8 Months Ago:
This is not the one who gets her heart.
Chris and I glare at each other over his - their - kitchen table; some composite wood piece of shit from IKEA.
For a while, I thought I’d stop this. For almost a year, I let it go or at least told myself I did. I hid it away, drowning it in bad habits and women I never even liked, pretending I could drink and fuck my way out of this obsession of screwing with her life.
It didn’t take, so here I am.
I know - or at least part of me knows - how fucked this is. I know it’s wrong, and I know I don’t actually have an end game here. But that’s the problem with obsessions - you obsess over them.
“What is this shit, man?”
Chris is putting up a bigger fight than the ones before. That’s admirable, I guess. It also makes sense. This isn’t some flavor of the month boyfriend. This isn’t man-bun Garret, or limp-dicked Josh, or that piece of shit Jason who I almost put in the fucking ground when I learned he’d taken her virginity. No, this is Chris - two-year-boyfriend Chris. Shares an apartment with her Chris.
And this guy has nothing under his bed. No skeletons, no hidden secrets. Nothing. Believe me, I’ve looked.
I always look.
Sometimes it’s a matter of “how much.” Josh is a prime example of that. So is Garret. Other times, it’s looking for leverage - that little secret they think they’ve got buried. With Jason, it was the freshman he was screwing behind Ana’s back and the tiny complication that she happened to be seventeen in an eighteen-and-older age-of-consent state.
Leverage.
Secrets.
Bribery.
They all eventually fall to one, which makes all of them ultimately unworthy of her. I push, but I don’t push that hard. Ultimately, it’s their choice, and they always choose to walk away.
…I’m never sure if that leaves me feeling vindicated or just empty inside. It’s a fucked up game and one that I never actually win. It’s more like a war of attrition.
Chris is the hardest so far. And he should be. He’s her first real serious adult relationship. I mean this guy’s the package deal. He’s got an actual job - albeit, one that pays shit in the fucking non-profit sector - but a job. He drives a Prius. They rent in a decent part of West Hollywood. Without my intervention, she could go on to live a very boring, very vanilla, very safe life with this douchebag.
Deep down, I know that should make me feel worse this time, doing this again, but it doesn’t.
“This is us striking a deal, Chris.”
He tenses his jaw, his hands balling into fists.
Chris is a decent sized guy, but I know if push comes to shove, I’d beat the shit out of him. I’ve also had four drinks before coming over here, which means I’m buzzing on the edge of feeling invincible.
“I know who you are, you know.”
I shrug. I honestly don’t care, so long as he adheres to the deal.
“Yeah, I know who you are, man.” He shakes his head, smiling grimly. “You’re fuckin’ sick, you know that?
Yes.
“I think we’re wandering from the matter at hand.”
“She hates you, you know.”
My lips go tight.
“Oh, yeah, buddy,” Chris sneers at me. “She hates you. I mean, of course she does, man, you fucking terrorized her in high school.”
“Why don’t we forgo the dramatics, Chris. My offer is in front of you.”
“Fifty thousand dollars?” He makes a face and shoves the paper away. “What the fuck is wrong with you, dude?”
“Seventy-five thousand.”
“Get out of my goddamn apartment.”
I growl.
“One hundred thousand.”
Chris’s eyes flash.
“This is my girlfriend, man. I love her. I’m going to marry her some day.”
I resist the urge to break the IKEA table back into the pieces he bought it in over his skull.
“No, you aren’t, Chris.”
“You think this’ll make her like you or some shit?”
I say nothing, and he whirls, pacing the floor of his kitchen. I stand there, motionless, one hand in the pocket of my suit pants, the other resting on the back of one of the chairs around the tacky fucking table.
“Sebastian, I know all about what happened with you and her in high school. All the details.”
“I doubt that.”
“Oh? I know you kissed her, and I know she was pretty drunk when you did.”
I tense.
“I know you took fucking pictures of her. I mean what the fuck, man?” He narrows his eyes at me. “You’re just the rich creep cliché, aren’t you?”
My jaw twitches.
“This because she wouldn’t fuck you back then? You think she’s going to now?”
“One-hundred twenty-five thousand, Chris.”
“Eat a dick.”
“Now it’s back to one-hundred.”
“Get out of my fucking house and stay out of our lives.”
“One-fifty.”
All of my negotiation skills are out the window, but I don’t care. This guy’s playing for keeps.
What he doesn’t know is, so am I.
Chris shoves his fingers through his hair. “You’re not listening. Do you even listen to people when they talk to—”
“Two hundred grand.”
He swears, his pacing getting more erratic as he punches the air in front of him.
