Chapter 9 Eden
Eden
Eden was doing the thing you should never do – using her phone in the bathtub.
Had she ever dropped it in the water before?
No. Was she afraid she might start today?
Maybe a little. But from the moment she sank into the hot, bubbly water, there was something she wanted to look up, and it sent her down a rabbit hole of looking up this and that until she was texting with both of her boyfriends because they happened to text her at the same time from two different places.
Liam was going out of town for the weekend. And Benson wanted to know if she wanted to go out and do something on Saturday. All in all, mundane stuff.
But Eden couldn’t stop staring at her phone even after she replied to them.
Even after Liam went to bed, Benson disappeared after saying something about a museum exhibit he wanted to check out.
(The man had promised a link, then got distracted, apparently.) Even after she opened a website that helped her calculate investment interest rates and payouts based on, say, $200,000.
You’ve got to be kidding me. If she played her cards right, Eden could retire at thirty-five.
She didn’t know what she would do in the meantime.
And who was to say she couldn’t make a proper career out of sex work here and there?
Tax-free, no less. Even if she got a side job in…
retail? Fine dining hostessing? Scrubbing down leather chairs in The Dark Hour?
All of those jobs paid more than sitting on her duff, but a quarterly excursion to the Caribbean, even for one year…
That wasn’t quite half a million dollars, but if she added up all of the bonuses… not to mention parlaying that experience into working at Le Salon or elsewhere…
What am I doing? Liam had been right when he said that Benson probably wouldn’t be into his girlfriend going off on weekends here and there to get screwed by a host of unknown men, especially when he knew firsthand how rowdy and wild those parties could get.
Add on to the fact that it would fly in the face of his kink…
Eden had him totally figured out by now.
Benson was only into “his” woman fooling around with other men if he got to play, too.
Which brought Eden to her other remaining conundrum.
He’s clearly super into me. Eden had a feeling that Benson was about to pop some sort of question soon, and she wasn’t inclined to immediately say no, whatever level of severity it was.
But was she ready to get into something long-term and serious with either Benson or Liam? They were great fun now, but…
So much money. Money she made herself, using her own body, time, and youth.
Eden’s goal was to be financially independent. She couldn’t do that while resting on her laurels with Benson’s money. Even if they stayed together forever… and there was no guarantee of that!
She put her phone on the side of the tub and dripped water through her fingers.
Ripples formed around her body as she tipped her head back and sighed.
Why couldn’t Eden have a clearer picture of her future?
Why couldn’t she have some passion that dragged her somewhere?
Some inclination that she could put her money toward and have a somewhat guaranteed adult life of housing, food, and health insurance?
And why, when she did find something that got her going, did it have to be against the social grain? Because, like her, Liam and Benson had both been raised in the same world, the same culture…
All three of them had some kind of hangup. Benson struggled to be “out” to the world. Liam got emotionally attached easily. And Eden? She was floundering in an economy that didn’t provide much direction for where to go, and did not respect sex work. If it was even allowed.
Quarter-life crisis. That’s what this is!
Well, could anybody blame her!
Benson treated her to an afternoon at the Metro Museum of Modern Art, followed by a perusal of some shops that she loved but rarely shopped out.
With a bag full of her favorite makeup and a couple of dresses in her hand – thanks to boyfriend Benson, who admitted he liked spoiling all women, from his girlfriends to his daughter – they decided to have dinner in a classic Italian eatery that sported candlelit tables and three-course meals.
Because of his connections, Benson got them a somewhat private corner booth away from other diners.
The man likes his privacy. Not that Eden could blame him.
Even if Benson were the most straight-laced man with desire for only one woman and nobody else, he would still want a corner private booth and for the world to know nothing about his business.
“What are you looking at?” he asked after the waiter took their orders, and she kept scrolling on her phone. “You’re reminding me of my daughter. Stop it.”
“What? Gonna ban me from using the phone at the dinner table, sir?”
“I almost expected you to call me Daddy, and we were gonna have some words about it.”
“Having met your daughter now, I wouldn’t blame you. How is she, by the way?”
Benson shrugged. “Back from New Orleans and staying with her mom before going back to Brown tomorrow.”
She finally put her phone down. “Do you know any local drag queens?”
There it was. A slight flash in the eyes. “Uh…”
“How about somebody called Ursula Slay Nguyen?”
