One Night With the Billionaire

Bang.

Smack.

“Oh my God, yes!”

“Don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop!”

“You are the king!”

Rolling my eyes, I sit straight up in bed. The pillow I’ve been holding over my ears gets tossed across the room in an uncharacteristic fit of anger, allowing the previously muffled sounds to penetrate straight to my eardrums.

Penetrate. Bad choice of words. Because unless my ears deceive me, there is a whole lot of penetrating going on next door.

Bang.

Squeal.

THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP.

“Noooo.” Covering my face with my hands, I slide over to the edge of the bed. I can’t handle this... this going on next door. I just can’t.

Raising a fist, I briefly contemplate knocking on the wall... not loudly enough to be rude, although clearly they’ve thrown that convention out the window. No, just loudly enough to point out that maybe, possibly, some of their neighbors are trying to sleep.

Instead, I let my hand fall back into my lap, but no matter what I do, I can’t block out the sounds. The intercourse sounds.

It shouldn’t be such a big deal—shouldn’t bother me so much. I shouldn’t be straining, trying to overhear. I should just buy some earplugs and go back to sleep.

I can’t. And it’s not logical to lie to myself, so I admit—within the confines of my skull—that I’m fascinated because I’ve never been this close to such shenanigans before.

The thumping stops momentarily, and I breathe a sigh of relief. Surely this can’t continue forever. Tonight is my third night in my new apartment, and I’ve endured the nocturnal party each evening. But surely my new neighbors aren’t that avid. Right? It’s not possible to have that kind of stamina. Surely there would be fatigue involved at some point. Possibly some chafing.

I chose this apartment building after extensive research because it was clean, in a new neighborhood, and represented the ideals I wished to embody as I embarked on my career. It wasn’t cheap, but I had a substantial amount in my bank account. The funds deposited by my mother before she’d deemed me an adult and sent me out into the world were largely untouched since I’d received full funding for school. And now, twenty-one years of age, with a doctorate in each hand, I had numerous lucrative paths to pursue.

Point being, I do not find it acceptable to have to listen to the cat-like yowls of my neighbors fornicating at three in the morning, every morning. A human needs seven hours of sleep to perform at maximum capacity.

As if they have a direct line to my thoughts, the thumping starts up again. At first it’s just a few soft bumps that could be construed as the bed settling under the weight of their inhabitants.

But then the thumping starts again. And the yowls.

“Hold on to the headboard. If you move your hands, I’ll spank your ass.” The male voice is so clear it could be right there in the room with me. My mouth falls open with disbelief.

Did he just threaten to hit her? Is she in trouble? Should I call for help?

But within moments, her mewls of pleasure answer my question. She’s not in trouble. Not even a little.

A sense of melancholy descends into my chest, and at the same time an ache appears between my thighs. Surely it’s just a primal response to the sounds of mating. That’s what my intellect tells me.

My body says something entirely different. If a twenty-year-old virgin body is to be trusted.

Virgin. Yes, I’m twenty years old and have never been touched. And when I say never, I do mean never. I’ve never had sex, never been kissed, never even held hands or gone on a date with a boy. Starting college at fifteen hinders one’s opportunities, after all. Plus, I’ve never deluded myself—my purpose in this world is in the ranks of academia. Not in the pleasures of the flesh.

But listening to grunts and groans of ecstasy, it’s more than I can handle.

I’ll go knock on the door. I’ll just request that they keep their... ahh... amour to a quieter level.

Just a few deep breaths to calm myself first. I’ll never survive if my new neighbors knew that my body has grown aroused from listening to them make love.

Wiping damp palms on the thighs of my pajamas, I slide my glasses onto my nose and make my way across the hall. The ruckus is even louder out here, and I feel the blood rushing to my cheeks.

What must it be like, to not care who knows that you’re doing that?

None of my business. Steeling myself, I walk the few steps to the next door and knock. If anything, the sex noises just get louder. Starting to become irritated, I knock again, harder. Still nothing.

Their behavior is so incredibly rude.

