Noelle Rudolph hovered the Christmas lights above her afro when her phone rang. She groaned when she saw it was her mother.
“I will not answer. She can badger voice mail instead of my ears for a change.”
Cease and desist was not in Shandra Rudolph’s vocabulary. To the point where Elle hated her Bing Crosby version of Jingle all the Way ringtone.
Elle caved. “Hi Mom.” She greeted her mother sweetly. “I’m on my way to the office Christmas party so I can’t —”
“Hi, dumpling.” Her mother’s Trinidadian accent sang in her ear. “Your father and I are finalizing plans for the lake. We just wanted to be sure you weren’t bringing anyone.”
Her mother damn well knew she wasn’t dating anyone because she just asked her two days ago.
Elle sighed. “No, I—”
“Okay, then you’ll have to share a room with one of the younger kids or perhaps the twins. We keep growing. We’ll need a bigger house next year.”
Oh, hell no! “You can’t be serious, Mom. I’m an adult.” Elle was the only single offspring of the Rudolph-Berry clan heading to Lake Placid for their Christmas vacation.
“Well, dear, it’s not like you need the privacy like the other couples. You know Christmas is a very romantic time of year.” Her mother sure did know how to add insult to injury.
“Yeah, but just because I don’t need that kind of privacy, doesn’t mean I don’t need regular privacy or my own space.” Elle turned off the battery-operated Christmas lights. With each response and question from her mother, her holiday spirit dwindled.
“Be reasonable, Elle.”
Elle was tired of being reasonable. Year after year she cringed from her family’s harassment over her singledom. She’d been fretting over this vacation for some time and her mother’s words battered her nerves.
“Well, you just ruined the surprise. I will be coming with someone.” What are you doing, Elle? Her mother’s matrimonial-minded tone drove her to do it. “Yeah, I’m bringing someone I’ve been dating for a few months.”
“Come now, Elle,” her mother warned. “You didn’t tell me this when last we spoke.”
“Because I wanted to surprise you guys. You know me.”
“Well, this is exciting news. Your father and everyone will be so pleased to know. Of course, we’re dying to meet him.”
“Yeah, he feels the same about meeting you all, too,” Elle grimaced.
Her mother dove right into unfiltered mothering role. “Well, tell me about him. What’s his name? What does he do? What does he eat so we can have the foods he likes? Does he ski? Jasper can show him the resort. I have to get him a gift. What would you suggest?”
There was still time to back out and tell her mother that this was all a joke—a really bad joke. But her mother sounded happier with Elle than she had been in a long time. Marrying Elle off was her mother’s biggest concern and their family’s ongoing topic of conversation. Elle’s family was great, but they truly obsessed as to why, at thirty-one, the oldest offspring of the Rudolph-Berry clan had yet to marry.
“I’ll let you know, Mom, but right now, I really have to get to the party.”
“But—”
“My colleagues are waiting.” Elle prayed she wouldn’t have to hang up on her mother to avoid answering even the basic questions.
“All right, dumpling-dear. We’ll chat later,” her mother said.
Shandra’s excitement made it easy for Elle to mimic. “Great.”
Elle hung-up the phone and groaned, plopped into her chair, and rubbed her face. “What have I done?”
Elle’s co-worker Tess Schwartz danced over. “Party ovah here,” Tess said, shaking sleigh bells with each step. Tess was a self-proclaimed Christmas-loving Jew and celebrated the holiday season harder than any Christian Elle ever met.
“Hey, girl,” Elle mumbled.
“What the heck happened to the glow-fro you were so excited about?”
“My mom called.”
“What happened? Is she hounding you again?” Tess was no stranger to Elle’s mother’s inquisition about men and her dating life.
“They were going to put me in the kids’ room for the Christmas house we’re renting for vacation.”
“Ouch.”
“What’s worse is I think I did something really stupid. No…no, I take that back. It’s definitely stupid.” Elle closed her eyes and sighed.
“Well, it can’t be that bad.”
“It is.”
“Let me be the judge of stupidity.” Tess sat in a chair from another cubicle and scooted over, her light brown ponytail swinging from side to side. “Lay the confession on me.”
“I told my mother I’m dating someone and I’m bringing him for Christmas.” Elle recanted the details of the conversation.
“Err…um, hold on.” Tess left and returned with her specialty bottle of spiced wine. “I was saving this for the party, but you need this now.”
“See. Stupid. I just panicked.”
“Maybe not the smartest move. I mean, did you have someone in mind before that crap came out of your mouth?”
Elle drew a blank, which explained it all to Tess.
