Dante
I didn’t even know if she had a ride to get home.
Was it my problem? She was an adult. Daniella was downstairs and could help her out if she needed it. She had a cell phone; she could have called anyone she wanted to pick her up. If those weren’t options, she had two legs, and both of them worked. She could walk home, or to a bus stop, or wherever the fuck she wanted as long, as it wasn’t here.
I was so mad; I just didn’t want to be in the same room as her anymore.
I felt like I was going to punch someone or something. I paced around the room before I zeroed in on my victim. I grabbed the standing lamp and swung it into the wall, smashing it into splinters. I swung the broken piece, smashing it smaller. I tore one of the drawers out of my bedside table and threw it across the room. The drawer smashed, and what was in it, just condoms, scattered across the room.
I grabbed the one item on the bedside table which was a remote control and threw it against the door. It hit the wood and popped open.
A knock on the door stopped me. I turned to the door and walked up to it, opening it, nearly tearing it off its hinges.
“What!” I barked.
I saw Daniella at the door with her eyes wide. She backed away and turned her back when she realized I was still naked.
“I’m so sorry, sir. I wanted to ask about your guest,” she said. I backed into the room and looked for something to cover myself. I grabbed some boxers from the closet and put them on. I went back to the door.
“I’m sorry, Daniella. I didn’t know it was you,” I said to her.
“Your guest, the young woman, she already left. I arranged for a taxi to take her home.”
“That’s fine. That’s great. Thank you, Daniella.”
She wanted to ask about Quinn. I knew she did. She had seen countless women come in and out of the house and she had never asked about one of them. She was always polite when she would see them though and she always offered to get them taxis to take them where they wanted to go. She didn’t come to work every day, and that meant that she wasn’t there every single time there were women over. If she wasn’t there, then they just had to make their own walk of shame arrangements.
I had asked her to be there. I had asked her and the cook to come by the day before so that they would be here for when Quinn and I got back from Houston. I had never asked her to do shit for a woman who I had over.
Never.
I had told her that I was going to be having Quinn over for a while, and I knew she wanted to ask what had changed, but she was biting her tongue. I silently thanked her for it because I did not want to answer it. She probably thought her wild boss was settling down but nope.
“Sir… I heard some noise coming from up here,” she said quietly.
I looked over my shoulder at the damage. There was smashed and shattered wood all over the floor.
“Uh… yeah. There was a little… situation.”
“I can clean it up,” she offered.
“Uh… not right now, Daniella. Later.”
Daniella left, and I closed the door behind her.
I walked back into the room. That lamp had cost six hundred dollars. That table… it was probably a shitty one from IKEA or something, but it was all over the floor. The remote control likely was not going to work again. That throw had been pretty hard.
Fuck.
Daniella coming to the door had stopped me before I could do any more damage, but it looked pretty bad in here. It looked like the scene of a crime. Quinn was gone. Apparently. She had gotten herself a safe ride home… good, I guess. Good riddance.
Why did she… how could she?
It was literally one thing. She was smart. She had a fucking degree, she could count to one.
It was all I fucking asked not to be filmed, and she…
I could still see it. I never forgot anything. I had tried for years to forget what had happened, but I never could. I could always remember it like it had all just happened yesterday. I never told this to anyone. Maybe I should have told her when she was here, or even before, when we had talked about the bottle and the bullying—but I hadn’t.
It didn’t happen every time, but it happened enough.
She wouldn’t have done it if she knew… I hoped she wouldn’t. I knew… I was pretty sure that she wasn’t the type of girl who was trying to use me to get somewhere in her life. She didn’t need to do that. She already was somewhere in her life. She was an established writer before she and I even met. She had her degree and her talent and her obvious chops. She didn’t need a come up.
What if what she was looking for wasn’t a come up, it was just a chance to drag Dante Rock through the mud?
She hadn’t given me any sign that that was something she wanted to do, but since she had that camera out, I couldn’t be sure anymore.
Why’d she have to make me not trust her? Why did she have to do some shit like this and make me doubt her?
I wanted to trust her, but she was fucking up.
It was the one and only condition that I had given her. The only fucking one. I didn’t ask her for shit else. I didn’t ask her to paint me any specific way in the stories she would write. I didn’t ask her to sign an NDA or anything like that. All I wanted was for her to never, ever film me without my permission.
All she had to do was tell me that she wanted some footage and I wouldn’t have said no. She could keep a camera on me like a fucking documentary, filming everything I did, as long as she fucking asked me first.
But she didn’t.
I didn’t like feeling used. I didn’t like feeling taken advantage of and that was what she had done.
I was asleep. There was no way I could have given her permission, so she took it. There was no way that was a mistake. She took that camera out when I was asleep on purpose. She wanted to get away with it. That had to be it.
I didn’t want to think that she was sneaky or two-faced, but she had given me a damn good reason to think just that.
She had the footage now, of me sleeping. How much did she have? What was she going to use it for? What could she use it for?
I hadn’t let her stay around long enough to tell me.
I didn’t want to hear it.
She wasn’t welcome in my house again.
Quinn and I…. no, that was done. That was over. There was nothing there anymore. There was no way she’d be coming here again.
We had never put a label on what we were, so we couldn’t break up, but I was done. We were done. She and I were history, and that was that. No more Quinn Blaze.
It was fun while it lasted.
The season was almost over; it wasn’t like I'd be suffering, waiting to get girls again.
I could survive the few games that remained.
My body felt tight and tense. I went to the bathroom to stand under the shower a while. Maybe that would loosen me up or at least help me feel less like I wanted to commit murder.
The flashes and images that came back to me when I was triggered didn't scare me anymore the way the used to when I was younger. They made me mad. They just made me angry.
I stood under the water a little. Maybe I would need something else. Maybe I had to go out running, or go to the gym. I felt like if I was bent anymore I would break.
I came out of the shower and sat on my bed.
All the things she had left behind jumped out at me. They were on the floor and on the bed. I saw a lacy underwear thing, like a teddy. I saw a t-shirt. I saw a hairbrush. They must have just not made it all the way back into her bag when she was trying to get out.
I went over and picked the teddy up. It was pretty. I could imagine her in it. She would have looked good.
A beeping from my phone caught my attention.
I looked at my phone. I had been ignoring it since I had been in the bathroom and there were a few missed calls.
All from Quinn.
She sent a text message, too. I guess since I didn’t pick up and she didn’t know what else to do.
I’M SORRY. PLEASE. TALK TO ME. I DON’T KNOW WHAT I DID.
I rolled my eyes.
Wow.
Either she was desperate, or she was a cunt.
She didn’t know what she did? How? Because I didn’t fucking tell her? I told her. I remembered telling her, and I remembered her saying she understood. It was even before the first interview when I had told her about my dad abusing mom. She told me all the shit I couldn’t do anymore while we were working together, and I had agreed. I told her that all I wanted was for her to tell me when she got the camera out. I didn’t say she couldn’t get it out, or that she should only get it out at certain times or anything.
She could have gotten it out as often as she wanted as long as she fucking asked me first.
She had heard me… she just didn’t care. Hell, maybe she hadn’t heard me at all. Maybe she was just waiting for me to get to the good stuff so she just nodded and agreed with what I had asked her so she could get her recorder out and really get to the scandal.
I trusted her.
She did this to herself.
I ignored the text message and blocked her number.
There was nothing she could say. If she didn’t respect me enough to listen to what I had asked her, she didn’t deserve me listening to her now.