Reason to Believe (White Lace) (11 page)

I hesitated outside the door of the classroom with my hand on the metal handle.

Why had I agreed to this?

My nerves were on overdrive, kicking around my stomach like Irish folk dancers. My chest…well, that felt like I had an elephant with a front row seat to my face.

This was not a feeling I was accustomed to.

Fear.

I’d never been afraid of anything in my life: not rattlesnakes, not the dark, not death, not even the boogeyman.

Who knew a room full of students would be my worst nightmare?

“How are you feeling?”

The appearance of Grace’s hand on my forearm somehow settled my whirling thoughts.

“I feel…fine.”

Liar!

She’d done so much to help me. Given me tips and words of wisdom. The last thing I wanted to do was make her feel like her time spent with me had been for nothing, which was why when she got home tonight she’d find a bouquet of flowers waiting for her. I had picked it out in the store—the most beautiful bouquet, with varying shades of green, which reminded me of her eyes. I could have brought them myself, but we’d stepped into new territory the night of the hotel party and I had no idea what I was doing. I was so bad at…this.

Whatever
this
was.

“You look hot in that suit.”

She caught me off guard with her comment. “So we’re going there?”

We’d finally given in. All right,
I
had given in and we’d had sex. And it had been the best decision I’d made in a long damn time.

“I figured since we…” She leaned in closer. “…bumped uglies, it’s fair game to comment on the attractiveness of the other person. So yeah.” She nodded her head with a smile. “You look hot.”

She brushed off the fabric on my shoulders and straightened the arms, taking a step back and analyzing my appearance. She’d been right. The suit was good quality…but it just didn’t feel like me. With a nod of her head, she was content with how I looked and finally gazed up, her eyes meeting mine.

Shit. I was getting an erection. Even her touching me in a platonic, professional manner was making me excited.

“You’re going to do great.” She lifted on her toes and kissed my cheek, then patted my bottom. Whispering in my ear, she said, “Break a leg.”

A loud mingle of voices hit us when I finally opened the door. We parted ways at the top of the stairs in the theater-style classroom and immediately I felt chilled when the warmth of her body was gone. I felt empty, like she’d taken something with her when she’d walked away. But I didn’t have time to contemplate that thought. Not when I had students to inspire. Not when I locked my eyes on Grace’s behind as she sashayed to the end of the room. Those hips. Those curvy, perfect-to-hold-on-to-tight hips that I’d made use of, thoroughly, just the other night.

I traveled down the steps to the bottom of the classroom, where Professor Hughes was standing talking to one of her students.

“Mr. Lockwood. Right on time.” She didn’t bother with small talk. “Shall we get started?” She leaned in, lowering her voice. “Before the students get restless.”

I looked out into the crowd and it appeared as if they were already restless. Rings and bings went off in rapid succession as students laughed and pointed at their cellphone screens.

Professor Hughes cleared her throat into the microphone. That one simple gesture was enough to get everyone’s attention; immediately the room went silent.

I found Cory in the crowd. In the front row, of course, eager and ready to listen to me make a fool of myself.

“It seems like more than half the class was motivated enough to turn off Netflix and show up this evening. Thank you.”

My mouth dropped open with her candidness. It was refreshing. Maybe she really was different than most other instructors.

“I’d like to welcome our guest speaker. The Vice President of White Lace Productions, where our very own Cory is interning this semester. Please welcome, Ben Lockwood.”

Applause filled the room. For now. Last night I’d had a dream that I’d gotten booed away from the podium.

Professor Hughes stepped aside and I took her place in front of the microphone. I searched for Grace at the back of the room and she smiled, urging me on with a small nod and a double thumbs-up.

“Hi…I…” I cleared the rumble from my throat. “Yes. I’m Ben Lockwood. Vice President of White Lace Productions. And yes, before anyone puts up their hand, we produce adult entertainment.” There were blank stares in the first few rows. Did I really need to clarify this? “We produce porn.”

