I was nineteen the summer I met Keith.
He was older—married, obviously. The kind of tan that costs money. Spoke like everything he looked at already belonged to him. He was showing a house in the Hills, some glass-and-steel mausoleum with a view. My friend dragged me there for the open bar and the catering. Nobody was actually buying. Everyone just wanted to be seen.
I was in cutoffs and a camisole, still buzzed from something I’d taken an hour before. Didn’t plan on being noticed. Keith noticed.
He found me by the sliding doors, staring out at the infinity pool. Smiled like we were in on a joke together. Asked if I was in school. If I lived nearby. If I’d ever been in a house like this before. His questions weren’t really questions. They were instructions.
“You’re not here for the real estate,” he said, low and slick.
I laughed. He didn’t.
An hour later he texted. I hadn’t given him my number— he got it from a friend of a friend. It should’ve been a red flag, and yet it felt like a compliment.
You’re stuck in my head. Let me take you out.
I didn’t answer. He spent the next few days following up.
Dinner. Tonight.
You’d look good in my car.
Stop pretending you don’t want this.
Relentless. I gave in.
He picked me up in a black Porsche 911, red interior, like a car a producer drives in a movie about producers. We didn’t go to dinner. He pulled into his office garage, killed the engine. Looked at me like I was already naked.
“You ever been fucked in a car like this?”
He didn’t wait for an answer.
His mouth was on mine before I could speak. Teeth, heat, hands. Yanked my camisole down. Bit hard. Rubbed me through my underwear like he was trying to erase something. He said, I’ve been thinking about this since I saw you. Knew you’d feel like this.
I climbed onto his lap. He shoved my panties aside and slid in, no warning, no condom. Just motion. Hunger. A quiet, calculated violence.
His watch scratched my thigh. My head hit the roof of the car. I came, or thought I did. He didn’t stop. Not when I cried out. Not even when I asked him to slow down. He finished inside me. Didn’t say a word.
After, he buttoned his shirt and said, “You should’ve answered the first time I texted.”
He wasn’t joking.
We kept seeing each other. Hotels, mostly. Always the same kind: modern, over-air-conditioned, rooms that felt wiped clean of meaning. He paid in cash. Used different names. Whispered things like You make me feel alive, like that was supposed to mean something.
I asked once if he felt guilty.
“For what?” he said, zipping his pants. “You’re not a kid. You knew what this was.”
I didn’t answer. But something in me hardened.
The sex stayed good. The illusion didn’t.
He stopped looking at me during. Started checking his phone after. I noticed how he never said my name. Never asked questions that didn’t end with me taking something off.
Then one day: Room’s booked. Same spot.
And I didn’t go.
Didn’t text. Didn’t call. Ignored the follow-ups.
His last message: Don’t ghost me, baby. That’s not who we are.
Except it was.
One night he picked me up at a hotel in Hollywood. Said he was “in the mood to celebrate.” I asked what for. He said, “Does it matter?”
The room was already booked.
We didn’t make it to the bed.
He pushed me against the window overlooking Hollywood Boulevard, my cheek pressed to the glass, cold and filthy from the outside. Cars passed below, headlights flickering like flashbulbs. I could see the red glow of the In-N-Out sign reflected in the pane as he lifted my skirt.
He didn’t bother taking off my underwear. Just pushed it to the side and slipped two fingers in—dry at first, then not. He curled them like he was searching for something. Found it. Made me gasp. He smirked.
“You like that?”
I nodded. Didn’t speak.
He unbuckled his belt with one hand. Told me to keep my hands on the glass, to stay just like that. His voice was calm. Even. Like he was giving driving directions.
“Don’t move. You’re perfect like this.”
He pressed the tip of his cock against me—slow, then all at once. I exhaled so sharply I thought I might faint. He grabbed my throat with one hand and fucked me from behind, hard and fast, like I was a problem he didn’t have time to solve.
“You feel unreal,” he murmured into my ear. “Fucking perfect.”
He pulled out, spun me around, lifted me effortlessly. My back hit the window, glass sticky against my skin. He slid back in while I was still catching my breath. His fingers dug into my thighs. I wrapped my legs around his waist, dug my nails into his shoulders, left half-moons there I’d forget about later.
He told me to look at him.
Not the city. Not the view. Him.
“Eyes on me,” he said. “Let me see what I do to you.”
So I did. And he did.
I came first—fast, violent, unexpected. He didn’t stop. Just fucked me through it. Kept going, like he needed it more than I did.
He pulled out and came on my stomach. Didn’t say anything for a moment.
Just watched it drip down my skin.
“You make me forget who I am.”
It should’ve sounded romantic. It didn’t. It sounded dangerous.
We didn’t kiss after. We didn’t cuddle. He handed me a towel. Lit a cigarette. Said he had to make a call. I stood there, naked, watching him talk to his wife from the bathroom doorway, cum drying on my stomach.
That was the night I realized what I was to him. Not a girl. Not a secret. Not even a person.
I was a pause. A breath between obligations.
And he was the first man to make me come against a hotel window overlooking Hollywood traffic.
That felt like something.
Even if it wasn’t.
Two days later, I was in the shower when my phone rang. Voicemail. His wife.
“I found your number. I read the messages. I just… I need to know what this was. I need to hear it from you.”
I never called her back. Didn’t owe her anything.
Maybe I did. I don’t know.
Sometimes I think about Keith. How easy it was for him to slide in and out of my life like it was a valet loop. How much I gave him. How little it cost him.
It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even about me.
It was about appetite. Access. The thrill of taking.
But I walked out before he was done.
And sometimes that’s the only victory that matters.
I thought I’d feel clean after. I didn’t. I felt emptied. Like he’d left with a part of me I didn’t know he was stealing. Something weightless, but important.
He didn’t text again after the wife called. I imagined her in their kitchen, holding his phone like it was radioactive. Maybe she confronted him. Maybe he told her I was a mistake. A name he didn’t remember. A body he never asked the name of.
Maybe that was the truth.
I spent the next week deleting things.
Texts. Photos. A voice memo he once sent me from an elevator. I changed my sheets. Twice. Stared at my phone like it owed me something.
Sometimes, still, I see his face when I close my eyes. Sometimes I hear him when I get dressed. When I masturbate. When I choose panties. Not because I miss him. But because he got in.
He never left a mark. No bruises. No evidence. Just memory.
I started dreaming about him. Not sexy dreams. Just weird ones. One where he stood at the foot of my bed, buttoning his shirt. Said, “I already had it,” when I asked what he wanted.
I woke up shaking. Then laughed. Then hated myself for both.
A guy I met took me out. He was normal. My age. Polite. Asked questions. Said my name during sex. I wanted to like it. I didn’t.
I kept thinking about Keith’s face—how he looked at me like I was a challenge, not a person. Like he wanted me to tell him no so he could ignore it.
I wasn’t broken. Just rearranged.
That was worse.
In a bar, a guy said I smelled expensive. I nearly threw up. In a store, a salesgirl offered me a silk slip. I couldn’t even touch it. Keith had ripped one off me once, grinning like he was proud of himself.
I tried to get off on my own. Couldn’t.
Because my body remembered.
Remembered what it felt like to be used. Not adored. Not seen. Just used.
And part of me missed it.
Not him.
Just the power of surrender. The moment everything else disappeared.
That’s the scariest part.
That I still crave the blur.
