CHAPTER 1

OLIVIA.

"May I join you?" someone asked, pointing to the empty chair next to me.

After a few seconds, I nodded my head. I don't know exactly why. 

This man come to me, dragged the chair over, and slid into it.

The restaurant was getting lonely, surely someone must have to tell me that I had to leave. I felt annoyance and misery if that was possible.

I went through my little purse and checked my money for the cab. Thank God, was a good one! The many times I have been stood up have made me a cautious woman. 

“Do you want to order another drink?”, he spoke again.

I looked at his face. Oh God. The words left my mouth, stay in my mind. He is... so handsome.

He looked relaxed but expectant. Why is he looking at me like that?

“No problem, I'm leaving" I said.

“Do you want a cab?”

I must have looked ridiculous trying to hide my bewilderment, without succeeding. I frowned.

“Are you restaurant's owner?”

“Excuse me?” he asked.

I sighed deeply, tired, exhausted from this sad night, from being here alone and from... everything.

“You need that I leave, don't you?” I asked. “Ok, I got it. I’m sorry.” I looked towards the waiters' bar. The waiter didn't know that I made him an accomplice of my unknown mistake by looking at him. “It's late and I must go home”, I whispered to myself.

I had to get up after saying that, but no one moved a muscle and again, I didn't know for sure why.

“Do we "need" you to leave?” He shook his head and raised the corner of his mouth, just a little. “I don't need that. Not me, at least. But “you” do need something tonight, yeah.” He took a short stop. “What is it?”

Now… I was really looking at him very attentively. His way of asking that question put me on full alert. At that moment I didn't know how to explain that tone of voice and God only knows how much I wanted to answer him, to tell him exactly what I wanted and needed. That blissful question was thrown on my table and bounced against my temples in a deadly, agonizing way. What did I need, what did I need?! Pay for dinner and go to sleep? That's all? There, thinking about the answer and watching him deign to wait for me, I did not take my eyes off his.

“I want to start over. In my life, I want to start over once again" I whispered without warning.

And I felt a sudden relief, as if a weight release me, leave my shoulders… Wow, my goodness!

The gentleman narrowed his eyes, just a little movement after my words. He had an unchanging smile, getting unnaturally desperate to me.

“You were going to have sex tonight, weren't you?” he asked.

“What?”

Without giving me time to think, he placed a finger on his upper lip and began to rub it, analyzing and dragging there, on that piece of flesh, move that took my breath away and all my coherent thoughts.

To effect, my words:

“If my answer is yes, what would you think?”

He was silent for a couple of seconds without taking his eyes off me.

“I would disappoint. A woman like you should be on a bed.”

My heart already felt sick, moving with a seismic signal. I didn't like what he said but the certainty and security in how he said it... I could have felt fear, any girl would feel it. He was an stranger, the King of that corner. Anything he tried to do with me could be mistaken for something dangerous. But… Oh God, That greedy randomness turned me on. 

“If I say no?”

“You must to start a new adventure because you deserve your own.” He took a brief moment of silence. Again. “Is something is stopping you, isn't it? Something is stopping you from starting over, what is it?”

This weird snooping again, c'mon. My tongue was dry, my palate... However, he wouldn't succeed intimidating me. This is why I began to challenge him.

“What a concern for men, eh?”

“Which one?”

“If women don't enjoy life that you should to have, the world ends for all of you.” I smiled sadly and I could even enjoy that my whispers and low words, if I turned up them, would be almost the only noise in the room. 

I looked at him again and with more depth, I wanted him to understand well what I was telling him. 

“Let me tell you something. Always, all the time all of you live scheming life of women. It's like fashion, you know? But it's over, now we are others. Don't you get tired of having disappointment again and again?”

He smiled genuinely and I had to look away. I felt something below, down into my body. So below, that I suddenly wanted to be down the table like a crazy girl, all when I saw his smile, that smile.

