It’s me, Samantha, it’s me, he thought, Gordon Phillips. I’m sorry I left you then. I wish it could have played out differently.
Gordon sat up and stared straight at Samantha.
“Sammy, stop, I can’t keep this up any longer,” he said.
Sammy? How could Mr. Phillips know her name was Sammy? What the heck was going on here?
Gordon took a deep breath. “Look at me, Sammy.”
“Mr. Phillips, please. I thought I’d been through this with Ramsey.”
Was Gordon just another sexual asshole?
“I don’t mean that. Look at my face. Just look at my face.”
Gordon stared at her, trying not to move his face like he was a paused TV screen. Those eyes, they seem so bright, even out of kilter with his dark, disheveled hair.
“Sammy, look, don’t you recognize me?”
No one called her Sammy, not like that, not in a long time.
No. It can’t be, she thought. Phillips.
“What’s your first name, Mr. Phillips?”
“Come on, Sammy, you know what my name is.”
Yes, she did. His first name was Gordon. Gordy. She grabbed his face and kissed him on the lips.
“Sammy, you still kiss like an angel. But…”
Samantha pulled back from the kiss and punched him in the crotch. Gordon groaned, almost dropping to the ground. Samantha didn’t look back. She ran out of the building yet again.
And that’s the end of my fucking contract, she thought. What the fuck am I gonna do about Ella? Gordon Phillips?
Chapter 5
The walls of the cafe seemed remarkably closed in, considering that Gordon had suggested this venue. As Samantha had expected, Gordon was late. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was bothering to see him. She didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to have anything to do with him. The complete callus way with which she had been rejected still haunted Samantha to this day.
As much as she had loved Ted, she ultimately knew that she had played it safe with him. He was an extremely gentle soul, an extremely generous soul, and he had proved to be careful. She had sometimes thought he wasn’t an exciting person, but she cared about him. He wasn’t an inspiring person. He was calm, he was kind, and he was a good man. That was it. Samantha often wondered what they had seen in each other. They had shared nothing in common. She used to be energetic and adventurous, but Ted seemed to calm her down, so much so that she became someone else.
Samantha liked to explore as many new experiences as she could. Often this could be as simple as eating a meal from another country. If Samantha found herself doing the same thing repeatedly, it distressed her. She needed to see new things all the time. One of the many arguments that she remembered was Ted’s accusation that all she was doing was chasing novelty. He accused her of never settling down on one thing, finding out she was learning about one new thing or the other, and not sticking to only one thing.
This was one of the reasons that Samantha didn’t like watching TV, and Ted did. Watching TV required a certain amount of dedication coming back to the same thing most of the time, or having to be engrossed on one program or show, or sitting in one spot for a long time, consuming content like an overly sweetened snack. Essentially, even with premium television, you have to be willing to revisit certain themes, ideas, certain experiences. Even if premium television, as opposed to the network television of old, did not seek to precisely repeat the experience of every episode once a week, it wanted people to devour large-scale stories that required longer than the two hours of a movie.
Ted would often ask what Samantha would like to eat, and Samantha would tell him that whatever he wanted would be fine with her. However, it frustrated Ted when Samantha curled her nose at every culinary suggestion that he would make. They often argued.
“How about this? I know you liked it”
“But I want to try new food experiences. I want something else.”
“How about this?”
“No, we had that last week.”
“Oh, for crying out loud, Samantha, what do you want? There are only so many restaurants that we can go to and only so many dishes that we can cook. Do you want to buy a recipe book and go from there? Anyway, how can we try the cuisine of another culture if you don’t get someone who already knows how to cook it to make it for us?”
Samantha had longed for their lives to go beyond food and television, but Ted seemed to be stuck in this rut. He would ask her what she wanted to do, and she wouldn’t feel comfortable. She was rarely satisfied. She wanted adventure. She wanted new experiences. She wanted to go out and learn new things, to experience the whole world, not to be stuck in front of a TV screen constraining herself to see however many pixels that were within that roughly three-foot rectangle. And, if she took Ted out to the latest art exhibition, or a tech show, or a cultural event, he would end up finding a reason to hate it.
Samantha sometimes felt that they were speaking a different language. In that sense, then, she couldn’t blame Ted. They simply liked different things. Samantha had settled with someone who was calm and sensible, and one should never settle with life. All that did was make her unhappy.
True to form, Gordon was late. This was exactly how Samantha remembered him. Back in the day, this seemed cute, endearing even. She would wait for him at the location where they set their date, and she would sit, coffee in one hand, book in the other, familiar with how dates with Gordon were supposed to work. She even took a book to concerts, knowing that they would miss the first couple of songs. She didn’t mind. Bands tended to softball the entrances; their best songs would be somewhere in the middle of the program.
Samantha had been so in love with Gordon, and she didn’t mind this inconvenience. However, sitting as she was, in this cafe, she certainly was not in love with Gordon anymore, and just felt pissed. She had assumed that her sparkly new contract would be void, having punched the CEO in the groin. She felt unusually calm about this. She didn’t want to revisit her past. Despite the comforts of having access to this much money, she would rather have gone to find clients elsewhere, to start that mountainous prospect again. She had only answered Gordon’s summons because it was his secretary who rang. Samantha had to consider Ella, after all. She would give this billionaire five minutes of her time, nothing more. Her coffee had become lukewarm, and she was getting ready to leave before Gordon walked in. Gordon was trying to look incognito, dressed as he was in jogging pants, a loose sweater, and a baseball cap.
“Sammy, I’m so glad you could come.”
“Don’t call me Sammy, Mr. Phillips. Is there a business proposition that you wish to make? Make it fast. My coffee is getting cold. Hell, my coffee is already cold. What the fuck is with you, Mr. Phillips?” Samantha was pissed off, and it showed. She knew she was once in love with this guy, but now all she felt was anger, and she was trying her best to control it.
“I know you’re mad, Samantha. I understand. I wrecked something great back in college. Is it okay to call you Samantha? I can call you Ms. Parker if you like.”
“Shut up, Gordon, and make your point. I assume you’re not here to convince me to stay. You are aware that I am not the only masseuse in New York.”
“I know that, Samantha. Let me help you.”