Thank you for your continued interest and support. I appreciate it. I was a bit too tired last night to honour your requests...

I do not own Glee or the characters, neither do I own Serving The Billionaire.

MERCEDES

I called Brittany while I was waiting for the subway and told her I wouldn't be coming to work the next day.

She sounded puzzled, but didn't ask me any questions, and I was intensely grateful.

I couldn't have talked about what had happened even if I'd wanted to... I didn't have the words for it.

Whatever had just happened... Whatever Sam had tried to make me do... However I had refused... It was all beyond me.

The next morning, I slept as long as I could, and then lay in bed for another hour, eyes closed, trying and failing not to think about Sam.

Fact... He'd asked me to perform oral sex on a stranger.

Fact... He'd been stunned that I had refused.

Fact... He had let me walk away without protest.

Implication... He thought that I would want to do it?

Consequently, implication... He thought I wanted to be his whore?

I rolled over, groaning, and pulled my pillow over my face. I didn't want to think about anything. My life had gotten entirely too complicated since I'd met Sam...

I knew there was a reason I'd stayed a virgin for twenty-four years. It was time to swear off men, and go back to being celibate for the next twenty-four.

Maybe by the time I was fifty, I would've figured out how to interact with the opposite sex.

Finally, I admitted defeat and got up to make coffee... I would never know what Sam had intended unless I asked him, and I had no intention of ever doing that.

In fact, I had no intention of ever speaking to him again...

I should've cut ties the previous evening, like I originally intended, before the party... Before I let him touch me.

My mistake was, as always, letting his charisma influence me away from what I knew was the correct course of action.

So, starting now, no more Sam...

No more sex...

And no more intense interpersonal connection...

I would go back to being just me, boring Mercedes, cocktail waitress and person of no importance whatsoever.

And he could go back to being Sam Evans, most important man in the world...

At least to me.

I ground the heels of my hands against my eyes. I wasn't making things any easier for myself.

My coffee maker whistled at me, and I gratefully poured my first cup... I was going to need way more than one to get me through this day, but I had to start somewhere.

I looked at the clock... It was noon, which was around the time I usually woke up.

I should've made more of an effort to go back to sleep though, because when I was sleeping, I didn't have to think about Sam.

I took my coffee over to the sofa and opened my laptop... My inbox was full of emails about impending Black Friday sales.

But the last thing I wanted to do was spend too much money on a flat-screen television or whatever other useless junk I didn't need.

I hated the holidays...

I had no home to go to and usually spent both Thanksgiving and Christmas alone in my apartment, feeling adrift.

I spent the next fifteen minutes reading through and mercilessly deleting every email in my inbox.

But it didn't make me feel any better.

So I started making my daily rounds of gossip and fashion blogs... Two things I had very little interest in, but had started reading about in an effort to educate myself.

Since I started working at the club, I'd spent more time than I cared to think about, reading reviews of different lipstick brands.

It could be pretty overwhelming, but I figured there was a steep learning curve, and the only way it would become less confusing, was if I kept plugging away.

And of course, because the universe hated me, the first website I opened had Sam's face plastered all over it...

The headline screamed... "SANTANA LOPEZ STEPS OUT WITH INFAMOUS PLAYBOY SAM EVANS! BUY HER DRESS HERE!"

Infamous playboy?

I clicked on the link...

Santana Lopez was apparently a model of some sort, and she and Sam had been spotted at an art opening on Saturday night, climbing into a limo together.

That was the same day I'd woken up in his bed!

I swallowed hard, fighting against the sudden lump in my throat... There was no reason for me to be surprised. We hadn't made each other any promises...

He was young and handsome and wealthy, so of course he was keeping his options open. And I would be doing exactly the same thing... If I had options.

I opened a new tab and typed "Sam Evans playboy" into the search bar... The long list of results didn't reassure me. I clicked on the first link...

"Sam Evans at it again... Fourth girl in two weeks."

I clicked the back button and opened the next link...

"Sam Evans still delicious, seen flirting with Amber Riley at Per Se."

The third link...

"Gabrielle Ramos spills all about hot night with Sam Evans!"

