Chapter 3
| GIRL
| You’re serious right now??
| Please tell me you’re seriously asking
| As serious as I can be
| I’m tired of disappointing Tinder dates and even more disappointing sex
| Plus, you know, I’m broke as a joke
| Wait up for me, we’ll talk. I’ll be home in less than an hour
Normally Cora stays the night at Fred’s place after one of their dates, especially on a weekend night. Instead, when she gets home just after midnight, she climbs into my bed and plays with my hair like we used to when we were young.
We’re both quiet for a long while, her nails gently raking through the strands of my hair. I’m almost asleep when she finally asks:
“Did something happen tonight?”
The pain in my chest is unexpected.
“No.” But it feels like a lie when I say it. “Maybe. I don’t know.” The silence stretches, but it’s with a patient breath that I turn onto my side and curl my knees against her hip. “I think you’re right.”
“About what?”
“About wanting someone to take care of me.” I squeeze my eyes shut but already feel a little lighter with the words taking flight on my lips. “I don’t want to want that. I’ve always done everything for myself. I haven’t needed anyone except for you in a long time.”
“I know. You’ve always been little Miss Independent.” Cora’s nails scratch lightly against my scalp, smoothing through to the ends of my hair.
“Like I had any other choice.”
“Exactly. So maybe it’s time you take some time off from that? Like a vacation.”
“A dick vacation?” I can’t help the snort that breaks free.
She smirks those red lips down at me, and I clock the smear at the corner of her mouth. “A good dick vacation. Let him spoil you with food, gifts—pleasure. Maybe you won’t want to come back.”
I roll my eyes, sinking back into the pillows and wishing I wasn’t feeling guilty over ruining her night.
“Right. Suuuure.”
“Never say never.” Cora shrugs.
I pick at the little fuzzies dotting my duvet obsessively, avoiding looking up at her. “Sorry you felt like you had to come home. We could’ve talked tomorrow.”
“Please, you didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want. Freddy was fine with it, considering the context.”
“He was?”
“Of course. His best friend might be getting his own sugar baby.” She grins, a wicked thing that has me flinching into the plush of my mattress to get away. “He was on the phone with him before I even got all the way out the door.”
I take a deep breath in, count to five, and exhale. Repeat.
“So what does this…mean exactly? What are the rules?”
Cora stops playing with my hair, and suddenly I wish I hadn’t asked. She shimmies further down in the bed to lay against the pillows beside me. There’s a beat of silence before she speaks.
“Every sugar relationship is different,” she begins, her tone shaking before it steadies out. “I’ve had several now. It’s a no-brainer that communication is key, just like a regular relationship. You’re going to want to set some rules together—like pay per meeting or an allowance, dress code, how often he wants to see you, how you’ll spend time together, your hard limits for sex—”
Good God, okay.
“—and you’ll want to get a passport, since he might want you to go with him on trips. You know I travel with Freddy a bit.”
Understatement.
Cora has been on a ton of trips with Fred since she started her relationship with him. Was that something to look forward to? I’ve barely been out of the state for vacation.
“I’ve never even been on a plane, Cor.”
I peer up at her, and there’s a soft look on her normally sharp features. Sympathy? Pity? I’m not sure.
“Flying is the easy part of the whole thing, I promise. Just don’t ask for more after you’ve established things. That’s one of the biggest don’ts I can advise you on. The difference with being a sugar baby, not a vanilla girlfriend, is that you aren’t demanding attention. You aren’t calling him up. No obligations, no tears, no drama—no drawbacks.”
It sort of sounds too good to be true. Because those drawbacks are exactly why I’m always the first to leave.
“You’ll need to get tested so you can exchange results with him. You need to keep yourself safe. Birth control?”
“You know I got an IUD years ago.”
Cora looks proud for half a second before then her expression softens and becomes too much for me. My IUD will always be a reminder of my sister’s pregnancy and everything that brought my house down with it. The last thing my parents were able to force on me so that I didn’t end up pregnant out of wedlock just like her. At least they paid for it.
“There’s another thing I know you’ll have a hard time with because I know you, but that is literally the point of this. You not only resist compliments, but also gifts—”
“I do not.”
