Chapter 14 – Celeste
I arrive at The Exchange nearly as flustered as I was last time I was here. I feel as if I’ve barely slept all week.
Instead, I've been continually playing over and over again in my mind everything that happened between Maxim and me, and wishing that things could have ended differently.
The only good thing to come out of the whole experience is that I feel more confident about my sexuality. I know I’m not too slutty or “forward” like Tom had claimed. I just needed a real man to take charge and show me that my sexuality is a good thing.
Not that I plan to use it with anyone else any time soon. My biggest fear is that no one will ever compare to Maxim and I’ll never want to have sex with anyone except him again.
I certainly have been fantasizing about him— I even went and bought a bullet- shaped vibrator like the one he’d used on me, to relive our time together in my mind. It’s not anything like the real thing but it’s as close as I want to try to get for a long time.
I feel a strange bond with Maxim that is probably there any time anyone loses their virginity to someone. But it feels like more to me. It feels like love.
Still, he hasn’t contacted me, and he’s the one with the power to do that, since he knows Rachel and he could easily reach me through her. So, I guess it doesn’t feel like love to him.
Now it’s time to snap back into reality. Because Rachel called me just a bit ago saying she really needs me to bring her little black dress she’d lent me eons ago to The Exchange. It’s a ridiculous request— I have no idea why she needs it— but she told me it was very important and begged me to come.
So here I am, even though I suspect she has something up her sleeve. As long as she doesn’t want me to fill in for her again, I’ll be happy.
There's no way I'm standing up on that stage and being auctioned off, ever again. Even if I had originally been into the idea— which I hadn't been, or at least not very much— now it would be a completely different experience. I've already been claimed by Maxim and no one else can compare.
The security guard must think I’m here to work again because he ushers me to the same curtained- off backstage room I started out in last week. I look around and Rachel isn’t in here, but Bianca is.
She’s chatting to some girl in the corner— that poor girl. I don’t think Bianca sees me and I don’t want her to. I quickly duck out and go look for Rachel in the main room, where the auctions are held.
She’s not in here, either, but I stop dead in my tracks when I see who is.
Maxim.
He’s standing in the back, looking around just as I had been.
Is he here to bid on a girl?
My stomach drops. I guess what we had meant nothing to him. How silly of me to think otherwise. All because of some meaningless words he said in the heat of the moment.
But when he sees me, he looks really happy. A grin spreads across his entire handsome face, causing his chiseled cheekbones to appear to raise up even higher. He rushes over to me and I know that he is feeling at least something along the same lines as what I’m feeling.
“Celeste,” he says, taking me in his arms. “I was looking for you.”
Then his grin turns sheepish, as if he’s waiting for me to say the same. So, I do.
“I was looking for you, too,” I tell him. “I mean, not exactly right now because I didn’t know you’d be here. I came to see Rachel.”
But I’m always looking for you, I want to add.
Part of me was hoping I would see him here, even though another part was afraid it would obviously mean he was doing to other girls what he had done to me. And I don’t know if I could bear knowing that. But at least it would mean getting to see him again.
I didn’t expect him to be here looking for me. I have no idea what’s going on.
As if on cue, Rachel rushes up to us. She’s wearing jeans and a blouse, rather than the elegant evening dress she should be wearing on stage if she’s working. I suppose that might be why she asked me to bring this little black dress I’m carrying.
“There you guys are,” she says.
“Here we are?” I ask her. “Here you are.”
“Oh yeah, sorry I’m late.”
Leave it to Rachel to be late for a meeting that she herself called. Even though the meeting was supposed to happen at the place she claimed to be when she called me.
“What’s going on?” Maxim asks.
“I have no idea,” I reply.
It appears that we’re equally confused.
“Maxim, I’m glad you’re here because I couldn’t even get a hold of you,” Rachel says. “That’s why I’m late. I was outside trying to call you.”
“Well I’m here,” he answers, confused.
And now I’m confused. If he isn’t here for the same reason I am— because Rachel called me and told me to come— then what is he doing here? Don’t tell me he’s going to buy another girl…
“I’m here because Bianca called me,” he says, quickly, as if to ease the fear starting to well up inside me again.
“Bianca?” Rachel and I both say, obviously equally as confused.
Now as if someone cued her, Bianca approaches us.
“Oh, there you all are,” she says. “What a lovely little reunion we have going on tonight at The Exchange.”
We just stare at her, each of us barely even blinking.
“When I heard Rachel call Celeste right after she got here, before changing into her evening gown or anything— Rachel, you really shouldn’t be out here in street clothes—” she pauses to scold, “—I just had to put an end to all of this. For Terri’s sake. And everyone’s really.”
“Yeah, right,” Rachel laughs. “For your sake, you mean. I know you’ve had a crush on Maxim for years now. You confided as much to me when I first started working here.”
“I did no such thing,” Bianca’s cheeks redden. “It was you who said you had a crush on Maxim, and quite a few other patrons of our fine establishment, if I remember correctly—”
“That’s crazy,” Rachel says. “All I ever said are that some of them are younger and better looking than I had originally imagined.”
“Well thank you,” Maxim says, and I can’t help but laugh.
The whole picture is coming together now that I know that Bianca wanted my man.
My man.
My cheeks burn with embarrassment for having thought that, but then I realize I didn’t say it out loud. No one knows how much I wish he was actually my man.
“You took that and ran with it, turned it into what you wanted it to be,” Rachel tells Bianca. “And you’ve made a crazy competition out of it ever since. Now the joke’s on you, because it turns out Maxim doesn’t want either one of us. Which is fine with me, since I’m spoken for. And because he’s obviously ga ga over my best friend Celeste here.”
Bianca looks like she’s going to melt. But I’m paying more attention to the way that Rachel looks when she says that she’s spoken for. She seems more confident and sure of herself than before.
“Did Billy propose?” I guess.
“It doesn’t matter what Maxim wants,” Bianca interrupts, clearly not caring whether Rachel’s boyfriend proposed nor about how rude she’s being. “What matters is the good of the club. I called Maxim here so that I could tell him— and you two— to make your choice. If he is going to be carrying on with Celeste then he can’t be involved in the club. And neither of you can work here.”
She glares particularly cruelly at Rachel when she says this.
“What?” I explode. “Rachel had nothing to do with any of this. I don’t want to work here. But she shouldn’t be penalized because Maxim is seeing someone. If he’s seeing someone.”
I hastily correct myself, and he squeezes my shoulders for reassurance.
Okay good. We are seeing each other. Whatever that means.
I feel over the moon, even though I’m annoyed at Bianca and concerned about Rachel’s job. Apparently I still have a lot to figure out.