Why am I all of a sudden like this? That’s what you want to know, isn't it?
Because of what I saw on the fucking tablet.
Yeah, the same thing I can’t tell you about yet.
Don’t pout. I just had to fucking do that. I’m going to fucking miss you when this book is over; you know that, don’t you?
Anyways, we’re far from done now, because Brittney is looking at me and I can tell she’s starting to waver in whatever she had committed to doing.
“Let’s sit down,” I tell her, and I take her hand and lead her to the sofa where I sit her down next to me.
I can smell her fucking perfume. It’s fucking addictive and it makes my nostrils flare up.
“What did you want to tell me?” I ask, looking at her.
Brittney looks down.
“Hey,” I tell her. “You can tell me anything.”
“It’s just a secret that I’ve been keeping from you,” she tells me. I nod. Every one of us has fucking secrets. That’s nothing new.
If you want to know my secrets, you’ll go turn on that tablet. But you can’t.
Yeah, I’m an asshole sometimes. I know.
“Babe, it’s okay,” I tell her, holding her chin with my hand and lifting her face. “You can tell me anything, but you don’t have to tell me everything.”
Brittney looks at me for a second. “You know I used to do porn, right?” she asks me.
I nod. I mean, I never outright asked her specifically if she used to be a porn star, but it was always something I suspected. And there was something about her face that seems kind of familiar…
“I always thought,” I say still nodding, “But I never really knew for sure.”
“I lived in Los Angeles for the longest time and I sort of drifted into the business,” she tells me, looking at me intently, seeing what my reaction is going to be. “I came to New York to get away from it.”
“Well, you seemed to do a good job of that, babe,” I tell her, smiling a bit to show her that it’s okay. I can tell she's fucking on edge—looking to see any sign of me being upset. “You’re going to be the first Illicit Escape girl. I don't know if that’s leaving the business entirely.”
“But that’s not what I thought I’d be doing when I came to New York,” she tells me, and she scoots closer. “I honestly thought I’d be leaving porn forever. I brought my assistant with me, Walter. And we set up a business together.”
I nod. Walter reminds me of Cheryl in a lot of ways from the few times I’ve seen him here and there as I’ve met Brittney.
“Okay,” I say, scooting a bit closer. “So you used to do porn. I’m in porn too,” I tell her.
“But it’s what I did afterwards, that I want to tell you about,” she tells me, struggling to get the words out.
“What did you do afterwards?” I ask, now getting genuinely interested.
“I started a company, where women would come to me, and they’d tell me about the men they wanted me to fuck, and I’d seduc
e them for money,” she says to me, letting it all come out in a rush. “They wanted to get proof that these men were assholes and were cheating on them so they’d have grounds for divorce.”
“They couldn’t just get a private investigator?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “It wasn’t always so easy. The husbands, maybe they weren’t cheating then, but they were still ignoring and mistreating their wives. Sometimes it was just that the husbands weren’t traveling. But the wives knew the love was gone. And they wanted out of the marriage. They came to me.”
I’m silent. Brittney continues.
“I’m the CEO of a company called Man Chasers, LLC, Ethan,” she confides. “And for the longest time I thought I didn’t need a man in my life at all. That they were nothing but a waste of time.”