Chapter One #2
“Right?” She shook her head. “I don’t know what she was thinking. And then she said, well—actually that’s when she said she wants to be the one to carry the baby? So she said maybe it’s better if my brother does the, you know.” She mimed jerking off.
Jem was still nodding until he realized, “Uh, Victoria, you don't have a brother.”
Tori just looked at him, patient and earnest. “Jem.”
Oh shit. “You want me to—” He realized how loud he was getting and adjusted. “You want me to knock up your wife?!”
“Not, like, in person or anything. Gross!”
So anyway, shortly afterward Jem and Tori and Ivy had gone from being family to being family family, and Jem was still kind of awestruck that he got to be part of it.
He dropped a kiss on Ivy’s cheek when he came in, then took in the legal pad, three highlighters, two pens, and the phone she had in front of her and shot a betrayed look at Tori. “You already talked to her?”
“Jem, I love you but I am the world’s most committed lesbian. If you want to hook some male-attracted whale to pay your bills, we’re gonna need an assist from a certified man-appreciator.”
He turned to Ivy. “You’ve been with Tori for like five years; your certification still valid?”
“Oh, yeah,” Ivy deadpanned. “I renew every year when I do my license plate. But I do my best work when someone’s making me dinner.”
“Guess I better get started, then.” Jem rolled up his sleeves, washed his hands, and got to work.
At the kitchen table, Tori opened the app on his phone and read through the profile questions while Ivy made notes by hand.
“Okay, first question, Mr. James Anderson.” She must’ve had to fill out his legal name. “Do you have a preferred gender for your sugar parent.”
“Not really.” He splashed a bit of olive oil in the bottom of a Dutch oven. “You know I’m bi.”
“What if you get matched with someone who’s nonbinary?”
“Can you put pan?” He glanced over his shoulder. “Like, I’m not interested in what’s in anyone’s pants, I only care about what’s in their wallets.”
“We are not putting that in your profile,” Ivy said primly.
“We should,” Tori dissented. “Jem should get a sugar daddy who appreciates his humor.”
Jem had no opinion on that, so he shrugged and pushed a handful of ground beef into the pot.
Ivy cleared her throat. “Moving on.”
There was a beat, and then Tori read the next question.
“What kind of arrangement are you looking for? This one is like, three-part multiple choice. The first part is how often you’re willing to meet with someone, from once a month to multiple times a week, and the second part is whether you’re looking for short- or long-term partnerships, and the last one is whether you’re open to multiple simultaneous partnerships.
Then there’s, like, a spot for you to write specifics.
” She paused. “Let’s go with no on the multiples.
Like, this is baby’s first paid situationship. ”
“Yeah, duh. Thanks, Tori.” He stirred the meat to break it up.
“Let’s go with two or three times a week tops, weekends preferred, one weekday per week max, and long-term.
” It wasn’t like he had a lot of homework to mark, but he still had to do evaluations and lesson plans and write report card comments, and sometimes the kids just took it out of him.
The next section apparently concerned Jem’s areas of expertise, which Tori could fill out as well as he could by this point.
“You speak Spanish?” Ivy asked, peering over Tori’s shoulder as she scrolled through the questions.
“I’m not fluent, but yeah. Maria who runs the day care with my mom is Mexican.” Jem had basically grown up in that day care, and plenty of the other employees at the golf course had been immigrants too, so he’d picked up a fair amount.
“Got it. Oh, hey, scroll back up. You forgot to click that he plays guitar.”
Jem brought his guitar in to do sing-alongs with his students, which he personally thought didn’t count, but Ivy was the expert.
When the meat had browned and Jem had removed it to deglaze with the onions, Ivy said, “Okay, now we’re getting to the good stuff. Tell us about your date comfort zones.”
Jesus Christ. “What does that even mean?”
“Like, if someone takes you to a salsa bar…,” Tori prompted.
“The kind where they serve tortilla chips or the kind with ladies in red dresses?”
He glanced over in time to see Ivy cover a snort with her hand. “Let’s assume the focus is on the second one.”
