THAT DATE WAS ONE OF the strangest experiences of my life. I felt like I was a different person, like I was locked inside of someone else’s body. I didn’t look like me, and I didn’t act like me either. It was surreal.
Rob had a town car with a driver pull around to the front of the building to meet us. I wondered vaguely how I’d ever be able to get home. Cassie said she’d taken my things down to my car, but I suddenly realized that my things included my car keys, my cell phone, and my wallet. If I’d felt vulnerable in this new outfit, looking like a new woman, I felt positively naked without my cell, my keys and my wallet. I was completely at Rob’s mercy without those things.
A shudder of apprehension came over me as I stepped into the car.
“Rob,” I said. “I need to get my things from my car.”
“Trust me,” he said, “you won’t need a thing, Lacey. Not the way you look tonight. I’ll be happy to pay your way.”
“I don’t even have my ID.”
“You don’t need it.”
I nodded. I know this sounds difficult to believe, but at that moment, I didn’t feel like I could really make a fuss. I felt somehow beholden to Rob. He’d spent all this money transforming me into his dream date, and I felt as if that made me owe him something, like I shouldn’t be rude.
The thing was, I heard all the time about terrible things happening to women when they allowed themselves to get into compromising situations. Wasn’t this exactly one of those situations? I mean, the girls who got in trouble usually looked exactly the way I did, with a sexy ass, huge breasts, perfect hair, and no fucking clue where they were going and who they were going with.
The car had a minibar in the back and Rob opened a bottle of champagne. He handed me a glass and then poured one for himself.
“Relax, Lacey,” he said, “you’re going to have a great night. You’re going to see how much fun a girl can have when she dresses and acts the way men actually like.”
I felt an intense urge to fling my champagne in Rob’s face. Who did he think he was, telling women how they should act and dress? There was more to women’s existence than pleasing men.
But yet again, all I did was smile and nod. I took a long drink of the champagne and held my glass out to him for a refill. He liked that. He smiled as he poured my drink, and then his hand came to rest on my thigh.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Rob was controlling everything, from where we were going and what we would do, to how I dressed, to the fact that I didn’t have my phone on me. I was completely under his control and I realized that this was how women too often allowed themselves to be.
I began to have terrible thoughts of where he might be taking me. I mean, what really could I have done if the driver took the freeway out of the city and brought us to some cabin in the woods? What if Rob had something really terrible planned for me? I couldn’t call for help. I couldn’t fight him and the driver. I couldn’t outrun them in my two-thousand-dollar heels.
When the car pulled up outside one of the most exclusive nightclubs in the entire city, I almost cried in relief. And that’s saying a lot, because I don’t even like nightclubs. I find them intimidating. All the sexy women, the girls who are willing to go farther than me, work harder, to win their man. I’d always felt out of my depth at clubs like that, but this time I was just glad Rob hadn’t taken me into the woods to murder me.
*
THERE WAS A LONG LINE waiting to get into the club, girls in expensive dresses that barely covered their asses and tits and left nothing to the imagination. The guys looked like they worked out at the gym seven days a week, muscles rippling under their bright shirts. I saw one guy with thick, strong arms who looked out of place in the line of jocks of bros and he reminded me intensely of Grant.
Grant.
What I wouldn’t have done to see him right then and there. I’d have run to him and jumped into his arms. I’d have forgotten all my pride, all my dignity, and I’d have told him to take me home.
This scene with Rob wasn’t for me. It wasn’t the kind of girl I was. I already knew. What he wanted was a supermodel bimbo who would talk like he wanted, act like he wanted, and do what he wanted. That wasn’t me. He’d made me look the part, but there was no way he could change the person I was inside. Or was there?
One of the club security guards came over to our car and held the door as we climbed out. A photographer from a gossip website flashed his camera at me as I walked past the line, Rob to my left and the security guard to my right.
Every girl in the line looked on jealously as I was escorted right past them, into the club.
“What’s going on?” I said to Rob as we followed the guard.
“It’s always like this here,” he said. “They get so many celebrities that the photographer shoots anyone who looks like they might be news.”
“Does that mean we look like news?” I said, my jaw dropping.