The Evolution of Man (The Trust Fund Duet 2)

None of them come close to this.

He turns them so she’s against the wall, him shuffling with his jeans around his ankles. Then he thrusts into her hard and fast, so hard her sounds become louder, his ass muscles tensing on every push forward. He looks down at the top of her head like it’s the hottest thing he’s ever seen. Her hands are splayed against the brick behind her, holding her up in a crouch.

A roar and then he’s coming into her mouth, pressing his hips flush against her face. I watch as her hands fist, my insides twisted with worry for her throat, for her ability to breathe. I take a step forward, ready to intervene, when finally he lets her go. She falls to the ground, panting against the gravel and decades’ worth of detritus. He zips up, still panting loudly enough to be heard from twenty feet away. Then he pulls something out of his pocket. Money? He tosses it onto the floor in front of her before leaving the alleyway toward the street.

God. God. He just paid her for that blowjob. My body is confused as hell, torn between being hot at the explicit sexual display and angered by an act she probably did not enjoy.

Someone from my sorority was a cam girl. One corner of her room was decorated with frilly pink pillows and carefully placed composition notebooks and banners from a nonexistent sorority so she couldn’t be traced. Sometimes we would join her for a playful little striptease to watch the horny Internet anons go crazy and make enough money to order shots at the bar later. She didn’t enjoy what she did, not in a sexual way. It was a job to her, the way you might be a clerk at the bookstore or a waitress at the diner off campus. She didn’t get off on it, but she did like the money. And she had options. It wasn’t a last resort to her, but as I watch the girl snatch the money and shove it into her shoe, I think this isn’t a choice for her.

She stands gingerly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “You like the show?”

I stand there in silent shock before I’m sure she’s talking to me. There’s no point in hiding anymore, so I take a step into the alleyway, my body still flushed in confused arousal. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s usually a charge for someone watching.”

“I didn’t mean to… but I can pay you.” I fumble for my purse, feeling slow and disconnected. This was happening outside the library, maybe every single night that I was inside, sculpting as if I could change the world with art. “How much is it? Never mind, I can just give you what I have—”

A harsh laugh. “Don’t worry about it. I know you weren’t with him.”

“How do you know?”

“Besides the fact that you look like you stepped out of an ad for Anthropologie? Because he’s a regular. And he doesn’t bring girls around or ask for anything more complicated than a BJ.”

There are things more complicated than that blowjob? Because it looked intense and difficult, every movement with subtle undertones of power. “A regular. Do you live around here?”

“Guess you could say that. I stay closer to here than you do, I’m guessing.”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions based on jeans and a T-shirt.”

“Am I wrong?”

That makes me laugh. “Nah, I guess I’m easy to read.”

“I’m surprised you stuck around once you saw what was happening. You a perv?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I didn’t know that it was a… you know, a professional situation at first.”

She giggles, which unsettles me because of how young she sounds. “A professional. Well, I’m not putting on a suit and carrying my briefcase into work, but yeah, I’m a pro.”

I take a few steps closer, but the shadows don’t reveal her face to me. “How old are you, anyway?”

That makes her stop laughing. “You aren’t a cop, are you?”

“God no.”

“It’s none of your damn business how old I am.” The bravado in her voice doesn’t scare me. It just makes me sad that she needs such strong defenses. “So go get your pervy kicks somewhere else.”

She takes a step back, and panic rises in my throat. “Wait. Let me give you the cash I have with me. It’s not that much, but it should be a couple nights at a motel or something.”

That makes her pause, at least. “That’s what you are. A Mother Theresa.”

I’m the one who snorts a laugh. “Definitely not.”

“You want to save me? You want to protect me from the big bad wolves of the world?”

“I don’t—” Except of course I do. “I just want to help, like a tiny bit. That’s all.”

There’s a pause while she wanders forward, almost as if she is a deer walking through the forest, unknowing of the dangers within. Then she’s a few feet away. The eyeliner can’t hide the hurt in her eyes. Her lips are still swollen and slick from the blowjob. This is why the community needs a library; this is why they need art that looks like hope. Because the west side takes girls and turns them into prostitutes. It leaves them on their hands and knees with money lying on the pavement. Books are the answer to this. Knowledge and a safe space in which to learn it.