The Boyfriend Rental service

Diana Ashworth was on her third glass of champagne when she found me by the bar and I already knew how the night was ending. I'd been doing this long enough to read a room in under five minutes. Who mattered, who didn't, who was watching the door, who was watching me. Diana had been watching me since I walked in — not subtle about it, not trying to be. Fifty two, recently divorced, wearing a black dress with a neckline that said she'd spent twenty years being careful and had recently fired whoever gave her that advice. Fourth booking in three months. She was becoming a regular. "You're late," she said. "By whose clock." She smiled and handed me a glass I hadn't asked for. On the floor she moved into me before the first song finished — her body close, her perfume close, her hand flat against my chest like she was checking for something. The dress had a slit up the back that I noticed approximately immediately, and when I turned her and my hand found her lower back the fabric shifted and my palm met bare skin instead. She exhaled slowly through her nose. I could feel her pulse pick up under my hand. "You always do that," she said. "Do what." "Touch me like you mean it." "I do mean it," I said, which was somewhere between true and professional. We danced for a while and her hands moved the way hands do when a woman has made a decision and is working up to announcing it. The slit in her dress made the dancing into something else entirely — every turn, every shift of her hips, my hand finding different places on her that made her breath change in ways she wasn't hiding anymore. By the third song her cheek was against my jaw and I could feel the warmth coming off her skin. I'd lost count of the number of women I'd stood like this with. Genuinely lost count somewhere around the fourteenth month of doing this. Galas, dinners, fundraisers, private parties on boats and rooftops and penthouse floors — always the same expensive air, always a different woman wearing the same hunger underneath different jewelry. I didn't mind the work. That was the honest answer. "The suite," she said near my ear. "Fourteenth floor." "You mentioned it." "Twice," she agreed. "This is the third time." I pulled back just enough to look at her. Her lipstick was still perfect but her eyes weren't. "Give me ten minutes," I said. She was already sitting on the edge of the bed when I came in, heels off, looking at me with an expression that didn't need translation. The city spread out behind her through the floor length windows. She'd left the lights off, which I appreciated. Low light suited this kind of thing better than honesty did. I shrugged off my jacket and she stood up and crossed the room and kissed me before I'd finished hanging it — both hands in my collar, her body pressing into mine, warm and decided. She tasted like champagne and something underneath it that was just her. I walked her back toward the bed slowly. She went willingly. The dress had a zip at the side that she guided my hand to without breaking the kiss. The fabric fell and she stood in the low light looking at me the way women look when they know exactly what they look like and want to see what you do about it. I took my time with her the way the evening deserved. Her hands in my hair. Her breath against my neck. The sounds she made when I found the right places — quiet at first then less so, her nails finding my back and staying there. The city outside silent and indifferent to all of it. Afterward she lay across my chest, one leg over mine, the sheets ruined and neither of us remotely sorry. "You're dangerous," she said quietly. "You keep booking me," I pointed out. She laughed and traced something on my chest with one finger. "Same time next month." "Call Marcus." "And if I wanted to skip Marcus." "You'd still call Marcus." She laughed again, softer this time, and went quiet. I stared at the ceiling and let the room do what rooms do after things like this — settle, cool down, go honest. This was the part of the job nobody asked about upfront. The after. Not heavy. Just specific. You learned to exist inside it without letting it mean more than it did, which took a few months to figure out and which I was now very good at. I was back in the apartment by two. Marcus and Danny had started this whole thing on a dare two years ago — Danny had bet Marcus fifty dollars he couldn't convince a woman to pay him to accompany her somewhere. Marcus not only won the fifty but came home with a business idea and a phone number. Within three months we had a system. Within six we had a waiting list. We weren't rich off it. Not even close. But we weren't scraping either — the apartment was decent, the clothes were good enough to walk into any room without looking like we didn't belong, and the work kept coming. That was enough for now. Danny was on the couch with his shoes still on. Asleep or pretending. Hard to tell with Danny. I dropped my keys on the counter and checked my phone. Three messages from Marcus. First two were routine — a reschedule, a confirmation. The third one I read twice standing in the kitchen. New inquiry. Vandermeer. As in the Vandermeer family. She's twenty two. Wants a six week arrangement, full social calendar. Events, family functions, the works. Best money we've seen. She asked for you by name. I typed back. What's the situation. He replied fast. Engaged. Caught the fiancé cheating. Wants him to watch her move on before she pulls the plug. Clean job. I put the phone face down on the counter. The Vandermeer name wasn't small. I'd been in rooms where it came up and watched people adjust themselves when it did. Old money. Generations of it. The kind of family that didn't make noise because they didn't need to. Danny's voice came from the couch. "Good night?" "Fine." "You smell like someone else's perfume again." "Go to sleep Danny." He pulled the blanket over his head and said nothing else. I looked at Marcus's message one more time. Send me her details tomorrow, I typed. Then I went to bed. I had no particular reason to think Sophia Vandermeer was going to be anything other than a clean, well-paying, straightforward booking. I'd thought that before. I was usually right. This time I wasn't going to be.