Alex
Days after my vacation with Chloe ended were long and torturous. I missed having her with me, waking up next to her, and feeling like nothing else mattered except for finding another restaurant to try or making sure to stop in at the little boutique down the street from the hotel. I’d held onto her as long as I could at the airport, lingering with her until the final call to board sounded.
She refused to accompany me to the Cannes film festival, saying that she couldn’t get away from her family for that long right away. It disappointed me to not have her here on Zamir’s yacht, but I knew I would get to see her again soon. I would have preferred her company over the yacht girls though, it just wasn’t the same.
“You’ve been with her a month. A month!” Zamir cried in horror.
He sat across from me at the poker table, shuffling the cards while we all waited. We being myself, Gianni, and Nik. Zamir had only come because Gianni was a terrible gambler and that meant Zamir could easily take whatever the hell he wanted if he was good enough tonight. I wasn’t much of a poker fan, but it was nice to be able to meet up with friends.
At that moment however, I was under attack from all sides. None of them thought my gift to Chloe was appropriate this soon into our arrangement, even if it was her birthday. All of them agreed that I was an idiot for giving her something that expensive. Especially now that she was back in the United States and I had flown straight to France.
We sat inside tonight while the rest of Zamir’s guests prowled the upper decks of his yacht: young attractive women, other tech industry big shots, and a lot of alcohol. Champagne wasn’t the only thing in abundance on the boat, I could ask virtually anyone here and get any substance I wanted. Some of the girls were drunk, that was to be expected, but more than a few of them passed around ecstasy or coke to party through the night. Jazmin was somewhere upstairs with them; she had pulled me aside just as we left the dock and asked me to check on her because she wanted to try some. I promised her I would and both Zamir and I had been keeping tabs on them all night.
Gianni and Nik hadn’t noticed, they were too busy getting massaged by the topless Ukrainian girl with the burgundy lipstick.
“And it was her birthday,” I reminded him as I picked up my cards. “I’ve done worse. I gave Jazmin that car.”
“And this was what, half the price of that?” A hint of disdain crept into Nik’s tone. “You’re already paying them; you don’t need to give them twenty-five-thousand worth of jewellery they can’t wear anywhere else.”
Gianni laughed. “And she’s how old again?”
My face felt warm, but I glared at the man anyway. “Does that matter?”
They all laughed in response and my stomach dropped. Chloe was more than just a number, she wasn’t some mindless teenager, but I didn’t know how to defend her to them. I didn’t want to have to defend her to them, they should respect her automatically, but I knew no matter what I said to that effect they wouldn’t listen to.
I had spent quite a bit on her, and I didn’t plan to stop. I couldn’t take my money with me in the end, Marie had someone else to take care of her now, and Peter had taken over the construction company. I was left with money I didn’t know what to do with. I used large chunks of it to fund housing projects to help people recovering from the recession, I donated even more to local charities, but I still had the real estate firm I helped create, and I had these poker games where I was currently about to win Gianni’s apartment in Rome.
“Three of a kind.” He slammed his cards down. “Come on Zander, let’s see what shit you got.”
Keeping my face blank, I carefully laid the cards down. A straight flush, my second of the evening.
Gianni cried out in outrage while Zamir and Nik broke out laughing at him. Grinning to myself, I swept the pot over to my side and tucked the scrap of paper with “H island” written on it back into my pocket. Marie would never let me hear the end of it if she knew I gambled with the island regularly.
“Where am I supposed to escape to now?” he demanded. “Christ…”
“Shouldn’t have bet what you couldn’t afford,” Zamir taunted. He waved over the woman who smiled and went to work on his shoulders but he just pushed her hands away and murmured something to her in Ukrainian.
She nodded and Nik handed her a beige envelope that she happily accepted before heading back upstairs. Gianni watched her go before getting up as well and taking what was left of his poker chips over the blackjack table behind us. I followed suit, taking my own pile over there as well and cashing out for the time being.
“I’ll send you the paperwork,” Gianni said tiredly. “Are you in a rush?”
“No, I would like it in time for the Republic Day celebration, that’s not too quick I hope.”
“Ah not at all.” He clamped a hand on my shoulder and grinned. “You’ll bring the girl, won’t you?”
“How often do I really show up alone?” I asked dryly.
Gianni laughed and grabbed his glass before heading back upstairs to the party with Nik. I could hear the music getting louder and the laughter spilling down for us to hear. When I turned around, Zamir was opening up his cigar case and held one out to me. I took it and we went to join everyone else.
I wasn’t exactly sure how I had reached this point, where so many of my friends – or people I just socialized with – were people that kept a lot of women around. Prostitutes, sugar babies, yacht girls, women that got paid to spend time with us. Zamir had been the one that introduced me to sugaring, but that was the extent of it. I wasn’t even certain how I came across Gianni and Nik, it wasn’t like they spent a lot of time around people like Amelia or Zamir. I wonder what Amelia is up to right now. Not trying to reclaim her lost youth with drugs and cigars, that was for certain.
“Zander.”
My head jerked up and I spun around to see Zamir staring at me. “Sorry?”
“I offered you a light since I don’t think you can glare at it until it starts to smoke.” He paused. “Well, maybe you could.”
I smirked and held out the cigar for him to light. Smoke curled into swirling gray ribbons while I gazed out over the water, we were so far from land that no matter where you looked it was just an endless void sprinkled with golden dots for stars that reflected on the calm water. I leaned against the railing and took another pull off the cigar as we stood there quietly.
People screamed behind us and laughed, the sound of fireworks exploding followed close behind.
