Gagged (15 page)

Instead, I feel anxious to the point of a panic attack.
 

Instead of protecting me, Jasmine’s words are — of all things — making me wet.
 

I feel like I’m returning to the scene of a crime. What happened last night, that’s the kind of thing you do once and then run from. No sweet, committed relationship was ever born with a bathroom blowjob. I went from good girl to slut in a handful of seconds. I didn’t even dodge. I took his come right down my throat. And while I know a lot of my nerves right now are from my own stuff rearing its ugly head, even Jasmine would have second thoughts about revisiting a backroom lover.
 

Maybe I should be proud; maybe I should say that I wanted what I wanted last night and that there’s no shame in taking it. Maybe I
do
have the power. Maybe I shouldn’t see this as him using me and me feeling bad, because after all, it was
my idea
. So maybe I should stand up proud, seeing as I did nothing wrong. And when I see Caspian again, maybe I should look him right in the eye and say,
I won. If anyone should be embarrassed, it’s you
.
 

But that’s not how I feel.
 

At all.
 

Jasmine might have advice for me, but I can’t bring myself to tell her what happened. I doubt she’d laugh at me, but that actually makes it a hundred times worse. She’d feel pity — not because something bad happened but because she’d be able to read the depth of regret in every line etched around my exhausted eyes. She’d never see her friend and roommate the same way again.
 

So I said nothing when Jasmine told me that Caspian wanted to continue her once-in-a-lifetime interview, or when she asked me, for the hundredth time, if I actually felt okay. I shook her away and told her I was exhausted and wanted to sleep. But I couldn’t sleep until I recognized desire in all my conflicted emotions, in that horrid stew keeping me awake, and finally slipped my hand inside my panties with hatred in my heart. I came with the memory of his flesh between my lips, with his warmth flooding my tongue.
 

I told her I didn’t want to go with her today, but she said Caspian insisted. “He just donated a ton of money to your schools, and he wants to talk about bringing GameStorming to schools, A!” There was no way to refuse, and I don’t want to give her reason to wonder. She knows I was in the bathroom for a long time, and James probably knows Caspian’s absence overlapped mine. And if they find out what I did in my moment of lust …
 

I don’t want to think about it. I walked from the club last night feeling like I was wearing a scarlet letter. I kept rubbing my cheeks and licking my lips, sure I’d left evidence. I borrowed one of Jasmine’s sweaters to cover a stain on my dress, certain I was transparent as glass.
 

And here I am. Waiting.
 

For him.
 

“I wonder if we’ll have to wait long,” Jasmine says. “I had to wait forever last time.”
 

I can tell she’s nervous, too. She’s wearing a fire engine-red dress that looks like it’d be at home on a pole dancer, but her matching-heeled foot is tapping as fast as mine. I guess she figures she has a history with Caspian now, between our interview and the dinner and dancing, and wants to push some buttons to interest him, seeing as he lost it the last time. I took the opposite tack. I’m in sneakers, baggy canvas pants, and an unflattering sweatshirt. The two of us must make quite a pair: Jasmine like an escort in need of a john and me an advert for Goodwill.

I’m looking down. It’s hard to look up, or around. I didn’t wash or fully brush my hair. It’s pulled up into a messy pile, like a lanky and pale homeless person.
 

“A? Did you hear me?”

I look at Jasmine. Her question about waiting required no answer, but she seems to want one anyway. Sitting on Caspian’s all-white couch in her red dress, she looks like a bloodstain on a silk scarf. Her knees are together, but the dress rises so high, I can see most of her long legs — a pose that’s both prim and provocative, nervous and scintillating.
 

“Yes. Sorry.”
 

“Are you excited?”

“Like I said, I’m convinced he’s screwing with us.”
 

Jasmine shakes her head. Red hair flies in an enthusiastic halo. “You heard Debbie and Luther. You got the phone calls.”
 

“That only proves he gave them the money.”
 

“But a hundred thousand dollars! Each!”
 

“Pocket change to a guy like this.”

