“The power differential was not in my favor, Julia, just trust me on that.”
“I’m not saying it was but…”
“I was sixteen, I thought, yeah sure, get paid to have sex. I’d never in my life worried about sex much since I was too busy trying to figure out where my next meal would come from, or trying to teach myself to read so I could navigate my way through the world. But being a teenage boy, I was interested. With all my bravado, compliments of life on the street, I figured it wouldn’t matter to me. That it wouldn’t mean anything. And I was still a virgin so…it was even tempting on that level. But I didn’t realize what it cost. What I would have to do to get through it in the end. Until you’ve been through it, you don’t really understand, Julia. Until you’ve gone so far as to sell yourself to live, you don’t know what it’s like. Every time was like…having more and more of my skin stripped off until…at the end, I couldn’t bear to have anyone touching me. It was torture. Not pleasure.”
Julia looked down, some of her rage cooling then. In some ways she did understand. She hadn’t realized how she would feel after sex. The rush of jumbled emotion that would hit her. She hadn’t had a clue. And she pictured him as a teenager, innocent in that way, being led into something he couldn’t possibly have understood the repercussions for.
“You can’t stop when you start,” he said. “Because there’s no other way to make that kind of money in that little bit of time. Otherwise I was doing hard labor for twelve hours of the day and still not making enough to sleep in a bed at night. Not making enough to keep you fed, to keep up your strength to work.”
“Ferro…”
“No, it’s good you know. But I think it draws a line under the fact that you and I can’t allow our personal attraction to have a place in this.”
“Are you attracted to me?” she asked.
“I am. But I think you can now attest to the fact that being used for your body doesn’t feel much better than being used for your money.”
“I knew more about that than you might think. That wasn’t being used, trust me. I didn’t particularly enjoy the…after stuff, but the sex was great. I felt desired, I felt pleasure. I hope you did, too. I hope you didn’t feel like I used you, because that wasn’t what I wanted. Because whatever you might think, I do know that pain.”
“Maybe we should just call the conversation over,” he said.
“Oh, right. Over.” So he didn’t want her to share. Fine. She didn’t want to share anyway. Things just weren’t working out, and they were ending them. Which was the only way it was ever going to go.
But you don’t want him anyway. Too much baggage. Not enough cuddling. Failed experiment. Back to the drawing board.
She sighed and looked back down at her computer, more than ready to just deal with some silence on the flight. It was better than this awkward conversation.
And she would try to ignore the fact that when she looked at him, her body burned. There was no place for that. She’d made a mistake, but at least it had been her choice. And it wouldn’t be terminal.
They were in a business relationship and it was time for her to remember that. Time to get back to California. Back to real life. Back to business.
* * *
“Why is there a giant metal salmon in my office?” Julia walked out into the foyer, coffee clutched in her hand, and over to Thad’s desk.
“I thought you ordered it,” he said, not looking at her and sounding way too innocent.
“You did not. Did Calvaresi come in and flash his abs at you?”
“I’m not that easy, Julia, honestly. You wound me.”
She leaned forward, hands planted on Thad’s desk. “And you let him put a fish in my office.”
“It’s not a real fish.”
“Thad, focus.”
“I thought since you were, you know, with him now, that it would be acceptable.”
She was about to say she wasn’t with him, but she couldn’t say it, because she just remembered the assumption had been that they were together before they’d actually slept together and that the ruse had to go on with the absence of actual sex.