1
Harley
As I stare at Cam’s towering skyscraper, memories race back. Day after day I walked into that building, stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the fifty-fourth floor, then put my hand on my belly as that weird twisty feeling from shooting up into the sky kicked in. When I arrived, I told the receptionist I was there to see him. I have no clue if she knew about his side business. Nor did I care. She gestured to his office down the hall, and my stomach flipped and wiggled in a different way as I walked to him, because he was my power broker—he was the man who set me free from how I’d grown up. He always grinned when he saw me, then shut the door and gave me the details of the job. Like I was a hired assassin. Like he had a top secret classified file about the target and he was giving me the download.
We were comrades and partners, pulling off heists.
Wednesday was our big day. I’d head straight for his office when the final bell rang at my school, and we’d review the gigs for the next week. Sometimes I’d have one, sometimes several. It all depended on my schoolwork and my mom’s schedule, whether she was in town or out of town chasing a story. But even if she was around, I knew how to concoct cover-ups. I said I was at study group or extra field hockey practice, or I made up the name of a boy I was seeing, spinning my own tales of a date with Cody or Hunter or Jay or some other random, nonexistent boy, stories of dates and ice cream and kisses in Central Park. But we always broke up too soon for her to meet this fictional mate.
When I had my regular appointments with Morris, Cam wanted me to prep at his sprawling Upper East Side brownstone, not far from the hotel where I met the political adviser for his doggy trysts. “It’s safer,” Cam said. “Safer for you. I’ll have a car waiting to take you to the hotel.”
We had a ritual before the Morris meetings. Cam took a bath, and I polished my toenails. Cam liked his sea salt crystals mixed with Sweet Lemon bubble bath in his baby-blue claw-foot tub, filled to the top with scalding hot water that he soaked in for thirty minutes while singing along to big seventies classic rock, like the Eagles’ “Hotel California” or Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”
I perched on the closed toilet seat painting my toenails—a mouthwatering fire-engine red for Morris. Cam chatted about whatever business meeting he was heading to during my session, all while dispensing little tips here and there. “Press hard with the right heel between his shoulder blades while he sucks your left big toe,” he told me. “Call me if there’s any trouble, but there won’t be.”
I looked away as he stepped out of the tub, the water sloshing around and cooled to lukewarm, then dried off with an oversized white fluffy bath towel. He’d already have his outfit carefully laid out on the down comforter of his king-size Japanese-style bed, usually a suit with one of his colorful “cowboy shirts,” as he called them, and no tie. Cam never wore ties.
Then I’d zip up my skirt and slide on my shoes, and he’d give me a peck on the forehead. “Go make me proud, baby doll. Can’t wait for your report.”
He’d head off to a steak and lobster meal someplace, likely to woo a shady businessman into a shady deal that seemed legit—all smoke and mirrors was my man—while I’d let Morris slide his tongue between my toes for two thousand dollars.
Sometimes I’d meet Cam at Bliss after a job and tell him how it went. We’d have drinks—soda and martini—and appetizers, and I felt like every second with him was a fantastic secret. A bubble I lived in that no one could ever touch.
“Who takes care of you? Who looks out for you?”
“You do,” I said, poking him playfully in the chest.
“All the time, baby doll. Anytime you need it.”
He was proud of me. Like a proud papa.
I don’t think Cam ever knew how hard it was for me to leave him after those dinners. Every time I did, I felt like black sludge had settled under my skin, because then I had to deal with my mom, my house, the noise. He was the antidote—the only one I ever had—to what awaited me inside my own home.
Cam felt like home. He was my center. I trusted him when there was no one to trust. Because he gave me me.
But do I need the antidote anymore?
Now that I’m here, I don’t know if I will feel the same. I used to walk in here, feeling known, feeling understood. But am I still known? How can I be if I don’t know who I am?
And that right there is the issue.
I go inside, not knowing who I am, not knowing anymore why I’m here.
Am I Harley? Am I Layla? Am I the call girl or the girl in recovery? I don’t feel like either one of them.
I don’t feel like anyone I know.
Maybe in here I can be someone again.
As the elevator whisks me up, I talk back to my overactive brain, my too-emotional heart.
Play the part. That’s what you know how to do. Fake it till you make it. When I reach Cam’s floor, I’m greeted by a crisp, controlled energy in the air the second the elevator doors sweep open. Sharp women in fitted skirts and heels, men in tailored suits, and assistants with headsets melded to their ears pace from cube to cube on either side of the gleaming floor-to-ceiling glass walls flanking the entryway.
I walk inside.
“May I help you?”
I used to be a regular in these parts, but receptionists come and go, and since this one is new, she doesn’t recognize me. She’s young and blonde, with stick-straight hair tucked neatly behind her ears.
“I’m here to see Mr. Cameron Jackson. I have a delivery for him. He’s expecting me. You can tell him Layla is here.” I don’t use my name. Nor do I use my mom’s name. I know better. My mom doesn’t reveal her sources, and Cam would never go on the record for one of her stories. He is all background, all behind the scenes. Besides, I’ve just used the one word that guarantees my entrée anywhere Cam is.
Layla.
My name is probably sashaying its way through the air, down to his office, slinking behind the door, reaching his ears, all five letters whispered in that sexy, seductive tone that will turn him into the man he is with me—mesmerized.
“Let me just call him,” she says, then picks up the phone and stabs a finger against a button.
“Hello, Mr. Jackson. You have a delivery from someone named Layla?”
I don’t have to hear Cam’s side of the conversation to know what he’s saying right now. He is all yeses.
The receptionist stands up, ready to escort me, but I tell her, “It’s okay. I know the way.”
Cam’s door is ajar. I knock lightly, and he calls me in. His smile—that familiar broad grin that reveals all our naughty, tawdry, dirty, delicious little secrets—greets me first.
Then he leans across his desk, taps on the calendar, and pretends he’s deep in thought, his index finger resting on his chin. “Well, that’s funny. My calendar doesn’t say it’s my lucky day. But clearly it’s wrong. Because seeing you two days in a row means I am the luckiest son of a bitch in the entire fucking solar system.”
Has it been less than twenty-four hours since I’ve seen him? Since last night at Bliss? So much has happened since then, but so little too. Last night with Trey, the talking, the drinking game, the time on the couch, and then this morning and that dismissive denial from his mouth. I feel as if my world has been tugged, pulled, and twisted through the smallest eye of a needle, and parts are bunched up on one side, left behind in a mess.