Saving Her Billionaire

For the two years they had been together, the love that Samantha displayed was very real to Nate. It was not real anymore, this was true, but during those two years he had believed whole heartedly in its existence. He missed that feeling. He missed the feeling of loving someone completely and being loved in return. He wanted it again, but he did not think that he would be able to trust anyone enough to allow himself to do it.

The door opened and people walked in. Nate’s inebriated mind was not so hazy that his sharp instincts were affected. He could tell that it was two women, both of them laughing. The sound of a woman laughing is a very pleasant thing to hear indeed. It is the kind of thing that you want to keep hearing for the rest of your life on repeat and never listen to anything else again. Or, maybe this was just Nate being the hopeless romantic that he was. Maybe nobody else thought that the sound of these two women laughing was all that attractive.

He turned to look at them as they talked to two men that were sitting at a table. They did not behave like they knew each other. Nate assumed that the two women were just out on the town having fun, flirting with men and not expecting anything. He liked the thought of that. He liked the thought of these two women simply existing in this space with him, and he enjoyed the thought of existing in a space where these two women were having fun and getting over the various problems that they would undoubtedly be facing in their lives.

He turned back and contemplated his drink while thinking about how the girls looked. One of them was blonde and white and was wearing glasses. The glasses were kind of s*xy but the girl’s figure was not really to Nate’s liking. She was kind of bony, and though she was tall this only seemed to accentuate the skinniness.

Nate decided that the other girl was more to his liking. She was black and gorgeously so, her skin contrasting beautifully with the skin of her friend. She was not as tall as her friend, but her body was remarkable. It was curvy, with the curves jutting out like they had been carved into marble. She was the one with the laugh, he realized. She had a rich laugh, heavy in a way. This did not take any of the femininity away from her laugh, however. Quite on the contrary, it made her seem mysterious and s*xy, the kind of person that Nate would be desperate to know.

To his surprise, this second girl walked up to him and sat down beside him.

“Life got you down?” she asked.

Nate was amused. She was clearly being ironic, using the kind of line that a man would use on a woman. He liked that she was so open and confident and that she was not at all afraid to talk to him in any way. He also liked the fact that her voice seemed to indicate that she was genuinely interested in what he had to say, she was genuinely concerned about whether he was doing alright or not.

Her name was Phoebe, and she was utterly beautiful. Nate felt like she might have been the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He felt his heart swelling at the sight of her. He did not want it to stop, even though a more mature and cautious part of him felt like it would be best if this feeling stopped in its tracks.

“So,” she asked. “What do you do?”

“I work at a boring office,” said Nate. “It pays well, but I have a feeling that whatever it is you do is going to be a lot more interesting to hear about.”

“Well,” said Phoebe, “I suppose you’re right. What I do is rather interesting. I’m a counselor.”

“A counselor?” asked Nate. “That is really cool. Do you help a lot of people?”

“I like to think I do,” said Phoebe. “I am not at all picky in who I counsel. I’ve counseled rap* victims and people who are recovering from child abuse, I’ve counseled police officers who have been shot and former drug addicts, and I’ve even counseled people who are going through bad break ups and just need someone to talk to who won’t judge them for what they are feeling and will make them feel like whatever they are feeling is completely valid.”

“That’s really nice,” said Nate. “I mean, you’re not judgmental at all. You don’t think that the people who are dealing with break ups are being immature or need to get over it. You don’t compare people’s grief, you don’t weigh tragedies against one another and judge one or the other to be greater. You deal with people in a really mature way, because it would be very easy indeed to think that the people dealing with break ups need to get over it if you have just spoke to a rap* victim.”

“That’s not how grief works,” said Phoebe. “That’s why I don’t judge, because people should be free to grieve about whatever they want to grieve about.”

“Do you enjoy what you do?” asked Nate, and Phoebe suddenly made a face. It was not an unpleasant face at all. It was not the kind of face you made during a normal conversation either, though. It was the kind of face you made when you were genuinely concerned about something, when you were particularly vulnerable.

Nate wondered what it was that had made her make that face. She was acting like he had asked a very intimate and personal question. Had it been an intimate and personal question? Nate did not know, and he did not care. He felt like he had asked her something very important, something that people didn’t ask her often enough.

Besides, the face she was making was utterly beautiful. Nate was truly and thoroughly aroused. He wanted her more than he had wanted any woman since Samantha, and this was saying something. For a moment he wondered what it was about her that was making him feel this way, then he pushed the thought from his mind. The why did not matter. The feeling was everything.