I nod my head but before I can respond she says, "You and ever other girl in New York City! Come on Ashley, he's the biggest playboy in this city!"
"That's the thing. I think he loves me too—at least that's what he'd said. I've really fallen for him… well, until a few nights ago anyways. Now I don't know what to think."
"What happened last night?" she asks.
I stare off at the happy couples brunching, smiling, drinking their $6 orange juices, as I recall the events of the Boathouse. "That's when everything came crashing to the surface like some horrific car accident. He admitted to me that he was the man calling into my sex line. He said it so casually, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. I can still hear him ask me, 'is it King Henry?' and right as those words left his mouth, it felt like my entire world was shattering. I knew he wasn't lying—he couldn't have possibly known about that caller any other way—and it felt like everything I'd known was a lie."
Yasmine takes a sip of her champagne and pushes her croissant around her plate a bit with the tips of her fake, neon-pink nails. "I don't know… it just sounds so weird, don't you think? The whole notion that you can fall in love with someone just over the phone."
"I don't want to sound cheesy, but until last night, nothing felt weird at all—it all felt like fate, Yas."
"Fine, fine," she says, throwing in the towel to her argument. "So what's the problem? You're being an idiot. That's what I think. Go get Mr. Perfect. You loved him on the phone, and you loved him in real life."
"How can you say that? You make it sound so easy. I was lied to, remember? He knew all along what he was doing."
"You're over reacting. I get that it hurts to be lied to—I mean, that'd piss me off too, but the bottom line is you're in love with the same person. You pulled away from Arsen after you slept with him, and it's obvious that he was just trying to find another way to get close to you."
"I don't know… it still feels so… wrong. I said things… did things… that were so personal on the phone."
“Listen, Ashley baby,” Yasmine says. “I’ve known Arsen Hawke a lot longer than you. And let me tell you that before he met you, that man knew how to tear shit up.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say to Yasmine resignedly. “I know I could make him happy though.”
“You did from the moment he met you, now that I’m remembering that far back,” Yasmine says.
That stops me up short. I look at her and lean in closer.
“What are you talking about, Yas?” I ask.
She’s silent. I wait. She looks at me. Finally she sighs. “Alright, fine,” she says. “You know that Arsen’s dad used to own the club before he died. He started the whole empire.”
I nod to Yasmine. Arsen has told me all this.
“Well, Arsen used to come in and fuck the girls if they wanted a ride, you know? Kind of like a welcome committee. Not all of them, and not every time. But he’s been known to wet his whistle with a Scorcher’s girl quite a few times,” Yasmine says. What she’s saying isn’t a secret. I used to hear girls talk about Arsen in the dressing rooms. About his body. His appetites. His giant cock. “But what you don’t know is that the night you left early, like a week later he came back.”
Now I’m curious as Yasmine continues. “Comes in and I think oh, maybe it’s time for me to finally take big boy for a ride, and I’m flirting with him.”
I wince as I think about Yasmine sharing the same man that I love but she continues. “Motherfucker completely shot me down,” she says. “Instead asks me if I knew where that pretty blonde haired girl with a nice tits and hot ass and blue eyes went. I told him she didn’t work at Scorcher’s no more. That I sent her over to work at Simulated Pleasures.”
I freeze. Arsen had seen me at the club. And he had been looking for me. He had singled me out. And he had wanted me.
“Guy didn’t even touch one hair on all this,” she says, using her hands to gesture to her body. “I was ready to suck his cock right there on the main floor too – it was one of those nights. But alls he wanted was you, babe. Haven’t seen him inside the club since.”
“He just wanted me…” I say to her softly, but I’m speaking more to myself.
“Since the moment he met you, girlfriend. So I’d go a bit easy on him,” Yasmine says, finally taking a bite out of her chocolate croissant. "If anything, Arsen was trying to protect you."
"How's that?" I ask.
"Well, he sold his company in chunks to the Russian mob. I'm sure he was trying to protect you for as long as he could. They probably would have pressured you for sex or something to keep working there."
Her words stun me. What if that's true? Could that be it? Was Arsen just trying to keep me safe and protected?
I ask, "How do you know all this?"
"I have my ways."
"What's that supposed to mean?"