“What’s the point of this? What happens after I leave? You think suddenly she’ll date you or something? You think she’s going to come running to you and thank you for fucking with her life?”
“I’m still waiting for an answer.”
“Fuck no.”
“Two-twenty-five.”
“No.”
“Two-fifty.”
His jaw tenses, his eyes darting over mine wildly.
“You’re fucking crazy.”
You have no idea.
“Two-seventy-five.”
Chris says nothing, he just whirls and puts his hands on the edge of the sink behind him, taking deep breaths like he’s going to be sick.
“Three-hundred-thousand. Jesus Christ, Chris.”
“Please,” he whispers.
“Three-fucking-fifty,” I growl, my hand gripping the chair with white knuckles.
The kitchen is silent for a full minute.
Slowly, Chris nods.
I grin, wickedly - triumphantly.
They all break.
All of them. Because talk is talk until there’s money on the table. Chris talked a big game, but no guy who actually was going to marry her would agree to what I’m proposing for three-hundred-fifty-thousand bucks.
The man who gets her heart wouldn’t give her up for any price.
He turns, and the look on his face is defeat. It’s not heartbreak though, which only solidifies what I already know: he wasn’t the one to have her. She’s going to get hurt here - badly. But she’s not going to have her heart torn out - not by this guy.
Hurt, but not killed.
That’s collateral I can live with.
“Pack your shit.”
He frowns. “What, tonight?”
“Right the fuck now, yes.”
I don’t look at him as I whip out my checkbook and start writing.
“Dude it’s six. Ana’s coming home in like four and a half hours from her open mic gig.”
“I have a truck and movers outside.”
Chris swears as I rip the check off and toss it on the table. I take out my cell and call the moving company I really do have parked outside.
“What is wrong with you?” he whispers.
“So much.” I smile at him, like a lunatic, as I push the check his way.
“I’ll toss in an extra two grand for each state you put between yourself and here. And Chris? The terms are non-negotiable.”
“I understand.”
The bravado and the fire from earlier is gone. He’s defeated now. Empty. I mean, the man just made a deal with the devil.
Me.
“Okay,” he says quietly, his voice flat. “I get it, man. Can you just get out now?”
I smile. “Me? Oh, no, I’ll be staying until you’re gone.”
“Dude—”
“Chris I just paid you close to half a million dollars. I’ll be doing as I fucking please.”
The front door opens and the movers start coming in. I go to Chris’s fridge and pull out a beer.
“Her stuff stays, you tell them what to pack.”
Chris looks numb as he stumbles from the room.
He takes the check with him.
I sit in silence, drinking the beer as a chapter of Ana’s life is literally dismantled around me, piece by piece.
This one is going to hurt. This is going to cut her deep, and knowing that slices something through me. I do my best to drink through that.
Sometimes, part of me wonders when I’ll get tired of this, or over it. Part of me wonders if shit like this puts me past the edge of redemption.
Probably. But then, I already was.
“Hey, buddy?”
I look up at the big, sweaty guy in the blue and white uniform of the moving company.
“This too?”
He points to the shitty IKEA kitchen table.
I nod, drowning the rest of my thoughts in a long pull from the beer.
“Definitely.”
* * *
Present:
Asshole.
Psychopath.
Monster.
They’re all words I’ve tossed around inside my head - all words I’ve been called at one point or another by people who really, truly meant them. Oh, and Anti-Christ, if we’re counting my old nanny. I’d like to be able to say they don’t faze me, but they’re words that keep me up at night.
You could say it’s my parents dying young, the fact that money has afforded me a privileged life and that I don’t know the worth of things or the value of people. But that’s bullshit. There aren’t any excuses for what I’ve done, or how I am.
Or, I guess, you could blame her - that somehow she made me like this.
But that’s not fair.
…Even if it might be at least partially true.
* * *
A training session with Katrina keeps me occupied the rest of the day after the music room. I’ll admit, I look for Ana when night comes, but she’s fastidiously closed off in her room. I tell myself to calm the fuck down and give her distance when I don’t see her the next day. Multiple times.
I’ve never chased pussy. Not once, and I’m sure not going to start now.
I try to amuse myself throughout the day, but I’m bored. Again, I do thank the fucking stars I’m locked up here, on ten acres and a ten-bedroom mansion instead of anywhere else. As much as I love Paris, I’d be putting a bullet in my head right now if I was on house arrest with two thousand square feet of apartment for six months.
I work out.
I then re-tip the scale by eating shitty, unhealthy food from the pantry.
I scowl at the roses in my room and fuck around with the multi-thousand-dollar hydroponics system that isn’t doing shit.
I go up to the roof of the house and knock golf balls into the Atlantic Ocean.
