To the review that thought it ironic that Ana was a schoolteacher, while also sounding so stupid (I'm assuming you mean her Georgian accent). Fuck everyone below the Pennsylvania line, yeah? You… you do know they still have schoolteachers underneath the bible belt, right?
Here's ch four my friends. I used the alibi room because pizza is my thing and I knew it was close to street market. But now I can't stop thinking about SHAMELESS
At exactly 12 noon, Ana made her way over to my table at The Alibi. I had to work awfully hard to neutralize my expression once I took in her appearance. Gone was the lively painter from Friday morning. She was wearing plain black leggings, and a university sweatshirt. Her hair was once again piled on top of her head, but this time it appeared to look straw like. She wasn't wearing makeup on Friday, but her face was full of life. Blushed and dewy. Today, her natural face was pale. She looked sick.
She sat down in front of me without making eye contact or taking her hands out of the pocket of her sweatshirt. She was silent.
"Are you alright, Miss Steele?" I asked, to fill the silence.
She took a sharp breath, and closed her eyes for a moment. Once she opened them, she looked at me for the first time.
"What do you want from me?" she asked quietly. I could tell she was struggling not to cry. While I had been around many a crying woman in my life, this one was suddenly cutting me to pieces.
"Hey." I began, "What's going on? Tell me what's wrong."
Ana looked at me as if I had gone crazy. "What's wrong?" she repeats me.
"A man that I find out from google owns most of Seattle, insinuates that he is going to tell everyone about something very private about me and then use it to get me fired, and I'm supposed to act like nothing is wrong? I moved across the country and fell in love with these children. I am damn good at my job, and I make a difference for the first time in my life, and you're threatening to take all of that away from me? And I'm supposed to be fine?"
Did I do that?
I mean, I suppose my note accompanying the flowers might have suggested I would act in that manner…
"Miss Steele," I place my open hands on top of the table palms up, hoping to appear more harmless. "I know my note stated otherwise, but I never intended to bring any harm to you. Idle threats… Miss Steele, they are currency in the business world. I can assure you that I have not and will not make any move to tamper with your employment. My mother speaks highly of you. I'm almost certain she would get rid of me before she got rid of you."
Ana smiled slightly at the mention of Grace, but just as quick as the life came into her face, it left. I want to punch myself in the face right now.
"Ana." I lean up and reach across the booth. I place my hand on her elbow and gently work her hand out of her pocket and onto the tabletop. Once there, I slide my hand down her arm, and grasp her fingers.
I can feel it. The electric current between us. I'm almost convinced that when I let go, I will look down and have another paint streak across my palm.
"Ana. I am so sorry. I never should have insinuated that I would use anything we've spoken about against you. I am disgusted with myself. Additionally, you know just as much about me and I would be at your mercy as well."
Ana shook her head, slowly.
"No you would not. I would never tell a soul what happened to… I'd never tell anyone anything about you. I would never do that to a person."
I sighed.
"I know that my actions have stated otherwise. But I promise you, Ana. I would never do that to you. Normally before any type of discussion like this, I have the other party sign an NDA."
I open the folder next to my elbow holding the NDA and pen I intended to present to Ana to sign, only now I'd rather curl up into a ball and roll backwards into hell.
She quickly grabs the pen and makes to sign the form, but I am quicker, and I pull it away.
"You are not signing this. Not after how I've acted towards you. And please, Ana. Do not ever sign something that you haven't read like that." This document could have said anything, and the girl would have just signed her life away. If that doesn't scream "I need a dom to take care of me." Then I don't know what does.
"Honestly Grey, I would sign anything to make this all just go away." Ana pulls her remaining hand out of her pocket and places her head in her hands.
This was not the reaction I expected. So, she liked it a little rough. Big deal. It was unnerving that she was acting as if she was being forced into a confessional booth.
"So… just. What do you want to know?"
Everything, I thought.
"How did you meet Elena?" I could see her gritting her teeth. That's a habit I would break quickly if she were mine.
"I could ask you the same thing." She said, condescendingly.
"Elena and my mother have been best friends since I was a child."
"And you just… grew to realize you had common interests, then?" she asked, a sarcastic nip in her tone.
"Something like that," we were not going there just yet. Not until I unraveled the Ana mystery. Ana nodded her head repeatedly and stared off into the busy restaurant.
She didn't speak for a while but when she finally did, I immediately knew just how common our interests were.
"I met Elena when I was thirteen." She said quietly. "My daddy, he lived in Montesano. I stayed in Savannah with momma through the school year, but I'd come to Washington and spend the summers with daddy." She smiled when she spoke of her father.
"He was a forestry technician. And the summer I turned thirteen, his boss started sending him to work in Seattle because the volume was always high. He took it every year. The pay was real good, you know. He'd work it a couple months, and then go back to Montesano and take a swing shift. It seemed like every summer, he'd end up in Seattle. I think he did it for me. More stuff to do when I came around, more places to go and sites to see. Anyways, His boss had a pool house. We'd live in it, and daddy'd work crazy hours. Sometimes thirteen, sixteen hours a day. To give me something to do, daddy's boss would let me clean his house, and him and his wife would pay me chump change. Running around money, is what daddy would call it. That's how I met Elena. I'd clean her house in the summers."
