Auctioned to Him 7: The Contract

by Charlotte Byrd

  I sighed and paused. I would do anything for a friend, especially one as good as Alex. The money isn’t the priority for this job, but it’s what keeps my standards high and makes sure that my clients have the same standards. “How cheap are we talking?”

  “Her name is April. She thinks it costs $200 per night.”

  “Is she renting an escort or a birthday party clown?” For $200 dollars you could get a lot of things, a quality companion was not one of those things but many sexual diseases might be.

  “I know, I know. I’ll owe you big time. I wouldn’t ask if this didn’t sound like such a desperate situation.”

  “Okay, yeah, you owe me one. And this one can be free. $200 a night doesn’t even cover my utilities here.”

  “She won’t do it if she isn’t paying. You could be homeless for all she knows. If she has to pay she thinks you’re a decent guy.” This was starting to shake up my night quite a bit. Maybe I could put this charity work on my profile.

  “Could I talk to Travis about this?” Alex forwarded his number to me and I called.

  “Hello?”

  “So what kind of girl are we talking about? Is she 60 and riddled with herpes?” Travis snorted after I said this and excused himself.

  “Sorry, I have to leave this room really quick. She was right next to me.” Travis sounded a lot like Alex did but with a deeper voice and a lot less inflection. “April is a nice person. She’s been in some trouble recently.”

  “It sounds pretty bad.”

  “You have no idea. Emotionally, physically, spiritually she is hardly the same girl I knew before the accident.”

  “What accident?”

  “Minor car accident.” He coughed out quickly. “Don’t worry about that, we can get to that later. Point is, I’m the one paying rent most months, it’s that kind of bad. She really is a great girl, but she just can’t show up to her ex-fiancés’ new fiancées’ dinner alone and bent out of shape.”

  I sighed and nodded. “Yeah, I understand that.” I’m no stranger to marriages. After all, this is Vegas. Marriages and remarriages happen all the time. I once had a client who had 5 different husbands below her belt. This kind of stuff isn’t new to me. My parents even were both remarried, and happily so. I’m happy for them. I’m just still getting used to a new set of parents to nag at me.

  “You can keep her money to cover her rent, think of it as charity or a gift from me on Alex. $200 really isn’t enough to care about.”

  “Yeah, I know. I don’t think she knows too much about the whole escort system.” He snorted. “You guys can carve out more of the details later, I have to get back in there and lend a shoulder for crying.”

  “Alright, let me know if I can help in anyway.”

  “Thanks, Grant. I owe you one.”

  I clicked end and went back to staring idly out my window. The lights below flickered and blinked. It could make a seizure prone person paralyzed for life. I love this grimy, beautiful city. New tourists and people every day, different sketchy activities happening every minute, and the fresh smell of sweaty old gamblers and cheap hooker perfume was enough to make me feel at home.

  I was always up for new adventures and challenges. This event sounded like it was going to be a fairly mundane and tame way to experience a wedding that I have no bias for. Maybe it would be healthy to spend a lot of time with a woman who isn’t over a relationship. I could see what it’s like to be attached to someone. I’ve never experienced this personally, but it looks wonderful from the outside. Well, until you get to the bad parts.

  I’ve never had a healthy long relationship, and I’ve never been around one either. My parents were married for a long time, but it definitely wasn’t healthy. They were always fighting and had nothing in common. I often wonder what actually brought them together in the first place, and I’m sure they wondered that too.

  My brothers and I were all not surprised by the divorce. Several times they had separated and gotten back together, but it was final about the 5th time. They would cheat on each other and go weeks without seeing the other one. And then my mom met Mike and my dad met Tammy, and the rest was history. Not always happy history.

  Tammy is pretty young for my dad. She’s 32 to be exact. Dad has a type, and it isn’t one in his generation. And now they’re expecting a kid. When my mom heard, she practically moved into her plastic surgeon’s office. She started buying vats of anti-aging cream and filled up her Botox punch card. And the fact that Mike is more than twenty years older than Mom also doesn’t help matters.

  Despite appearances, my dad isn’t ecstatic about the new baby either. He isn’t exactly young. Tammy could very well be the result of his midlife crisis, but that has come with some collateral damage.

  I don’t mean to be bitter. I do love my family as individuals, but growing up in a house with all of them wasn’t a party. And it wasn’t exactly easy. People assume that wealthy people have the most luck and are always having a great time just because we have nice clothes, nice cars and nice houses. But we’re people. And people have problems. Even rich people.

  Maybe that’s what appeals to me about older women. They are straight up with you. They have had enough of men fucking around on them, so they aren’t about to let some young prick tell them what to do. Things are simple with them. They say and do what they mean. No games. No bullshit.

  Normally when I get back I would watch TV and catch up on the news, but I’m back late enough that all I can do is work out, shower and go to bed. Another one of the requirements for charging such a high price is being able to back it up with quality goods. I was always a little athletic but I had to make a very complicated work out and eating regimen to get in top shape for this business. I always made fun of those people that would eat a leaf of lettuce and then run ten miles a day, but sadly I have become one of them. I could conquer the high school prom queen at a non-eating contest.