I’m fucking bored and bored has me thinking of yesterday. Specifically, the part where I slide two fingers into Anastasia Bell. The part where I touched her where I never did before, where I fucking tasted what I’ve been dying to taste for basically ever.
Longer than I care to admit to myself.
And all that means that now I’m bored and hard as a damn rock, standing there on my fucking roof with a golf club in my hand and a nine-iron in my pants.
I don’t chase pussy.
I say it to myself twice as I head downstairs into the house. I repeat it like a mantra as I prowl through the music room, down to the kitchen, up to her room, out to the cottage, and over through the flower garden to the office in the garage.
Lots of dirt, a few pairs of gardening gloves, tools, and bags of seeds.
No Anastasia.
I scowl as I storm back to the house. But it’s on my way to the kitchen door that I notice her dad’s old pick-up truck is gone.
Leave it. Just leave it the fuck alone.
I stomp back to the house.
Still bored, still with blue balls, but now I’m determined.
And I’ve got the scent.
I grab my phone, even as I’m telling myself to just stop, texting - texting - even as my balls draw up and the voice inside my head tells me how much of a sad, pathetic pussy I’m being.
Where are you.
There’s no response.
I growl as I head back down to the kitchen and grab a beer. It’s Mrs. Tottingham and Carl’s night off, so the house is empty tonight. I glance at my phone again as I sip on the beer because obviously, something is wrong with me. Mentally. Fundamentally.
Finally, I see the little dots of her typing.
None of your business.
I growl, lowly.
I believe we’ve been over this. In this house, with that contract, it is very much my business.
As a second, I add:
I own that ass.
She’s fast this time.
Putting your hands on it doesn't make it yours.
She’s flirting. Anastasia Bell is fucking text flirting. Well, sort of. For Ana, it’s text flirting at least. We’ll work our way up to sexting dirty pictures.
I beg to differ. Now where the fuck are you so I can show you exactly how wrong you are.
Not at the house. Contract void.
Wrong. So very VERY wrong.
Now I’m just getting annoyed. Where the fuck is this girl.
The typing dots pop up again.
Went out for a drink.
I restrain myself from saying with who.
Where.
Are other girls into this whole macho alpha control thing?
Yes.
I get the eye-rolling emoji back.
Get back here.
Aww, what’s the matter, bored?
Hard.
That one gives her pause.
I guess you could just come to where I- ohhhhh wait. No, you can’t.
She follows it with fucking emojis of a car, a pill, a beer mug, and a red X.
My scowl deepens.
A tad outside the lines, don’t you think?
I’m at Floyd’s, finishing a drink. P.s. this place used to be cooler.
My jaw tightens.
Yeah, Floyd’s used to be cooler when it was a fun family restaurant with stupid shit on the walls and a jukebox full of 90s rock. Eight years ago, it got sold to new owners who turned it into a damn biker bar and kept the name. Not a fun, cool biker bar, I mean a legit, don’t-come-in-here-unless-you’re-wearing-the-right-colors biker bar.
You shouldn’t be there.
She shouldn’t. The place has a fucking bad reputation these days, and I’m not saying that as some white-gloved, pampered rich kid. I’m saying that as in there was a knife fight there four months ago, and maybe a year back, there was a whole thing with a girl getting raped in the bathroom.
She should not be there.
It’s fine. I’m a big girl, I can take care of myself. I did live in the Lower East Side for two years.
I’m not kidding, leave.
Didn’t we just talk about this? Macho alpha thing?
Fuck this.
I stand, pacing the kitchen as I call her. She ignores it. Twice. She thinks I’m fucking around with her.
For real, you need to leave that place. It’s not safe.
Oh, and I’d be safe with you?
I’m typing a reply when she sends first:
Turning phone off now to finish my drink in peace and quiet. PS some old biker dude is trying to hit on me :P
She’s trying to rub it in. She’s trying to be cute and get a rise out of me. She’s getting one, but it’s not the one she’s flirtingly looking for.
I tell myself I’m overreacting, but ten minutes later, I’ve moved my pacing to the living room - stalking back and forth in front of the fireplace like a psycho.
You know how some people talk about getting worried about people they know and care about? How sometimes they can think the worst case scenarios? Well, I don’t. For one, because anyone I know and care about can take care of themselves, and for two, I don’t actually care about that many people, so it’s not a problem.
This is the day I have my first worst case scenario thoughts.
Lots of them.
I hate these feelings - nervousness, weakness, helplessness, paranoia. I’m still pacing, my fingers digging into my palms and the blood rushing through my ears.
I grab my phone and call her, again, like a big pussy.
This time it goes straight to voicemail.
Fuck this.