Page 222 of Boyfriend of the Hour
Instead, he’d take me to a motel—usually one of the ones that rent by the hour. His favorite had mirrors on the ceiling. Sometimes it was a random (and usually seamy) apartment. Often just the back seat of his car.
There, he’d look at me and tell me he wanted me to do…something…for him. And I would perform.
Sometimes it was actually dancing. I’d be so eager to show him the things I was learning because I wanted his approval.I wanted Shawn to look at me like he had the first day we’d met. I wanted him to tell me again that I was talented. That I was extraordinary. Sometimes he would, but not without some undercutting remark.
“You’d be incredible if your ankles weren’t so wobbly.”
“You’d be as beautiful as a model if you were only a few inches taller.”
“You’d be gorgeous if you had bigger tits.”
Then he’d tell me what to do to make it up to him. Get on my knees. Give him a kiss. Offer him something else, and eventually, that’s what I would do.
I’d been chasing my self-esteem through this man’s eyes for a decade. If I hadn’t met someone else who gave me the gift of loving me exactly as I was, I might have stayed in this nasty cycle for another ten years or more.
But now Shawn’s expression, a clear dare to perform and become something new to please him, held zero appeal.
In fact, it made me sick.
“A flame,” he went on. “But you know what the best part of a flame is? That little dancing light on the end of a candle?”
“No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me along with the rest of this boring as fuck lecture,” I said.
It was the wrong thing to say.
I was rewarded for my sass with a sharp slap across the face that sent me flying back into the couch.
“What the fuck?” I shouted, even though I was scrambling backward. “Since when do you dothat?”
“You think you can just run off with another man like that, Sunshine? You think you can make afoolof me that way, huh?”
“I didn’t doanythingbut move on, Shawn. Please.” It was a shaky retort but also a plea to stop. My cheek was burning, probably from his handprint.
It was to no avail.
“The best part of a flame,” Shawn went on in a voice shaking with rage, “is snuffing the bitch out.”
He loomed over me, a sweaty mass huffing, looking very much like he wanted to continue his assault.
But before he could, the door opened, and a man I didn’t recognize poked his head inside.
“Lis wants you,” said the man with a brief glance my way.
Shawn nodded and turned back to me. “I look forward to putting out your fire later, Sunshine.”
Then he turned out the light, and I was eclipsed by the dark.
I wasn’t exactlysure how much time passed. I knew I slept a lot. I woke up hungry, and someone came in and brought me a bit of bread and a piece of meat I really couldn’t identify. Another man dragged me to a mildew-covered bathroom, where, through a tiny window, lights bounced against a horizon, but nothing else was visible in the dark. I still had no idea where I was, though occasionally, it did feel like the room was moving around me. Bobbing, even.
Sometime after my second “nap,” I woke to find I had company. The overhead light had been turned on, and I was able to identify the person currently either asleep or, from the looks of him, knocked out at the far end of the couch.
“Mike?” My eyes popped open. “Michael?”
The hunched shoulders of my brother-in-law moved with a groan as he pushed himself up to seated, revealing a face full of bruises, an eye almost swollen shut, and a fat lip with a bad cut.
“Joni?” He mumbled, peeking at me through his one good eye. “What are you doing here? Fuck, Lea’s gonna kill me.”
“Killyou? She bit my head off already just because she thought I got you involved with these assholes. What are you doing here?”
