All That Glitters

Chapter One

The Last of the Unplucked Jems

“There’s always stripping,” Tori offered from her back on Jem’s ugly carpet.

Sprawled on his sofa—legs over the back, head hanging down to the floor—Jem turned to look at her. “I’m flattered,” he said flatly. “Except for how everything about that sounds terrible.”

The hours, first of all. Jem taught kindergarten; he needed to be in bed at a decent time to keep up with the little gremlins.

Then there was the waxing… unless chest hair was in vogue again, which, maybe?

Fashion was one thing, but who could keep up with body-hair trends?

Who would want to? And Jem could dance well enough, but the idea of anonymous strangers pawing at him had lost its appeal in his junior year of college.

“Well, you’ve got to do something.”

Unfortunately, Tori had a point. Jem’s beloved-but-ancient Prius needed, like, a heart transplant.

It was hanging in there for now, held together with duct tape and a prayer, but it wouldn’t last indefinitely, and Jem had depleted his emergency savings four months ago when he broke his foot walking down his apartment stairs in his Crocs and had to take three weeks off work.

“Maybe I could sell a kidney,” he mused.

Tori thwacked him with a pillow. “Be serious.”

“I am.”

“You only have one kidney left, Jem. You need it.”

Sighing, Jem let himself roll off the couch entirely.

He mostly didn’t land on Tori. “Well, what else am I going to do? Call up my father and extort him for the money to go back to school and become an investment banker?” Jem’s father had traded the right to speak to his illegitimate child for the aforementioned kidney, which his real son needed.

Considering Jem hadn’t even known who his father was until he was seventeen, he didn’t think the relationship was much of a loss.

Tori barked with laughter. “God, that’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard you say. Imagine you in a suit and tie every day, debating, like, stock futures or whatever.”

“Is that what investment bankers do?”

“I don’t know, Jem, I’m a music teacher.”

Maybe Jem should’ve been a music teacher.

The subject specialty meant Tori got paid more.

“I’m not going back to waiting tables during the schoolyear.

” He could handle it during the summer, but, well.

Sleep. Jem liked it. And it was only January.

“Ugh. I guess I could coach volleyball next year.” That paid extra, and Jem was athletic enough to pass as a coach for preteens.

“Yeah, but you need money this year.”

“Thanks, I’m aware.”

She turned to look at him, her hair fanning out across the floor.

“How do you manage it?” he asked.

“I married well.”

Tori’s wife, Ivy, was a lawyer specializing in some kind of software IP. “Right,” Jem said. He paused. “Hey, is Ivy’s brother still bi?”

Tori thwacked him with her arm instead of a pillow this time. “Yes, and he’s still an asshole you hate.”

Oh yeah. That was a deal-breaker. Jem didn’t actually hate Mike.

His podcast was funny. The documentary film he and his work partners had done about the creation of their podcast was hilarious.

But spending more than five minutes in a room with Mike made Jem want to swan-dive off the nearest balcony. His kids would miss him.

Tori tapped her fingers against the floor. “You know, while the specifics are all wrong, the concept’s not bad.”

Something in her tone made Jem sit up. “What do you mean?”

Tori sat up too. “I mean, not marrying for money, but like, a sugar-baby situation.”

Jem balked. “You want me to be an escort?”

“No! I mean we should find you a rich sugar parent to line your bank account.”

For a moment Jem let himself process what she’d said. “No, sorry, I am going to need you to explain the difference.”

Tori held out one hand, palm up. “Escort,” she said.

“Which, okay, that’s—you know, there are escorts who don’t have sex.

You get paid to go on dates that may or may not involve sex.

” She raised the other hand. “Sugar baby. You enter into a financial arrangement with a particular person and, I don’t know.

Probably it’s the same deal as being an escort, like, ‘with or without blow jobs.’”

Okay, that made sense, but—“Who’s going to pay to date me?” Jem had a hard enough time getting dates who didn’t pay for the privilege. He was kind of a bitch.

“Uh, lots of people?” Tori furrowed her brow. “You’re hot. We live in California. Rich people everywhere. The world is your oyster.”

“I’m allergic to shellfish.”

“Oh my God, Jem.” She slapped his thigh, then dug in his pocket for his phone, because she’d never had a strong grasp of personal space.

“Look, there’s probably even, like, a dating app for that.

It’ll be easy. You just make a profile, set up a couple dates, find a rich loser who’s looking for some arm candy, and give them the boyfriend experience. ”

The boyfriend…? “Is that a sex thing?”

