He stares at me, looking torn between answering and ignoring me. Stepping back, he walks toward the door, silently letting me know that this conversation is over.
“Yes,” he says, looking over his shoulder. “I’d seen you several times before we met…”
Michael
Before We “Met”
The woman standing outside the doors of Club Swan is a fucking vision. Under the harsh glow of the neon lights, dark brown curls frame her faintly freckled cheeks. Her bow shaped lips are coated in a devilish shade of red, and the black dress she’s wearing is shorter than the grey coat that barely hits her thighs.
Looking at her now is a mix of lust and torture—a living, breathing example of someone I want at first sight, but someone I’ll never be able to have. It’s also like staring at one of those alluring “Life in New York” postcards from a cliché gift shop. The image can probably sell itself, if the pretty words don’t do it first. Beautiful girl stands on street corner as snow falls; she smiles as New York City’s skyline glitters in the distance. Here is where she’ll explore all the possibilities in life. Come here to our city and explore yours …
Then again, this woman is far sexier than any supermodel I’ve ever seen. Her name is Meredith Alexis Thatchwood and she’s far more intriguing than they are as well.
She’s twenty-four years old, fresh out of Fashion School, and way too damn naïve. She’s also damaged, irrefutably broken, but she hides it well under her six-figure wardrobe, beneath a smile that she’s been groomed to perfect.
I’ve only been watching her for a few weeks, but I already know her day to day habits. Every move in her predictable, unwavering routine.
Monday through Friday, she steps outside her expensive condo for a two-block walk to The Paper Café. The order is for her boss, and it’s always the same: Caramel spiced latte, add foam, hold the sugar. She hails a cab to Vogue’s headquarters in the One World Trade Center, where she spends the next twelve to fourteen hours catering to the whims of the top magazine editor in the country.
During her hour-long lunch breaks, she phones her best friend—Gillian Weston, and they talk and laugh about absolutely nothing. (I don’t even bother trying to overhear their conversations anymore.)
After work, she tries her best to distract herself from the loss of her mother by buying new books she’ll never read or running through Central Park until she can’t take anymore. She occasionally slips through the doors of Club Swan and spins her pain away, around the comfort of a pole; from what I can tell, she only dances on the faraway stage and she never lets any customers touch her. She’s there for herself, not anyone else.
It takes all of the restraint in the world for me to not go in and watch…
On weekends, she starts her mornings by faithfully penning five new pages in her diary. It’s a habit she’s kept since she was twelve, and the entries range from the sensible (“I really wonder if Fashion is what I’m meant to do with my life.” to the utterly absurd (“Last night, I dreamed that I was a bird,”). When she’s not watching Law & Order: SVU marathons or running last minute errands for her boss, she spends her Saturday nights swiping on Tinder. She almost always swipes left. (Especially on me, for some goddamn reason.)
Tonight’s “right swipe”—a blond-haired Wall Street guy who calls himself Jameson Turner—is an aberration in her system. He’s due to meet her at a bar down the street in thirty minutes, and I can already tell from the blush on her cheeks, that she’s fantasizing about all the dirty things he’s sent via private message.
“I’m going to leave your tight pussy soaking wet, have you begging for more of my cock … Tonight will be a night you’ll always remember, sexy girl.
She has no idea that his name isn’t really Jameson Turner, that he’s not even from this city. He’s actually Connor Ryan, a five-time sex-offender from Philadelphia who has all too easily escaped felony rape charges due to his parents’ massive wealth and influence.
His approach on nights like this is laughably lazy and unoriginal. Twenty minutes before the date, he calls the girl and asks her to meet him at a nearby lounge, so they can “cut through the noise to get to know each other a little better.”
Once there, he charms her like a skilled predator who knows his prey—telling her stories of all the places he’s traveled, listening carefully about who she truly wants to be in life. Mid-conversation, he slips two “roofies”—date rape drugs— into her drink and then he patiently waits for her to say the inevitable: “I think I need to go home, my head hurts.”
Of course, the girl never gets home. Instead, she wakes up in an abandoned alley hours later—bleeding and confused. By the time she pieces together the night, his Tinder profile is deactivated and he’s crossing state lines to play his twisted game with someone else.
I can’t believe how many times he’s gotten away with this shit…
Blushing and wide-eyed, Meredith suddenly steps closer to the curb. She holds her phone up to her face and her smile falters.
Jameson has rescheduled her date at the last minute, promising to make it up to her on New Year’s Eve.
She mouths, “Ugh!” and her stunning silver stilettos almost give way as she waves to her Uber driver.
I take one last drag of my Cuban cigar, and steal a long and hard look at her sinfully red, sexy lips. My brain races with thoughts of how perfect they would look wrapped around my cock, how my hands would easily grip her almond-colored hair and guide her greedy mouth up and down my length.
Don’t even think about it…She’s just a job. Just a job.
A grey Nissan pulls over, and I tap my steering wheel. I’ll wait a few minutes before heading home and calling it a day.
I promise myself that after tonight, I won’t intervene in her life anymore—even if it’s for her own good. I’ll have to treat her like any other assignment. Otherwise, I’ll fuck up and get attached.
When the Uber is out of sight, I step out of my car and pop the trunk. Everything inside is exactly how I left it this afternoon. Connor Ryan is tied up in wires, his mouth shut with duct tape. His eyes are wide and he looks scared shitless, but he’s only getting a small dose of how all of his victims have felt.
Grabbing the edge of the duct tape, I tug hard and pull it off.
“Fuckkkkk!” He yelps. “Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me. I did what you said. I texted her and asked her to reschedule.”
“No, I asked her to reschedule.” I pull his cell phone out of my pocket and hold it up. “She’s not very happy about it, but she’ll get over it when you stand her up on New Year’s Eve, and she’ll never know how big of a bullet she dodged.”
“Bullet?” His eyes go even wider. “Don’t shoot me, please...”
“I’m not going to waste any of my bullets on you,” I say, offended that he would even think he meant that much to me. “Each one of them costs ten times more than what your life is worth.”
He nods, continuing to shake.
“I’m going to drive you to the Greyhound Station,” I say, pulling a boarding pass out of my pocket and tossing it into the trunk. “From there, you’re going to catch the 3201 bus, and you’re not going to mention me to anyone. You’re going to ride home to your pathetic, coddled life that your parents continue to pay for, and you’re going to confess to breaking house arrest and crossing state lines.”