A Night With A Stranger novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Fifty Thousand Dollars
Jada wakes in a billionaire's suite with no memory of the night, he offers her a check, and she tears it in half; in the lobby a text from the club's best customer says he has photographs.
I opened my eyes with my head pounding and my mouth as dry as paper.
The ceiling above me was far too high.
The sheets were white and heavy, and nothing in the room was mine.
I tried to sit up and my hip hurt so badly I gasped.
My knees were scraped raw, and the camisole I'd worn to work had a strap torn at the seam.
My leather jacket hung on a hook by the door.
My canvas bag sat closed on the arm of an armchair that someone had dragged to the foot of the bed.
A thin hotel blanket lay crumpled on the seat.
The last thing I remembered was one in the morning at the Cellar, and Bree pushing a glass of red wine into my hand.
"For the road, Jada," she'd said. "You earned it."
It had tasted bitter at the bottom, and I'd blamed the cheap bottle.
Dennis Kroll had sat at table nine all night, watching me carry bottles.
He tipped two hundred dollars a bottle, and every time he said, "Come with me, sweetheart."
Every time, I said no.
Now I was in a bed I couldn't place, and the whole night was gone.
A door opened across the room.
A man came in wearing a charcoal suit that was creased across the lap, with his tie hanging loose.
He stopped when he saw me sitting up.
"You're awake," he said.
"Where am I?"
"The Brodsky Grand, twenty-second floor. My name is Evan Brodsky."
I pulled the sheet up to my chest.
"Did we..."
I couldn't finish it.
He looked at the carpet, then back at me.
"I don't know," he said.
"You don't know?"
"I woke up in that chair with my head splitting. I don't remember last night at all."
His jaw was tight, and his hand shook when he reached for his inside pocket.
He took out an envelope and set it on the bed beside my knee.
"This is for whatever I did," he said. "It's a cashier's check for fifty thousand dollars. Take it, and tell me if you need anything else."
I stared at the envelope.
Then I opened it and looked at the number.
My mother's hospital bills were still eleven thousand four hundred dollars.
That check would have cleared every cent and paid my tuition on top.
"You wake up next to a woman you don't remember," I said, "and the first thing you do is write a number."
"The first thing I did was wait until you woke up," he said quietly. "I didn't know what else to do."
I was too angry to hear it.
I tore the check in half.
Then I tore it again, and again, and let the pieces fall onto his polished shoes.
"I'm not for sale," I said.
"That isn't what I meant."
"It's what you wrote."
I slid out of the bed and my knees nearly gave way.
He moved toward me, one hand out.
"Don't," I said.
He stopped.
I pulled my jacket off the hook, grabbed my bag from the chair, and put my feet into my boots without lacing them.
"Tell me your name," he said. "Please."
"You didn't earn it."
I walked out and didn't look back.
In the elevator my phone buzzed to life at four percent.
There was a text from Bree.
"Hope you got home okay!! You were SO out of it, I put you in a cab. Call me, I'm worried."
I didn't remember a cab.
I didn't remember anything past that glass.
Then a second text came in from a number I didn't know.
It was a photograph.
I was limp against a man's shoulder in a hotel corridor, my head hanging, my boots dragging on the carpet.
Under it was one line.
"Nice night, sweetheart. I have more."
Only one person had ever called me that.
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