Holy fuck. Holy fucking fuck.
Ana's father worked for Lincoln Timber. Ana cleaned Elena's house as a child. I had so many questions, and a disgustingly sick feeling in my stomach as to where this was going.
"Mr. Lincoln was home a lot. He owned the timber company, so I guess he didn't have to do too much but get rich off of it. Elena would pretty much ignore me, but Eric." Ana shook her head, pausing her story.
I am shaking. I'm sitting in a pizza bar booth, and I am shaking. I know what she's going to tell me. I think I have always known, and I've never wanted to think it could be true. Never wanted to think that people could be so evil.
"The first time Eric molested me, it was just touching. I don't remember how many times it happened before I ever went into the playroom, but for a while that's all it ever was. Just touching. Anyways, I won't go into detail because I'm sure you know… but after four summers of it, Elena got… upset. I was seventeen, and she always knew it was going on and didn't seem to have a problem with him doing it. But this one day, that last summer, she got upset. She pulled me into the playroom, and opened this little safe that was underneath that desk in the corner, you know?" Ana looked up at me and nodded.
She knew about me. I couldn't even speak. So, I just nodded. And continued to shake.
"She got out these pictures. Of a boy. She said he was her sub, and she'd taken them for insurance that he never turned on her. Then, she said the time was overdue that Eric hadn't done the same to me. So, after they fought about it, she made me take all my clothes off, and she made me get down into position and look at the floor, and she took pictures of me. She said they were going in her safe, right there with those pictures of that boy and if I ever thought of turning on Eric, I'd remember those photos and think twice. Now that I'm older, the logic is kind of flawed I know." Ana laughed, "but it sure did scare me when I was seventeen. Eric was so upset with her. He was threatening to beat the hell out of her, and just all kinds of awful things."
I did the math in my head. Elena's assault happened the first year I started my business. Still, no words could come to me. So, Ana continued.
"Anyways like I said, that was it for me. I never came back to Seattle. Life got better, and I learned how to move on. I realized I liked a lot of the aspects of BDSM, and for a long time it ate me alive. I felt so disgusting for liking these things that he'd done to me. But then late one night, I read this huge article about how people's sexual interests are sometimes affected by things that might have happened to them as a child. And then I read more, and more. And more, until I had kind of taken myself through a therapy of it all. I leaned how to love myself, and to love what I'm into, and how good it makes me feel, and the people I would enjoy it with. And then I met Paul. He worked at a hardware store about a mile from my high school. He was just a real southern gentleman type of guy. But he had his dirty side. Nothing like some of the things I did with Eric, but just enough to keep me full. And he was always happy to try new things." She spoke sweetly of this man. If I could breathe right now, I would be so jealous, I would lose my breath again.
"But he wanted to get married and have babies. And I wanted to go to school." She smiled brightly, for the first time since she sat down. "I think I might have loved Paul in my own way. But I didn't love him like he wanted me to. And that's ok, I think. So, I went off to school, and Paul went and got married and had some babies."
"How? Why are you here? Why are you in Seattle, Ana?" I couldn't hardly believe I strung a sentence together.
"Daddy got sick last year. He couldn't work, and Lincoln Timber sent him home with a severance package that was blown on his first chemo treatment. He couldn't even file unemployment because there was a release of harm in the severance package. I knew Eric had done it on purpose. I don't know what in me got brave enough to do it, but as soon as daddy told me that, I was on a plane to Seattle to tell Eric Lincoln where he could shove his severance pay. I went to his house, and we had a huge fight. I held my own though, and he never put his hands on me. But he wasn't going to budge on the money. And daddy was dying." Her voice broke at the mention of her father.
"He got real disgusting and started asking me questions about what I had been doing since that last summer. I was telling him anything he wanted to hear at that point. So, he came up with a plan. He said if I moved to Washington to take care of my father, he would make the company pay out daddy's early retirement, and then he would have insurance. It didn't even make sense to me, but he promised if I went along with the plan, he'd pull the money out of his own pocket if he had to. But that he would only do it if I agreed to let him find a dom for me in Seattle. He never once suggested that he would be the dom. Only that he wanted to look out for me, and knew what I liked and he could find someone suitable. It didn't make sense at the time, but I think he might have been jealous of Elena. He wanted what she had. Someone under her thumb like you are."
I was about to vomit. I was about to vomit on this table.
