october 16th
london, england
MY HEADACHE HAD THE AUDACITY TO WAKE ME UP. It took me a few seconds to realize where I exactly was, but then I remembered things. There I was, lying in that overpriced, spherical platform bed with an out-of-my-league male right beside me, regretting all of my stupid life-choices. I carefully switched sides so I could look at him. His eyes were closed and dark hair all messy which I expected, because he slept like a spastic dog; turning over, back, one leg over my whole body and depriving oxygen, and so on. But the sight of him being in such a peaceful state was awe-worthy. On the other hand was I about to jump out of the window. I couldn't believe I gave myself away like that to a man who probably did this every weekend, I couldn't believe my last tiny bit of dignity had deceased.
Suddenly he pursed his lips and blew into my face. That was shocking enough, but when he opened his mouth and started talking, I couldn't help but let out a high-pitched squeal.
"Get me a coffee- Jesus fuck," he quickly covered my mouth with his hand without opening his eyes, "you can't just earrape people like that."
There was no denying, his British morning voice was so hot and almost made me want more sex with him.
"Sworwy," I mumbled into his hand.
"Just get me a coffee and some aspirins, will you?"
It wasn't a request, it was an order. I frowned my brows at him and pushed his hand off my face.
"Who the hell do you think I am?"
His eyeballs started to move under his eyelids where after he finally opened them.
"My assistant. I pay you to bring me coffee, remember?" He yawned and stretched his arms.
That made me feel... some type of way. For some reason my stupid drunk alter ego – let's name her Becky – thought I was the only one he had slept with, but that obviously wasn't true. Of course this vainglorious writer had an assistant to fuck whenever he felt like it and of course that assistant agreed, because she must've been as stupid as me. I felt ashamed of myself and didn't know whether I wanted to throw myself out of the window or him.
His reaction left me speechless. He did not have the capacity to distinguish me from his fucking assistant. He had treated me that whole night as if I was special, 'something else' as he kept telling me, but in the end I wasn't even someone – I was something he'd make use of and then throw away.
Becky definitely was a snake for making me have sex with him.
The bare, famous writer beside me groaned, rubbed his eyes and then looked me dead in the eyes.
"What are you waiting for?"
"I'm not your fucking assistant!" The only thing I could do was throw a pillow at his face. Really pathetic.
"Wait," he removed the pillow from his face and fixated his hair, "what's your name again then?"
"Oh, fuck you Xavier Montgomery!"
And that was when I punched him in the face. My action left a red print of my hand on his right cheek which made me gasp a little. I had never known I could smack someone that hard, but I sure was proud of the unpredicted power I had in me. Deep inside I wanted to apologize, but on the other hand did he really deserve it. He looked at me quite shocked at first, but then began to grin. It took approximately half a second for me to decide that I would run out of his apartment, so I basically jumped into my dress, fixated my messy hair a bit and struggled towards the elevator in my way too high heels. Blisters on my feet were about to explode.
"Thank you for leaving a memorial on my face," I heard him say behind me.
"No fucking problem." The elevator wouldn't open its doors for me and got me very frustrated. There I was, like a hopeless puppy, trying her best to get out of Xavier Montgomery's apartment after spending the night with him – which by the way meant more to me than it did to him –. After pushing all the buttons and nothing worked, I let out a cry of disappointment and leaned against the wall.
Xavier was still laying in his king-size bed, looking amusedly at me.
"Looks like you killed off your last two braincells last night."
"Shut the fuck up," I told him, "your stupid elevator is broken."
He pushed himself out of the bed and stood there for a second, completely naked. I couldn't do anything else but look at his perfect body. Seeing that lowkey made myself proud, I had fucked someone that hot, but didn't lessen my self-hatred. When he caught my stare, he started laughing a bit, which sounded adorable and walked up to me. I turned around so that I didn't have to look at all that perfection and faced the elevator, but then I suddenly felt his body – especially his dick – against my back.
"Apologize first, then I'll help you." His low, husky voice made me shiver. I felt aroused, but tried to get that feeling out of my body with all strength I had. It was such a hard task to deny him and my horniness, but afterwards it was going to make me feel like an independent, empowered woman, which I totally wasn't.
"You apologize." I tried to sound as confident as possible, but that unfortunately didn't succeed. He was six feet and three inches and I was five feet and seven inches, so he could literally look down on me.
"No one tells me what to do." It was as if his voice got lower with every syllable that came out of his mouth. And it made me sweat a bit.
"Get your dick out of my crack and open that fucking elevator before I punch something which will make you unable to get children." I turned around to face him.
Suddenly, his eyes got dark and made me scared. He looked at me like he was going to beat the living shit out of my, or even worse, spank my ass.
"Please?" I quietly asked.
Then he reached out to a button right beside my head, pushed his body even closer against mine, let out a little sigh against the skin in my neck and when the door of the elevator opened, he backed off. I didn't doubt for a second and escaped the apartment. I watched the back of his body slowly disappear behind the iron doors.
