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If you’d bothered to dress like this for me once in a while, maybe we’d still be together
“Sonofabitch!” I screamed.
“Clara, please—”
“Who the hell are you?” I shouted, holding my phone in front of his face so he could read the headline attached to the text Tyler had sent me.
Ian Dunning Rents Two-Dollar Whore!
“I’m nobody,” he said. “Really. I’m just Ian—”
“Dunning,” I practically screamed. “I can read. Why the hell did you give me a fake last name and why are the paparazzi following you around taking pictures of you?”
His face was crimson. “I’m kind of a celebrity,” he said. “An unwilling one, I swear. And you didn’t seem to know who I was when you woke up this morning, so when you asked me my name, I just—”
My phone rang. I looked at the screen.
It was Mom. I was in trouble.
Reluctantly, I hit the green answer button and held the phone up to my ear. “Mommy?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
Mommy was not happy.
“Mom, I swear it’s not what it looks like.”
“Was I a good mother, Clara?” she said. “Did I not teach you good from bad and right from wrong?”
“Of course you did,” I said. “You know how much I respect—”
“Then remind me what I’ve spent the last twenty-eight years of my life teaching you.”
I turned my head to the window, keeping my voice low. “Don’t be an asshole,” I whispered.
“That’s right!” Mom yelled. “Don’t be an asshole! So you tell me, what kind of asshole only charges two dollars for her services?”
“If you would just let me ex—”
“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times. Not a penny less than five thousand a night. And that’s the low end of the pay scale. I’ve made more than that in a half hour.”
I jumped out of the car and slammed the door behind me, hoping Ian hadn’t heard any of what my mother had just said. All I’d told him so far was that she’d once been a career trophy wife. I hadn’t told him about the extremely lucrative freelance enterprise she’d been engaging in since her last divorce.
“Will you just listen to me for a minute?” I said as I scurried away from Ian’s car.
“Listen to what?” she said. “This is Ian Dunning! You could have easily charged ten thousand. If he’d become a regular client, you could have made your entire living off of him.”
“He’s not a client because I’m not a prosti—”
“You’re the one who’s supposed to be so smart!” Mom said without letting me finish. “Do the math. You service the guy twice a month at ten thousand a pop, that’s almost a quarter mill a year. It would have left you with all the time in the world to wash ducks in Palmolive.”
“It’s Dawn, because it has a grease cutter, and would someone please tell me who the fuck Ian Dunning is already?”
“He’s your client from last night!”
“I know who he is technically!” I shouted. “I mean who is he that he’s making headlines? Is he some movie star I’ve never heard of or something?”
“Are you serious?”