Some of the blank stares had turned into uncomfortable shifting in the seats. Maybe Professor Hughes and Cory were the only non-judgmental people in this room, because I wasn’t feeling the love.

No matter. Most people didn’t love what I did for a living. Why should these students be any different? Nothing I hadn’t handled before.

“So…what do I do?” I straightened out my jacket, pulling on the soft fabric of the lapels. “I’m the creative director for the company, too. I’m doing both jobs…so I guess you could say that I am responsible for…everything.”

It wasn’t everything, but it was most things. It felt like everything because I still had no clue what I was doing even after all this time.

“Specifically, I’m in charge of location scouting, casting, marketing and communications, and also the website. The one thing I don’t get to do much of as VP is work behind the camera.”

A hand shot up in the crowd. The arm was covered in bright red fabric and hard to miss.

“A question? Go ahead.”

The student didn’t bother standing and simply shouted out, “Do you have a studio in the city?” The person beside him snickered.

“We do, but it’s rarely used.” I would never give out the location. That’s all the actresses needed was weird, random dudes showing up thinking they could get with a porn star. “Only when we shoot a full-length feature. Otherwise, we shoot at private homes and hotels in the city and surrounding areas.”

Another hand shot up, this time from a girl in the back. “You’re really young. How old are you?” She twirled her long, brown hair around her finger with a coy smile.

“I’m twenty-four.” A sinking feeling washed over me. It wasn’t going to take much for these students to figure out I was a fraud and that they were more qualified than I was, simply because they were enrolled in school and I had dropped out.

The girl hadn’t bothered to put up her hand again, she just stood and asked, “So did you go to school?”

I shook my head. “I did enroll in film school—here, actually—but I quit after one semester, when I was given the opportunity to direct full time for White Lace.”

“So what are we supposed to learn from you if you didn’t go to school?” A kid in the front row blurted.

I had to stop my jaw from hitting the floor. He had just posed the question I’d been asking myself for the last few weeks. It was a valid question, and I still didn’t know the answer.

What the fuck
was
I doing here?

I found Grace again in the crowd and she’d sat up straight in her seat. Our eyes locked and immediately I knew how to proceed. With one look she had invigorated me. With one look, she had reminded me of all the responses we’d practiced. When we weren’t fooling around, of course.

“I have years of on-the-job experience and those years have allowed me to perfect my vision. My trademark, you could say.”

I looked back at Grace and she nodded, relaxing back into her seat. I’d managed to deflect my first controversial question. Pride swelled in my chest and just as I opened my mouth to continue, that’s when it happened.

My mind went completely blank.

Fuck me.

Fuck this.

Fuck everything.

I couldn’t describe my vision, because I didn’t know how. There were no words in the current dictionary that could even come close to describing how bad I was tanking right now.

“I guess you could say…” I heard someone snicker in the crowd. “…I like close-ups?” The words came out in a high-pitched sound as if I were asking them if my answer was correct.

I looked over at Cory, who had slunk lower in his seat. Although he continued to make eye contact with me, urging me on silently. The kid was embarrassed, and I didn’t blame him.

“Live space,” I blurted into the microphone. “I don’t like a lot of live space. If any of you have seen my work, then…” I stopped talking immediately, remembering that this was actually a college, with rules and ethics. I looked over at Professor Hughes.

She nodded, then said, “They’re all over eighteen.”

Thank Christ. Why hadn’t I thought to ask that question before I started?

Because you have no idea what you’re doing.

“Right, so…if you’ve watched any of my scenes, then you’d notice that I like to keep things close, I make use of as much of the live space as possible.”

I looked over at Cory again, who nodded at me with a smile.

“Especially when you’re filming an intimate scene, whether it’s explicit porn or not, getting the characters right is what’s most important.”

I took a deep breath. That hadn’t been so bad.

Someone’s hand shot up.

Thank fuck.

I pointed at the female student with raven hair, and piercings in her nose and lip as she stood. “Do you have sex with every girl that auditions for you?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t test the merchandise, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Have you ever been in a film?” she continued without giving anyone else an opportunity to ask a question.