“What?” She huffed. “Look, as much as it pains me to say it, I have seen you date. When you’re in it, you’re in it, you know? You’re a good boyfriend. You’re thoughtful, you’re a good cook, you clean up after yourself. You probably pack them lunches with cute little love notes in them.”

That wasn’t totally true. Jem had never written a love note.

But he’d written dumb jokes on Post-it Notes for his college girlfriend and put them on the coffee maker for when she had early labs.

He liked waking up to the sound of her laughter, even if he didn’t always get out of bed when he heard it.

It broke his heart when she moved to Germany to do her postdoc, but he understood. She had to follow her passion, her research, and Jem had young minds to shape.

“You think someone’s going to pay me for that.”

“Pff.” She unlocked his phone and went right to the app store. In less than thirty seconds, she slapped it back into his hands. “I know someone will. Look. We’re gonna have to do some research, obviously, but you could do this.”

Jem looked down at the screen. FindMyBaby. Good Christ. “Let’s try extreme couponing first,” he suggested.

“I think you’d have better luck as an investment banker,” Tori told him, but she didn’t push the issue. “Come on. I’ll buy you groceries and you can make me dinner.”

“Deal.”

Jem kept thinking about it. He thought about it at the grocery store the next week, when coupons brought his bill down to $57.

14 from $63.77. He thought about it on Wednesday morning on his way to work as he put air in his rear passenger-side tire and noticed how worn it had gotten.

He thought about it when he was waiting with his students for their parents to pick them up.

But only a third of them got picked up by their parents; the rest had nannies to do the job.

Even the nannies had nicer shoes than Jem, which was galling because Jem was an expert in thrifting designer kicks.

Most of their cars cost twice what Jem made in a year.

Of course, the nannies probably didn’t have to pay rent and they didn’t own the cars they drove. But still.

Friday was payday. Jem checked his bank balance at lunch, leaned his head back against the wall, and resolved to find Tori before she left for the day.

He managed it only because she found him first; Tori didn’t have to supervise pickup. She breezed into his classroom just after his last student was escorted out by his mother, who dressed like a Secret Service agent if Secret Service agents wore Versace and Louboutins.

“So,” Tori said.

Jem closed his eyes. “Can I come over and make you and Ivy dinner?” Neither of them could cook for shit, which was especially inconvenient for them now that Ivy was expecting. “And maybe you can, uh… help me with my profile?”

She smiled widely. “Jem Anderson, it would be my honor.”

Ivy worked from home a lot—one of the benefits of the post-Covid life and one she took more advantage of now that she was experiencing the joys of morning sickness.

Eight months ago Jem had come over to make dinner, and afterward Tori pulled him downstairs and ambushed him with “Ivy wants to have a baby.”

Jem had blinked. “Uh.” Tori hadn’t said anything about what she wanted. “That’s usually a ‘two yes, one no’ situation.”

Tori nodded like a broken bobblehead. “In this case we’re looking for three yeses because neither of us can be the sperm donor.”

“So like… you, Tori Foster, want to have a baby.”

Finally she looked up at him again, cheeks flushed with indignation. “I like kids! I'm a teacher!”

“Yes,” Jem agreed, “and you routinely gripe about how disgusting children are, so… I just want to make sure, you know? That it’s what you want too.” Years-ago Tori—first-friend-Jem-made-in-college Tori—had not.

But people changed.

“I didn’t think I wanted it,” she admitted.

“Like, in college, not being able to get pregnant by accident was a huge perk of being a lesbian. But I don’t know…

. Then I met Ivy, and she’s so—I mean the woman can do anything.

Including make me want kids, apparently.

” The flush was sweeter now. Affection, embarrassment… love. True love.

“Wow.” Jem cleared his throat, feeling like he’d fallen short of the enthusiasm a best friend should show for this kind of thing. “Then congratulations, obviously. You’re going to be great at it.”

Tori smiled, uncharacteristically shy. “Thanks. Ivy wants—we both want—a family that’s like, ours, you know, so, I mean. Originally she was like, what if Mike is our sperm donor—”

Jem tried to control it. He wanted so badly to be supportive. But he could feel his eyes bulging in horror.

“—but I said I’d suck my uterus out with a toilet plunger before I let Mike’s jizz anywhere near me, and she said yeah, that’s fair.”

“Thank God.”