“Well, what are you going to do, Elle?”
“I don’t know.”
“You could always hire someone.” Tess laughed.
“I’d never do that.” Elle oscillated her head at a dizzying pace. Or could she?
“Don’t you even think about it.” Tess wagged a finger at her. “I was kidding.”
“But hypothetically, if I was desperate enough, which you know I definitely am, what would that look like?”
The air that escaped Tess’s lips could rival a tornado. “There are male escorts,” she enlightened. “Let me rephrase. For your situation, an elite male escort is what you need. A gigolo.”
“Gigolo? Come on, Tess. Aren’t they just camouflaged prostitutes?”
“No. They are escorts who take you out, show you a good old time, and leave. If they choose to have sex with you, it’s a consensual act between said adults. That’s why it's not prostitution.”
“Can’t I just get an actor?”
“Yeah, but where are you going to find an actor who isn’t going home broke for the holidays or performing for it. You don’t have that kind of time to vet someone who can pull this off. This is what these scrumptious men do for a living.” Tess’s fervor was intriguing.
“For real, though? I’m not trying to get sexed up.”
“So you say, until a tall drink of something sexy is whispering in your ear at the end of the night.” Tess licked her thirsty lips.
“Whatever.” Elle couldn’t remember the last time she had a man whisper in her ear. Had a man ever whispered in her ear? Jeez, she was pathetic. “So…how much does something like this cost?”
Tess swiveled in the desk chair. “It depends on the agency, the guy, and for how long.”
“I only know I need him to play my boyfriend for eight days from a few days before Christmas to just after.”
“Then forget about it. That’s going to cost you. Even I wouldn’t pay that much for a gigolo and I am not going to encourage you to, either.”
Elle knew her friend was trying to be protective, but how bad was the price tag for a fake boyfriend? “It can’t be that bad.”
“Yes, it can.” Tess smirked.
“Wait a second. How the hell do you know so much about this anyway?”
“I had a cousin.” Tess focused one hundred percent of her effort on inspecting her fingernails.
“You had a cousin? What does that even mean?” Humor sang through Elle’s words.
“Okay, okay. Before I met Nathan, I sowed my royal oats. Don’t judge me.”
“Tess, I’m asking you about hiring a gigolo to deceive my family so they don’t think I’m the loser I obviously am, because I can’t convince a guy to latch. I’m the last one to judge.”
“I'm just saying.”
“Moving on.” Elle rolled her index fingers around one another a few times. “So, how much is it? A couple thousand a stint?”
“Try, fifteen hundred to three-thousand a night.” Tess’s face wrinkled as she waited for Elle’s reaction.
Elle did the math in her head and nearly fell out. “That’s almost twenty-five thousand dollars!”
Tess twisted her mouth to one side and shrugged. “Yeah, and for what you need, the weekly and weekend rates kick in so, it could be less or more.”
“Are you kidding me? That’s like a down payment on a home or someone’s salary!”
“Told ya.” Tess patted her shoulder. “Just forget about it, girl. There are worse things than going home to a family who loves you, lover-less. Even if they are a pain in the ass.”
“You think so? Pause.” Elle pulled out her phone and played messages from her mother, her father, her brother, two of her cousins, her aunt on her mother’s side, and her uncle. Each message started with a remark alluding to her lack of beau, sandwiched in between a greeting and salutation.
“Daaayyyyuuummm.” Tess bit her knuckle. “That would drive me up a fucking wall. I’m sorry, Elle.”
Elle tapped her nose with her index finger several times, and then fiddled with the small gold watch hanging from her neck. “I can find the money.”
“I know what you’re thinking. You’ve worked too hard to blow that money. Remember the goal.” Tess lowered her voice to a whisper and leaned forward. “Two more clients and you can leave here and work your graphic design business full-time.”
“I can make it back. I’d just have to work here another year and work my business and I can pay myself back.”
“But you’re killing yourself. How long do you really think you can keep up this pace, Elle? The new year was supposed to bring these changes.”
“I’ll just have to postpone it one more year.”
Tess swiveled the chair from side to side. “It’s not worth it. Especially if you are not even thinking about sexing this dude. Maybe you can find a guy friend who can play the role.”
Elle spun her phone in circles on her desk. “My family knows all my friends, plus it’s the holidays. Everyone I know will be with their families.”
“You’re in a bind, but it’s not a twenty-five-thousand-dollar bind. My suggestion? Tell the truth and bunk with the kids. It’s only eight days.”
Elle replayed the messages. She wasn’t so sure that buying a boyfriend—to get a little reprieve from her family’s incessant nagging about her love life—wasn’t worth the price.