“Please," he gave a soft laugh, "don't think I came to you because I'm worried about you or something like that. I don't know you at all, but I suppose that a lady alone at this hour in Maracaibo City, crying and looking at the cell phone screen as if her life is at stake, is an inevitable attraction.” I swallowed thickly when I realized his details about me. “Don't blame me for anything, pretty girl. I blame you for everything that happens tonight, instead. I blame you because you're the reason I left my table and came here.”

“Your table? Do you own the restaurant or not?” Well, if he does, he can literally own one table here.

And I looked around for the staff, or anything that might indicate to me that I was the eye of the hurricane. I frowned and pursed my lips to prevent a profuse exhalation.

“I guess that everyone here must have already made their conclusions of what's wrong with me”, I said. “Maybe the few remaining crew of restaurant must be thinking and having fun with the guy deigning to fulfill a personal bet with me, or not? A play with the lonely girl in the green dress?”

“What?” His furrowed eyebrows matched his puzzled smile. “I don't bet. Ever.”

“You ask my permission to sit here, and you're not fulfilling any bets?”

“Okay, I see your point. But I didn't just ask your permission to sit, I asked your permission to join you. Both very different”.

“Ah, you recognize that you’re an employee of this place. The owner, the manager… You're one of the big guys here, right?” I laugh softly. 

He was already starting to look at me in a funny and strange way and I didn't know but at this point, I would to call him by his first name if I knew it. 

I enjoyed my own laughter and my owns jokes, but only for a brief moment, because the sound of his chair being pulled towards my body brought me back to reality. Now I was very close to him. And that word, ‘close’, perfectly describes anatomically how I was now standing next to him. That man decided with his hands  everything. His manhood, his perfume... All powerful, like magic. I could only stare at him mesmerized.

The body that supported me that night wanted to shake in defense, but the treacherous dress left in evidence a dimple on my right thigh. I noticed it because the cold from the air conditioning crept in there and as I moved my hand to pull my skirt down, some damn diabolical male palms prevented me from doing it.

Trapped. I was trapped and lost!

He swung his hands with touches that I had never witnessed in my life. His whiskey breath and that peppermint perfume suddenly poured over the hollow between my neck and shoulder.

I lossed head, he had ripped it off my mind by the roots. Hands on my legs, mouth tasting my skin along with a little puff. The planted, tears, pain, suffering and shames, the failure, every anguish and even the minutes, went to the ceiling and stayed there, away from me. I swear to the highest rank in heaven that I no longer cared too much if people saw us. Two strangers were professing to each other something barely intimate, barely murky, barely forbidden, but too exciting to stop.

I crossed my legs and I felt perfectly when his fingers slowly pulling them apart and I caught a faint whiff of me. Oh… I thought, I...

He created more intimacy between us when his index finger, the same one that previously trailed over his lip and had already turned me on, now began to know me deeply, traveled inside that green cloth under the table. 

I anchored my hand on his wrist, I pressed to hold on it. That stranger was getting into a place just very few people had entered. 

His finger found my place and I gasped. 

“If under here is a yearning to start over," he whispered to kill me, "I'll arrange a new encounter. I'll pay to make you cry again. I'll be the one to dress you in green. Just me. And I'll adjust the clasp of your heels to come back here and start, again and again and one more time and keep on like this." He stuck his finger so into me… My tongue went dry. “I'll start a few times, as many times as you need.” 

My breath, my night, my life pirouetting, transforming. 

“Your face, woman," he continued with pleasure, "this one that now I see and the same that you dedicate to me as I make you come, would be worth every hour, every rant, every fucking sad message on your cell phone.” 

“Oh, God!”

He kept moving his ghoulish finger, in and out, breathing me in, worshipping whatever his hand could reach. I was about to, I would end up exploding in a public place at the hand of a total stranger. 

And like reading my thoughts, he immediately placed himself at my ear to whisper to me:

“My name is Carl, I'm not the owner of this place. And if you want to start again in your life, pretty girl, today is the night and you'll do it with me.”