  I don’t condone eating disorders. I think that they are horrible on a body and are a cry for help from anyone, but being disciplined is something different. If I weren’t sculpted I wouldn’t get the revenue and amount of return clients that I do. I don’t like this side of me, but it’s a side I have had to be honest about. No one is perfect, even if they try very hard to look it.

  3

  April

  “Stupid beautiful Isabelle and her stupid long legs.” My fat around my stomach was soft to pinch in my fingers. I could see the stretch marks around my sides starting to turn from pink to white. “And stupid Tom and his stupid beautiful fiancé and their stupid happy picture on my stupid Instagram feed.”

  Travis came back in the room after his phone call and sat on the edge of my bed.

  “I have stretch marks now, Travis.”

  “You know, those are considered beautiful in some cultures.”

  “Not helping. They aren’t beautiful in this culture.”

  “No, really.” He started brushing my brown hair with his soft fingers. “People call them tiger stripes. It’s something you earn.”

  “That’s if you get pregnant.” I groaned and showed him the picture. “Look at these two stupid happy people.”

  “She is hideous.” He lied, smiling over at me. “Not nearly as pretty as you are.”

  “You mean not as pretty as I used to be.”

  “April, shut up.” That’s what gay best friends are for: living with and telling you to shut up. Travis has been the nicest through all of these changes recently. He was the first to offer to find a new place with me, the first to lend me a helping hand (with some money in palm) and the first to actually visit me in the hospital. “If you really feel that bad about a little weight go to the gym.”

  “I have been going to the gym.”

  “Well, go more then. And eat healthy.”

  I sighed again and rolled over. My laptop showed that I had a new email from Cosmo. I had been waiting by my laptop day and night waiting for a reply to my article I submitted.

  “Cos
mo wrote back.”

  “Oh! Good news?”

  I opened the email. “Nope. They rejected it.” Apparently “How to please your man in Bed” was an overused topic and it needed more zest in order to be published. I groaned again, as that seemed to be my communication method.

  “I bet dumb Isabelle doesn’t have a bad day at work.”

  “What does she do?”

  “Dumb executive assistant for a dumb Universal Studios hot shot. Hopefully they have an affair and call off the wedding. And then dumb Tom can go to dumb Google and do whatever dumb thing he gets paid for and be unhappy at work.”

  “This dumb wedding.” Travis jabbed at me. He left my room and let the door creak behind him.

  “I bet she doesn’t live in a dumb ugly apartment” I muttered under my breath. Normally I wasn’t this ungrateful, I couldn’t even afford this apartment with how freelancing had been going as of late. Pasadena isn’t exactly cheap and the landlord won’t take my fat as payment.

  “Wait, where are you going? Can’t you see I need you?”

  “Sorry, doll. I have to go to this dumb audition to make dumb rent.” Travis was an actor, and supposedly a good one at that. Maybe that could be my next career move. I can play everyone’s fat best friend. “I’ll come home right after. We can get dinner and I’ll bring wine or something.”

  “Make it arsenic, or maybe just rat poison will do.”

  “Never lose that sense of humor, April.”

  And with that he was gone. I turned the TV on and tried to do some crunches while watching a reality show. Realities shows were great for making me feel better about having a personality and being a decent person while simultaneously making me feel horrible about my body. I often did a quick workout routine when watching TV since I wasn’t up early enough to do those morning yoga shows.

  After I was all crunched I flipped open my laptop and skimmed through all the freelance jobs available. I preferred article writing, pop culture and feeding into it really is my strong suit, but at this point I would take any job that is offered to me. I have written vacuum reviews, made lists until my brain has fallen out, and still I am too broke to pay for anything.

  This apartment is nice enough to live in but not nice enough to stay. As soon as I get a regular paying job Travis and I are out of here and into somewhere where the water comes out of the faucets completely clear and the paint isn’t chipping off of the ceiling. I will miss the inspiration that all the characters we live next to give me, but I won’t miss their loud banging or arguments or the elephants that live upstairs.

  I often think about moving away from the west coast, or at least just out of California. I don’t think that will ever happen though. It was hard enough to leave Santa Barbara when I had to. I was born and raised there, as was dumb Tom. Why does my family have to be friends with his family? How do you friend break up with a whole group of people that have been there through diaper changes and growth spurts?

  You don’t. And you can’t. The Middletons were closer family than some of my aunts and uncles. I should have known better than to have fallen in love with someone so close to everyone. They were there for the accident, but that caused the collateral damage of my un-engagement. Life has been more glamorous for me before than it is now. At least I worked off some of the extra weight.

  I got in this car accident. I’m fine now, but I was bed ridden and put on heavy pain medication for a while. I gained 70 pounds, and I have lost 30 of them. I’m still 40 pounds heavier than I want to be, and I’ve been at a plateau for a while now.

  I did another set of crunches in between applying for different article writing gigs. Hopefully some magazine would take as much pity on me as I have.

