A phone ringing in my ear wakes me up the next morning. I don't even open my eyes or raise my head off of Micah's bare chest as I reach over to the nightstand and grab my phone before answering it.

"Hello?" I mumble groggily into the phone.

"Please tell me that you're not busy on Wednesday," Ashe greets me on the other end. She's another escort at the service, one of my closest friends, and she's been away with a client for a long time now.

"Are you back?" I ask her.

"I am back," She confirms. "So Wednesday?"

"Um, yeah, I'm free," I mutter, still not getting up from Micah's chest mostly because I'm just too tired to move. "Do you have something?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," She chimes, sounding very awake and very excited about whatever it is that she has planned for Wednesday. "A bunch of the head honchos from Hudson are coming into town and they've decided to throw a party. And what sceevy businessmen party is complete without a few very well-paid hookers?"

"That sounds good," I tell her, glancing up at Micah. He's still asleep and I'm sure that even if he wasn't, he wouldn't be able to hear what Ashe is saying. Still, I manage to get up and head down the hallway into the bathroom just in case he was able to hear the conversation. "What time?"

"I'll text you the details later," She says. "Do you want to go shopping tomorrow? Pick out something super sexy and new for these pervs?"

"I can't go shopping right now, I've got to save my money right now," I tell her apologetically.

"Let me buy you something then," She suggests. "I can't go shopping if I don't have anybody to go shopping with, there's no fun in that."

"Alright, sure, I can go shopping with you tomorrow. We have a lot to catch up on, you were gone forever," I inform her.

"Oh, honey, I know," Ashe sighs. "Anyway, just look out for my text about Wednesday. We are going to be making bank. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah, see you tomorrow," I confirm before we say goodbye and hang up.

I like working the parties mostly because it rarely ever involves actually having sex with anybody. They just like something pretty to look at while they get drunk or high or both. They like to touch, they like to shove money into our bras like we're strippers, but they usually pass out before they can get their dick hard enough to stick anywhere. We're basically getting paid to be glorified strippers. The only difference is that we're way more expensive and if they get especially touchy, they can play with our tits.

We charge by the head, so it depends on how many people are in the room and usually, there are a lot. Which means that it's easy money and something that I sorely need right now. I'm confident that none of these men know Davis because Hudson is a company from out west and they just visit the city for meetings and conventions sometimes. It's a safe gig.

I get my teeth brushed and I clean my face in the bathroom before I return to the living area and I make a bowl of cereal. Micah is still asleep so I just sit beside him on the bed while I eat and put the party on my calendar so that I don't forget about it. Other than a client on Friday night, those are my only two appointments for the week. It's a good thing that Micah is getting me that job at his dad's office because I really need that extra money.

Speaking of money, I suddenly remember that I have to pay Casey's tuition bill by the end of this week so once I finish my cereal, I open my laptop and get onto the school's website so that I can log on and pay that bill. However, when I look at the balance for this month, it has a big whopping $0 where it should have the amount that I'm supposed to pay. I know for sure that I haven't paid it this month so I click on the history of the payment info.

It shows that there was a payment last week from a bank account ending in 5240, which isn't my bank account. Immediately, I suspect my father. The note that he left with the car is still in the kitchen so I get back up from the bed and find the note in a drawer near the utensils and unfold it to find the phone number scribbled at the bottom of the page.

"This is Silas Barkley," He answers the phone.

"Did you pay Casey's school bill?" I ask him just to get straight to the point.

"Eleanor?"

"Did you?" I ask again.

"Yes," He confirms with a short sigh. "You seem like you could use some help, so I'm just trying to help out."

"Is this hush money? Because I already told you that I'm not trying to out you or anything. You don't have to keep doing shit like this," I say to him as I'm pacing the kitchen, trying to speak quietly so that I don't wake up Micah. "And we don't need your help."

"You don't need my help?" He repeats me, sounding very skeptical.

"No," I insist. "We're doing just fine without you intervening just because you're afraid or because you feel bad."

"You are not doing 'just fine' on your own," Silas informs me. "You are prostituting yourself for money just to make ends meet, how do you constitute that as doing fine?"

"I'm doing what I need to do but I'm getting by," I say to him and I know that it's totally hypocritical of him to judge me for being an escort when he buys escorts from the service that I work for. We're playing different sides of the same game and he has the nerve to judge me for that? At least I have a good reason behind why I do it, the only reason he's doing it is because he wants to get laid. I don't say any of that though because I'm talking loudly and I might wake up Micah. "And I don't think that you really have any room to judge me."

"I'm not judging," He insists. "I'm just trying to help you get out of that life style. If you could tell me where you life, I can help with rent too."

"I don't need help with rent. I don't need help with anything."

"What if you get arrested? What good would that do Casey?" He asks me.

"I'll figure it out."

"Just let me help you, Eleanor," Silas says quickly.

"And what if a reporter or some hacker or something gets into your bank accounts and sees that you've been giving us money? Not only will your name get dragged but you'll pull me and Casey into it too, we'll be a laughing stock. Like the next Monica Lewinsky or something and I'm not going to put Casey in that kind of situation."