Finally I give in, in a way that I never do, and pound on the door with my fist. It feels illogically good, slamming my hand into the wood, frustration dissipating with every smack.

The noises stop, replaced by heavy footsteps. I school my face into a polite smile, ready to be a friendly little neighbor, even though that’s not at all how I feel. I feel tired, irritated, and aroused.

But if we all went around acting on unrestrained emotions, we’d be no better than a bunch of monkeys. And in my current circumstances, the word monkey makes me think of a slang term I once came across—monkey sex.

Hot, sweaty monkey sex.

Clearly, my brain is broken.

“Do you know what time it is?” The door before me swings open, revealing...

Oh. My. God.

Revealing a graying man, probably in his later forties, given his physical appearance. He’s decently attractive if you ignore the thirty-some year age difference between us.

He’s also sweaty and absolutely, completely naked. And absolutely, completely aroused.

I have doctorates in astrophysics and medicine. I have an IQ of 182. But I have absolutely no idea how to deal with the sight in front of me.

The man grins as my eyes stray to his throbbing member then snap back up to his face. His own eyes rake over me, lingering in the area of my breasts, causing my hands to clutch at the lapels of my conservative blue flannel pajama top.

“Cute.” The man smirks at my sleepwear. I feel a steel rod snap into place in my spine.

Get a grip, Mari. Surely that big brain of yours can find a connection to your tongue!

“What the fuck’s going on?” A sulky female voice emanates from the apartment behind the man, and then a woman is peering around him. She’s naked too, though I’m saved from that visual by the sheet that’s clutched to her abundant breasts.

Her hair is long and blonde and in quite the disarray. Slumberous blue cat eyes regard me thoughtfully, lips twisting into a smirk, and I will myself to hold still.

“Oh, it’s you. The brain trust.” Her smirk widens.

“I... yes.” I’m surprised she—Jenny—recognizes me. I taught two of her freshman introductory biology classes, despite the fact that she’s a couple of years older than me. She skipped half of them and was more interested in the boys sitting around her than my lectures when she was there. And even then, it had been hard not to notice that the boys were interested in her right back.

Blonde, popular, sexy—Jenny was all the things that I was not. And now I’ve seen her naked.

Awkward.

“What do you want?” As if just realizing that her man is naked in front of me, she shoves the sheet in front of him, which only causes her large, jiggling breasts to be revealed. I roll my eyes skyward, trying not to look at either of them.

“I... I’m wondering if perhaps you wouldn’t mind keeping it down.” I swallow loudly when silence greets my request. A silence that drags on until I can’t help but look back down.

“What, you have a hot date tomorrow?” Jenny’s face is so mean, she looks like she’s channeling Regina George. “Need your beauty sleep?”

“No.” What does that have to do with anything? “But a human woman my age needs an average of seven hours of sleep each night to maintain her health and mental well-being.”

“What?” The man stares at me, incredulous, before turning to Jenny. “Did she really just say that?”

“Yeah, she did.” Jenny turns to her lover with an eye roll of distaste directed at me. Looking down his body, she fastens her gaze on his erection, which bobs under her stare, and runs her tongue suggestively over her lips. “Come on. Let’s go take care of that little problem for you.”

“But she’s so sweet. It’s adorable.” The two of them examine me as though I’m a kitten, the man with something I surmise must be lust, Jenny with more than a hint of aggression.

And then the door slams in my face. I could knock again, demand that they honor my request...

This encounter has told me that I’m not likely to get very far. I have no choice but to turn back to my apartment and, given the late hour, return to bed.

Alone.

Always alone.

If my mother were still in my life, she would have reminded me that people who spend their nights fornicating are little more than animals and that I am far above them. I have a loftier purpose.

But she wouldn’t have said it with love, just her belief that the genes she selected for me—hers and the ones belonging to a carefully chosen, anonymous sperm donor—were superior.

Right this moment, I can find no comfort in that. I should be celebrating, with my doctorates in hand and life before me.

But I’m not. Right this moment, I want to be normal. I want to be a fornicating animal. I don’t want to be the girl the neighbors look at like a freak.

