Undeniable Read online

  I stared at my lap, thinking about Joel. When I didn’t reply, Zac reached out and placed his fingertips lightly on my forearm. “It’ll be ok.”

  I looked up at him and nodded, grateful that he didn’t ask anything else.

  A comfortable silence crept in between us, and I settled back, watching the buildings rush past. “This is a pretty nice way to travel.”

  “Beats the subway,” he said. “And my accountant lets me write it off.”

  He gave me a wink, and I almost fell off my seat. “Smart woman,” I managed to say. “Was she the one with you in the diner that day?”

  He shook his head. “Nah, that woman was my PR director. You’ll know my accountant by her perpetual scowl.”

  We laughed, and I noticed that even when he laughed, the shadows in his eyes didn’t quite disappear.

  “So,” he said, watching me intently, “What brings you to New York?”

  I looked down at my hands and shrugged. “Oh, you know. The usual. Searching for a job and all that.”

  Even as I said the words, I remembered that one of the reasons I’d picked New York over any other city was so that I could be near Joel. So that I could keep an eye on him.

  “And you haven’t gotten a break yet?”

  I shook my head and told him the story of losing my job.

  “That sucks,” he said softly. “But it gets better. I know how it is, to be alone in New York.”

  I bit my lip and nodded. “I hope so.”

  I remembered the look on Joel’s face, and the way he’d always pushed me away when I’d tried to get closer to him. I’d thought that he was just moving on with life in his own way, that we’d be friends again as soon as he’d worked out his issues. I reined my thoughts back in before I could get too upset. “My life’s pretty boring. Tell me about yourself.”

  A funny look came over his face. “My life’s pretty boring, too.” I looked at him and he smiled. “Since we’re both convinced our lives are boring, let’s talk about something else. Where did you go to college?”

  “Not Yale.” The words were out before I could stop myself, and I found myself giggling and telling him about my brief, terrible dinner date.

  Zac grinned broadly. “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t go to Yale, either.”

  We laughed again and I said, “So, New York. It gets better with time, huh?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “You’re going to meet people and you’re going to get another a job. You’ll wonder why you ever thought this town was tough.”

  “I doubt that.” I looked at him carefully, drinking in the way the passing streetlights lit up the contours of his face. “But – I’ve told you about my date. Just because it was terrible, doesn’t mean… Won’t your girlfriend be annoyed at you for running out like that?”

  “I don’t have a girlfriend.” His voice was low and sensual, and I tried not to beam. “And no, I told my friend that we’d reschedule.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling guilty. “I hope I didn’t ruin your plans.”

  “No.” His eyes pierced mine. “Don’t be sorry.”

  When we reached my run-down Williamsburg apartment, Zac opened the door for me and walked me up the stairs to the main entrance of my building. I fumbled with my keys for a moment, and then I looked up into his eyes. His hair fell forward, looking slightly messy, and I tried not to blush, as I said, “Would you like to come upstairs?”

  He shook his head. “I shouldn’t.”

  “Oh.”

  I hid my surprise. There was nothing to be surprised about, really. The ones you liked, never liked you back. I felt my face flaming with heat, and I gulped and looked down.

  “It was lovely seeing you again,” Zac said.

  He placed his hand on my forearm, and I felt, even through my thick winter coat, the jolt of electricity where his fingertips touched me. His lips grazed my cheek, and I looked up in surprise.

  And then my hand was on his shoulder, and I was looking up at him, lips slightly parted. This wasn’t goodbye. His eyes darkened, and his hand slid over my back and down to my waist. His breath was hot and moist against my cheek, and my heart raced.

  He pulled me against him in one swift motion, and I felt myself crushed against his solid muscles. His lips came down gently, tasting me slowly as though he had all the time in the world. And then his mouth was pressed against mine, hot and demanding and sending shock-waves of desire through my body. He pressed me closer to him, and I let my arm travel down from his shoulder and along his arm, feeling the muscles that flexed against the warm fabric of his jacket. I moaned softly into his mouth and his tongue explored a little deeper.