It was one thing to know, intellectually, that you were nothing...just a convenient diversion... But it was another thing entirely to have it spelled out for you in 48-point font.

Of course I meant nothing to Sam...

Why would I?

I was just another disposable woman, not even famous enough for the tabloids to pay attention to.

And he was nice to me, sure. His mother had probably raised him right. But niceness didn't mean anything. Most people were nice, for the most part. It was the default state for social animals... Don't smack the monkey beside you, and it won't smack you back.

None of my rationalizations made it hurt any less, though...

I should've stopped there...

I should've closed the browser and read a magazine, gone outside, done anything to distract myself, but I was determined to find something that would make me hate him...

I needed to hate him... It was the only thing that would make me feel better.

And I didn't think it would be very hard... He went to a sex club for fun in his spare time, for goodness sake; surely he'd done something morally repellent that would make me lose all interest in him.

Tax evasion, exploitation of workers, human trafficking... Something...

But the more I looked, the more I regretted it...

Sam hadn't done anything horrible, and worse, he'd actually done many many things that were good.

He was the lowest-paid executive at his company...

He had donated 50% of his income to charity in the last fiscal year...

He volunteered...oh God...as a Big Brother to a kid from the Bronx...

He was, in short, a prince among men, and as I read article after article describing the many noble things that he'd done, I realized that he wasn't just a pretty face...

There was more to him than womanizing smeared all over the tabloids. He was a good person, the kind of man that I couldn't help but admire.

But I really wanted to be able to hate him...

I was still sitting there, staring blankly at my computer screen, when my doorbell buzzed...

I sighed, and didn't move. I didn't feel like talking to anyone.

It was probably just the mailman; he could leave whatever it was with the retired lady who lived on the first floor. She was always home to collect everyone's mail.

But the buzzing didn't stop... It kept going, insistent, until I finally gave up and hauled myself off the couch.

If there wasn't some kind of emergency, I was going to be really annoyed.

I shuffled down the six flights of stairs to the building's foyer... Someone was standing in the vestibule... A tall person... A man wearing a long overcoat...

Oh God...

I hauled open the door...

Of course, Sam had come to see me when I was still in my pajamas and hadn't even brushed my teeth yet.

He came into the main lobby, shaking snow off his coat. I didn't even know it had started snowing...

"How did you know where I live?" I asked, the first words that spilled out of my mouth. I sounded suspicious, even to myself. Well, I was suspicious...

"Harry told me," he said. And at my blank look, "My driver. You had... Remember, he dropped you off here, so..."

"I remember," I said, folding my arms. "So you just decided to invite yourself over."

"Well," he said, and had the courtesy to look sheepish. "I didn't know how else to get in touch with you. Brittany wouldn't give me your phone number."

"You asked Brittany..." I shook my head, disbelieving. What was he really doing here? "What do you want, Sam?"

Suddenly, a door creaked open, just a sliver, and I saw my neighbour peering out at us. I smiled at her to show that I was okay, but she didn't go back inside her apartment...

Sam had turned at the sound, and now he turned back to me and said,

"Is there somewhere else we can talk?"

"You mean like my apartment?" I asked. "Is this your usual tactic? You show up at a girl's apartment and invite yourself up?"

"I'm not...that's not who I'm. You aren't usually so..." He trailed off, blinking. "I know I screwed up last night, but I didn't think..."

He was right; I was usually a lot more submissive around him. But I was on my home turf, now, and he'd caught me off guard. I was confused and lashing out.

I closed my eyes, trying to regain my equilibrium...

"Okay," I said. "You can come up. It's a mess, though."

"I won't mind," he replied.

We climbed the stairs in silence, Sam following me. And I frantically tried to remember if there was anything particularly gross or embarrassing in my apartment...

I'd washed dishes the night before, and most of my dirty laundry was in the hamper. But it was too late to worry about it anyway.

He was here...

When I opened the door and walked into my apartment, I saw it through his eyes...

The tiny, cramped space, the hideous flowered sofa I'd gotten for $50 at a thrift store, and the twin bed shoved against one wall with the sheets rumpled.

However, I was fiercely proud of my apartment... I owned everything in it, I paid rent every month, and it was mine...