Intellect can’t push my emotions aside as I stiffly return to my bedroom. I’m straightening the sheets when I again hear voices on the other side of the wall.

“Why’d you slam the door?” It’s the man’s voice, a low rumble through the drywall. “She was cute. I wanted to ask her to join us.”

“Do you have a nerd fetish now? I’m good with role playing, but I’m not wearing those horrible pajamas for you.” I can see Jenny’s shudder in my mind’s eye, and I stand, suddenly cold, frozen in place. “Besides, she wouldn’t have a clue what to do with you.”

“Maybe a little innocence isn’t a bad thing.” I’d have to be deaf to miss the note in the man’s voice, the fact that he’s goading her. Jenny, however, does, or else simply chooses to ignore it, secure in her plentiful charms.

“She has no friends, she dresses like a grandma, and unless she’s talking about astrology, she can’t hold a conversation.”

“Astrology?”

“Yeah. You know. The stars and shit.”

“I think you mean astronomy.”

“Whatever.”

I’m slightly incredulous at the lack of brainpower of my one-time student. Do men prize large breasts enough to overlook this?

“My point is, she’s like a doctor or something, and she’s still, like, a teenager. She’s a freak. And probably a virgin, too.”

A virgin. According to Jenny Paul, age twenty-two, being a virgin is a fate worse than freakdom.

I’m not entirely sure that she’s wrong.

“So she’s like Doogie Howser.” The man sounds more intrigued by my lack of experience than anything, but I know that can’t be right. No man in his right man wants a girl my age who can name the intricate parts of the penis but has no idea what to do with one.

“Who?”

“Doogie Howser, MD. This old show about a sixteen-year-old doctor... never mind.” He breaks off with a laugh. “You’re too young to know.”

“I am young.” The promise is rich in Jenny’s voice. “Young. Supple. And don’t forget kinky.”

“How could I forget kinky?” The man growls, and Jenny squeals. “Come to daddy. You’ve been a bad girl. You need a spanking.”

Thump.

Bang.

The sex sounds have quieted down, but I still can’t sleep. With one hand clutching the mug of chamomile tea I brewed in an attempt to calm my jangled nerves, I pad barefoot to the living room and curl up in a corner of the couch.

Being awake at this hour isn’t usual for me. I don’t do sleepless nights—I’ve never had reason to. Intelligent, fit, reasonably attractive, I’ve always been pushed to spend my days becoming more intelligent, more fit. I’ve always gone to sleep at the end of the day knowing that I’ve worked toward fulfilling my reason for existence… though I know that my mother was disappointed in the fact that the superior sperm she had chosen to mix with her undoubtedly flawless egg had resulted in a daughter who was simply attractive, rather than beautiful.

And there, there was the little crack in my armor that Jenny had so easily managed to slip through. Intellectually I know why she said those things—she was feeling threatened by the presence of another woman around her mate and was attempting to establish herself as the dominant female.

Knowing this doesn’t make the cutting remarks any less true.

I don’t have any friends. I never have. The mechanics of human interaction sound simple enough on paper, but in person, there is a layer of complexity that I have never really understood. I do know that friends are supposed to like you for who you are, and yet I’ve never come across anyone eager to take the so-called brain trust out shopping to the mall.

No friends. And looking down at my sensible pajamas, I find that I can’t argue with her comment about my clothing either. I suppose I’m not the least bit fashionable, though really, I have no idea. I mostly wear clothing similar to what my mother dressed me in during my years in her house—simple slacks and plain blouses. I wear glasses, as do a large portion of the population, but I don’t suppose that the simple wire frames are funky enough to make them a statement. Though I’ve seen some girls wear thick plastic spectacles with skinny jeans and leather jackets, and it all seems like a reflection of their inner selves.

I don’t know what a reflection of me would look like, not really.

Startled by the realization, I try to sit up straight on the couch cushion. The softness pulls me back, and I wind up spilling tea all down my front, but I barely notice.

I don’t know what a reflection of me would look like, not really. A random thought, one that doesn’t make much sense, but it acts as a shockwave to my system, much as Jenny’s words earlier had.