As the elevator went down, rich people got in. Me, looking like absolute shit, standing there unmannered and anti-social compared to the neat men and women was like a trash bag against a Chanel bag. It was unfair and I felt very uncomfortable. The funniest thing was that people didn't look very shocked at me although I smelled like sex and sweat, looked like I had just crawled out of a bin and came from the penthouse. They were used to it, random girls coming from Xavier's apartment. The thought of it made me even more mad, that fucking manwhore.
When the elevator stopped at the ground floor, a very familiar man appeared when the doors opened.
"Miss Autumn!" Darius looked rather worried than excited, but he did his ultimate best to hide it, "I did not expect to see you here."
I got out of the elevator with my bright red cheeks out of full shame. Of course this had to happen to me; I was doomed by the Lord himself.
"Neither did I..."
"I suppose you went to visit Xavier." Darius pushed a hand through his grey-ish hair and smiled at me. Even he seemed to be disappointed with me.
"I- yes, I did."
"For business, I hope." He winked at me and walked into the elevator. "Diner's tonight. I would like you to be present, Miss Lily-Rose will discuss the details. Have a nice day."
"You too, Mr. Montgomery."
How I wanted to repeatedly stab myself in the chest after this conversation. When I got outside, a big car drove up to me and a stranger got out.
"Hi, ma'am. Mr. Montgomery ordered a ride home for you," he spoke.
"Xavier?" I asked.
"Yes, ma'am."
I looked around and tried to understand where I was. I had no clue, I was too drunk to remember the way back. Sighing deeply, I got into the car and cussed to myself. Fucking Xavier and his fucking driver, of course he had sent someone to come pick me up. The driver got in as well and started doing his thing.
"So..." I said, "How many other girls have been in here before me?"
"I'm not authorized to tell you, ma'am."
"Is it really that bad?"
He just peered at me through the mirror.
"Do I have an STD now? I don't want an STD. No man will ever have sex with me again if I have an STD! Unless I don't tell them and just use a condom...."
"I hope not, ma'am."
"Me neither."
The girls in the hotel were very glad to have me back. Lily-Rose was very happy with me, but angry with the rest of the group, because they misbehaved at the party. Little did she know that I slapped Xavier the day after.
"What if we go out to a fancy lunchroom-thingy and then do some shopping for our diner tonight?" Valentina proposed.
After eating and giving the girls a summary of the night, we went to the shopping mall. I picked out a satin, crème-colored, sleek dress with some accessories. No, I did not have to pay them myself, Lily-Rose's father did. Huge shout out to you, David. When Fadoua and I were standing in the line to pay, she jabbed into my arm and pointed at something.
"There's your man."
Those three words scared the shit out of me. When I looked, I saw Xavier's book with a life-size cardboard beside the heap. I breathed out deeply in relieve.
"They should've enlarged the outline of his dick."
Fadoua facepalmed herself and hissed at me.
"There are more people here, Autumn. Behave yourself."
I laughed about it and a few minutes later we met up with the other girls.
"Everyone set?" Lily-Rose asked.
"Hell yes, I'm going to enchant Darius with this dress." Valentina smirked at her choice of dress and pushed her long, dark hair to behind her shoulder.
"That's gross. He's like forty years older," Sadie disgustedly looked at her.
"Hey!" Gwen pushed Sadie a bit, "No daddy-issue-shaming allowed. Val never had a father figure so now she's craving one."
"Don't joke about that," Fadoua said as she rubbed Valentina's arm.
"It's okay." Valentina smiled at Fadoua. It was almost like something very energetic came to life when they locked eyes, combined with their touch. Like, real chemistry. I didn't think much of it, because Valentina usually looks at people in a very admiring way.
We walked our way back though a beautiful park.
"I want to go skinny dip in that," Gwen, the savage one among us, pointed at a lake, but we all shook our heads. "Losers."
I wandered a bit off in my head, thinking about all the mistakes I had made. This trip in the first place, because I could've used all this time to study. Having sex with a famous writer, because I thought that would get Chris out of my head. Everything Xavier did, I imagined Chris doing it, which made it feel better. And then him not remembering my name, that was the worst part. Also, the hangover I was going through worsened everything.
"Rosie?" I asked. She immediately turned around and started walking beside me.
"What's up?"
"I think I'm going to have to cancel tonight's diner."
"What? No, please don't. I know that you feel awful about basically everything, but you just need to stop thinking about Chris and tonight is the perfect occasion for that. It's going to be a lot of fun, all the people I'll be working with like you!"
"Well, yesterday was the perfect occasion for that too."
A couple of girls passed us while exchanging weird looks. I decided to not say anything, I mean, we were loud Americans after all. I didn't blame the girls.
"You drank too much yesterday. Tonight's a fancy diner, so only a few glasses of champagne and wine, no over-drinking. Just fun people, discussing some business and having a lot of fun."
Some other girls passed, only older than the previous ones and looked at us in the same way the other girls did.
"How was Xavier in bed?" one of them shouted.