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Like sleeping with him? I grab a piece of coconut from the fruit basket before me and bite into it, chewing it hard to refrain from remarking about how sexist his comment is. I don’t want the five-hour flight separating me from civilization forever annoying him to the point of leaving me here on this beach. At the end of the day, I depend entirely on him, and making him angry is not a great idea.
I sigh with relief when he gets up from the table and enters one of the rooms behind me. The air on the balcony becomes instantly lighter, and a sincere smile crosses my lips. My happiness, however, doesn’t last long because when Theodore returns, he kneels next to me with a smile on his face and the blue velvet box that I have come to hate.
“Theodore, what did we say about marriage proposals?” I ask him, exasperated as I look at the pink diamond as big as a walnut mounted on a platinum ring.
The first time he proposed to me, in a luxury restaurant in Paris, I was terrified that someone would mug us and rob us. The fear outweighed the embarrassment of having to decline his proposal in front of a place full of people who held their breath waiting for my answer. I received shocked glances from some of the women when I closed the box and put it back on the table. The diamond shone so brightly under those lights that anyone who noticed it thought I was crazy.
“I know what you think about it, but I’ll keep asking you until you say yes.”
I roll my eyes and grab him by the arm to drag him back to his chair.
“You have three failed marriages. Why do you insist on finding a fourth wife?” I ask him, sincerely intrigued by his insistence. I really can’t understand what drives a person to do that.
He shrugs and grabs another croissant from the bread basket. “I need company. Do you know how lonely the life of a successful entrepreneur like me is?”
I overlook his flamboyant behavior and emphasis on his social status and study him for a few seconds. He’s an intelligent man. He’s built a billion-dollar empire, yet he just doesn’t get certain things.
I sigh and explain for the umpteenth time, “A sugar daddy website is not the right place to look. It’s not that hard to understand. Girls who become sugar babies don’t want a relationship. They want the gifts their sugar daddies give them. Otherwise, they would have put their face on a dating app and dated guys their age who want to start a family. Do you want to pay to just have sex without even knowing the person’s name? You go to an escort agency. Do you want company for a holiday, a weekend, or even a dinner, in exchange for some gifts? Look for a sugar baby. Do you want your fourth marriage? Go to a marriage agency. Theodore, I’m on that website because I have a huge amount of debt, not to look for a husband.”
His expression becomes sad, as if I’ve just told him that his lifelong dream is not achievable. “If you become my wife, it’ll solve all your money problems.”
His insistence is almost physically painful. How is it possible that he can’t give up even when I reject him every single time? “Theodore!”
“Okay, don’t fret.” He smiles at me as he gorges himself on brioche. “But remember that there are stories of sugar babies who eventually fell in love and married their daddies,” he continues petulantly.
“And how many of those have a lover?”
He looks at me and shakes his head disconsolately. “When you stop being so cynical, you’ll realize that true love exists, and it’s worth striving for.”
“Coming from someone with three failed marriages behind him, that’s not very reassuring,” I tease, winking at him.
He laughs and shakes his head.
It’s not that I don’t believe in love, but I was raised by a single mother and stopped believing in fairy tales. In my world, as I became an adult, I learned there was no Prince Charming and, most of all, no princesses who needed marriage to feel fulfilled.
***
We get on the private jet that awaits us at the airport. Theodore has been on the phone since we got into the limousine. The man who tells me to take it easy and enjoy life has an empire to oversee. Despite delegating most of his work, our dates always end with a brutal return to reality when he turns the phone back on. From our initial meeting, it was very clear what kind of person he was—his first request was for me to sign a non-disclosure agreement. I can’t talk about our relationship with anyone, but I also have to remain silent about all the information I get from our conversations or his phone calls in my presence.
In all honesty, I understand his position. Many of the things I’ve heard would bring companies and plenty of politicians obsessed with their public image to their knees.
We sit opposite each other, and the flight attendant approaches with two glasses of champagne and macarons that she puts on the table between us.
“Thank you.”
The girl smiles at me and then disappears behind a compartment that divides our luxury with leather seats and a wooden table from her cubicle, which is a kitchen to prepare dinner while we fly to New York. Theodore leaves the phone aside just long enough to allow us to take off but immediately gets back to work when the seat belt signal goes out.
I look out the window and enjoy the bird’s-eye view of Florida, not paying attention to what my companion says. After months of listening to conversations about contracts, mergers, and scandals, I lost interest in what once intrigued me about this world.
A hand resting on my knee brings me back to reality. I turn to Theodore, who, without pausing his conversation, pushes across the table the white envelope with the elegant black writing of one of the most famous jewelers in Manhattan. Inside is a velvet package very similar to the one that contained the ring. I look at it, open it, and find a pair of diamond earrings. Two simple stones with a hidden frame emphasize the jewel’s purity. The eight-thousand-dollar receipt is on the bottom of the envelope. Theodore didn’t hide it because he knows I never keep his gifts.
I pull my bag out from under the seat and put the envelope between my clothes. I look up, and for a moment, I lock eyes with the flight attendant, who immediately lowers hers, embarrassed. It’s not the first time one of them surprises me to check out the gifts Theodore gives me. At first, I died of embarrassment, caught in the act like a prostitute. Over time, I learned to ignore the sense of discomfort until it became so minimal it almost disappeared.
There is no excuse or justification for what I do. I use my looks to make money. I could have been a prostitute, but this would have meant accepting the risk of sleeping with potential employers, because the truth is that many in the music and entertainment industry use escort services. How could I think of maintaining my credibility as a manager if, as a second job, I have paid sex with my employers or potential clients? I support Evan day and night because he is the best in this industry. I want to learn all the little secrets of this job and, one day, become like him. I worked three jobs for years while I studied to learn entertainment management. When Evan offered me the job, I didn’t think twice about accepting, even if it forced me to find alternative ways to make money since managing doesn’t leave me any time for another job.
The flight attendant looks up again. I smile and wink at her as I shrug. She giggles and nods, and the silent conversation ends as quickly as it began. When we finally land in New York, I get up from the seat and, before getting off, I hand the girl a paper on which I wrote the name of the service I use.
“If you feel like making some extra money, this one is safe. Men pay a lot of money to the site to be able to contact you, so it filters out the ones who only pretend to be rich. They’re people who don’t just want sex, and you often find yourself on a flight to Paris for an unexpected vacation. So while he’s busy with business meetings, you get to be a tourist out and about in the city.”
