“I’m hardly alone,” he said. “I’ve got a crew of guys here every day. My business partner. Margaret’s here constantly.”
I wondered if he believed the lie, but I did not. I knew alone. I’d been painfully alone and I only realized it now, after a month at the Flowered Manor. It only took a few friendships of exceedingly shallow depths to show me how alone I’d been. And not by choice.
“Why me?” I asked. The question surprised us both.
“Why you, what?”
“Why’d you do all this with me?” His face was blank, like he didn’t understand what I was asking. “Was it a power thing? Was it like a…I don’t know…a test? A joke—”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Annie? A joke?” He sounded offended.
“I mean look at you, Dylan. Look at all that you have. You could get down off this mountain and have any woman you wanted and instead…you were having phone sex with some stranger who could barely make rent on her shitty trailer in a shitty trailer park. And my guess is you knew that. You knew I was living in that trailer from the very beginning, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I knew, but—”
“So was it some kind of game to play around with the poor girl?” What did he call it that night, virgin kink? Was this poverty kink?
“You think any of that matters to me? What I have and what you don’t?”
“I have no idea what matters to you,” I said, and he blinked.
“Well, that shit doesn’t.”
“So…why me?”
He finished what was left in his champagne glass and then filled it up. He gestured to me to finish my glass.
“A little liquid courage for the birthday girl,” he said, sounding…dark. Angry. As if my questions had wounded him. I drained my champagne and held my glass out for more. “That first phone call, I knew you were lying about living in that trailer. You are a shitty liar.”
Oh, I thought, you are so wrong. So impossibly wrong. You have no idea the lies I’m telling.
“You kept doing this thing, every time we talked. You’d get scared and be about to hang up, but then…it was like you forced yourself not to be scared anymore. To keep talking to me. And every conversation I’d push a little harder, ask you to do more, and you’d…keep coming back for more. Over and over again and…Fuck, Annie. Watching that, being a part of that kind of bravery. It was exciting. Addictive.”
“You didn’t laugh?” I asked. “You didn’t hang up and laugh at me.”
“Never.” It was a solemn vow from him and my nipples got hard. My body wet. “Every time you called me I felt so damn lucky.”
He finished his glass of champagne and stepped over toward me. His hands on his hips. “Now, why me?”
I stared at him blankly. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I’m serious. Why’d you do that with me?”
I took a sip of champagne and it fizzed through me, so I took another. And then one more. “I like your voice. And…” I held out my glass. “I like your champagne.”
Silent, he poured more champagne into my glass.
“Tell me, Annie. The truth.”
Oh, the truth. Wouldn’t that be something? What would happen if I just opened my mouth and told him the truth?
“You asked me if I was okay. Every time,” I said, watching the bubbles explode in my glass instead of watching him. “And you apologized. And you seemed to…care about me and I was a total stranger to you. I felt safe,” I said.
“You are safe.”
I gave him an arch look. That was not the song he was singing earlier, urging me to leave the trailer park.
“With me,” he clarified. “You are safe. I won’t hurt you, Annie.”
I think I’m already hurt, I thought. I think I’m bleeding and I don’t even know it.
This was, without a doubt, the nicest thing any man had ever done for me. Ever. The champagne, the disgusting cheese. It was all so kind. It was the most trouble. The most care.
And I didn’t deserve it.
I was lying.