“Yes, you do. And you’re likely going to be given expensive gifts, large sums of money, lavish trips—but as a sugar baby, you graciously accept the benefits from your sugar daddy.”
The guilt and anxiety are already welling up like an overflowing spring. I can feel it simmering in my pores like sweat on a hot summer day.
“I can do that.”
Cora levels me with a stare that could break a mountain in two.
“I can,” I say more resolutely. “I understand that’s the point of the relationship. It’s not something I’m used to, but I’ll get over it.” My words sound pretty convincing, committed even.
But who am I convincing, Cora or myself?
“Good. The last thing I’ll say for now is that you need to be prepared for him to end things at any point. Don’t depend on it, use it like a supplement.” She pauses and chews on her lip, looking away from me. “Just don’t get too attached. You don’t want to fall in love with someone who only wants you for those specific things, because eventually you’ll want more.”
I nod, closing my eyes. My teeth sink into my lip and can’t help it when I bite so hard the coppery tang of blood blooms across the tip of my tongue.
My head is swimming when I get up the next day. I have to drag myself up out of bed to turn the alarm off on my phone halfway across the room, swiping away messages containing different links Cora sent to me before we went to sleep. Unfortunately, I have a shift to work at the flower shop today. Though it’s not that early, it still makes drinking then staying up so late so regrettable. Even after only one beer. I don’t know how people drink more than that, honestly.
I’m too young to feel so old.
Rushing through getting dressed in jeans and a black tee, I step over the piles of laundry in my room, go down the hall, and rush toward the door after barely brushing my teeth and throwing my hair up in a ponytail. I reach for my cardigan on the hook in the entryway, fingers slipping through the thin air. I groan, nearly stomping my foot like a toddler when I remember exactly where it is.
Probably kicked under Sam Paris’s bed to die a gruesome death, next to all the other women’s panties he slingshots around his room.
Grabbing my keys and purse, I lock the door behind me and take the stairs two at a time down to the street level to start my walk to the flower shop. It’s only a few blocks from our apartment building, so I don’t have to bother with the bus, subway, or anything crazy. Thankfully, there is barely a chill in the air this morning.
The day goes painfully slow, the only saving grace is my co-worker, Valerie, ordering coffee from Starbucks and offering to cover my drink. My once-a-day, no good money sink that I know I shouldn’t be indulging in, considering caffeine calms me more than wakes me up. I’m always ready for a nap after a caramel macchiato.
I sit at the counter between helping customers and misting down the flowers we have out front on display, scrolling through links Cora sent. Idly, I fill out an expedited passport application, even though part of me wants to freak out over the thought of getting on a plane. I’ve barely been two states away on family vacations and now I’m going to be ready to fly to another country? It kind of makes me want to barf.
The total price nearly makes me weep—nearly three hundred dollars in total. I have to send a pathetic text to Cora to ask for the money to cover the cost. Not even two minutes later, I get a notification that I have money in my Venmo account. She sent more than enough, because she’s extra like that. I follow the link at the end to make an appointment at the post office for the remaining steps.
I throw myself into flowers for the rest of the day. I weave bouquets with a laser focus I can only ever seem to find in the backroom of the shop, even when the floral smell overwhelms me at times and I’m forced to take a break or risk a migraine.
Cora isn’t home when I get back to the apartment, and that’s just fine.
Fine.
Not that I’ve been freaking out all day, bruising flower petals and having to cut ribbons twice over whenever my thoughts strayed.
A sad turkey sandwich and handful of chips later, I settle in bed with my e-reader and a spicy, pirate x princess-disguised-as-a-cabin-boy romance for the rest of the night.
The next morning, I go in to work before I’m supposed to—which is blasphemy. I don’t enjoy the shocked look on Angela’s face when I walk through the door, decidedly not late for my shift for once. But I could barely get my brain to turn off in order to sleep, so I rolled out of bed and crawled across the floor to get ready despite wanting to bed rot all day.
Working my shifts back to back is nice because I need that structure for my day. But today, Cora texts me at noon to let me know she’ll be picking me up when I’m finished working. Which means she has something planned. Which puts me on edge the rest of the day and makes me wish I was anywhere but here.