I nodded. “Yes.” I wasn’t ashamed of what I’d done, but I knew in the long run, it was only going to make it harder for people to take me seriously. “Early in my career I did several POV scenes—you know, the scenes where you don’t see the man’s face?”

The girl beside her stood up and asked, “Have you ever gotten an STD?”

“No. And as for the company, our actors are required to get tested every month. It’s a company policy.”

It was one of the jobs that didn’t fall on my shoulders. Barbara, my assistant, was responsible for collecting and reviewing the test results.

The questions from the audience were getting more pointed by the minute and I was afraid to acknowledge the blond girl sitting on the end of the third row. But that’s what I was here for. To answer questions truthfully about working in the porn industry.

The girl stood, a sweet smile on her face. “Were you sexually abused as a child? Is that why you work in porn?”

“I…What?” I stared at her in disbelief. Her smile might be sweet, but her question was less than sugary. I glanced over at Cory, who shrugged at me.

“Next question, please,” Professor Hughes said. “That’s not an appropriate topic of discussion.”

Three more hands shot up and the knot that had already been coiled in my stomach tightened even more. I was starting to sweat and thankful that I’d decided to wear a T-shirt underneath my button-down white shirt.

This session had taken a turn for the worse. Even Cory knew it, because he was huddled in his seat, his hand covering half his face. The kid, the one who chose to intern with a porn company, was embarrassed at how this was playing out.

There were several hands up in the crowd, but I chose the guy who wore khaki pants and a golf shirt. “How do you live with yourself knowing that you make your money by exploiting women?”

“I assure you that everything we do at White Lace is ethical. No one works who doesn’t want to be there. No one is forced into anything.”

I decided to steal a glance at Grace, who was running her hand underneath her chin in an attempt to get me to abort the discussion of ethics.

So I did. I took another question.

“Do you really think you can have a family and live a normal life?”

Were these kids mind readers? It was like they could see into the depths of my soul and read all of the deep-seated questions I had kept buried, afraid of discovering the answers.

Luckily, I didn’t get the chance to respond to the last one, not that I easily could.

Professor Hughes stepped up and joined me at the podium. She spoke into the microphone, “I think that’s enough for tonight. Thank you all. I’ll see you next class.” She turned off the microphone and gave me sympathetic look.

If I was a crier, this would have been the moment I broke down. I had come in here terrified but optimistic that I could somehow prove I was a professional. But the porn industry didn’t leave much to prove. I was discounted even before I opened my mouth.

The students filed out of the room on their own time, and when I glanced down at my watch I realized the whole thing had only lasted twenty minutes.

The complete annihilation of my existence had only taken twenty fucking minutes.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Lockwood, I thought it best to end things. The session went a little off the rails. I had no idea that—”

I stopped her with a shake of my head. “I shouldn’t have expected anything else.”

With a more hopeful expression, Professor Hughes smiled. “I hope this doesn’t deter you from the second session.”

I couldn’t help the half laugh–half snort that escaped my mouth.

“I know there are a lot of other students who are interested in hearing about your career.” The woman still had a serious look on her face. Instead of laughing me out of the classroom, she was encouraging me to continue.

Despite wanting to run screaming from the building and never look back, I wasn’t a person who reneged on an agreement. “I made a commitment. I’ll be there.”

Most of the kids had already filed out of the classroom by the time I made my way up the stairs. Grace waited for me at the entrance, chewing on her thumbnail in nervousness.

I stopped right in front of her and she had to crane her neck in order to look into my eyes. “It wasn’t that bad.”

This time a full-out laugh escaped. “It was a disaster.”

She licked her lips and immediately mine remembered just what her skin tasted like slicked with sweat.

Damn it! Stop thinking about sex.

“All they did was accuse, and ask me invasive questions like I was some kind of monster.” I hung my head. In all the years I’d worked in porn this had been the most aggressive and blatant grilling I’d ever received.