Jasmine gives me a look like I’m ruining her fun, but then she’s wringing her hands in her lap, adjusting her neckline, clearly every bit as worried about being fooled twice as I am. The dress is as small up top as it is down below, with tiny straps like a sundress. If she moves the wrong way, I’m sure a boob will pop out. I’m not sure it’s the professional reporter’s image she’s going for, or will glean her the nonsexual respect she seems to be craving.
 

I look her over as the foot taps, as the hands wring, as she swallows and her throat constricts, a pulse nearly visible on her milky white skin. She’s looking away from me, probably reciting her own mantra. But it’s hard to feel sympathetic for Jasmine. I don’t care how nerve-wracking this is for her — how much she must fear disappointment after the disrespect we received our last time here — because whatever has Jasmine’s dander up, it’s nothing compared to mine.
 

I have the power,
I tell myself again.
 

But it’s hard to feel powerful when I feel like this man’s plaything. It’s hard to feel confident when — the more I replay our encounter — I’m shamefully turned on instead.

The door opens. But it’s James, not Caspian. Jasmine reacts immediately, and for a second I think she’s forgotten herself, ready to wrap him in her salacious embrace. It’s hardly professional, but the way she talked about James just this morning, it’s clear she’s dying to have sex with him. It’s also clear she hasn’t done so already.

I’ve finally outdone her, winning the sexual liberation contest I had no desire to win.
 

“Mr. White is ready for you,” James says while Jasmine goes to him and slips a hand along the contour of his ass, her nipples erect and obvious.
 

But James wasn’t speaking to Jasmine, or even me
and
Jasmine, as a unit.
 

No. I saw his eyes, where they went and where they didn’t.

When James said,
Mr. White is ready for you,
he was speaking only to me.
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

A
URORA

W
E
FOLLOW
J
AMES
INTO
C
ASPIAN
’
S
office. It’s only been a few days since I was here last and intellectually I remember how it was all white, but now the starkness strikes me anew. There’s a white wood-and-metal desk, white light fixtures, white walls, white floors covered with lush white rugs. I see bouquets of white flowers in a dozen different places. In all this nothingness, only Caspian — in a dark blue suit, white shirt, and red tie — seems to truly be present.
 

He’s standing when we enter, hands clasped in front of his waist. He gestures for us to sit in white seats. White couches. With white ottomans and white end tables. I wonder if he’s hesitant to sit anywhere for too long less human contact mar it, but then I decide that this is a man for whom everything is disposable. It doesn’t matter if a couch costs $25,000. He’d replace it without a thought.
 

He doesn’t come forward to greet us. Instead he watches until I sit in a big puffy thing with arms that nearly swallow me in its ivory folds. He waits for Jasmine to sit at a right angle to me, on a couch large enough for three. I guess James isn’t leaving because he sits beside her. He’s taken Jasmine’s hand and is holding it sweetly, as if they’d of course be considered a unit: two people a long time in love. Caspian reacts to none of this, though it strikes me as strange. The last time we were here, we were with him alone.
 

Maybe James heard all about that. Maybe he’s here to protect Jasmine, to make sure Caspian honors his word. I hear it was James who sent GameStorming’s money to the schools at Caspian’s request. Maybe he’s a kind of in-between: employed by and loyal to Caspian but doing double duty as Jasmine’s protector.
 

With my heart fluttering — increasingly sure by the second that I shouldn’t be here and that I’ll never be able to meet this man’s eye — Jasmine’s small hand in James’s large one strikes me as beautiful, in its way.
 

I have no protector.

Nobody to keep Caspian from doing and saying the wrong things to me.
 

I am alone.
 

“Thank you for coming,” Caspian says. “I was inspired enough by our last meeting to hop aboard the education train, so it seemed only right that I not stop at a donation but instead push this thing all the way.”
 

It’s a strange way to phrase our situation. It makes me uncomfortable. I shift in my seat but can’t find a position that doesn’t feel awkward.
 

