Ivy grinned like a dope walking out of the building, after the final, the late morning sun casting everything in a beautiful light. The last of the pale pink cherry blossoms seemed to be blooming just for her, telling her that all her hard work and diligent studying had paid off. Because if Ivy wasn’t mistaken, she’d just aced that test.

She fished her phone out of her bag and turned it on, intent on telling her parents how good she felt about the exam. Instead, she was faced, again, with all the text messages Whisper Line had forwarded her way last night, even after she’d turned the device off.

Shaking her head, mentally filing a note to talk to someone at the company about that, she started deleting the messages. She only had a set amount of time to reply in order to get paid, and that time had long expired. All the texts were nothing more than salacious spam, clogging up the storage space on her phone.

When it came down to it, she realized, deleting text after text, guys weren’t exactly the epitome of creativity when it came to sexting. The vast majority of them just started off with a single “hey.” She found it interesting, too, that people from all walks of life utilized Whisper Line to get off. Everyone from business executives to taxi drivers to politicians. And almost all of them started things off with “hey.” Maybe people were more alike than they thought.

It was Ivy’s job to draw them out of their shells, to get them talking about their fantasies, what they wanted her to fulfill for them. She got paid based on how many text messages they sent, so it was in her best interests to keep the conversations going.

It was more fun to view it as a challenge. She hadn’t yet had a client who she hadn’t been able to crack. It had more to do with making a personal connection than being exceptionally sleazy right off the bat.

Ivy had learned early on that if she went for the jugular, so to speak, right away, her clients would come more quickly, stop texting her, and halt her money flow. It was better to start slow. To hook them, reel them in gradually. Let them slowly lose their will to fight against her inexorable beckoning. And then, once she’d landed them, to give them what they wanted. Keep them coming back for more.

She had just finished deleting a very forward initial text—“I’m going to shoot my load right in your face”—when she got an incoming call. Her mom. She had to tamp down the shudder of guilt she always felt when she was working with Whisper Line and her parents called her. They had no idea she was doing this, and it was only in her nightmares that she imagined what they would do if they did find out.

“Hey, Mom,” she said brightly, answering the phone.

“I’m outside of the window of not being able to call you, right? I’m not distracting you from anything, am I?”

Just from deleting a long string of sexts, Ivy wanted to say, but she bit her tongue. “No, I’m just walking back to my apartment.”

“Oh, you’re done with your test?”

“Yep!”

There was a long pause before her mom laughed. “Well, aren’t you going to tell me how you did?”

Ivy smiled. “Well, we’re not going to know our grades for a couple of days, but…”

“But?”

“I think I aced it. There wasn’t a single question I didn’t know the answer to.”

Her mom squealed and Ivy laughed. “We’re going to have a doctor in the family! I can’t believe it!”

“You’re jumping the gun, Mom,” Ivy said. She couldn’t stop grinning. “I still have another year of school left, remember?”

“Another year closer, then. I’m so excited! Your father is going to be thrilled. Stay on the phone. I’m going to go get him so you can give him the good news yourself.”

Ivy shook her head to herself, turning the corner and walking down the block toward her apartment. Her parents were so good to her, and so sweet. Her mom had worked Ivy’s entire childhood as a secretary, while her dad had been a factory employee. The fact that she was going to medical school to become a doctor flummoxed all three of them, especially since neither of her parents had gone to college themselves. They talked about her to her extended family in gentle awe, like they weren’t really sure where she’d come from or why, but they were going to try and do their best with her, give her what she needed to be great.

“Hey, Ivy-bear,” her dad said. “Mom said you had some good news?”

“I don’t know if it’s good news for sure, yet, but I think I did well on my finals.”

“Stop being so humble,” her mom fussed, apparently listening in on the other phone. Ivy was pretty sure her parents were the last people on the planet who still had a landline phone in their home. “You told me you aced it.”

“Maybe. Hopefully aced it. Definitely passed it…I think.” Ivy laughed. “I don’t know. I’ve just been working so hard. It’s a relief to have this semester behind me.”

“You should treat yourself,” her dad said. “You don't take enough time for yourself. Always working or going to classes or studying. You’re going to burn yourself out if you’re not careful.”

“How is work, anyway?” her mom asked. “You never really talk about it, and now we can, with finals out of the way.”

Ivy grimaced. She didn’t like lying to her parents, but in this case, it was necessary.

“That’s because there isn’t really anything to talk about. It’s just the same old thing, day in, day out. Take people’s orders, then bring them their food.”

They thought she was a waitress at a nice restaurant in the city. It was the only way to explain why she had so much more money than she should’ve—generous tips.