  My heart was racing to keep up, and then suddenly, his lips moved away a few inches. I felt almost weak with desire, and stepped away from him reluctantly, intending to hold his hand and lead him upstairs with me.

  My fingers brushed his hand, and he jerked it away, blinking and looking at me with a mixture of confusion and desire.

  “I have to go,” he said hoarsely, and before I knew it, he was rushing down the stairs and getting into his car.

  My jaw dropped open and I tried not to feel the sucker punch to my stomach as I watched his car disappear into the dark streets. I blinked a few times, wondering if this had really just happened, and then I went upstairs and let myself into my apartment. This was my life, I thought. Just when I’d found someone I liked well enough to invite upstairs, he disappeared. As I closed the apartment door behind me and slid out of my jacket, I realized with a pang – he didn’t even have my phone number.

  He probably didn’t care. Or maybe he was married. I opened the fridge and helped myself to a big slice of chocolate cake, in lieu of dinner. Whatever his reason, he wasn’t in my life, and he never would be.

  Four

  The next morning, I couldn’t help but expect Zac to wander into the diner again. He didn’t, and neither did he wander in the next day, or the day after, or the… well, you get the idea. It was time for me to move on.

  On Friday night, when Jessie tried to drag me out for drinks with her and Ben, I shook my head resolutely. “No way.”

  “You’ll never get a boyfriend if you don’t give anyone a chance,” she whined. “You haven’t even brought a guy home since we moved into this place. You’ll get rusty.”

  Jessie had no idea that I was a virgin, and I wondered if my V-card made it harder for me to connect with guys. When I was in college, it was no big deal; I didn’t have time for guys, not when my mother was sick, and certainly not after she passed away and I immersed myself in work.

  But here, in the big city, women were expected to be experienced, and sex was no big deal. I didn’t want my first time to be with someone I’d just met, and definitely not with some creep who expected it on the first date. It was rare to meet someone I was actually attracted to; and apparently when I did, he disappeared.

  I shook my head. “No more blind dates, please. I’ll find my own guy.”

  “Like hell, you will.” She looked at me warily, and I sighed. “What’s gotten into you? Sure, Michael was a jerk. But there are lots of guys out there. You always look tired, these days”

  “I just… need some time. I’m worried about work, that’s all.”

  She let the topic go, but I knew she’d bring it up again some other time. I didn’t have time to think about boys – I was spending my days stressing about Joel and what I could possibly do to raise twenty thousand dollars.

  I’d just entered my bedroom when my phone rang.

  “Joel!” I said, closing the bedroom door behind me. “Thank God! Have you found the money? Is everything ok?”

  There was a brief second of silence, and then he said, “No.”

  His voice sounded muffled, and I tried to suppress my growing panic. “Are you ok?”

  “I’m fine. But—”

  “What happened? Tell me!”

  “The guy I owe money to, Buck… he stopped by my place.” I closed my ey
es, hoping that Joel was ok, and he went on. “I didn’t open the door. Pretended I wasn’t home. But he knew I was there, and he said I’d better have the money by next week.”

  The words “or else” hung in the air.

  I didn’t say anything for a few minutes, and when I spoke again, I felt as though my voice was coming from a long way off. “Any ideas?”

  “I’m working every second of the day at this café,” he said. “I’m doing sixteen-hour shifts, I can’t do any more.”

  I tried to sound tougher than I felt. “I’ll think of something. Don’t worry about it.”

  I hung up and wandered out to the kitchen again. The fridge was empty, and I really needed to learn how to cook. So far, we’d been dining mostly on Ramen and takeout, and I wasn’t sure I could afford the takeout any more. My savings were dwindling down to near zero, and pretty soon, I’d have to start working longer shifts at the diner. Which meant I’d no longer be able to look for accounting work.

