Chapter 12
Aaron roused himself as the sunlight streamed in across the emptiness of his bed. She was gone. Was it all an illusion? Was Vanessa an intricate stitching of all the other odd events that had befallen him in the last twenty-four hours? He could barely remember what happened last night before she’d taken over his night, that inexplicable stretch of time when the clock sped up, when reality faded away, when he lost himself in a whirl of confusion.
Work began hours ago. Aaron’s absence would absolutely be noted by Mr. Lee, who seemed more like an old-world spy than Aaron’s Vice President. Dreading the lecture he’d get from this man who held the mystifyingly strange position of subordinate even though he’d been working at Kümertech since before Aaron was alive, Aaron sighed and padded off to the shower, racking his brain for some excuse he could give. Not unlike a teenager caught skipping school, he decided to use the age-old alibi that sickness had gripped him while he slept.
* * *
The first bus departed at dawn from the stop down the street from Aaron’s hotel. The sky was purple fading to pink, which blazed into a robust orange as Vanessa stepped off at the stop closest to the Burger King where she left her bike. She raced home to shower, to get away, to look at who she was and what she’d done. Shame crawled across her like ivy on a brick façade. How could she have done this? What was she thinking when she merely took a glass of wine from a stranger, let alone crawling into bed with him?
Disgusted with herself, with her behavior, with everything she’d allowed her life to become, Vanessa wailed through her empty house. Her sobs ricocheted off the walls where family portraits used to hang, where her mother used to mark her height as she sprung up through the years. She acted rashly, jumping the gun and muddling herself in the process. Girls who behaved that way—jumping into cars with strange men, blacking out in ecstasy in hotel rooms—had no self-respect. Vanessa didn’t have much anymore, but at least she had that.
* * *
Aaron didn’t know what time her shift began, or whether she was even working that night, but he knew he had to see her again. He craved her. He wanted to discover every bit of her body with his mouth. She was flitting through his mind, zipping through his stream of consciousness, rendering him useless and swimming in a sea of his own lust. Aaron waited at the strip club from 7 p.m. onward, scanning everyone who walked through its doors.
After a few hours of examining a stream of middle-aged, thoroughly bland men with cowboy boots and pickup trucks, Aaron saw her ride up to the front of the club around 11 p.m. Quickly bolting out of his Porsche, he strode toward her with a sense of urgency. She winced and cowered, not realizing who it was. Or perhaps, maybe she had realized it was him, he thought with a sinking sentiment as she skidded out of his path, away from him. She didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with him, locking her bike furiously, maniacally, and scuttling off toward the doors to the club.
“Vanessa,” he hissed after her.
“What do you want?” She said, turning around. Her face was twisted in grief. What had he done? Aaron scrolled through his mental Rolodex of memories to ponder whether he’d lost more time, if something in him took over, if he hurt her. Nothing came to mind, which haunted him even more.
“I want… you…” he faltered, not knowing what to say. For all his money in the bank, for all his swagger in business, for all the ways he could make a woman melt with just a stare in her direction, he never did learn the art of communication.
Vanessa stood there, willing him to say more. He didn’t know what she needed to hear, what she was trying to cull from the depths of his mind. After an unbearable minute of silence, of staring into the abyss of each other, she sighed. “I have to go to work now.”
“No,” he lunged after her. “No, no you don’t. Come with me instead.”
Vanessa smirked incredulously. “Come with you where?”
“Back to my hotel room. Out to dinner. Hawaii. Anywhere. You haven’t left my mind since I met you,” he gushed.
“I have bills to pay,” she said, turning away from Aaron again.
“Let me pay them,” Aaron replied, a little too quickly. “Just… come back with me. You don’t need to work here. You don’t need to do this.”
Vanessa, awash in confusion, paused. She was being pulled in all directions. Emma needed medications. The both of them needed a secure roof over their heads and food on their table. Her shift began three minutes ago. And most grievously, this man who pulled back the curtain on arguably the most sensual night of her life—a night where she actually felt desired, sexy, like a woman—wanted to take her away from all of this.
He is just exaggerating, Vanessa thought to herself. There’s not a chance that he’d go out of his way for me. It’s just a ploy, just a way to use me for a night. And yet, looking at him from head to toe, one would assume that he had a full repertoire of women on reserve. The way his suits fit, the way his Porsche revs, the way he can cut steel beams with his eyes: bright and cerulean against a rich, earthy skin tone. He could have any woman he wanted, and yet… he was here.
And it was true that as the day wore on, as Vanessa’s mind drifted ever backwards to the events of the night before, she began to soften. She remembered the tenderness he’d used to touch her, the warmth of his breath along the insides of her thighs, the way he made her entire body vibrate with euphoria. She wanted to feel shame, because logically, that’s how she was supposed to feel. But what she couldn’t quite expunge from her mind was the fact that the world of sexual pleasure was seldom logical.
“Let me take you to my apartment,” Aaron said slowly, softly, “in the city.”
“I…” Vanessa sighed, walking toward him. “I… can’t do that.”
“Why?” Aaron asked, genuinely.
“Look, this isn’t the time or the place to talk about this,” Vanessa could feel the truth bubbling up beneath her skin, right there in the parking lot. She felt as though she were about to burst, to break open in front of him, spewing the reality of her life across the perfect image of her that he’d concocted in his head. He didn’t want to hear about Emma. About epilepsy. About poverty. About dead parents. He wanted nothing to do with any of that, she could feel it. All he wanted was to experience her, to taste her, to feel her.
“Tell me,” he whispered, taking her hand. “Why can’t you join me tonight?”
“I can’t go to the city tonight,” Vanessa sighed. “But I can go with you to a hotel.”