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His foot starts tapping. “Been thinking …”
I really don’t like the way he looks at me, hesitant and yet determined. “Thinking, what?”
He lifts a shoulder. “I would like to hire you. To be a friend for a while,” he clarifies in the face of my silence.
I try to say something. Really, I do. But my throat constricts. A telltale prickle grows behind my lids. I’m going to cry, and I’m not a crier.
Pay me to be his friend? He might as well have pulled out a scythe and cut the legs out from under me. I’ve dealt with this before, getting close to someone who ends up seeing me not as a true friend but as something less than. Honestly, I’ve dealt with this enough times that I have the standard, “Yeah, sure. Let’s schedule something” answer down pat.
And, after all, he is offering to pay. Some people—a lot of people—want me to be the friend on call, the friend who acts like a paid companion, who they expect to give them benign answers and pleasant smiles, but they don’t want to pay. They expect me to act that way for free.
Maybe I should be thankful.
John stares at me with an earnest expression, clearly oblivious that he just mentally gut-punched me. All I have to do is be polite and get him out of my apartment as quickly as possible. But I can’t make my mouth move.
Clearly impatient, he edges forward. “I’ll pay you extremely well. Enough that you don’t have to see other clients. Just me.”
My face begins to tingle. “You want to pay me to hang out exclusively with you?”
Satisfaction lights his face. His big, stupid face. “Yes.”
I start my deep yoga breathing.
“Well then?” he asks, hands clenched into fists. “What do you think?”
“You need to leave.” I stand, nearly knocking into the coffee table. “Now, please.”
John lurches to his feet as well, his brows winging up. “Leave? Why?”
I can’t look at him. “Because I asked you to.” Turning my back to him, I pick up the teacups.
“What the hell? What did I do wrong?”
You offered to pay me for what I would have done for free. “Nothing.”
A wrinkle forms between his brows. “Then why are you kicking me out?”
So I can cry alone. “I’m tired.”
“Bullocks.” His English accent, rises up, crisp as new paper. “You look as though I’ve sucker-punched you. Is it really so distasteful to hang out with me, then?”
Distasteful? I want to scream. I just might.
John’s color deepens as he takes a step closer, his long, lean body looming over me. “Answer me, damn it.”
When he moves to cup my elbow, I swing my arm away. “Because you did sucker-punch me, you jerk.”
He gapes at me in shock. “How?”
Of all the … My disappointment bubbles up and turns to rage. “How can you not know? Are you seriously that clueless?”
His mouth snaps shut on a glare. “Apparently so. Enlighten me, then.”
“Because it hurts, okay?” When he frowns, I advance on him. “You think because I’m good old Stella, everyone’s friend, that I don’t feel that …” I wave a helpless hand. “Black hole of pain? That utter fucking emptiness? People pay me to be their friend. I make people smile and laugh so they can say, ‘There’s Stella, isn’t she good fun’?”
Something dark and bitter burns within me. My words come out like hard punches. “Do you know how many actual friends I have? None. Not a fucking one. Nobody knows the real me. Nobody calls on my birthday, or to see how I’m doing when they haven’t heard from me in a while. No one turns to me for anything other than a fleeting laugh or paid companionship.”
It hurts to say. My vision blurs and I blink rapidly. “I have zero true friends. Just people who know the surface of me. Sometimes the loneliness of it hurts crushes my chest like a vise. And I sit here, alone, wondering what the fuck is so wrong with me that no one has bothered to try. That no one sticks.”
“There is nothing wrong with you,” he rasps, attempting to grasp my shoulders.
I evade him again. “But there has to be. There has to be a reason I have no friends, why no one stays. And that reason is me.” I suck in a shaking breath. “You just proved it. I thought we were becoming real friends—”
“We were.” He sounds almost desperate now, a wild look in his eyes as he leans close. “We are!”
“Come off it. You wanted to hire me just like all the others.”
John runs a hand through his hair, making the ends stick out in all directions. “I said that because I wanted to be close to you and am too emotionally stunted to man up to it. There isn’t anyone I want to be around more than you. You occupy my thoughts, haunt my dreams. I can no more stay away from you than I can try to keep my heart from beating.”
