I nod, and he moves slowly on top of me, sliding in and out, watching me like he’s waiting for something. I felt nothing for him all these months, but now I can’t help it. Since seeing Royal shook me awake, made me feel something again, I’ve been coming back to life despite myself. I wanted to stay numb forever, but every day my mangled soul twitches a bit more than the day before.
I look up at Mr. D, and I try to remember what I should feel when a man is inside me, but I can’t. I don’t love him. I know that. All I feel is sadness. Tears slide down my cheeks, wetting my hair.
“Is it my face?” he murmurs. “I can put the mask back on.”
I shake my head, trying to stop the tears, to stop my lip from trembling and my throat from squeezing so painfully tight it brings more tears.
“Do you want me to stop?” he asks.
I shake my head again. I wrap my arms around his neck, and I hold him close and give him what he wants, not sex but closeness, however empty it is. I wish I could fix all the broken in him, that he could fix me, and that we could be that for each other. But we’re just not.
When he’s done, he showers, and I go to the kitchen and make eggs and toast. Everything in his kitchen is clean and shiny and expensive. No chipped plates or mismatched knives. I think about how angry my mother will be when I tell her I’ve walked away from this. She’ll tell me it’s every girl’s fantasy—every girl like me. That I’ll never do better. And maybe she’s right.
Mr. D comes out wearing his mask, charcoal grey dress pants, and a blue button-up shirt that matches his mismatched eyes. We eat in silence, but it’s different, the air heavy instead of relaxed.
“I want to go back to Willow Heights,” I say. “Not Faulkner High.”
He makes a noncommittal sound and forks through his eggs. “Thanks for cooking.”
“How old are you?” I ask, pulling back to study him—his sharp chin freshly shaven, his lips that never touched me until today. It’s hard to tell with the mask, but I know he’s younger than I pictured. He’s the furthest thing from a gross old guy jerking off in his trailer and offering me the moon. Or even a gross old rich guy jerking off at his computer while I told him about sucking dick.
“Nineteen.”
Damn. He’s only been out of high school for a year. He seems so much older, at least in his mid-twenties.
“I’ve caught up on everything I missed last year,” I say, trying to keep the nerves from taking me over at the thought of setting foot in the same school as the football team. “Maybe you can go in and talk to them about my scholarship?”
“That again.” He shakes his head and takes the plates to the sink.
“I think I’ve earned it.”
“You know I never leave this place,” he says without looking at me, turning on the water to rinse the plates.
“You left to get me every time I came over this summer,” I point out, crossing my arms, some little seed of stubbornness sprouting inside me, sinking its roots into the ground. “And when I lived here, I heard you leave at least a dozen times in the evenings.”
“I don’t get out of my truck.”
“I’d rather have that than all the clothes and shoes and jewelry.”
He doesn’t say anything. I want to be angry, but I can’t summon that much emotion. So I turn and go to his room. While he washes up, I get the designer bag he bought to keep my new phone and keys in, and I put on the red-soled shoes he slid on my feet one day. He’s spent so much, I feel guilty asking for more. But that’s the only gift I’ve ever wanted. I didn’t ask for fancy things.
I return to the island that separates the kitchen and main room of the loft. “I’m leaving the things you bought me here. I’ll bring back the shoes and clothes I’m wearing.”
“I don’t need them,” he says, coming around the end of the island. “I have a phone. I’m not into women’s clothes, and even if I were, I couldn’t wear your size.”
“I don’t feel right taking them. You’ve done so much.”
“Then let me do this,” he says, his familiar, entitled hands falling to my hips. “Let me at least pretend I did something good for you these last five months.”
“Okay,” I say, swallowing hard. I search his eyes, my gaze moving from his blind, unseeing eye to the one that’s so sharp and alive, but just as guarded as the mask makes him. Is it unfair to ask for my scholarship back, to ask him to go to the school and fight for me? He’s done more than buy me things. Things I can never repay him for. But all he’ll remember is that I accused him of treating me like a whore after accepting every gift he gave.
I can’t ask for more.
He runs his finger down the chain of the necklace, looping it through the bottom, where the ballerina charm hangs. “Don’t take this off, okay? I like knowing that wherever you are, you’re wearing it. That I’m with you.”
“I should get to school.”
He hands me his truck keys and steps back, his lips tightening. “I’ll be down in a minute.”