But it had never looked so shabby to me.

I sat on the sofa and tried not to look at Sam's expression as he came through the door... I remembered his clean, bright, airy penthouse, and felt ashamed.

He looked incredibly out of place standing in the doorway of my tiny, dingy apartment, wearing a coat that probably cost a month's rent.

He didn't belong in my world... It was too small to hold him.

He made a slow round of the apartment, looking at the dishes draining beside the sink, picking up and examining the little animal figures I'd collected...

I said nothing while he moved through the small space. I had the strange thought that if I stayed very still and didn't speak, he would forget I was there.

But at last he stopped pacing and turned to face me, leaning against the kitchen counter...

"I'm sorry about last night," he said.

I didn't respond; I couldn't think of anything to say.

He paused for a moment, as though he was waiting for me to speak, and then said,

"I shouldn't have asked you to do that. I thought...well, it doesn't matter what I thought. I made a mistake. And I'm sorry."

He looked down at his hands as he spoke, fiddling with a button on the cuff of his coat...

He was nervous, I realized. And I wasn't sure what to make of that.

"You thought I would want to," I said, half-questioning.

"Yes," he said. "Or...I suppose I did. I wasn't thinking. And then you safeworded out and I..." He broke off and shook his head. "I was mistaken. I hope you'll find it in you to forgive me."

It was a good apology, by just about any measure, but I didn't want to forgive him just yet. Something in me had been badly hurt in that moment when he ordered me to suck another man's penis, and I was wary of giving in too easily.

I didn't want him to think that he could do whatever he wanted and be instantly forgiven as soon as he fixed me with that sad, green gaze.

So I said,

"Who's Santana Lopez?"

And I regretted the words as soon as I spoke them...

I sounded like a jealous girlfriend. I wasn't Sam's girlfriend, and I had no right to be jealous.

But as hurt as I was by what happened at the club the night before, I was more hurt by the thought of him kissing some model the same day we had shared coffee in his apartment.

The day after I lost my virginity to him...

But he didn't know that, and I couldn't blame him for it. What to me had been a night I would remember in vivid detail for the rest of my life, had been, for him, just another Friday evening.

I was positive that he hadn't been a virgin in at least a decade. So everything that was special about that night was probably completely mundane to him.

I was so busy beating myself up over my inability to keep my mouth shut that it took me several seconds to notice Sam's reaction.

Instead of getting annoyed or defensive, he was smiling...

That annoyed me.

"Is something funny?" I snapped.

I didn't like being laughed at, especially not when I was in such a vulnerable position, still in my pajamas with a billionaire in my apartment.

"I grew up with Santana," he said. "Our mothers are best friends. She's like a sister to me. Where did you even hear her name?"

"Some gossip blog," I mumbled, embarrassed. I shouldn't have jumped to any conclusions.

He raised an eyebrow.

"You read those?"

"I'm trying to teach myself about, you know...clothing and makeup and... things like that." I shrugged. "I didn't go looking for stuff about you."

"I see," he said, and sighed. "Oh, Mercedes. You shouldn't be working at that club."

I stiffened.

"Why not?"

"You can do better," he said. "You have so much potential. Don't waste it serving drinks to rich assholes."

What a condescending thing to say... I laughed sharply. It didn't sound happy even to me.

"I can do better? I really can't. My father was a drunk who beat my mother, who refused to leave him. We never had any money. My childhood sucked. I've been scraping by for years... one crummy job after another, and now I'm finally making real money. I just opened my very first savings account, so don't lecture me about better. This is the best my life has ever been. And you're... nobody has ever told you no. But I've spent my whole life being told no over and over again."

I rubbed my eyes, covering my face with my hands. I shouldn't have said any of that...

"You've been through a lot," Sam said. He took a step towards me and stopped. "Look, I know that I can't really understand what you've been through. But you shouldn't limit your options just because you've had a hard life."

To my horror, tears filled my eyes... I covered my face again, this time to keep him from noticing that I had started crying.

"I'll keep that in mind," I choked out. Then I took a few deep breaths, calming myself, and managed to get the waterworks under control.

I lowered my hands from my face...

"That's not the point. I'm still..."