###
After the office Christmas party, Elle, Tess, and a few of their inebriated co-workers straggled to a local bar to continue the holiday festivities. With glow-fro twinkling and not even half as inebriated as she wanted to be, Elle’s weighty decisions loomed.
Parched for escape, Elle hovered at the crowded bar. When the bartender kept flipping her long brown flowing hair and continued to pass her, Elle wondered if the woman was blind or just ignoring her on purpose. As if the puff of hair decorated in Christmas lights didn’t scream for attention.
“Who do I have to fuck to get a drink?” Her shoulders slumped. She wanted to be out at the bar sprinkling holiday cheer, but she was stressed, and it was starting to show. She had to figure out this boyfriend situation in just a few days.
“What are you drinking?”
Elle heard the richness of a deep male voice before she saw him. And when she did, she had to negotiate her mouth to close and her widened eyes to behave normally. Elle licked her lips as sudden dryness parched her mouth.
Finding her speech she responded. “I just want a Malbec.”
“Jo-Jo! Malbec!” He called to the bartender, motioning the size of a bottle with his hands.
“You bet,” the woman responded.
“Yeah, Jo-Jo. Hook a sistah up,” Elle commented.
Jo-Jo wasted little time tending to his request and opened a bottle, handing it to Elle’s savior, along with two glasses.
As he moved, Elle’s eyes began their wild uncontrollable perusal of the man. From his low cut, black hair and athletic build to the strong hands that delicately held the items Jo-Jo gave him. The bar was fairly dark and though she knew his eyes were light, their color was elusive.
“That’s quite the coif you’ve got there.” He eyed her afro.
For the first time ever, Elle wished it wasn’t the holidays and that she hadn’t just come from an office holiday party decked out like a Christmas tree.
“Power to the people.” Elle raised her fist in the air. Some random bar-goers raised their fists around her and she chuckled.
“And a following no less.”
“What can I say?” Elle shrugged. “Do you come here often?” She physically grabbed the words back from the air. “That is such a cheesy line.”
He gave her a sideways glance. “Kind of. Want to try again?” His words were arrogant, but his delivery was light-hearted.
“My bad. Take two.” Elle’s arms mimicked a clapperboard. “Do you know Jo-Jo, the bartender?”
“Better.” He licked his plump lips and in an instant Elle became a professional lip-reader.
“It was, right?” She smiled at their banter. “So?”
“Not really. I met Jo-Jo tonight when I got my drink earlier. Why do you ask?”
“Because she hooked you up like you’re a regular.” She paused. “It must be all of this.”
Elle’s hands waved a snake shape in front of his six-foot figure. To say he was handsome was a meager description. His lean but powerful posture towered and the white shirt he wore clung to his defined pectoral and bicep muscles.
“If Jo-Jo was a man, the situation would undoubtedly be reversed. Those curves command attention.”
She flushed. “Unfortunately, they’re not always in the places I want them but one thing’s for sure, they work well for dancing to Caribbean music—soca, reggae, calypso...” Though she was born in the states, she put on her thickest Trinbagonian accent.
“I don’t disagree with you about that.” His eyes openly searched her dim-lit curves. “I noticed a slight accent. Where’s it from?”
Elle’s pulse skipped a beat. “My Mom. Trinidadian.”
“I see.”
He ushered her to a less crowded corner and the eyes of men and women tracked him. Elle didn’t blame them. The place was packed, and she trailed him enough to marvel at the wide span of his back down to the tight roundness of his ass. His warming spicy fragrance was like a dangling carrot she had to chase. He was delectable in every way.
They garnered half of a high table where he poured her a healthy glass of wine.
“Please, by all means see if it’s to your liking.”
She didn’t know why he had helped her but when the first welcoming droplets of inky dark colored wine hit her tongue and the robust tannins exploded in her mouth, she closed her eyes in fermented grape heaven. “Thank you.”
She heard the rumble of laughter in his upper torso and her eyes flew open to meet his glimmering eyes.
“My pleasure,” he said.
“You gotta let me pay you for the bottle.”
“You promised another payment.” The man poured a glass for himself and the ends of his lips curled up in mischief.
Elle choked on her wine and the liquid burned her nostrils. “What?” She pretended that ‘fuck’ and ‘drink’ were not a part of her question earlier.
“If I recall correctly it was, ‘who do I have to fuck to get a drink around here?’ Well?”
“Yeah, but that was a high stress moment. I said it in jest. I would never offer my body for wine.”
“Jest?” He swiped the glass of red wine from her hands, picked up the bottle and started to leave.