  4

  April

  Even when I’m not eating, sometimes my brain default thinks about food. It makes it incredibly hard to keep the weight off and even harder to not just give up all together. I didn’t have much money, the accident put me out of work for a while, so I was struggling to get by to a point where food was scarce. I didn’t have the stamina to get a part time job on the street but also had too much pride to ask my parents for help. It didn’t take a therapist to recognize that I was a mess. This is the lowest point my life had had, and it was affecting every aspect of living.

  After the accident I couldn’t eat or sleep, and talking was even difficult. I had been driving home from a concert at night. It was a really really good day. I am thankful for that, that it was at least a great last day to have. While flipping through the stations on the radio a drunk driver coming from the opposite direction had gotten in the lane just enough to bump me. When I tried to turn the car, and keep some of it from bashing into the other drivers I over adjusted and turned it right into a tree. I was going 60 miles per hour, the other driver was going 80. He spun out and went down hard into a ditch. They tried to revive him for a few hours after, but eventually either he lost the will to live or his BAC got the better of his body.

  Even though I was the victim of that accident I had a tremendous amount of guilt. I was upset the other man died. Even if he was being a jerk, I didn’t want his family to have to deal with that loss. I was sure he was going through something bad if he had been driving after drinking. They said he was three times over the legal limit and almost bound to die anyway. When his parents visited me they told me about his life. He had found out that his wife had been cheating on him. He didn’t want to tell anyone, he wanted to keep it from his kids so that they could work it out in private. She wouldn’t admit to it and it drove him mad, making him unsure of what to do. That night they had a huge argument and he was going to finally decide to break it off. His mom was crying very very hard. She was upset that he made a dumb decision. She said he had talked about how depressed he was, and how he almost didn’t have the will to go on. She had wished she had listened better and gotten him a therapist.

  When I learned all of this instead of making me feel better it made me feel much worse. I thought of him a lot, especially after Tom called the wedding off. I should have seen it coming. He had never wanted to set a date. We had dated for six years before that, all through college and then after graduation. We were happy with each other, but when we lost the spark I knew that the engagement was a way of trying to fix a broken relationship. I swore we would both get over it, that all couples go through this kind of thing, and most do. And then it all changed with the accident. I saw him less and less. He talked stopped talking about our future, and stopped talking to me. When he broke it off I thought maybe he just needed some time away. Maybe my accident was causing us both to be depressed. It was depressing him, but he didn’t want to fix things. Instead he started a dumb new relationship last June with lady long legs.

  That’s why the worst part about all of this was the collateral damage. I gained the 70 pounds because I was bedridden and almost addicted to painkillers. As I healed I was dealing more and more with problems in my personal life, and one thing that was always there for me no matter what was food.

  When he left he never really left my life. My parents had known the Middletons before I had ever met Tom. When we started dating it just made them better friends. They all swore that it was destiny or part of some greater plan. I was foolish enough to believe it. We had a good time at the University of San Diego. I loved that he was different than me. I was incredibly expressive, I tried auditioning for plays and graduated with a major in English and Creative Writing. Tom was a Computer Scientist.

  We were really exciting to each other. He kept me thinking critically and taught me a few new things about the computer. If I ever wanted new software or couldn’t figure something out I had a professional on standby. When it came to computers I was about as useful as an 80-year-old Grandma that lived on a desert island. He liked that I was artistic and that I was a little bit insane. He told me all the time that I was the most exciting girl he had ever met.

  The more we got to know each other the less we had in common. The less we ha
d in common the harder we had to try to make it work. Six years was a really long time to be dragged along. You don’t get dragged that long without severe carpet burns and an excellent sense of what the bottom looks like. He probably felt the same way. None of our friends liked each other. One of the few friends of mine left was Travis.

  Travis came in the door, envelope in hand, waving it above his head. I quickly tried to make it look like I wasn’t laying like a lump on the floor.

  “What’s in there?”

  “My check from that commercial a month ago,” he sang, skipping into the kitchen. Travis had worked with one of the local companies on making a commercial. He had to do really cheesy dialogue and it would air overnight, but it was still acting. He swayed back and forth, probably texting his boyfriend about the money.

  “Congrats!” I was very happy for Travis. He was getting a lot of work and doing really well in his field. It made me feel pathetic when I saw his progress in an almost impossible job field and my lack of progress in the easiest field of work.

  “So what are we eating tonight?”

  “Air. I don’t have money. I can look at your food, though. Sniff it a little maybe.” I crawled back onto the couch and hid under the blanket. “This will be good for my diet. Being broke might be the best thing to happen to me.”

  “If you don’t start cheering up I am going to force feed you cocaine.” Travis shot me daggers from his eyes. He was very motivated, happy, and athletic – my exact opposite. Instead of it helping me live a healthy life style it made me more upset at myself. “I just got paid. Dinner is on me.”

  “You really don’t have to do this, Travis. You’ve done too much for me.”

  Travis walked over to the TV and changed it to the Food Network. “Yum. Look at all that. Maybe we should have Chinese. Maybe Italian. Ooh, how about sushi?”