"I told him how I'd went to school. How proud I was of my degree, and how bad I wanted a job. He'd never been cruel, if anything he almost babied me outside of the playroom. I think that's why Elena hated me so much. And I knew if I really played it up, he'd sweeten the deal. I know what that makes me sound like, Christian. I know. I just worked so hard for my degree and I wanted to work so bad. So, he said he'd see what he could do. I'd been in Montesano taking care of daddy for four months and he called me. He asked me if I would work at Elena's new foundation. Which just so happened to focus on exactly what I got my degree for. I don't know how he got her to agree to that. How they built a nonprofit from the ground up and involved your mom. I don't know what he did for Elena to extend herself as far as she did for him to have me right where he wanted me, but she did it."
These were all the answers I've wanted for days now, and I wish I could take everything back. I wish I had never picked up my line on Thursday when Sarah Porter called me.
"So, you scened with Isaac?" I ask, dreading the answer. Ana shook her head.
"I don't know who Isaac is. I didn't scene with Isaac. I scened with Eric Lincoln."
What? Miss Porter said she scened with the man Elena has with her all the time. since when does Eric Lincoln go to The Box? The fact that he got in under my name, doesn't get past me.
"That was the agreement. He led me to believe that he and Elena were members of this exclusive club. And that he wanted to take me down there, do a scene and get my name out. I found out later that, no they didn't belong to an excusive club. Christian Grey belonged to an exclusive club and Elena and her flavor of the month got in on the Grey ticket." She said, rolling her eyes. Any other time, and that would turn me on. But right now, it only made me sick.
"We agreed on what we would and wouldn't be willing to do, and then he threw that out the window and did whatever he wanted. I'll spare you the details, but it got pretty disgusting. And I like disgusting. But this was… he let the sponsors come into the room with us. I don't know if you're familiar with the layout of the showrooms?"
I nodded to confirm that yes, I am familiar. And yes, I am disgusted.
"Elena. Carrie Klein. There were dozens of people in there. Elena got her shot at me. Maybe that was the agreement, I don't know. She builds an entire foundation to employ one specific person, and she gets a chance to spit in my face and cane me." Ana shrugged her shoulders and her entire body shuddered.
Mine followed suit. In all honesty, I think my entire body has been shuttering the entire conversation. I want to hit something. Starting with myself.
"No one was aware of my soft and hard limits. They thought I just wasn't safe wording. But there was no way in hell I was going to safe word and embarrass him like that. Not when he was practically paying for daddy's treatments. And I guess the sponsors never thought anything about how hard I was crying. It was a Christian Grey hosted showroom. No one would have thought anything was going on that wasn't agreed upon."
I can hear my body rattling. My teeth clanging against each other with every quick breath I take. I can't be still.
This is all my fault. The more she spoke, the more I could feel it. This is all my fault. I could have prevented every aspect of this. I could have taken Elena off my ticket at the box, I could have never agreed to let her find submissives for me after I started denying her. I could have told someone. As I child, I could have told someone what was going on. There never would have been a playroom for Ana to be forced into at the age of thirteen had I just told someone.
"I think everything happens for a reason," Ana said, arily. "daddy died the same damn week we went to the club."
"Ana, I am so sorry-" I began, but she held her hand up stopping me.
"He's not hurting anymore."
Neither of us spoke for a long time, and then Ana finished telling me her nightmare.
"The deal was off at that point. I wasn't going to stick around and be his little Christian Grey. No offence."
I shook my head and made a motion for her to continue. She had every right to use my name as an insult.
"I told him that, too. When I put a stop to it. I got in good with Carrie Klein and a couple of the regular girls at the club. She told me if I ever needed in, to use her ticket. That she'd put my name on her prescribed list. And I told Eric Lincoln he could kiss me where the sun don't shine. And it felt so good." She laughed her sweet laugh.
"He threated to fire me, but by that point I had made good friends with Mia, and Grace and I had really built a good relationship. And you know, I'm not trying to have the big-head. But I really saved that program, and Grace was in love with those babies. Elena didn't have a dog in the race. Grace wasn't gonna let me go anywhere."
Ana was smiling. After this entire heartbreaking story, Ana was smiling speaking of the job she loved and my beautiful mother.
"He hasn't really bothered me since. And Elena pretends I don't exist. I go to the club sometimes just to shove it in their face. And because I have friends there, and its ok if I like it, you know."
I nodded my head.
"I know you are the little boy in the photos. I know that now. And I know we're still trapped there in that little safe underneath that desk, together. I know that. But it doesn't scare me like it used to. The world is full of terrible people, but we don't have to be." She shrugged as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
"Ana, I want you to know. I've shut down my ticket completely at The Box."
"No offence, Christian. But I don't really give a shit." She laughed.
After a beat, she changed the subject. "Are you going to buy me some pizza?" she smiled, sweetly.
She can eat after this? I'm impressed.
I think she should hate me. I think she should blame me in ten different ways for how terrible her life has been. I think she should hit me, scream at me for allowing these people to prey on her, and manipulate her situation, and abuse her. But instead, she takes her foot and runs it down the length of my shin, kicking me once she gets to my ankle.
"I really am hungry. Are you going to buy me some pizza or not?"
"Honey, I would buy you the entire pizza bar."