Caspian isn’t exactly looking at me (as far as I can tell from the corner of my eye), but I feel like his every word is intended for me. Our last meeting was at the hall where I received my honors then got to my knees and took something less dignified. I look away, reminding myself that the schools received the money and that there’s a chance for progress. I remind myself that this is Jasmine’s big chance. I remind myself that I have the power, though clearly all the room’s power is across from me, behind that bright red tie.

I sense that I’m supposed to answer, but Jasmine saves me.
 

“Thanks for inviting us.”
 

Caspian’s cold facade breaks, and I realize only after he moves that I’d imagined him permanently immobile like a statue. He straightens his cuffs, unbuttons his blazer, and moves to sit in a modern-looking chair across from Jasmine and James. The office feels like a sacred site, so it’s jarring when, before sitting, he pulls the chair over a little so we’re arranged in a rough triangle instead of a horseshoe. His chair isn’t big like ours. It’s a chrome frame — one of the few things in the room that isn’t pure white — with thick leather straps between them to fashion a seat and a back. It doesn’t look comfortable, but still he crosses one leg over the other and kicks back as if he’s never been more content.
 

“It’s my pleasure.”
 

I’m looking at the rug, and a small glass coffee table between us.
 

“So,” Caspian says. “I’m all yours. Ask anything. I assume you’ll want to use your recorder again?”
 

Jasmine seems flustered, but she reaches into her bag, removes the small recorder, places it on the table, turns it on, and starts recording. She looks at me, probably hinting that I should fetch my camera and take a few photos, but I’m frozen. My bag’s on the floor beside me, but it’s impossible to imagine myself reaching that far, paralyzed as I am.
 

I catch another glance from Jasmine and look over. Why did I agree to come here? Was it to prove I’m not afraid to show my face, that I’m not ashamed and want to claim my right to do whatever I’d like with my body? Was it to ask the poignant questions about educational reform, with GameStorming’s engine as the linchpin?
 

Or did something else bring me here?
 

Only my head seems able to move. It’s like I’m tied with invisible ropes.

James has moved his hand from Jasmine’s hand to her leg, just below the hem of her dress. It isn’t still, idly rubbing her skin with the ball of his thumb.

Caspian laughs. “I suppose I could ask the questions, if you don’t have any.”
 

Now Jasmine laughs, the tension slightly broken. James is silent beside her. His hand keeps moving, slowly stroking.
 

“I’m sorry,” Jasmine says. “It’s just that last time, you seemed so uninterested in talking about this. It was a surprise to hear you’d changed your mind. A pleasant surprise,” she adds hastily.
 

“What can I say? Ms. Henley’s arguments stuck with me.”
 

I feel the room’s attention turn toward me. It feels overly warm and makes me anxious. But then it shifts back to Caspian as he resumes speaking.
 

“I’ve always had a soft spot for children. Maybe because my father did not. When my mother became pregnant the first time, he took it as a terrible inconvenience. She had doctor’s appointments he didn’t have time for. She was slower and more lethargic, and things he counted on did not get done. People kept engaging him in conversations he wanted no part of, about the fatherhood he wasn’t interested in. I know all of this because he told me many times, then darkened the point with his hands and a belt. But it worked out because as with everything, my father was able to turn a child’s lemons into lemonade. Once I was properly weaned and trained into obedience, I became an extension of him — a way to prolong his own life past his actual death, which thankfully has finally occurred. But I learned my lessons. I learned that childhood idleness was not for me but only for children with fathers lacking ambition. I worked from an early age. I learned what was required of me. I did not play at first — and when I finally did, in my teens, it was a different kind of play. A blighted kind.”
 

I realize I’m looking right at Caspian. This out-of-the-blue soul-bearing has disarmed me, and I’ve forgotten all my shame and nerves. My mouth might be agape. Jasmine is blinking, unsure how to follow up such a candid, never-before-heard confession. The public’s perception of Caspian’s father is that of a stern but steadfast role model — a man this young titan couldn’t help but admire and emulate until he’d succeeded. But this new picture is so raw, so dark. I almost wonder if he knows what he’s just said into Jasmine’s recorder.