The next day, Aria spent most of her time with Taylor and Luke. She had been carried back to a place of anticipation about what might lie ahead, rather than the hope she had briefly felt.
At the other end of the city, Ciarra sat on the edge of the bed in a hotel room that her regular john, Larry, had purchased for the day. It was a Saturday. Having taken Aston back to the car lot to be watched by Mike, she had met Larry there in a last-ditch effort to try to exploit his affectionate nature and get him to pay for her abortion behind DeShawn’s back.
Ciarra told Larry that she was pregnant with his child. She had expected him to grow long in the face and begin to brainstorm about how to get her out of the mess entirely. But that wasn’t at all what happened. Instead, a heartwarming smile spread across his unbecoming face.
“Really? I mean, are you sure? Did you take a test?” he asked. Ciarra nodded. Larry paced the length of the room once before telling Ciarra to wait just a minute and rooting around in his duffel bag. He walked back toward her with an item he had found inside it, concealed in his palm. “Well, as you already know, I think you’re just about the most beautiful girl in the world. And I’ve been waitin’ to do this for just the right time. But I guess that time’s gonna be now.”
In shock, Ciarra covered her mouth with her hand as he struggled despite his weight to drop to one knee on the ground in front of her and begin to speak. “Ciarra … Baby doll, I love you. Since the first time I laid eyes on you, I knew you were gonna be something special in my life. The only thing more beautiful than you is your heart. You’re such a special woman to me. I know I’m not the best to look at. But I plan to take care of you. You can quit this and love only me. What do you say? Will you marry me?”
Ciarra watched his eyes well up with tears, in a state of complete disbelief. There were too many thoughts and feelings to sort through in the seconds granted to her, with his life lingering on the precipice of her reply. “Yes,” she said, letting him slide the little cubic zirconia solitaire onto the ring finger of her left hand.
Larry leaned in for a kiss, bracing himself against the gloss of her knee-high white go-go boots. For the next hour, instead of getting swept up in the commission of her seduction, Larry lay on the bed with her and held her close. Ciarra was careful to give him the impression that she was happy and in love with him too. He could not see or feel beyond the walls of her façade. Larry was in his own little blissful world alone.
In Larry’s world, Ciarra loved him. In Larry’s world, he wasn’t taking advantage of the women he paid to have sex with him. He was engaging in a transaction that served them both so he could get the affection he so desperately needed, but that no other woman would grant him willingly because of the way he looked. In Larry’s world, he had come to Ciarra’s rescue and would give her the care a young woman deserves. He could already picture her in the morning, cooking him breakfast in the newly decorated kitchen of his little house. He had always wanted to be a father. Sadly, no woman had been interested in choosing him to sire her child. As he lay there on the bed, happier than he had ever been, he imagined it would be a boy. He pictured the green field of the Dodger Stadium and the look on his future son’s face when he called over the man selling peanuts.
Ciarra’s world was different. Her profession required her to treat Larry like he was the only man left in the world. She had petted and pampered him. She had listened to him talk for hours about himself. She had sucked his cock whenever it was time to leave in order to go in search of her next client. She wasn’t in love with him in any way. Larry had no idea that she already had another child. It wasn’t something that a girl like her brought up in between the role-play and the fuzzy handcuffs. So why had she said yes? It was because of the inescapable heartbreak of her life. It was because she was desperate to square up. This was the best chance she had at any of it, at exiting the game, at escaping the constant tension of survival, at giving Aston the life that he deserved. Love was nothing next to survival. Love was nothing next to the promise of a safety she had never touched in all her life.
From underneath the weight of his arm across her, Ciarra felt her sorrow for Larry rise, and maybe a hint of guilt for the fact that she had lied to him. The father of the child that was now living this abhorrent life inside her was most likely not even his. It could belong to any of the several men she had slept with unprotected. She didn’t plan on keeping the child, even if she married him and so got Aston and herself off of the streets. If push came to shove, she would steal money from him to get the abortion when he was away at work one day and tell him that she had lost the baby.
The paradoxical gratitude and disgust she felt for Larry stirred like gossamer spice in her chest when she kissed him goodbye and promised to call him the next