I have achievements… scores of them. A doctorate in each hand, every academic award I’ve ever been up for, and the almost guaranteed acceptance at any job I care to apply for.

As a child, I learned to speak seven different languages, understood all of Stephen Hawkings’ work, played cello competitively, and studied ballet in the same manner. But I’ve never spent time with a friend, never held hands with a boy, never eaten a damn French fry.

An enriched environment like this is the way my mother chose to raise me. And as my parent, she had that right. However, I’m no longer under her roof.

If I don’t know who I am, the only person I can blame is myself.

“Damn it.” I almost slap my hand over my mouth the second the word leaves it. I don’t curse. Cursing, my mother always said, is for people who don’t have the intelligence to express their feelings any other way.

But… it feels good to say it. An expression of the anger welling up inside of me.

“Damn it,” I speak a little bit louder, wincing as though someone might hear and scold me.

Nobody does, of course. So I say it one more time, nearly shouting.

“Damn it!”

Hurrying down the hall to my bathroom, I fling open the door, squinting in the sudden light as I flip the light switch. What I see when I look in the mirror isn’t a surprise by any means, yet I study it in detail as if it is.

Curly light brown hair tamed into a braid that hangs down my back. Pale gray eyes surrounded by lashes the same color as my curls.

I’ve never thought about my fair skin much, other than to note that its light hue likely means it came from my sperm donor, a man my mother once told me was of Northern European descent. As I look at it now, it just looks… blank. A blank slate, telling nothing at all about who I am inside.

There’s nothing wrong with the way that I look… except that, at the root, I don’t like it.

I don’t want it.

Before I can overthink it, I open the drawer, closing my fingers around the handles of a pair of scissors. Tugging my thick braid defiantly over my shoulder, I saw the blades into the tail.

A six-inch plait falls to the ground, the tresses remaining on my head unraveling without the tie. I tremble a little, but it’s not with fear.

“Easy.” Willing my hand to stop shaking, I rake the fingers of the hand not holding the scissors through my remaining hair, fanning it out around my face. The single cut has left it decidedly crooked, and I cock my head, my brain already calculating where to snip and how to make it even.

Tilting my head forward, I lift a piece, draw the curls through my fingers, and then cut along the straight edge made by my fingers, as my stylist does when I go for my quarterly trim. I do this repeatedly, until more than half of my formerly waist-length hair is on the floor, tickling at my bare feet.

Sucking in a deep breath, I splash some water into the curls, finger combing away the frizz. And then I stop looking at the hair as its own entity, instead focusing on me.

The new cut is not fabulous, certainly not what I’d have gotten if I went to a salon with a professional. But still, it falls to my shoulders, framing my face in a much softer way than my typical ponytail did.

I feel like I’ve lost ten pounds, and I’m not referring to the hair that lies on the floor. Unable to stop myself, I shake my head, making my hair dance, and I giggle, the sound so foreign that I stop abruptly, slapping my hand over my mouth.

Did I just giggle? I don’t giggle. I rarely laugh, in fact. Everything in my life is serious, important.

And giving myself a haircut when I’m punchy from lack of sleep and emotion is most definitely not serious or important. My heart sinks as quickly as the frivolity of change had buoyed it.

“What are you doing, Mari?” I blink down at the thick locks covering the floor, then at my reflection. I like how I look. I like it a lot.

A haircut doesn’t make me a new person. I know this. But as I think of how unhappy Jenny’s words made me, how it just tore the scab off something I’ve been hiding deep inside…

I know that I don’t want to be this way. I don’t want to be faceless to everyone, including myself. I want to be young, something that’s always been denied to me.

I think of my two fresh doctorates, and of the career path before me. I’m not ready to give up everything that I’ve worked so hard for.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t have hair that makes me happy. And it doesn’t mean that I can’t have… maybe… Just one night to pretend that I’m just a normal young woman.

“One night.” Nodding, I turn my head, studying my face in the mirror. I can’t change who I am. But one night to let loose, to maybe discover a part of myself that I hadn’t known even existed?

What kind of trouble could I possibly get into?