“You were right about Jazmin,” Zamir said as he lounged there with me. “I’m thinking that we could all spend some time together this summer. Maybe go to your house in the Bahamas.
“You just don’t want to pay for a rental,” I teased.
“No,” he agreed with a grin. “I really don’t, but I also just figured it would be a good trip since the girls are friends.”
That was true. And Chloe would probably be thrilled to go on a vacation with her friend. “Did you think more about coming to Napa Valley this summer?” I asked, avoiding his question.
“I’ll go, that’s not a problem.”
“Then we just need to set some dates.” I stood back up and turned around, leaning back on the railing as I watched one of the yacht girls dance on a sun lounger. “I’ll have to talk to Chloe first of course, she’s new with the travelling and I don’t want to throw too much at her too soon.”
“Right, because you generally like to get someone else’s approval before you do something.” He rolled his eyes and discarded his cigar.
“Everyone acts like I just bulldoze right over their opinions,” I complained. “Where did that idea even come from? I’m not that much of an asshole.”
“Maybe if everyone says the same thing about you then there’s some truth to it.” Zamir shrugged. “Because it is true, you don’t have a history of asking for something, you usually just go ahead with it. Your wife knows that better than the rest of us.”
“Ex-wife.”
“The divorce isn’t final, and you have a brat together. She’ll always be the first wife and the mother of your only son.”
I didn’t say anything. The truth was that I knew Zamir was right on some level, that my controlling tendencies had led to bigger and bigger fights with Marie. The same had been true with more than one of my companions, including Jazmin, but those fights hadn’t been as extreme. I didn’t want to push Chloe away with those same mistakes because I had no doubt that she would just end our relationship without batting an eye. She was so new to the business and we had only been together for a little over a month, there was no reason that she had to stick around if I acted like a prick.
But I didn’t appreciate Zamir dragging Marie and Peter into this.
“If we go to the Bahamas and Napa Valley, I don’t want you mentioning them in front of Chloe,” I told him coldly. “Not a word. I want to keep her separate from that mess.”
“Eventually she’ll have questions,” he scolded. “There’s really no reason to keep it from her.”
“There’s plenty of reasons,” I snapped. “How do you think it looks when I have no relationships with anyone in my family? How am I supposed to explain that to her when she goes home to her parents and her brother, I’ve sent my mother away, my brother has been dead for over twenty years, and my ex-wife spent our entire marriage trying to get out of it while alienating my son from me?”
“She didn’t have to alienate him; you did a decent job of that on your own.”
Ice washed over me instantly. I had to turn away from him to try and calm myself down instead of lashing out, demanding to know where the fuck his children were if he was such a good parent. I couldn’t hurt him like that, not after he lost his son to addiction last year.
“I’m trying,” I told him finally. “I’m trying to make things better and I think they can be better, but it’s just easier to keep her separate.”
Zamir sighed and shoved his hands into his pockets. “You can’t live two separate lives. Not when you’re gifting her jewellery like that and whisking her away at every opportunity. She’s going to ask questions eventually.” He pushed away from the railing, paused and glanced back at me. “I think you’re giving her the wrong impression with those gifts, and I don’t know if that’s how you feel about her or what, but you need to ask yourself if it’s worth it to lead a nineteen-year-old girl on for your own sexual amusement.”
I watched him go in silence, he picked Jazmin up off the railing that she had been sitting on and sat them both on one of the plush white couches where she giggled and played with his hair. All around me women were fawning over rich men that waved money around like it was nothing. Half the men here were married, like Gianni, but none of the women cared because this was the biggest payday of the year for them. I used to find solace in places like this because there was no pretending what our relationship was when it was a service to bought and sold. But now I just wished I was somewhere else. With her.
I looked down at my phone and went back into the cabins where it was quiet. The bass vibrated the walls but the screaming outside my locked door was almost completely muffled. The pictures loaded and I flipped through the gallery aimlessly, pausing every time I came across a photo of herself that she had sent me. I didn’t want to believe that I was leading her on, my feelings toward her didn’t have to impact her own. But at the same time, Zamir’s words echoed my fears that I would begin a relationship unintentionally with her and break her heart in the process. Or my own. Mine could stand some more self-flagellation, it wasn’t anything new, but the idea of doing that to her made my throat constrict.
I didn’t know how to navigate this path in my life anymore, I had no idea how to distance myself romantically because I knew I wanted that as much if not more than Chloe did. I wanted to have her in every way I could but that didn’t mesh with my desire to keep her away from the rest of my life. Especially Peter. She didn’t even know their names, how was I supposed to want more with her when I wouldn’t let that wall down enough for her to know even basic things about the people in my life?
Her name glowed vibrantly on my phone display, one click away from me calling her and telling her that I was missing her this evening. One click away from telling her I wanted more. She has her entire life ahead of her… What right did I have to ask her to throw that all away for me – for the man that told her that he didn’t want her romantically and not to get any notions about it either? I swallowed the lump forming in my throat and turned my phone off before tossing it on the bed.
It would be good for us to have some distance so that I could stop playing these minds games with her and myself. She wasn’t a yoyo, she was a person, and constantly reminding her that I didn’t want a romantic relationship while I continued to do things that were above and beyond even for me was sending the wrong message.
I got up from the bed suddenly and changed into a button-down short sleeve shirt that I left open in the front. I needed to relax and take my mind off her for five minutes before I drove myself crazy worrying about it. And I would wait for her to call instead of running to her again. That would help. But even as I locked my cabin door again and went back up to join the party, my mind was permanently locked in that room with my phone, wishing I had the strength to be as honest with her as she was with me.