Page 2 of Shy Girl

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Accounting seemed like the logical path. Safe. Boring, but safe. I built my life around spreadsheets and formulas, around the certainty that numbers didn’t lie. Until they did. The mistakes started small—a decimal in the wrong place, a column misaligned. But they grew. Missed deadlines. Angry clients. I’d stay late, rechecking, triple-checking, running my fingers over the same rows and cells as if the answers might change. My boss didn’t care about my rituals, only the results. The pressure built, and my precision cracked under its weight. Eventually, I was fired. Unemployment is its own kind of hell.

Rent. Bills. A parade of due dates I couldn’t outrun. My brain gnawed at the problem like it could chew its way to a solution, turning it over and over until every angle was frayed. Borrowing money felt like begging. Job applications felt like flinging darts in the dark, the targets moving further away with every throw. What I needed wasn’t politically correct—I needed something that was immediate. Radical.

That’s when I remembered the TV segment, the woman with her flawless hair and a life draped in silk, funded by men old enough to be her father. Sugar daddies. At the time, I’d laughed at the absurdity of it, the glossy fiction of her ease. But now? Now it felt like a possibility.

Could I do it? Should I do it? The questions spiraled into equations: risks divided by rewards; costs subtracted from benefits. My brain, desperate for a foothold, clung to the math.

I didn’t look the part. Long legs, sure, but paired with a flat chest and hips that refused to curve, a body that felt like a compromise. My hair, wild and black like my mother’s, defiedevery effort to tame it, springing back no matter how much I pulled. My face was “quirky,” which is what people say when they mean not beautiful, but just interesting enough. Still, surely someone out there had a niche for girls like me.

MIA BALLARD7

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I researched obsessively, the way I always do. Forums, reviews, spreadsheets comparing platforms. I settled on SDForMe.com—just reputable enough to feel safe, just sleazy enough to feel possible.

Signing up felt like undressing for an audience, each question pulling at my seams.Describe yourself.I stared at the empty box, the truth hovering like a weight: broke, anxious, spiraling.

Instead, I typed:Ambitious. Curious. Open to new experiences.

A lie, but a convincing one.

Next came the stats: height, weight, ethnicity. I hesitated before selecting “mixed race.” It was true, on my mother’s side as she was half White, though I thought of myself as just Black. Still, I had just enough lightness in my skin, just the right type of hair, the right type of hobbies, the right type of demeanor that people in college used to call me “oreo.” I hated it, resented it, but ignored it all the same. What could I say to that anyway?Thank you? Fuck you?

Then came the preferences: age range, income level, generosity. I adjusted the sliders like I was tuning a machine, trying to manufacture the perfect equation, one that balanced survival with dignity.

Finally, the photos. My awkward selfies glared back at me like evidence of failure. I analyzed them until I hated every angle, every shadow, until even the ones I could tolerate felt likebetrayals. I chose a few that didn’t make me wince and uploaded them anyway.

When I hit submit, my chest tightened. I slammed the laptop shut and stared at the wall, the enormity of what I’d just done pressing down on me like the weight of a stranger’s gaze. My brain, relentless, looped through its litany of questions:What if no one responds? What if someone does? What if this spirals out of control? What if it works?

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The questions clawed at me, but the numbers were louder. Rent. Bills. The unrelenting weight of what I owed and couldn’t pay.

I’d opened the box. All I could do now was wait to see what spilled out.

TWO

The next day,I dress with purpose. A white turtleneck, pressed slacks, and a leather jacket that hugs my shoulders just right. Small gold hoops slide into my ears, neat and forgettable, the kind of thing no one second guesses, that no one will focus on. My hair is pulled into a high bun, tight against my scalp, clean and contained. In the mirror, I see someone who might pass for important; for brave.

Kennedy will lose it when I tell her. I’m the responsible one, the rule-follower. The one who color-coded the grocery list, who double-checked the tip at dinner, who carried an umbrella on a sunny day just in case. My life has always been defined by borders, neat lines I never crossed.

I’ve known Kennedy since college. Kennedy lives without borders. She’s messy, vivid, radiant. Her phone was always missing, her lipstick always smudged, her nights long and full of strangers she never felt the need to apologize for. Somehow, it’s always worked for her. She has a husband now, a garden overflowing with basil and kale, a dog that barks at everything, and a two-year-old

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named Liam who laughs so hard his whole body shakes. She exists in sharp, bright colors.

Me? I exist in grayscale. I am thirty, alone, and unraveling quietly enough that no one’s noticed. Yet.

The bistro smells like roasted garlic and fresh bread. The windows are wide, the kind that let the whole street watch you eat, and the

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