“What kind of bullshit is this?”
He retorted, “The bullshit where you renege on your deal and I’m out, kind.”
“Shots fired.” She shrank closer to the table, dumbfounded enough that her heels cemented to the sticky floor, shocked by his abandonment. Then, she caught the glimpse of humor that wrinkled the outside corner of his eyes.
He tossed her a brilliant smile.
“Come back,” she called and reached her arm out for him.
“Almost gotcha didn’t I?” He returned to the table and handed her the glass.
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t be too proud of yourself there, bro.”
“We were just talking about fucking and now you’re bro-ing me? I’m in that category already?”
When his full, luscious lips formed a smile, her urge to kiss them had her wanting to spin in circles. Though she longed to know the color of his eyes, it didn’t matter because they still mesmerized.
She shrugged.
“I’m Nicholas, by the way.”
“Elle.” Her eyes kept wandering to the deep V of his opened button-down shirt. His caramel coloring was such that she couldn’t guess his race, but she assumed he was multi-racial. It was hot as hell in the bar with the occasional frigid draft from patrons entering and leaving the place, and Nicholas was simultaneously keeping cool and advertising the goods.
“Are you here alone?” He sipped his wine.
“Nah, I’m with friends. I should actually get back to them.” Soon was unspoken and relative.
“I’m sure they won’t mind if you got to know a new friend.” He licked his lips and she never thought someone could have a perfect tongue until now.
“We’re friends now?” She teased and eased herself up on an available stool.
“We can be.”
“How about you? Are you here with friends?”
He focused on swirling the liquid in his wine glass. “I’m waiting for someone.”
Elle straightened at his gender-neutral description. “Cool.”
Nicholas filled her glass again. “I’m not trying to get you drunk.”
“I was going to ask because you’ve been pretty attentive in topping off my glass.” She spoke out of the side of her mouth in comedic flair. “Is that why you asked me if I was alone? So you can ply me with drink and take advantage of me?”
Elle didn’t know where that comment floated in from and then she remembered the Adonis of a man standing before her, cheering her up. As if she could forget.
“Says the woman who was literally offering relations for red wine.”
“Relations?” She enunciated every syllable.
He rubbed his thumb across his bottom lip. “Sorry, free fucks.”
She choked on the crimson liquid and coughed.
He handed her a napkin.
“Shall we move on?” She poured wine for him with an unsteady hand and the bottle lip clanked against the rim of glass.
The bottle was almost finished and she attempted to empty the remains into his glass, but he eased the bottle from her hand and decanted the last few drops into hers.
“Free fuck is a hard one to move on from.”
Elle’s eyes wandered to his crotch at the mention of hard one and not just any glance. But rather a lingering, ‘I don’t give a shit if he knows I’m watching,’ thorough evaluation of his bulge. She dragged her face back to his.
Humor and desire blanketed his slightly slanted orbs and chiseled features. “Satisfied?”
She cleared her throat. “I should get back to my crew—”
A woman sauntered up to him and gave him a kiss. Her long blonde hair flowed around him, and his arm hooked her waist.
“You made it, gorgeous. I was starting to get worried.” Nicholas thoroughly kissed the woman before they broke for air.
Elle’s mind screamed, what’s happening? She lost track as to why she was still standing there. Her eyes didn’t know where to land and she pressed the back of her hand to her flushed neck. She thought something was happening between her and Nicholas. Humiliated at the play of tonsil hockey between him and this woman, playing before her like some cinematic ending, Elle had only one option. Roll credits and bounce.
“Have a good night.” Nicholas threw the words at her as if she weren’t even a third or fourth thought, much less a second one. He stole the only ego-salvaging choice from her.
Her mouth caught flies and she let out an exasperated exhale that didn’t quite exit her constricting throat. She about-faced to Tess and the gang.
“What the hell took you so long, Elle?” Tess reprimanded.
“You guys, the most fucked-uppest shit just went down…” She recounted the story.
“I would have thrown the wine in his face,” Tess shrieked.
“It sucks but you did just meet. He really may have just been a nice guy who was waiting for his girl.” Her other male co-worker’s rationalization did little to reduce the sting.
“It’s cool. I’m about that free wine life,” Elle sang. She high-fived her friends, but behind her humor dripped egg—all over her face. She had once again met someone that either wasn’t available or didn’t pursue her. The situation only reminded her of the nagging that awaited when she lodged with her family on Christmas vacation.
Tess bumped shoulders with her. “You’re awesome. Fuck him and his sexpot.”
Elle gave her a sheepish smile. “Already forgotten.”