Escapism.

I find it entirely ridiculous that he has his manager coordinate travel plans. I would be perfectly content flying Southwest and calling an Uber, yet here I am, receiving itinerary texts and a private car from some random intermediary who is needlessly aware of my existence.

I know precisely why he does it. I understand the mechanics of the gesture. So I play along. I pretend to be impressed, and I laugh. When the car pulls through the gate, I send a text: “I’m here. I’m in your house. Don’t shoot me”

Then I sit there on the couch, enveloped in the quiet for a few minutes, waiting for the reality of the room to catch up with the momentum of the trip.

“You know what I love about you?” he says, walking in swiftly, shedding the weight of whatever he was doing before he crossed the threshold. “The fact that you’re just sitting there. You don’t even bother to ask where I was or what I was doing.”

“Well, I love how the front door was left open for just any old someone to walk in.”

“If you made it past the gate, you’re free to walk through the door.” He leans down and pulls me into a hug. “I knew you were here.”

“I gathered,” I reply, blinking up at him, wondering if he remembers the exact parameters of what I told him I needed when I landed.

“Drink?” he shouts from the kitchen.

I shout my affirmation back and settle deeper into the couch. I make myself comfortable. Visibly, unapologetically comfortable. Legs crossed, no bra, my sweater hanging loosely off one shoulder.

“How was the flight?” he asks, returning with a homemade Paloma.

“It felt quick. I was excited.”

“Excited for what?”

I smirk.

“To see you again, duh.”

We share a quiet chuckle, the familiar rhythm of our dynamic clicking back into place.

“Want a straw?”

“Yes, please.”

He is sweet in these moments. Endearing, really. I like him quite a bit. Not with the heavy anchors of expectation or fantasy, but simply as a human being. There is something genuine about our connection. A rare pocket of comfort. He’s easy to laugh with.

Sometimes I suspect part of the appeal is that I represent a version of reality that existed before his success complicated everything. Before handlers, schedules, the invisible layers between a person and the world. He seems to enjoy how little I care about the performance of it all.

What he mistakes for indifference, however, is really perspective.

Long before I found myself in rooms with Silicon Valley executives, professional athletes, and people wealthy enough to bend reality around themselves, I spent years wandering through entirely different worlds. I have stood in warehouses full of bikers. I have walked through places that felt one bad decision away from disaster. Not because I belonged there, but because I was a dangerously unsupervised little girl, reckless, and endlessly curious about people.

Then the pendulum swung.

By my twenties, I got into sales and was helping facilitate luxury housing arrangements for a literal billionaire’s sugar baby and leasing penthouse apartments throughout San Jose and San Francisco. One year you're watching humanity unravel at the edges. The next you're watching it hide behind designer furniture and private security.

A luxurious lifestyle impresses me but so does the raw absurdity of the opposite extreme. The difference is that after tasting both worlds, neither feels particularly sacred. Because of that, I can look at him and see exactly what he built: a man who came from very little and transformed talent into access, status, wealth, and freedom. I respect that immensely. But admiration and intimidation are not the same thing. Impressed, yes…but unmoved. Maybe that's what he likes about me.

We've been getting deep in ways that are both intimate and mildly terrifying. Hours on the phone. Conversations that wander into territory neither of us shares freely with other people. It's been nice.Dangerously nice. And if I let myself dwell on the shelf life of it all, I can admit it makes me a little sad.

But I don't dwell. Not while I'm here.

Eventually, his head lands in my lap, some nonsense television show playing silently in the background. I scratch his scalp, tug gently at his hair, and sip my drink. We don't say much. The silence is broken only by occasional laughter.

A profound sense of relief washes over me. This friendship has been a strange kind of medicine. It is a luxury to be out of my house, out of my routines, out of the confines of my small town and mom life. Most people would probably focus on the celebrity of it all but what I feel most is relief. Relief because I am a visitor.

I have always struggled with environments that feel overly curated, constrictive, or controlled. This arrangement offers the opposite. A temporary suspension of reality. A brief escape from ourselves.

And after so much time spent alone, celibate, sober, introverted, and hyper-vigilant, I am not ashamed to admit how desperately I needed it. The banter. The buzz. The touch. The laughter. The simple comfort of another person. Despite the low hum of paranoia and every instinct telling me to keep my distance, I allowed myself to have it.

The problem is that I’m getting far more than I signed up for.

“Let’s go to the room.”

Inside the bedroom, the variables shift.

I undress.

He smokes.

I drink.

We talk.

At some point, he plays me a few unreleased tracks. I listen carefully, catching fragments of lyrics as they pass.

Then a thought slides quietly down my spine.

Wow. Those broken women you rap about running through...I'm one of them right now, aren't I?

I wonder how many of them sat exactly where I am sitting. I wonder if they thought it felt this real. I wonder if they had flights arranged for them, too. I wonder if they also left on Sunday.

The room suddenly feels colder. The gravity sharpens. And I find myself asking the only question that matters: Am I fucking this guy, or is he fucking me?

Truthfully, I know my own motives. I know exactly what I am doing here. I can joke about it. I can suggest we get the show on the road. I can high-five him afterward and laugh. I can play detached remarkably well. But women learn early that detachment and immunity are not the same thing. No matter how self-aware we are, ego eventually enters the room. Self-worth enters the room. Hope enters the room. That's where things become complicated.

I sometimes have the urge to look him dead in the eye and say:

Don't get me fucked up.

Not because I'm fragile. Because I'm rebuilding. I've spent years pulling apart old patterns, old wounds, old versions of myself. The work has been lonely and often invisible, but it has been real. And because of that work, I know how to stay in my lane. I know how to manage the emotional proximity.

I remind myself what this is.

I don't need the drink. I don't need the fantasy. I don't need the late-night phone calls or the performative good morning texts. I just need the flight out. But like, respect me, still.

I know who this man is. I know the mythology surrounding his world. And yet the way he watches me when the music stops, the way he listens, the way he pulls me against his chest like he's afraid I'll run away? For a moment, the performance falls away. For a moment, it feels entirely real. But I know that it’s not. This is not a home meant to be shared. It is an island designed to be escaped to. And from.

Come Sunday, I'll be the one getting on a plane. Alone.