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Marlo piped up, “Sorry, Tate, we just thought—”
“You never think, that’s the problem. You saw I was with a girl, that we were getting close, and you announced you’d gotten escorts. Do you see the issue there?”
“Yeah…”
“Jesus Christ, you’re morons.”
Trey clasped his hands together, pleading. “I’m sorry, Tate, we’re all sorry. It was a mistake, seriously, never gonna happen again. Please, honestly dude. Forgive us.”
It was grotesque, watching a grown man beg for mercy from somebody he called his “friend” — whenever he wanted clout, anyways. They’re all disgusting, I thought, with something resembling pity. They only care about themselves, and nothing else.
That was it. The sole people in the world who claimed to care about me, who said they had a stake in my well-being, were just there for the parties and the chicks. I was nothing to them, just a walking wallet.
My whole world was empty, save for the devils who clung to my back.
Maybe I had lionized Kiki, for that matter. Sure, I’d thought the thing sparking between us was real, but who’s to say? More likely than not, she was just an accomplished actor, and I was a guy who saw what he wished to see. It was so fucking arrogant of me to assume that there were any deeper felt emotions. She was a cocktail waitress at my casino. Of course she had ulterior motives. Hey, she’d already gotten out of her punishment of the evening by chatting me up. How had I been so blind?
I hated myself. I hated my life. And I especially hated my father for forcing this meaningless existence upon me.
“You know what?” I said, surprising myself with the words. “I’ll take one of the girls after all.”
The men looked to one another.
“Yeah, sure, of course,” Carl said hastily. “Here, take Alice.”
From behind him, he ushered up a tiny blonde girl with enormous fake tits that seemed to drag her whole frame to the ground.
In uneven English, she greeted me. “Hello, I am Alice.”
“Let’s get out of here, Alice.”
“Okay.”
I took her hand and without so much as a goodbye to my group, I chartered a way out of the club. The two of us moved awkwardly together, our steps out of sync, but we eventually made it to the door.
At the lip of the club, I led Alice — presumably not her real name — to the left, past a couple of slot machines and through an Italian restaurant. I gave a nod to the chef and entered the kitchen, walking Alice past rows of steel tables and into a secluded backroom where we wine and dine celebrities too famous to sit with the general public.
We were alone, and the room was quiet.
I turned to face her.
She was shivering from the cold. Her dress was a mere slip, a little shred of pink silk that covered her tits and genitalia and nothing else.
Fuck. I couldn’t do this.
With a sigh, I undid my jacket, took it off and draped it around her shoulders.
“Should I get undressed?” she asked, even as she pulled the jacket tighter around her shaking body.
“No, that won’t be necessary.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No, but I did. I shouldn’t have brought you here.”
The problem wasn’t her — it was that she wasn’t Kiki.
“You seem… lonely,” she observed.
I hung my head, dragging my fingers across my stubble. “That’s perceptive.”
“Perceptive?”
“I mean to say — you’re right. I am lonely.”
She took a step to me. “I can help with that.”
“I’m sorry, but you can’t. There’s… there’s another girl.”
“Oh. Heart hurts.”
“Yes.” I tried to shake the sadness from my skull but it seemed wedged in. “Anyhow, you should get home to your parents.”
She did, after all, look young enough to still be living at home.
“You too,” she replied. “Call your family.”
“I don’t have any. But even if they were alive, I doubt they’d pick up. That wasn’t the kind of family we were.”
“I see.”
Alice fell quiet, and her silence said everything I needed to hear.
Reaching in my back pocket, I pulled out the remaining wad of cash I’d been intending to spend at the show as was expected of the owner. I handed it to Alice, who gasped at the number of bills.
“But we did not have sex,” she commented.
“I know. You gave me something better than sex. Thank you.”
She smiled and leaned in, giving me a peck on the cheek.
“You are good guy,” she said.
She took off my jacket, but I shook my head and she put it back on.
With that, she walked out of the room, leaving me alone once more.
CHAPTER 11
Kiki
I HASTENED TO my car, my shoes clack-ing on the concrete, bright red against the washed-out background.
Why did it feel as though I was going to some kind of Deep Throat rendezvous? It’s just a phone call, I reminded myself. Informational. Not binding.