  The door to Jessie’s bedroom was open, and I could hear her tapping away on her phone. I sighed, heading back to my bedroom again. Maybe if Mom were still alive, she’d know what to do. Of course, if Mom had been around, she’d never have let the situation get so bad. She’d have known – the very first time Joel had taken drugs, she would’ve put an end to it. Me, on the other hand: I’d been a failure.

  I felt myself sinking into despair, and tried desperately to pull my thoughts out of that dark hole. I had a week. A lot could happen in a week.

  I fired up my laptop, and sat cross-legged on my bed as I typed in the most starry-eyed of queries into Google: How can I make twenty thousand dollars in one week?

  The usual mess came up. Internet marketing, SMS marketing, affiliate marketing – all kinds of marketing where people talked about earning thousands of dollars a day, sitting at home in their pajamas and clicking a few buttons. I was surprised the scams stayed so constant; these were the kind of ads I’d seen when I was in college, and they hadn’t changed. I knew a guy who’d purchased all kinds of internet marketing courses, and I knew they didn’t work.

  I had to try something else. I typed in “high-paying freelance work” and found a couple of freelancing sites. The work looked legitimate enough, but it didn’t pay the rates I needed.

  Somehow, I stumbled onto Craigslist, and discovered a host of ads for all kinds of services. That made me remember – Jessie had told me about a new classifieds website that had purchased a banner ad on her blog. Appleaday.com. It was a classifieds site for New Yorkers, and I found my fingers typing in the address.

  It turned out to be a dating site, not a classifieds site. There was a section for lost connections, a section for people seeking relationships, and one for escort services.

  The escort services section was pulling a sentence from a recent ad: “I met a girl in a Williamsburg diner, and I can’t get her out of my head.”

  Five

  I had no intention of providing escort services, but that sentence made me stare at it, bug-eyed. I clicked on it before I knew what I’d done, and I took a deep breath and read through the whole ad.

  “I met a girl in a Williamsburg diner,” the ad from zb1234 said, “And I can’t get her out of my head. She’s not too tall and not too short, slim and curvy, and has gorgeous, wavy brown hair and sparkling brown eyes. Her cheeks dimple when she smiles. If this sounds like you, let me know, and I’ll make it worth your while.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned back, a sinking feeling in my stomach. It was him. It had to be him.

  Why was he posting an ad for an escort when all he’d had to do was to follow me upstairs? Maybe it wasn’t him.

  But maybe it was him. I had to find out.

  I forgot about Joel for a few minutes, and filled out the AppleADay.com registration form as quickly as I could. My fingers brushed out a message to zb1234. I smiled to myself as I wondered briefly why Zac would pick out such a boring, anonymous username. In retaliation to his lack of creativeness, I picked the username butterflies_and_light.

  butterflies_and_light: I look a bit like that. What was the girl wearing?

  My inbox pinged a few seconds later.

  zb1234: Just a regular diner uniform. Yellow and red. But you can wear anything.

  Hmm. There were quite a few diners in Williamsburg, and I was sure that more than two had yellow and red uniforms. Maybe it wasn’t Zac.

  But then my inbox pinged again.

  zb1234: I met her again and she was wearing jeans and some kind of top. I suppose you could wear that. But really, anything’s fine.

  zb1234: I’ll pay very well.

  It was Zac. It had to be Zac, I pulled my knees up and hugged them to my chest, grinning stupidly. So I wasn’t crazy – there really had been a connection between us. He liked me. He liked me. He liked me enough to want to hire an escort that looked like me.

  I frowned, remembering that night. Had I not made it clear enough that I liked him, too? Maybe I was a bad kisser. Or maybe I had some kind of attractive-man-repellant odor. Maybe it was the special kind that did double duty by attracting the freaks.

  I didn’t have Zac’s number, I didn’t have any way of getting in touch with him. He, on the other hand, could’ve come over to the diner if he’d wanted to.

  I was wasting time. I needed to get back to Joel’s problem, I needed to figure out some way to earn twenty thousand dollars in a week.

  But I was also curious. And my fingers had a mind of their own, typing out a response even before my mind thought it through.

  butterflies_and_light: How much are we talking?

  zb1234: 10k?

