Page 73 of A Ballad of Betrayal and Beauty

“You must really be missing me if you’re calling at two thirty in the morning. I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long.”

He sighs into the speaker. “I’d wait days for you.”

“You probably say that to all the girls,” I tease.

“Nuh-uh,” he says, “you’re the only one I call.”

I pause. Normally I wouldn’t believe him, but . . . this is the second time he’s mentioned it and the sincerity in his voice is too pure not to take his word for it.

“I missed you too. What’s got you down?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, I can tell when my Baby is upset. Tell me, and I’ll make you feel better.”

“I don’t know if that’s possible.”

Hmm . . . something must really be bothering him. Normally, he’s raring to go, dick hard in his hand and wanting to do vile things to me with hardly a how-do-you-do.

“If I were there with you, I’d wrap my arms around you. We’d lie in bed and I would stroke your hair.”

He moans, and the sound zings through me. “Have you ever been so mad but so exhausted at the same time?”

I squeeze the phone in my hand. “I—yes, yes I have.”

“I want to destroy everything. Break everything. Run through the streets swinging a bat. But I also just can’t get out of bed.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“It’s not your fault.”

I shake my head. “No, but I’m sorry something has made you feel so terrible.”

I hear a deep breath through the line then a long silence.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” I ask tentatively.

“No one can help me,” he admits. “Unless you have a time machine.”

I chuckle. “If I had a time machine, I wouldn’t be hanging around here.” I freeze. The number-one rule of sex work? Never interrupt the fantasy. This man has called me hoping for sympathy—comfort. To admit I’d rather be somewhere else? Not cool. “Sorry, I—I didn’t mean that.”

“It’s okay,” he says, and I can almost hear a smile in his voice. “I’m not an idiot. I know you’re only listening because I’m paying you to.”

Guilt racks me and for once, he’s wrong. “That’s not true. I’ve thought about you . . . even after the phone line goes dead.”

“You have?”

I take a deep breath. “Yes. And more often than I care to admit.”

A breathy laugh echoes through the speaker. “I don’t know why, but it feels like I know you.”

“Maybe we met in another life,” I suggest.

“Star-crossed lovers, perhaps,” he adds.

“Didn’t work out so great for Romeo and Juliet,” I tease.

“True, but it seems all of my relationships are doomed for tragedy.”

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