need would technically fit into a studio-sized apartment, but I wanted to live in the suburbs. Away from the business district and the limelight. I found one of the most private and quiet suburban neighborhoods in Chicago and this was the only house for sale at the time. So I took it. Now I feel like it has too many rooms and I don’t have enough life or interest to fill them.
I’m in my king-sized bed tonight, staring up at the ceiling. The house feels stuffy and hot. I shouldn’t have taken that shower. But I was all sweaty from my midnight run. Now I feel like I should go for another run. I’m not able to clear my head no matter how hard I try.
I know contacting the college is my only hope for getting in touch with Ella. But what if Jay is right and I’m only making the situation worse? Some things are better left untouched, right? Maybe it was just supposed to be one great night. All I got to do was kiss her when there is so much more that I wanted to do.
I know I can have any woman I want. Anyone other than Ella. In the span of the last six months since I met her, I haven’t been able to spend the night with someone else. I’ve gone as far as flirting. Inviting back to my hotel room. I even watched one beautiful blond take her clothes off in front of me, but I gathered them up eventually and held them out to her. Asked her to leave because I wanted to go to sleep. Alone.
This is what Jay doesn’t understand; Ella has ruined me. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be fixed again. Not unless I can have her. Not until she gives me a good reason why I can’t have her.
I have spent the past six months thinking about this girl and it has brought up another important memory. The fact that I have a big gaping hole in my life that I will never be able to fill.
No matter how I want to sugarcoat it, no matter what I achieve or how much money I make—the fact still remains that I don’t have a family. No parents. No siblings. Aunts or uncles or grandparents. I have no fuckin’ clue where I come from. Where I belong. I don’t even know where I was born.
I grew up in the system. The only thing I was told when I was growing up, being tossed around between foster homes, was that my parents had died in a car accident. That was the only information accessible to me on file. In my teenage years, I tried hunting down more, but the system had it all under lock. There was no way I was going to get any more clues out of them.
And then eventually, I just stopped trying. I focused all my energy on making a career for myself. A self-made man. I was good with numbers and really good with money. I could have taken a wrong turn and gone into a life of drugs and crime like a lot of my foster brothers and sisters did, but I wanted power. Real power. The kind only a tailored Italian business suit and a private jet can give you.
Over the years, as I started to achieve my dream, I have thought less and less about where I come from. How does it matter anyway? My parents are dead. I don’t have siblings, and if there are other family members, then they never came looking for me. So why should I go looking for them?
But now that I think about Ella, I can’t keep my mind from wandering to my childhood and the lack of human connection I have always felt. Maybe I wouldn’t be feeling this obsessive need to possess Ella if I had a wholesome upbringing surrounded by a loving family.
Maybe I’m just trying to fill that black hole in my life, and I’m using her to do it.
I sit up in bed, covered in sweat. I need another shower. Maybe a cool one this time. As I’m climbing out of bed, a thought occurs to me. Ella is a history major. Her last job at a firm in the city was that of a researcher. There is only one thing I need her help researching—my family.
This is the perfect excuse. This is the perfect job.