'I'm still mad at you,' I filled in silently, assertion and reminder. It was hard to stay angry when he kept looking at me like that...

I had to end this... I should've done it the night before, and I hadn't, and look how that had turned out. I couldn't keep going like this, thinking about him all the time, hungry for his presence when we weren't together.

It was time...

"Sam, look," I said. "This has been really fun, okay, but it's not... It isn't real life. We have nothing in common, not really. I need to focus on working and making money and taking care of myself. It would be really, really easy for me to get in over my head with you, and I can't let that happen. I know you aren't serious about this; I'm just a notch on your bedpost, I guess, like all those starlets you go out with, and I'm not really, you know. It's fine that you do that. But it's not really for me."

He stared at me blankly.

"Are you... breaking up with me?"

"No," I said. "I can't break up with you. We aren't...there isn't anything. But I think we need to stop spending time together."

"Because of the starlets," he said. His voice had no intonation to it; it was completely flat and emotionless. "What starlets?"

I turned to my laptop, still open on the sofa...

"Amber Riley," I said. "Gabrielle Ramos. Diana Agron. Emma Watson..."

He held up one hand to stop me.

"That's enough. Are you going to believe those bloggers? They're vultures. I speak to a woman for five minutes at a party, and suddenly I'm having a passionate affair with her." He shook his head. "I shouldn't have to explain myself to you. It's like you said. We aren't... There isn't anything."

I deserved that, but it still stung.

"The club," I said, grasping at straws, desperate for a reason that he wouldn't question, so I wouldn't have to explain the truth to him... That I wasn't good enough for him, and never would be. "You said you like watching. You're there with the...the dancers, in the private rooms, and you...I mean, I don't know what happens in there, but..."

"Are you really doing this?" he asked.

I ignored the interruption...

"...but I think that you should consider that the women you're watching are people, with their own inner lives, and by perpetuating the exchange of female sexuality for money, you're undermining the ability of women to meaningfully transform the accepted gendered behavioral binary."

I was babbling now, parroting things that Joss had said to me without really understanding them. But I hoped it was coherent enough that Sam wouldn't see through my desperate verbal fumbling...

Sam folded his arms across his chest...

"The gendered behavioral binary," he repeated.

I nodded, deciding it was probably best if I didn't say anything else.

"I suppose it makes sense you would think that," he said. "I'm at the club a lot, after all. And I did tell you..." He stopped, and sighed. "I shouldn't tell you this," he said. "Please understand that if you breathe a word about it to anyone, you'll be undoing several years of hard work on the part of many people."

I swallowed... I didn't know what he was going to tell me, but it sounded serious.

"I understand."

"I'm helping federal prosecutors build a case against one of my guests, Jeremey Allen. He won't meet with me anywhere except the club; he's paranoid, thinks he's being bugged. Well, he is, but he doesn't have any proof of it." He sighed again, and drew one hand over his face. "So that's why I'm at the club all the time. Not, as you seem to think, because I enjoy exploiting women."

"That's not what I think," I said, even though that was, in fact, pretty much what I had said to him. So I decided that misdirection was the best tactic... "Who's Jeremy Allen?"

"You've met him. He's the one who likes fingering the dancers," Sam said.

His words made me blush, but I knew then, who he was talking about.

"You're building a case?"

"Securities fraud," he said. "Mainly insider trading." He shook his head. "Men who have so much money that they can't think about anything but making more."

"But not you," I said, almost a question. "You think about other things."

Our eyes met...

His gaze, so clear and direct, sent an electric current running down my spine.

"Yes, I think about other things," he agreed.

He was a better man than I thought. I had known it instinctively since the first night I met him; and now I had the evidence, more than I could've asked for. And it only served to strengthen my certainty that I had to cut him loose.

I was nobody, just a cocktail waitress with a high school diploma.

He was going to be President...

I felt hollowed out, like I had been scooped empty of every organ, hope and memory... Lifted clean out of me.

I said,

"I'm sorry. I just can't."

He must've sensed the finality in my voice, because he nodded, lips compressed into a thin line, and buttoned his coat.

He didn't belong in my world, and I didn't belong in his...

Stay safe!