Emilia decided she wasn't going to think about last night. Marco had come over around two-thirty with a late lunch and given her the complete rundown of his conversation with Quentin. Who, apparently, was far more attached to their relationship than Em had originally thought.
The whole thing was bad on so many levels. Marco realized who Quentin was the moment he said his name, and gave Em the longest lecture of her life on how bad of an idea it was to hook up with her boss. Em had of course told him that Quentin was only technically kind-of her boss. He wasn't in the chain of command she reported to. Of course, Marco had to point out that he owned the company, and could definitely still fire her if he wanted. Em didn't have a good response. The truth was that she just trusted him. Quentin wasn't the sort to fire an employee over a personal dispute. But then again, their relationship was never supposed to be anything other than hookups. It was mutually beneficial, with no commitments.
Did Quentin want a relationship with her? He was the city's most eligible bachelor, rich and sexy and untouchable. People would lie, steal, or maybe even kill to be his lover. She'd already had him in her bed countless times. She knew things about him that you could only know after lying next to them night after night. She knew his body, his muscles and curves, the softness of his skin. She knew the tender spot on his back she could press to make him gasp, how he liked to bury his face in her neck while he came. But in the daylight, she didn't know anything about him. She'd made a lot of assumptions based on his public persona, all the rumors that ran around the company. She didn't know any of the things she thought mattered about a person. What did he care about? What made him happy? He didn't know anything about her, either.
The whole situation was giving her a headache. She said she wasn't going to think about it and she'd meant it. It wasn't her problem if Quentin fucking Blake wanted to sit outside her apartment all night like a fucking weirdo. It wasn't her problem if he froze to death or hated her for leaving him out there or ended up fucking some model. She had other shit to worry about. She had two weeks to come up with three thousand dollars. If she didn't eat for the rest of the month, then she had about half of it. Fifteen hundred dollars in two weeks. Fucking yikes.
She wasn't completely out of options. She could follow Tiffany's advice and start working corners. She admired people who had a strong enough will to live to do that sort of thing. There was a version of her who would have done it, done anything. That girl died with her family.
Em wondered if this was the thing that would do her in. If the fragile balance she'd somehow maintained for the past decade was broken beyond repair now. She'd worked hard, hadn't she? She'd kept going in this world where she was alone, working and studying and struggling and starving and somehow still fighting, still living. She didn't know why she did all that.
She had things she lived for, of course. She had those things that made her happy. Her friends, however few of them there were. Reality TV and murder mysteries. Sometimes horror movies. Almost any action movie. She liked an explosion. She liked the color of the night sky when she got the chance to get out of the city. She liked dancing with strangers, when the clubs were letting girls in for free. She liked sex. She really liked sex. It was simple and joyful and always free, or at least it was for her.
She liked having sex with Quentin Blake, but it seemed like that was over. She'd made up her mind, and frankly him showing up outside her house should have settled that for good. Should have. Seeing him last night had made her so fucking mad. She'd had a lot of shitty nights, but last night was one of the shittiest, and his presence was the last thing she needed. She might have pushed him over the railing last night. It was a good thing that Marco held her back. It was really good, because she also might have kissed him.
Would that have really been that bad, if she had kissed him? If she had pulled him into her apartment and rode him until all the shitty things melted away? Even now, thinking about it was melting away all her stress. The spiral had started, and then it had just… stopped. Maybe this was what they called a coping mechanism. When she felt like there was nothing worth living for, she could think about the face he made while she sucked his dick. When that wasn't enough…
Everybody in the world got to make bad decisions except for Em. She had to do the right thing all the time just to keep living. Men like Quentin Blake could do whatever the fuck they wanted but Em always had to walk the straight and narrow. Quentin Blake got to show up at her door in the middle of the night just because he felt like it but she had to forget about him, stay in her place. She didn't want to stay in her place.
If life itself was a bad decision, how much worse could she really make it?
Em decided she wasn't going to think about last night. She would head to the convenience store in the morning and pick up as many weekend and night shifts as she could, and she would make up the rest by selling some of her work clothes. High-end clothes always had value, even when used. She knew that because of how much she'd spent to get them. It would be sorted. She would sort it. She wasn't going to think about that right now.
She pulled out her phone and sent a simple text.
Em: Come over.
Quentin replied within the minute, which was typical for him but strange for men in general. It was six pm on a Saturday. Nobody replied to their fuckbuddy at six pm on a Saturday. He definitely wanted something from her. That wasn't her problem. She was going to do what she wanted, and she wanted to do Quentin. She hopped out of bed and pulled off her clothes, picking out the perfect outfit for the night. Something to make him feral. Not that it was hard to make him feral. Still, she wanted his best tonight. She wanted to feel him tomorrow. She wanted to forget about everything else. So she picked her outfit, and she waited.