Jem and Tori brainstormed a list—“I know way too much about your areas of competence, Anderson. Sporting events, golf, knowing which fork to use at fancy dinners, clubbing. Oh, hey, do you think anyone’s looking for a guy who can do a keg stand?
Child-minding, black tie, talking to rich people like you’re one of them—”
“Why is this starting to sound like an indictment of my character?” Jem wondered as he scraped the rest of the vegetables into the pot.
“I can’t imagine,” Tori said airily.
The questionnaire wound down just as the chili finished cooking, with Tori proclaiming, “Okay, there’s a section on, like, whether and what kind of time you’re willing to spend with your dates without your clothes on, but that’s none of my business and I’d rather not know, so… I think we’re done.”
Fuck, in an hour or so, Jem was going to have to decide if he was willing to put naked time on the table. For now he settled for putting dinner on the table. “Great.” He flashed a small smile. “Thank you for the help, really. It’s, uh… it means a lot.”
Ivy reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “Of course. It was fun. And thank you for saving us from takeout for another night.”
“Hey, you know I’m in love with your kitchen.”
Tori paused with her spoon halfway to her mouth. “Do you think we need to add that to your profile? ‘Weirdly turned on by functional design’?”
Ivy elbowed her, looked over teasingly, then glanced back at Jem. “Is that a feature or a bug?”
Jem’s friends were such dorks. He was so lucky. “You’re the expert.”
“Feature, definitely, if it gets me fed like this.”
Jem flushed at the compliment. Sue him; he liked knowing he made people happy.
Conversation died off as they all concentrated on their dinner, but when Jem was about halfway through his bowl, he caught Tori and Ivy giving each other a married-couple wordless look.
Jem made a bet with himself about who’d speak first. His money was on Tori. She usually did the heavy lifting when she thought Jem needed handling.
Good thing he didn’t make the bet with anyone else, because he was broke and it was Ivy who broached the subject.
“Jem, you know we support you if you want to do this sugar-baby thing. We’d never judge you for that.
” She put her spoon down and blinked at him with those wide, earnest brown eyes.
“But if you don’t want to do it—if you’re doing it because you think you have to—we could give you a loan. ”
Jem was already shaking his head. “No, that’s—I can’t accept that. I don’t know when I’d be able to pay you back, and then it wouldn’t be a loan.”
To his relief, Ivy didn’t push it, just smiled her acceptance. “Okay. Well, offer stands.”
“Told you,” Tori muttered, sticking out her tongue.
Ivy laughed at her. “Oh my God.”
It was just a normal dinner after that. Ivy insisted on doing the dishes while Jem finished the last of his profile.
He had to admit, the biography she’d written him sounded—well, it sounded embarrassing, but embarrassing in a way that suited Jem and would likely attract the kind of people he wouldn’t mind spending time with.
Jem A., twenty-seven-year-old former NCAA athlete, now a young professional himbo with golden retriever energy.
Whether you need me to crush it on the golf course, charm investors at a charity gala, or pour margaritas by the pool, I can do it all and look good doing it.
Rather hang out at home? That’s cool, I’ll make you dinner and we’ll trash-talk X Factor.
The world is your oyster when you’re with me (unless you like actual oysters, because I’m allergic to shellfish).
“I thought you said I wasn’t a himbo, just himbo-presenting,” he said to Tori, playing up his puppy-dog eyes.
“We could edit to ‘himbo-presenting golden retriever,’” Ivy said, “but that seems redundant, and there’s a character limit.”
“Nah, it’s great, actually. Thank you again.” He smiled and hit Submit, then closed the app. “For the first time, I actually feel pretty good about this.”
“That’s my wife.” Tori smacked a kiss on her cheek.
He zoned out on the drive home and only noticed the Prius’s exceptionally sluggish handling when he put it in Park in the apartment lot and it made a gasping, wheezy noise when he turned it off. When he tried to start it again, nothing happened.
Jem leaned forward and banged his head gently against the steering wheel. As far as signs from the universe went, this one was pretty obvious.