“Served anyone famous recently?” her dad asked. “Anyone we’d know?”

“I’m not sure,” she hedged. Ivy sometimes wondered how many men texted her with names other people would recognize on TV. Names her parents would know. She didn’t really follow politics. No time to. Or inclination.

“You’re doing okay for money, though?” her mom asked. “You’d tell us if you needed anything, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course I would,” Ivy lied. “And I have enough money.”

That part was true. She made three times as much cash with Whisper Line as she would’ve as a waitress even at the nicest restaurants in D.C.

It hadn’t always been like that, though. When she was preparing to graduate college, when she’d just been accepted into the medical school she’d hoped for, her parents cheerfully asked her over a celebratory weekend home how much tuition was going to be.

Their faces hadn’t changed a bit when she’d told them, but later that night, when she’d come downstairs to get a glass of water in the middle of the night, she’d overheard them panicking. It took just a little bit of snooping after that to realize that her parents had nearly bankrupted themselves putting her through college. Ivy couldn’t believe they’d been prepared to help foot her bills for medical school. Her first big lie to them, not long after she’d gotten accepted into medical school, was to tell them she’d qualified for a scholarship and that she was attending school virtually for free.

It didn’t matter to her that she had to take out a frightening number of loans to make attending school possible. She just didn’t want her parents to go any further into the hole for her. And that was really where Whisper Line had come in. When she’d started making real money, she’d simultaneously reduced her loans, managed her finances, and started sneaking money back to her parents.

Sometimes, it was as simple as folding some bills into their wallets when she visited them back in Boston. Other times, it was paying their bills online, which often puzzled them. They called her, bemused, and she brainstormed reasons they didn’t owe their electric bill that month, everything from promotions to compensations for being loyal customers.

“Well, what’s the plan for treating yourself?” her dad asked. “Anybody from your classes going out for dinner or drinks tonight?”

If they were, none of them had invited Ivy. She tended not to socialize in school. She was there for one reason and one reason only—to succeed. Most of her classmates probably thought she was a boring homebody, and that was pretty much how she preferred it. She couldn’t imagine the rumors that would circulate if anyone so much as caught wind of what she did for money.

“You know, right now, I think I’m going to go home, collapse into bed, and sleep for about a week,” Ivy said, turning down the street her apartment was on. “That sounds like a fitting celebration to me.”

“We’re proud of you, Ivy-bear,” her dad said. “Really.”

“Yes, the whole family is,” her mom added. “And your Aunt Carol wants to know if you’d be willing to look at a photo of one of her moles. She’s a little worried about it.”

Ivy swallowed a laugh. “I’m not a doctor yet, Mom.”

“She’s just looking for a professional opinion.”

“My professional opinion would be for her to get an appointment with a dermatologist at her earliest convenience.”

Ivy let herself in to her apartment and sighed as she closed the door behind her. All of her textbooks were still strewn around her living room, and she would take great pleasure in packing them away for the summer. Later, though.

“I’m home, now, guys, and my bed is calling me.”

“Get some good rest,” her mom recommended. “You deserve it.”

“Talk to you soon,” her dad said.

“Bye, love you.”

Ivy face-planted, fully clothed, on her bed before rolling over to end the call. Ah, yes. She’d been deleting texts from Whisper Line before her parents had called. She’d finish doing that, and then take the nap she craved.

She highlighted all the messages from last night, ready to make a mass exodus to the garbage, when one of them caught her eye. It was a photo instead of a text, and it wasn't a dick. When guys did send photos, they were almost always dicks. Fishing for compliments. Or trying out shock-and-awe campaigns. Ivy unchecked this particular photo and deleted the rest of the texts.

The photo was of a very handsome man in uniform. Navy. Ivy had lived in D.C. for long enough, seen enough men in uniform to be able to pick out the branch of military by sight of the person in question’s dress. She was partial to the Navy uniforms. Or maybe just this guy in his Navy uniform, dress blues bringing out his deep blue eyes. A grin lit up his entire face. His all-American good looks were framed by cropped brown hair. His broad shoulders and muscles were outlined perfectly in that uniform Ivy delighted in guessing at.

Ivy noticed he’d included a message underneath. She’d been so distracted by the photo, she hadn’t seen it.

“My name’s Cole Hardcastle, and I’d love to chat with you,” it read. Simple. Clean. No “hey” or lurid advances. Straightforward and seemingly respectful.

Ivy wasn’t sure what made her do it. She wasn’t going to get paid for responding to the message. The window for that had passed hours ago.

Chalking it up to latent patriotism, or maybe those blue eyes paired with that grin, she typed a quick response and hit send.