Discipline

Well, great, now I’m imagining him shower wanking again. Sorry.

I snorted, in the middle of a response when I heard a somewhat familiar voice chirp my name.

“Nina, oh my God!”

I spun around, feeling a vague sense of dread despite having yet to pinpoint the voice. But when my eyes focused on the petite blonde standing before me in one of her classic Pucci shift dresses, I realized that my senses had been correct.

“Tory, hi.” I blinked, dazed but reminding myself to give a polite smile. She was Dane’s girlfriend after all, not Dane himself. “How are you?”

“How are you? I haven’t seen you in too long, I’m getting so bored without you at these things, but Ben says you’ve been at home a lot or busy,” she said, pushing her Chanel sunglasses to her forehead as we leaned in to do kisses on the cheek. “What, did Carlo quit today?” she asked with amusement, referring to Ben’s driver as she nodded towards the subway station I’d come out of.

My eyes fluttered, unsure of how to respond. It took a second for me to realize that I didn’t have to keep his secret for him. “We’re not together anymore,” I blurted, watching Tory’s brilliant smile slowly falter, her head cocking as she adjusted the strap of her Chloe purse around her narrow shoulder. “Ben and I broke up.”

She blinked for a few seconds. “No,” she finally gasped, her face frozen into a friendly smile of disbelief though her eyes were glazed with an odd look, as if I’d just sprouted another head. “But…” Her lips formed several different words before saying one. “The ring. I know he bought one. It’s breathtaking.” She covered her face with her perfectly manicured hands before setting them hastily on my shoulders. “I’m so sorry to ruin the surprise, but honey, he is about to propose so whatever’s going on between you two, you gotta figure it out. ‘Cause they don’t all propose. Not this young, at least. I mean look at Dane, he’s got four years on Ben and my finger’s still naked as the day I was born!” she exclaimed before clasping her hand over her big smile. “Sorry, hon, I’m just riled up!” she laughed it off. “I just want you two to be together forever, I can’t let you do this to him. Or me! You’re my girl, Nina! You’re the only one of the girlfriends I like talking to.”

My smile was horribly awkward, I could feel it. “I know but I… Tory, I know about the ring. He proposed, I just said no. I can’t marry him.” Partly because he offered me to your boyfriend for a week. “It’s not right between us.”

Her lips parted and froze that way for a second. “Oh,

see, that’s not true at all. That’s what you think, honey, but — ”

“No, I know it, Tory, I don’t like being someone’s doll,” I insisted, though I felt immediately apologetic, like I’d just criticized her acceptance of that life. “I… just don’t like the way Ben treated me.”

Tory’s blonde head shook, slowly picking up its pace as if I’d just told her the most traumatic news and it was only gradually sinking in. “Honey, no. You’re not going to find another Ben.”

“I hope I don’t.”

Insult pursed in Tory’s pastel pink lips. “What, is there someone else already?” I didn’t respond and instantly, her doll-like expressions hardened. She crossed and uncrossed her lithe arms before touching the side of her chignon. “Well.” Avoiding eye contact, she rummaged through her purse for nothing in particular. “I’d tell you that you’re making a big mistake, but I guess it’s not my business. You’re so young, you just don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

Giving up on her purse search, she looked up at me, her skinny nostrils flaring. “You don’t know what’s out there and what’s not. But I can tell you what’s not, and that’s a fantasy man who’s a hundred percent gorgeous and loyal and perfect.” Her icy eyes cut through me as she swallowed and for a second, I wondered if she knew about Dane and the vacation. “Our boys, Nina, they can be tough to handle. They like to be pampered, reminded who’s boss. But it’s worth it for what they provide. It pays off.”

I could only shake my head in response. I forced myself not to speak, knowing that it was pointless with Tory.

“You learn, Nina, what it’s like to be a real woman with these boys. None of these girls here,” she nodded with disdain at the streams of people passing us on the sidewalk, “none of them know how to make a man happy the way we do. They don’t have the ability we have — to carry ourselves like real ladies, to treat our men like real men. We could steal every one of their boys if we wanted to, we just don’t. So excuse my language, but you’d be damned crazy to let it all go to waste, all the skills that you learned these past years.”

“Letting him control me wasn’t a skill,” I retorted.

“No, it’s a patience,” she responded briskly. “And a blessing, eventually. You just learn to love their way. You’ll want the same things he wants eventually.”

I shook my head with conviction. “I want to remember the things that I want. I like feeling like somebody with her own thoughts and passions. It makes me feel alive again.”

“Whatever you say, honey.” Tory shrugged, hoisting her purse onto her shoulder. She pressed her cold cheek against mine in an air kiss, sighing into my ear. “You could’ve had it all so early, but you gave up the most perfect life a woman could ask for. I just pray you don’t do anything stupid so that Ben never takes you back,” she said. And with one last pretend kiss on the cheek, Tory sauntered away.

~

I was at the Chelsea restaurant by the time I realized I’d forgotten to put on any makeup before leaving. My heeled feet had stomped straight out of the apartment after pulling on the stretchy black dress I’d purchased earlier that day, since Daniel had chosen a somewhat formal restaurant for our dinner. Perhaps I’d caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror and mistaken my cheeks as being brushed with blush or bronzer. They’d been bright and rosy since my run-in with Tory.

The conversation still had me fuming. Not as much with her but with Ben. And myself. He’d been so close to brainwashing me as thoroughly as Dane had with her. There had been a point when I’d convinced myself that his wants were my own. That I liked being at the apartment twenty-four seven, available to him at his beck and call. That it was best to simply text my friends every once in awhile rather than see them — they wouldn’t understand my relationship with Ben anyway, and they’d only judge me. Especially Adriana, since Ben had convinced me that girls like her were out to corrupt and ruin other people.

God, I was an idiot, I grumbled inwardly as my feet flew down the stairs and into the dimly lit restaurant built to look like a wine cellar. Despite the darkness upon entering, my eyes still flew straight to Daniel sitting at a table in the center of the room. Even without his magnetic force on my gaze, it would’ve been easy to spot him considering the waitresses who were huddled together at the POS system, not so subtly staring at Daniel while whispering to one another. How could they not? He looked so outrageously sexy in a black skinny tie and slim fit suit, dear God, that I wanted to scream.

The best part was that he promptly rose to his feet when he spotted me, his eyes gleaming at me with an anticipation that felt like the biggest compliment I’d ever received. I could feel my chest bounce with each step, my hair blowing behind me as I created a wind with my own long strides. Panting already, my fury with Ben and Dane and Tory immediately renewed itself into something of need.

Daniel exhaled when I reached him, his eyes feasting on me in a way that made my heart pound.

“Nina — ”