Authors: Claire Adams
“I will add your terms to the paperwork
and have you sign it tomorrow,” I finally said.
She grinned.
The game was on.
CHAPTER
5
ARIA
“You did what?” Stacey was staring at me
with a mixture of complete horror and amusement.
“I signed a contract to date Zayden
Sinclair for six months.”
“But Aria, is this what you want? To lose
your virginity over some contract with some-”
I hadn’t even told my best friend that I
had already lost my virginity. I was embarrassed that it was some guy from a
bar. No one was ever going to know if I had anything to do with it.
“I’m not losing anything, that’s what I’ve
been trying to explain to you. He just wants me to go on dates with him.”
She eyed me suspiciously. “Are you sure?
Did you read the contract? There wasn’t some footnote involving a dungeon of
some sort?”
“I said the same thing,” I laughed. She
joined me, to my relief. If I was going to do this, Stacey’s support was
essential. If she didn’t support this I would hear about it every day. “But no,
I read it cover to cover. No loopholes, no dungeons, no sex. Just spending time
with him. And I’ve been thinking about that, it can actually be beneficial to
me!”
“Well yeah, that’s a lot of money and you
can help your mom out,” she said, jumping on to the edge of my bed and grabbing
my stuffed turtle. I threw her a pillow from my desk.
“Yes, that, but also, he has an insane
knowledge of the banking industry,” I said, mindlessly scrolling through my
computer screen. “He can teach me things when we hang out.”
“He is a CEO, a title he inherited. I
doubt he knows much about becoming a loan officer.”
“He owns a chain of banks.” I looked at
her with raised eyebrows.
“I guess he’d better know a lot about loan
officers, huh?” She was hugging my pillow.
I shrugged. “Won’t hurt to ask. Plus I am
taking advanced Macroeconomics classes; he has a Masters in Economics along
with an MBA, so at least he can help me ace my classes.”
“Somehow, Aria, I don’t think he means he
wants to help you with homework when he says he wants to date you. He very
likely has other things in mind.”
“He does,” I frowned. “But since he is not
going to get what he has in mind, we will have to find something to talk about
during these ‘dates’ or whatever, and I might as well steer the conversation in
a direction that helps me do better in school. It’s not a colossal waste of a
time that way.”
“Or you could just jump his bones.” She
was now flipping through the copy of ZEN magazine with his interview on it.
“You jumped ship pretty quickly. Weren’t
you just lecturing me about the sanctity of my virginity?”
“Nope, I was just asking you if that’s
what you wanted to do. If it is, then by all means make hot… passionate… love
to this divine creation. I wonder how big his-”
“Nick!” I screamed loudly, cutting her
off. “You need to come in here and get your girlfriend, she’s getting out of
control.”
“Shhhhhh,” she hissed. “He won’t find this
funny. We haven’t done it in two weeks.”
“What? Why?”
“We are saving it for our anniversary.
Have to keep things spiced up.”
“By actively not, you know, spicing them?”
I shook my head. “You sex-having people and your weird ways.”
“You’ll get there soon enough. Very soon
according to your boss.”
“Please tell me you believe I can resist
him.” I could. I really, truly could. Why was I trying so hard to convince
myself when it was obviously the truth? My first time having sex was a mistake
and no way was my second time going to be too.
“You are stubborn enough to,” she said,
flipping through the magazine. “But if I were you, I would have some fun with
this whole thing. I mean how often do sexy gazillionaires pay you to date them?
I’d do him for free, if he asked.”
“Don’t make me shout for Nick again.”
She threw the pillow back at me and I
caught it right before it hit my head.
“Fine. You sit here and be boring on your
computer, I’ll go find my boyfriend.” She got up and left mumbling: “who is
probably sitting on his computer and being equally boring. What does one have
to do for some fun roommates around here?”
---
As the work-day came to an end and people
started evaporating away, I felt a strange knot in my chest. Zayden had sent me
an email earlier:
Aria,
Hang
around after 5. Our deal begins today.
Best,
Zayden
Zayden
Sinclair
Chairman
and CEO
South
National Bank
I wondered what he had in mind for today.
He hadn’t mentioned anything about going out, and seemed perfectly comfortable
lying on his office couch typing intently on his MacBook. Yep, we definitely
weren’t going anywhere. Just as well, I could ask him questions for my Econ
paper on progressive taxation. There was nothing else I could think of for us
to do within the premises of this bank except that, because that was just not
happening.
When everybody else cleared out, I wasn’t
sure whether to walk over to him or wait for him to summon me; he seemed
occupied by whatever was on his computer. Maybe he wouldn’t even notice if I
quietly snuck out. I did have tons of homework to get to. I tentatively started
packing up but the phone rang.
“Who said you could leave?” He was staring
at me. “You signed a contract.”
“You seemed busy and I wasn’t sure if you
wanted to be left alone.”
“If I wanted you to leave me alone, you
would know Aria.” With just that much he hung up the phone and went back to
typing vigorously on his laptop. What the hell was I supposed to do just
sitting here? I pulled out my phone and started texting Stacey.
“it’s weird as fuck. he’s just sitting
there doing work but I’m not allowed to leave.”
Stacey wrote back immediately.
“ask him if he needs anything. offer to
make him some coffee.”
“and set feminism back a few decades?”
“it’s just a nice gesture, nothing to do
with you being a woman. he’s helping you out, be nice.”
“fine. whatever.”
I called him back. “Would you like some
coffee?”
“Not if it is to be delivered with your
clothes on.” A grin formed on his face. I rolled my eyes. “Come on, I’m just
teasing. Easy on the eye-roll.”