  I gulped. Ten thousand dollars. That was half of what Joel needed. I was wasting my time at the diner!

  butterflies_and_light: For one night?

  zb1234: Yes

  butterflies_and_light: You’re not some kind of freak, are you?

  zb1234: We’ll meet for coffee first.

  zb1234: You can let a friend know which hotel you’re going to.

  butterflies_and_light: What if I don’t like you?

  butterflies_and_light: Can I walk out after coffee?

  zb1234: Sure. If I’m so terrible that even 10k isn’t worth it.

  butterflies_and_light: It’s not.

  I closed my eyes after sending that last message. What was I doing? I wasn’t a hooker. I hadn’t been with even a single man, what made me think that I could make a high-paying man with high expectations happy in bed?

  zb1234: ?

  butterflies_and_light: I’m a virgin.

  butterflies_and_light: I know lots of freaks who pay extra for that.

  There. I’d said it. I’d put my willingness on the line. And come to think about it, how was this any worse than losing my virginity to some creep I’d met in a bar? It was Zac. I liked him. I wanted to have sex with him. And if he was willing to pay for it – even better. I felt a little guilty for wanting money, but hey, he was the one who’d turned me down that night.

  This was the price for rejecting me and leaving me standing all alone on the street, my lips full of his masculine taste and my insides quivering like jelly.

  I smiled smugly to myself. Nobody rejects Allie and gets away with it.

  Ok, technically, that wasn’t true, but it was nice to believe.

  My inbox pinged again.

  Zb1234: I don’t have a virgin fetish.

  butterflies_and_light: I look a lot like the girl you described. And I’m a waitress, so maybe you’ll like me.

  zb1234: I don’t do virgins.

  I flopped back against the pillow and groaned loudly. What was wrong with me? Even when I wanted to whore myself out, I got rejected.

  “Allie?” Jessie called out from her bedroom. “Is everything ok?”

  “Yeah, all peachy,” I yelled back. And then I got up and closed my door, resting my forehead against it.

  I wanted to bang my head against the hard wood of the door repeatedly, but that would probably make Jess
ie come running, all worried and concerned about my mental health. So I contented myself with groaning softly again.

  I was sure this guy was Zac. Surely getting paid to lose my v-card to him wouldn’t be so bad? I had to do something. Now, not only was I willing to prostitute myself, I was feeling pretty desperate about it.

  I shimmied into my diner uniform, slipped into a pair of heels, and tried to strike a sexy pose. I took a quick selfie, from the neck downwards, and messaged it over to him.

  butterflies_and_light: Is this what you wanted?

  A couple of minutes ticked away, and I found myself growing increasingly panicked.

  I scrolled up and read his other messages, and then I clicked over to his ad and read it over again. He’d said something about dimples. That was it.

  I smiled, and took a photo of myself from the tip of my nose downwards. Funny, I’d never noticed my dimples before.

  I sent it over to zb1234 immediately, and hoped this would do the trick.

  butterflies_and_light: WYSIWYG ;)

  A few seconds ticked by, and I changed into my pajamas. This thing had better work out; imagining what a night with Zac would be like had left me feeling horny as hell, and if zb1234 said no, I’d probably wander down to the nearest bar and pick up some random freak. Sex needed to happen. Soon.

  Finally, my inbox pinged.

  zb1234: How much?

  butterflies_and_light: 25k.

  zb1234: Done

  Damn. I’d asked for too little.

  I stared at the messages on the screen, and my eyes widened as I realized that I was about to get twenty-five thousand dollars. All of Joel’s problems would be over, and he and I could go on with our lives. Normal lives. My pulse quickened, as I began to wonder what might go wrong. I needed to go through with it – and it shouldn’t be too hard if zb1234 was really Zac.

  And then it hit me with a whooosh! I was going to lose my virginity. Finally. And who knew, maybe, if this guy was Zac, we’d see each other again after this. I knew I hadn’t been hallucinating about our connection.