperoni box across the table to her.

“I don’t need the entire extra-large pizza. Do you want some pepperoni?” she asks.

“I’m good with the Hawaiian, I like a bit of juicy pineapple. Help yourself to a drink as well,” I say, setting the bag of drinks in front of her. I didn’t know what she’d want so I got one of everything. Unfortunately, the pizza place wouldn’t bring me beer.

“This is quite the selection of drinks,” she says, peering into the bag.

“I aim to please.”

“But there’s no iced tea,” she says and looks at me with mock disappointment. Figures I’d forget the one thing she wants.

“I assumed you were a Diet Coke sort of person.”

“I don’t like the bubbles,” she says, and selects a bottle of water.

Flipping open the lid of the Hawaiian pizza, I take out two slices and fold them over on themselves and take a big bite. I’m starving. I haven’t eaten anything since I fled New York and I inhale the rest of the two slices. I pull out another two slices and fold them over on themselves and cram them into my mouth.

“Hungry?” Elsie asks.

“Can you tell?”

“I wasn’t sure if it was simply the best pizza you’ve ever had in your entire life.”

“Definitely not,” I say, and bite off as big a piece as I can fit in my mouth.

Elsie nibbles at her slice of pepperoni and I watch her in fascination as I chew. She has a total lack of self-consciousness, unlike the women I normally go out with. They’re always too busy worrying about how they look and what other people are thinking about them to do anything like simply enjoy a piece of pizza. Plus, they fret over the tomato sauce staining their overly whitened teeth.

Fakers. Posers. Attention seekers. That’s what my life is filled with. Everything is for appearance. And my biggest worry of all is that I’m in the same category. If this media sex story has taught me anything, it’s that my life completely turned into a fake life for the sake of the camera and that there’s zero happiness to be found in front of the lens.

Publicity might feed my ego, but it has done shit to feed my soul.

“You must have some good stories about shit that’s gone down in this hotel,” I say, trying to get the conversation flowing.

She chuckles, a broad unguarded laugh that sends the blood straight to my cock.

“One time we had a couple check in, they were elderly so we put them on the ground floor. Oh my God, as soon as they checked in they started having sex so loud you could hear them at the reception desk. We thought it would be over fast, but it went on and on and on. Finally it ended and Nathan I could take our fingers out of our ears but an hour later they started again. They must’ve had a mountain of Viagra.”

“That’s awesome. I want to be that guy when I’m old,” I say, laughing along with her.

“Yeah, unfortunately later that evening the man’s kids showed up with the nursing home staff. Turns out they took off from the home because the staff had banned them from being alone with each other. They weren’t married or anything, so the staff can do that. They only met each other on bingo night and the common room.”

“This guy is my hero.”

“The best thing is they got married a month later and had the honeymoon here at the hotel. It was great to see, but we knew to put them in the far reaches of the top floor so they could be as loud as they wanted.”

“Sounds like a lot of fun stuff goes down here.”

“It’s why I love my job,” Elsie says and takes another nibble of pizza. “There are always so many different people who come through here, and it’s always interesting. Take you, for example.”

“Do you get many people like me staying here?”

“You mean people running from media sex scandals?” she asks and her eyes widen as if she can’t believe she finally brought up the topic we’ve both been avoiding.

“Yeah, about that. You can’t believe everything you see on TV.”

“Even on the news channels?”

“Especially on the news channels.”

“So, you’re saying there is no truth to the story?” she says, setting down her pizza and sitting up straight in her chair.

“None whatsoever. I promise you.”

Elsie twists her lips and looks at me with her brows raised. I’ve never told anyone about my real relationship with Luna but there’s something about Elsie that makes me want to be real for once in my life. She makes me want to unload my burden. Like she’ll share it with me somehow and make it disappear into irrelevance.

“Okay, here’s the deal but you have to promise that this doesn’t leave the roof.”

“Absolutely. I would never tell anyone.”

“Not even your friends in the lobby?”

“Your secret is safe with me,” she says with that natural smile that lights up her face.

I open my mouth to give her a full confession, but the words don’t come. Instead I ask, “Why don’t you tell me about you? Do you have a boyfriend?”

She furrows her brow in confusion and says, “Nope, I’m single. I work far too hard and don’t have much of a life outside of the Good Rest Inn, although I’ve recently made a promise to myself to have more fun.”

“Why’s that?”

“No reason,” Elsie shrugs and looks away. There’s something she’s not telling me.

“Is having more fun the reason for the sexy photo shoot, or was that something else entirely?”

“That was my friend twisting my arm into doing something.”

“So, who are the photos for?”

Elsie shrugs and says, “Myself. Posterity. No one.”

“You can always give them to me, I’d appreciate them.”

“I’m sure you would.”

“Great, so when do I get them?”

“Hey,” she says and playfully hits me, “who said you were getting to see them?”

“Why not? After all, I was at the photo shoot and I definitely liked what I saw.”

“That was a fluke. Realistically no one except me is ever going to see those pictures.”