Now, everything in me burns for her, and even being here in this room with these two gorgeous women. It isn't enough to take my mind away.
"I'm sorry. I can't." I pull away, suddenly realizing how pathetic I am.
They're surprised.
I'm lying on my back, and they're lying on either side of me running their fingers up and down my body.
One of them kisses me again, playing with my earlobe. "Come on, baby. Stay. You can just watch."
"Yeah, we need you," the other whispers. "We don't get to come here often. Once every three months is the only time that we can play. You don't want to ruin our evening, do you?"
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to find another guy," I say, shaking my head and sitting up.
I find my shirt on the floor, buckle my pants, and check to see if my wallet, keys, and phone are still inside.
"This has nothing to do with you. You two are gorgeous. Breathtaking. You're going to make some guy feel incredibly lucky."
I walk out the door before I can change my mind.
Even a week ago, this wouldn't have happened. I would have had a good time, enjoying myself, got a little too drunk after, and then flew off to my next work assignment without a second thought.
I like this system and this routine, just like I like all of my other routines. It gives me something comforting to look forward to, something to put me at ease.
But then I went to The Redemption Club in New York and I saw her there, everything changed.
It was supposed to be a visit just like any other, and that was the last place that I thought I would find her.
I've watched her troll the bars. I watch her go home with different guys, worried that they might take advantage of her, but she was never that intoxicated, and she seemed to know what she was doing. She was there looking for the same thing that they were looking for.
But then when I saw her at Redemption, everything changed. The world tilted on its axis.
How did she find out about this place? Why is she here? Is it just a coincidence?
I wanted to talk to her, so I asked her to dance, and then my body took over.
Everything that I knew was the right thing to do in my head I couldn't make myself do. She has no idea about my past, and she thought that it was just a casual meeting like any other, except of course it wasn't.
As soon as I'd seen her, I knew that we had to be together, and when I touched her hand and our bodies ground against each other’s on the dance floor, I knew that I had to feel her naked underneath me.
I hate this about myself.
I hate the obsessiveness, the stalker behavior, but I can't make myself stop.
I feel like a loser, someone who can't just come forward and say what they want and ask a girl out to their face, but there are rules now.
She doesn't know that Dante is my real name. We were supposed to give out a pseudonym. She also doesn't know that I know that Jacqueline is hers.
I couldn't help but tell her the truth about my job, mostly because I was lying about so much other crap. I want something in our relationship to be true.
I get back to the hotel room, get on my laptop, and start to track her again. I check her emails and then log into her iCloud account to see her texts.
My mom doesn't want to do it. She's worried about the debt, Jacqueline texts, But I can't let her die. She has done so much for me, and she has been through so much. I just feel like such a fool for not trying to find a good paying job sooner.
Her mother's cancer is back, and she needs an experimental procedure that costs at least $75,000 upfront with no results promised or guaranteed.
What's a good paying job going to do? It would have to be incredibly good paying to come up with 250K, Allison texts back.
What am I going to do? Are you sure that OnlyFans isn't going to work or some sort of escort service? Jacqueline texts.
My heart clenches up.
Are you sure you want to do that? I mean, that's serious, Jacq.
I'm having sex with all these stupid guys anyway. I might as well get some money out of it.
You're having sex with hot guys who are into you. That's very different from prostituting yourself to the highest bidder, since most of them are going to be old and gross and not someone you'd want to be with at all.
I have to come up with $75,000. I already wrote them back that I have it. They're expecting it within the next couple of days, otherwise she can’t travel for the initial treatment.
What about the rest? Besides, it takes months if not years to develop enough clientele to build up that much of a bank roll, Allison writes. You're not going to be able to do it so quickly. You'll get a few thousand at the most.
What other choice do I have?
The conversation ends there, and I look at the timestamp. Fifteen minutes pass, and they don’t say anything else.
I've been watching Jacqueline for some time, but I never knew this part about her life. I knew her mom had some health problems, he had mentioned that.
But this experimental treatment? This aggressive cancer? I had no idea.
I pace around the hotel room trying to figure out a way to help.
If I send her the money, then she'll know who it's from and she might not take it.
But what if it was sent somewhere else?
What if I send the money to the clinic directly?
The whole $250,000, as an anonymous sponsor?
She won't be able to find out that it's me, and the world would be a little bit of a better place.
16
Jacqueline
I drop my mom off at the oncology appointment, and tell her that I'm going to run a few errands while she's there with the doctor.
Usually I'd have to wait in the waiting room, but it's a particularly sunny and warm day and I want to take a walk outside behind the medical center. The office building and the parking lot borders on a large ravine full of shrubs and trees, and an unofficial muddy path right behind the wall of the parking lot.
I like this place because no one is ever here, and sometimes it's nice to just go somewhere to get away from it all.
As I walk with my goal of getting at least 5,000 steps which I haven't reached in weeks, hell, let's be honest, months, I turn on my phone and make the dreaded phone call to the Danick Clinic.
I'd done something like this when I was in college.
I wrote letters and made phone calls to the Financial Aid department hoping to stumble upon someone with a heart to make an exception. It rarely worked, but I did it every semester because I heard the stories.
One of my friends or a friend of a friend would say, "I called them, told them about my situation, and actually got this additional grant, or scholarship, or financial aid option, and an extension."
I looked into it a little bit, about what it would take to become an escort, and I still can't believe that those words are going through my mind.
Unfortunately, ever since Allison and I texted two days ago, I'm no closer in finding out exactly how to do it safely, of course not legally, but in a way that wouldn't get me murdered.
As a journalist, I did an investigative assignment where I interviewed streetwalkers. Many of them suffered from drug addiction and were doing it mainly to stay high, but there were some that were a little bit more enterprising. They were saving money to start a new life. They came from bad circumstances, lots of abuse, and this was the way out.