"Well, the situation you're putting him in right now isn't great either, you know."

"Fuck you," I spit at him. "If you would have been there from the beginning, none of this would have happened. I'm sorry that we weren't convenient for you back when we needed you but you can't just hop in and out of our lives when it's a good time for you. If you would have acknowledged our existence before, maybe Casey wouldn't have been put in the situation that he's in now. But we were left alone so I'm doing what I have to do to give him what I never got. So don't you dare tell me that I'm doing a bad job at providing for him because I'm doing a better job than you ever did. The hobo that I pass on the way to Walmart has done a better job at raising Casey than you have. So thanks but now thanks. We're doing fine without you. Asshole."

"You kept the car."

"What?"

"You kept the car. Didn't you?" He asks me.

I don't know what his point is but I don't like where he's going with this.

"All I'm saying is that if you didn't need my help as much as you claim that you don't, maybe you wouldn't have kept the car," He explains to me. I glance over at Micah and see that his eyes are open now. He looks tired but he's looking at me curiously. I don't continue looking at him, I keep up my frustrated pacing and focus on the conversation at hand instead of my incredibly hot boyfriend in my bed.

"Whatever," I don't have a good argument to that. "Just leave Casey out of it. Alright? Don't try to talk to him, don't get in contact with him at all. If you want to give us your money then fine. Whatever. You will not bring him into this. He wants absolutely nothing to do with you. You are nothing to him, and it's going to stay that way."

"Sure," He agrees with me. "I won't contact Casey."

"No amount of money should ever be able to clear your conscience of what you've done to us," I add before I hang up on him and run my fingers through my hair in frustration. I then turn to Micah and say, "I'm sorry if I woke you up."

"Don't worry about it," He says with a yawn. "What was that about?"

"My father," I answer him. "Trying to do the right thing, I guess."

"That's... horrible of him...?" Micah is confused but still tries to side with me, which is sweet.

"He's fourteen years too late to make things right," I explain to Micah. "Anyway, what's on the agenda for today?"

"I think that you should get back into bed," He mumbles to me, reaching over and grabbing the hem of the t-shirt I'm wearing. I'm just wearing this shirt and a pair of panties right now. He pulls me by the shirt into the bed so that I topple over on top of him with a few light giggles.

We spend some time in bed and then we take a shower together before we decide to just watch a movie in the living room instead of going out and doing anything. Just spending time with him is enough for me so I don't really mind where we are.

"So Silas hasn't tried to get in contact with you until now?" Micah asks me when he goes into the kitchen to get something to drink and sees the letter sitting there.

"Nope. I think when he saw me at that dinner we went to, he remembered that he had two other kids and I don't know. I guess he's decided to grow a heart. That, or he didn't know that we were still in the city and he doesn't like the fact that we're so close to his real family. I don't know what his end game is but I'm not trying to figure it out either."

"Does Casey know that he's doing all of this stuff?" He continues asking me questions about my father.

"He doesn't. Casey's never even met the guy before. Silas broke up with my mom when she came to D.C. to be with him. She was pregnant with Casey when she did that but when he said that he didn't want to be with her, she tried to kill herself. They had to an emergency C-section to save Casey and it was this whole mess," I try to explain it to him without going into too much detail. "I don't think any good would come from telling Casey. He absolutely hates Silas and he has enough to worry about with his new school and everything."

"She tried to kill herself," He repeats. "Does that mean that she's still alive?"

"As far as I know," I say with a shrug. "They sent her to a mental hospital, put us in foster care. They'd told me that I'd only be there until my mom got better but she never came for us. So she either never got better or she just didn't want her kids back. It makes sense, she never really wanted kids. She only had us because she thought that it'd make Silas fall in love with her or something. I don't know, she was crazy."

"You don't ever wonder where she is? Or why she didn't come back for you?" He sits down beside me.

"I mean, of course, I wonder sometimes. It doesn't do me any good though, so I try not to. It happened and there's nothing I can do to change that so I just have to move on," I explain to him. "Even from the time that I remember being with her when I was young, I don't have many good memories of her so even if she did come back, I'm not sure how much better our lives would be."

"I just can't believe that they did that to you," Micah tells me. "Just left you all alone like that. You were only eight years old. It just really sucks."

"Yeah, it sucks," I agree with him. "But I'm fine now. It's been rough but I guess that it made me stronger and I got through it. I didn't fuck Casey up too badly either, he turned out pretty great."

"I don't know how you did it," He admits slowly. "I would have lost my mind."

"I never said that I didn't lose my mind a few times," I add. "But I had to look after Casey, so that's what kept me going. All of the hard parts are over now, so Silas doesn't get to come in now and pretend to be the hero. It's too late. We've already saved ourselves."

"Yeah, fuck that guy," Micah tells me and I kind of laugh a little bit.

"Exactly," I rest my head on his shoulder as we get back to watching the movie. "Fuck that guy."