Page 2 of The Cinderella Arrangement

I pretended not to hear him as I dashed out of the office. Pressure built up behind my eyes and I gasped for breath. I thought of the Golden Gate Bridge and saw my body leaping off the red bars to be swallowed by the icy waters.

Everything will be fine.

I would go to the library and research.

I’ll spend the whole damn day there if I have to.

Once I entered the library, I breathed. It was my sanctuary. When I was young, I spent whole days away from homeburied in books. It was easy to crack a book open and dive into the story for hours and escape. When it closed at five, only then would I return. I still remembered how my stomach would fill with dread when my feet brought me closer and closer to my foster parents.

Fuck that.

I slid into a chair and logged onto the computer. Someone left a Time magazine on the desk and I pushed it aside. Themonitor burned my eyes as I scoured every website I knew for editing jobs and found a few I overlooked before. I spent hours typing up cover letters and sent half a dozen emails. I also shot my resume to other non-editing jobs. Professor Lark was right; I couldn’t afford to keep waiting for my dream job.

I grabbed the mug of coffee I brought with me, which was now stone cold, and knocked over the magazine so the cover landed face-up. A title caught my eye.

How I Became a Millionaire’s Sugarbaby

Intrigued, I flipped the pages to the article and read one of the enlarged quotes:

“I make about $5000 a month, which doubles when I travel with him.”

Holy shit.

My eyes scanned itas if I was the first one to learn this secret. The article was about sugarbaby websites, where the world’s richest men would ‘hire’ young women to go on dates with them at the most exclusive restaurants, or as companions when they traveled for business. The womanclaimed that she had never had sex with her clients. Women who became sugarbabies were usually college-age. They needed to pay for their college tuition, or their credit card debt, or whatever.

This can’t be real.

I clicked to one website they mentioned and gaped as I scrolled through the list of “gentlemen” and saw their profile pictures, their net worth, and their location. Apparently, theydid background checks on their millionaires’ tax records to make sure that their income was legitimate.

Wow. Five thousand dollars a month. That’d pay for rent, easy.

The girls probably have sex with the millionaires, making them little more than prostitutes.

I imagined myself on the arm of a sixty-year-old man and my guts twisted. But really, who cared how old he was? I could go on a couple dates with him. It’s not like I was signing a contract to go home with him.

This is a stupid idea.

But I would choose whom I went out with. He didn’t have to be sixty.

I took the Time magazine with me, stuffing it into my bag. Like a zombie, I walked back to the shuttle and returned to the BART. I was so out of it I almost got off the wrong stop. A battle raged inside me as I took the BART home, wondering whether I should tell Natalie or not. I knew she would not approve.

Jessica, don’t be stupid. This is just an escort site disguised as something else. Are you really that desperate?

Yes. I needed a job. Retail didn’t pay enough. This seemed like such an easy thing. A couple dates a month for a fat paycheck. I could at least try it. If I was uncomfortable with the experience, I could just delete my profile and never do it again.

You’ve lost your damn mind.

I unlocked the door to my apartment and walked inside. It was a grimy, two-bedroom place in the East Bay I could barely afford. Though Natalie’s parents were well off, they had the opinion that once you turned eighteen, you were on your own. We scrimped and saved for every beaten up piece of furniture in our place. A moth-eaten sofa that might have once been beige laid in the living room, and a chipped, circular wooden table surrounded by fold-up chairs sat in the linoleum kitchen. That was it. We didn’t even have a coffee table.

Natalie was in the kitchen, eating leftovers. I couldn’t believe how late it was. Almost suppertime. How many hours did I spend in the library researching?

“Hey.How’d it go?”

“So well I’m considering prostituting myself.”

Not far from the truth.

She stuck out her tongue at me, assuming I was joking.

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