Page 5 of Good Girl

I blink at her. More than once. “Face masks?”

She laughs. “Whatever. Just something to make you feel good. To re-center or whatever you need. Shit, I’ll have a personal masseuse waiting for you in the apartment, if you think you’ll need it.”

We lapse into silence again, and I stare blankly at the TV.

Twenty motherfucking thousand dollars.

Well, thirty, really.

I work through the numbers quickly and almost choke on a laugh. Over a three-year period, that’s just shy of two hundred dollars a week, if no interest is accrued.

I will have to pay taxes for the first time in my life because I’ll bemakingmoney.

Just this weekend.

Then I’ll stop.

They won’t want more, once they have gotten everything they desire this weekend.

Okay.

Just the weekend.

Then I’m done.

“Just the weekend,” I say to no one in particular.

Chapter 3

Emery

Needing a minute to myself, I grab my things, head to my room and close the door behind me, only to be confronted with the half dozen black bags of lingerie that I didn’t take with me tonight. Needing the comfort of my bed, I quickly remove everything and pull the blankets back before climbing in and snuggling down into the two pillows as best I can.

My room is bare, save for the furniture that the room came with—bed, one bedside table, and a chest of drawers, all of which have seen better days. Not that I can judge the state of the furniture, considering I turned up with my duct-tape-and-pins backpack and two garbage bags containing all my worldly possessions.

The foster system didn’t really allow for having anything more. And after a couple of weeks bouncing between shelters and street camps, my shit was limited. The majority of my clothes are hand-me-downs or from thrift stores. Besides the lingerie I bought earlier today, I own nothing brand new.

The lingerie shopping was today.

Today’s timeline of events is seriously shocking my system.

The cab ride to the hotel was today.

It all happened today.

Why does it feel like it was weeks ago?

It’s like my internal clock has been forever shifted, and I have no idea if the dial was rotated forward or backward. It’s just before hotel and after hotel.

I pull up my phone and go to the SugarLife app. It’s still open to the yet-to-be-responded-to private invitation. Doing my best to not think about it too much, I scroll down and clickAccept. My breath catches when I scroll back up and spot the green icon next to Brat4Us, indicating that they are online.

A message comes through, and the screen auto-scrolls to the message.

Brat4Us:Thank you for accepting our invitation, Emmy.

Brat4Us:We have an apartment that we have adapted to our particular tastes and would love to share the space with you for the weekend.

Several grayed-out images with an icon of a closed eye appear, and I tap on the first one to enlarge it.

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