Deep down I know what it has to do with, because she never does anything in half measures. She’s all in, all the time. I just can’t let myself think too hard about it. So instead, I look at the clock or my phone every five minutes with the rest of the day crawling by unbearably slow.
Ten minutes to the hour, a horn honks from outside, making me glance out the front windows. I slip my apron over my head, peeking around the corner to Angela’s office in the back to let her know I’m leaving a smidge early today. She gives me a positive affirmation from where her head is ducked behind her laptop, her dark eyes peering over the rims of her glasses at me.
She waves me away with a flick of her fingers before pushing the wire frames up on the bridge of her slim nose. She smiles up at me, crinkling the edges of her eyes even further as she wishes me a good night.
Out front, Cora’s little red Volkswagen Beetle is vibrant in a sea of monochrome vehicles. She looks like a supermodel as she leans against the car, her red-bottom heels scraping the pavement as she flicks her heart-shaped sunglasses down as I approach.
“We’re having a spa day.”
Blinking, I look down at my phone before tucking it in my purse slung across my hip. “We have time for that? It’s already six.”
“Time doesn’t stop for anyone, babe. Get in,” Cora tosses over her shoulder as she saunters around the car. “You need a facial and a wax before Friday.”
It’s Tuesday.
“What’s Friday?”
Cora hums as we get in the car. Her nails drum against the steering wheel, a second of hesitation before she pulls into the road.
“Cora,” I try again, more pointedly as I click my seat belt into place with more force than necessary. “What is Friday?”
“Your first date with Ben.”
The sinking feeling from yesterday returns, and my head spins just a little. “Ben?”
“Freddy’s business partner. I told you about him, remember?”
I reel back, clenching my eyes closed to ignore the glances Cora is sending me when I’m silent for an overly long time.
“No, no, no—” I blurt out, sighing and sinking down in my seat. “You told me like three things, and that’s fucking it.”
Of course, I hadn’t asked either, throughout any of our conversation.
“Benjamin Reed,” she offers. “Ben.”
She shrugs, still driving calmly to our destination like I’m not having an existential crisis in the passenger seat.
I don’t quite know what to say, so I settle for picking the lint off my jeans to give my hands something to do that doesn’t include carving the skin out of my palms.
“I thought you decided you wanted this?” Cora asks, far gentler this time. “You asked for the money for the passport.”
“I did—” I sink further into the seat. “I do. It’s just happening a lot sooner, like way, way sooner than I realized it would. It’s only been like a day since we talked about this. I’m kind of freaking out, and I don’t know why.”
Except I know exactly why.
The eons of insecurity and scrutiny fueled by my mother still live within me, echoing with each breath I take. Despite the distance, despite the years, it still lives under my skin, programmed into my brain. It feels tenfold with the fact that this man is my parents’ age and has probably lived nearly twice as long as I have. He’s not a dumb boy like Sam Paris. He owns a successful business with a partner who can absolutely spoil the fuck out my cousin.
“Do you want me to cancel?”
My heart thuds against my chest. My first instinct is to tell her yes, but I literally asked for this. Just because change is difficult for me—just because time is an illusion that moves so slow and fast all at once—doesn’t mean I don’t need this.
“No—I just—ready for—I’ll go.” I finally manage to get out in some semblance of a sentence.
Cora squeals and thrusts her hand out to squeeze my knee. I don’t miss the way the car jerks before she corrects it.
“Great, we’ve got work to do then. And it’s just a first meeting, babe. You don’t have to do anything other than have dinner with him. If you don’t vibe, then you don’t have to do anything else.”
“I would hope not,” I say, despite knowing that to be the truth regardless.
We spend the next couple hours at the spa, one of the fancy ones with the hot towels and warm blankets. The staff are intimately familiar with Cora, carrying on with conversation as I get poked, prodded, and my hair yanked out all over.
I’ve never had a facial before. Well, the kind with the steam, the exfoliation, and the dermaplaning. It’s as relaxing as they say. There’s usually a fine line between too much stimulation and just enough, but this is the best way to keep my mind off of him.
Off of Ben.
But it doesn’t mean I don’t daydream about a man in a three-piece suit with silver hair.