Benson leaned back against his booth and crossed his arms. “What did Liam tell you?”
Eden could hardly hold back from laughing. “That you might be a fan.”
“He’s convinced I’m her number one fan because of that one time she…”
Eden’s brows arched.
“Nothing.”
“Beeeeen. Tell me. Please.”
“No.”
“Because of that one time sheee?”
Finally, he relented. “We went to a drag show way back when. We did that about once a month because we had some friends we liked to drink with who were big into the local drag scene, and Lemmy’s Dive has the best cocktails in that part of town…”
“You’re digressing, Ben.”
“Anyway, Ursula has a type. The number of times I was hauled onto the stage for her silly lap dances and—”
Eden’s mouth dropped. “No way. You, getting lap dances from drag queens…”“You’re just as bad as Liam.”
“Why? Because we know what you like?”
“Because you relentlessly tease me about any old thing.”
“You like it. You like having people who know you so well that we can love you for…”
They both looked away from one another, Eden blushing and Benson clearing his throat. Play it cool, Eden. She hadn’t said, I love you. She had referred to a type of person who… loved him…
“You bring up an interesting point,” Benson said, confusing Eden about her feelings even more. “I do tend to surround myself with people who know me a little too well.”
That wasn’t where Eden thought he was going, but she let out a breath of relief, anyway. “You’re an easy guy to like, Ben. I can see why Ursula can’t stop gyrating in your lap. Maybe I should take a spin tonight.”
“I much prefer lap dances from women, anyway.” He scrunched his nose. “I mean, non-drag women. I mean…”
Eden rolled her eyes.
“Why are you bringing her up, anyway?”
“Because I’ve been thinking about checking out a drag brunch tomorrow. Mimosas and Donna Summer cover songs.”
“And you want me to take you?”
“Eh, only if you’re into it, too. Maybe it can be something we do together.”
“You like drag?”
He sounded so puzzled by that, as if Eden hadn’t been raised on a healthy diet of social media accounts run by lifelong and later-in-life drag queens discovering themselves and sharing their joy with the world.
Oh, and we have like… the same tastes in divas.
They loved Janet Jackson… Eden loved Janet Jackson!
They knew every lyric to Olivia Rodrigo’s first album…
so did Eden! Ooh, I wonder if there’s a Sabrina Carpenter drag queen!
“It’s whatever,” she said with a nonchalant shrug. “Ooh. Look. Breadsticks.”
The waiter dropped them off alongside some olive oil and butter. Benson gestured for Eden to have her fill. She worked on the first one while quipping she had to watch her figure, for while she was curvy in the middle, there was such a thing as eating enough to go up a dress size.
“You’d look great no matter what,” Benson said. “Eat the bread. You only live once.”
Eden slowed down her chewing before putting down the breadstick on her plate. “Still, I don’t want to buy new clothes. It’s a big pain in the butt. Which will happen to my butt if I eat too many carbs.”
“You do what you want,” Benson said. “But I’ll tell you what I tell my daughter…”
“Oh, my God, no.”
“…and what I used to tell my ex-wife when she worried about staying thin in the 2000s.”
“Ben, please, no, for both our sakes…”
“I’ll be attracted to you no matter what. Your health matters most.”
Eden pursed her lips. Well, at least he hadn’t gone the beautiful at every size route, which Eden was drastically tired of hearing after hitting puberty and gaining thirty pounds. Most of it’s my thighs and tits. She had an hourglass, more or less, which got her into La Mariposa, but…
Another reason she knew she only had so much time to make money off her body, if that’s what she still wanted to do. Men only find figures like mine hot as long as our stomachs stay behind the waistband. She sighed to think about it.
“Eden.”
She glanced back at her boyfriend, who was the quintessential hottie trending toward silver fox status. Something something fine wine. Eden wanted to scream.
“What?”
“There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
Eden gave one last look at her phone to see if Liam had texted her back about her date with Benson, but nothing. He must still be at his dinner. Or was it lunch in LA? “Yeah?”
“It’s about…” He inhaled a deep breath, sitting up again. “Well, I’ll just come out and say it. You said your lease is up this summer.”
Her stomach dropped, but she kept a straight face as she braced herself. Here we go…
“Yes. Probably going to get my rent raised again.”