“You can see that?” I rolled them again
involuntarily.
“And that. I’m good with the coffee, but
thank you. Dinner should be arriving soon. I’ll get off my computer when it
does, I promise.”
“What? Dinner?”
“Yep, it’s a particular kind of meal,
usually served in the evenings, usually the last meal of the day.”
“You think you are so funny, don’t you? I
didn’t know we would be having dinner.”
“Well you do now. Tonight and every other
night until I say otherwise, you’ll be having dinner with me at the office.”
“Will I ever get to choose what I want to
eat or will you always be doing it on my behalf?” I regretted saying that
immediately. I was kind of being a bitch, but the best part about takeout is
deciding what to eat.
He looked a little wounded by that. “Well,
I will just email you Sean’s number and you can tell him what you would like
from tomorrow onwards.”
“What are you even talking about?”
“Sean’s my chef. He does international
gourmet meals.”
“Oh,” I said feeling stupid. “Of course.”
Why would we be getting take-out when he
had an international gourmet chef at his fingertips? For some reason, the
notion made me feel extremely uncomfortable, and a little irrationally angry. I
hung up, looked away from Zayden and took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure why I
was so on edge. Perhaps because I had been hanging out around the office after
a long day of work to entertain him, while he pretty much ignored me for most
of the night thus far. What was he even trying to accomplish?
Okay, maybe I was a little upset because I
had wanted to talk to him, get to know him, and get help with my Econ paper.
Not sit here staring at my phone panic-texting Stacey. The truth was I wanted
us to become friends. In order to achieve my dreams of becoming a successful
loan officer, having a powerful network of contacts was essential, and it was
particularly helpful if my contacts were of the power and stature of one of the
most successful young banking entrepreneurs in the country. Part of my
reasoning behind wishing to discuss homework with him was that he could see my
potential outside of my job as a teller and hopefully serve as a valuable
reference someday. In fact, the more I thought about the contract that I had
signed, the more it seemed to be beneficial to me rather than him.
But this, whatever was going on right now,
was beneficial to nobody.
It was another half hour before a couple
of men in black-and-white uniform materialized as though out of thin air and
began setting up silver dishes on the mahogany table in Zayden’s office.
Wouldn’t that stain? Zayden Sinclair probably didn’t give a crap about stains
though. He probably owned an entire IKEA all to himself, all furniture readily
replaceable whenever he liked. Much like the women he got involved with.
Disposable, just like me. I shook my head. Instead of letting my thoughts stray
to needlessly upsetting places, what I needed to do was enjoy a nice dinner
with an influential man and try to build on my nonexistent network.
One of the men in the uniforms was now
walking towards me.
“Dinner is ready, Ma’am,’ he said with a
smile on his face.
Ma’am. I wanted to burst out laughing.
“Call me Aria, and thank you.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Ma’am,” he
looked at me nervously.
Oh god. I did not have the energy or will
to argue, as it hit me just how hungry I was. Whatever rich people ate for
dinner, it had to be tasty, right? I took off my jacket and walked towards
Zayden’s office. I was wearing a blue dress with a slightly low-cut neck, and
black tights. Professional and hopefully alluring in a not misleading or sexual
kind of a way. Most of the men in uniforms were now waiting just outside the
bank’s premises, except for the guy who had come to summon me: he was holding a
bottle of champagne.
Zayden was already seated when I got
there, with a red napkin wrapped around his neck and his sleeves rolled up.
“Do you like champagne?” he asked.
“Who doesn’t like champagne,” I giggled in
a don’t-be-silly kind of a way and sat down. “I love champagne, it’s super
tasty and-”
I made the mistake of catching his eye. It
was twinkling.
“Okay, I’ve never actually had champagne
before,” I admitted. “I don’t really drink other than a few beers here and
there with pizza and T.V. I am not a particularly exciting person.”
He was beaming at me as though I had just
said I saved sick puppies for a living.
“I haven’t had the luxury of enjoying
greasy pizza and cheap beer with some good old television in quite some time.”
“Luxury? Are you mocking me?” Our waiter –
server? butler? – was pouring out two glasses of champagne, as I tied a red
napkin around my neck to match Zayden’s.
“No, not at all! Luxury is relative,” he
said looking quite disdainful. “Sometimes I wish I could enjoy the simple pleasures
of life but all this was dropped on me,” he said, extending his arms out to his
sides.
“You’re talking like you’re dead. We can
totally just hang out with some Bud Light, pepperoni pizza and Netflix at my
apartment one night if you like.” I laughed out loud at the thought of him
coming to my apartment. Yeah, that was totally going to happen. It was polite
to ask, still.
“What is that? Some kind of recording
device?”
I stared at him in utter confusion for
almost a whole minute before it hit me and I burst into a full-blown laughter.
Zayden Sinclair, CEO of the entire South National Bank empire, was asking me if
Netflix was some kind of a recording device. What planet did he live on?
“It’s,” I started out to explain but felt
another fit of giggles coming on, which I quickly turned into a cough because
he began looking somewhat offended.
“It’s this website that stores hundreds of
thousands of movies and T.V. shows, and you pay like 10 bucks a month to be
able to stream all their content online.”
He twisted his mouth in a comical fashion.
“I’m just joking Aria,” he laughed. “I’d rather just purchase all of the movies
and shows though.”
Well, he gave me a good laugh anyway.
“It would probably cost over a million
dollars to try and purchase every title that’s on Netflix though,” I said,
trying not to roll my eyes. “It’s just a cheap way to find entertainment for
regular people like me.”