“What makes you a good candidate for the job?”

The manager—Dirk—who was sitting across from me looked like he couldn’t care less what I said in reply. He wasn’t even looking at me, just staring down at the back of my job application form as he hand-wrote notes on it. Well, most of the notes seemed to be tick marks.

I fumbled for the answers. “Um, I’m used to working with people. I like to work hard and treat people fairly. I think making people smile is a great thing, but I value efficiency, too.” Did that sound good? It had been a long time since I’d worked in a crappy retail job—and a gas station in the middle of nowhere as a fifteen-year-old wasn’t quite the same experience.

“Fine,” Dirk told me, and made another tick mark. Even his voice was bored. “What hours are you free?”

Is that it? I stuttered for a moment. I’d expected to have to wait to hear back. “Uh, I mean… anytime. I don’t have anything else planned right now.”

Another tick mark. “Can you start right away? Monday?”

I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or insulted. They hadn’t even checked my high school diploma that I’d lied about on the application, like Josh had once advised me to do. I was pretty sure that Adam was right, and all they wanted was a warm body.

Compared to the qualifications it took to be successful in my other line of work? It was an insult. In that job, I had to be conversant in arts and culture, politics, science… a little of everything. I had to know how to blend into any social environment, whether the rough humor of a mechanic’s garage or the snobbery of a black-tie ball. I had to know a hundred unwritten social codes. I hadn’t done a lot of upscale work, but I had to present myself as if I had in order to get more of it. That was how you climbed the career ladder.

But I was here for steady hours and a legal career. I swallowed my pride and resigned myself to feeling cheaper than I ever had on a date with a client.

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re hired.”

The paperwork didn’t take long. There was barely any. Just my name and SSN, and my bank account number. After I wrote it all down, he took the paper and grunted in approval. “Two weeks for your first check, son.”

No contract, no formal agreement of any kind. I just had to trust that I had a job now, because some random guy told me I was hired. “Thanks, sir. I look forward to Monday.”

“Great.” He stood up, a clear sign of dismissal.

I left the office, still dazed and half-considering just disappearing before Monday. One look around the little grocery store and I already felt trepidation. I kinda felt crappy. I’d be stuck here for at least twenty hours each week, and for all that time? Maybe three hundred bucks. That made maybe twelve hundred a month, but that was before taxes…

Fuck, this stung. Retail was not going to be my future.

If I had to suck it up and go back to school, maybe it was worth it. Even a community college to learn some useful office skills. I didn’t care what—it had to be better than this.

“Hey.” Adam caught me before I reached the door. He was working today, so I’d dropped off my resume. I hadn’t even let on that we knew each other before getting pulled in for an interview, so I knew it wasn’t nepotism. It was straight-up desperation for workers.

Which was always a good sign.

“I got it.”

Adam fist-bumped me. “Knew it. I’ll get the good wine tonight.”

“The five-buck bottle, not the two-buck chuck?” I joked.

He grinned. “You know it.”

“What time are you off?”

“Four. I’ll make dinner,” Adam offered, which was unusually generous. I kind of wanted to be able to eat my meal without having to rescue it with copious amounts of chili powder tonight, though.

“Nah, I’ve got it. You bring the wine, I’ll figure out something to make. See you later, man.”

We’d both been extra-nice to each other since the fight. Even though we’d both apologized in our own ways, we’d never really backed down, either.

I sighed as I headed around the block to our apartment, my mind a hundred miles away.

If I was making an abrupt transition, this was going to be rough. I had emergency savings, but it definitely meant no more laundry pickup, no more tailoring, no more steak for dinner. All of that stuff I could live without. It was just an abrupt change, which made it feel like a sharp fall.

There was no harm in checking to see if I’d gotten any interest, was there? It would make the new job sting a lot less if I had more of a safety cushion. Lifestyle creep, they called it when someone got used to making a lot of money and spending it, too. But I couldn’t quite stop myself yet.

I switched on my phone and eyed the messages that came in all at once. I could already see a few offers, but only one interested me.

Charlie.

I’d spent a lot of time over the last couple days thinking about our date, so opening his message was an easy decision.

And then my heart dropped. He’d wanted lunch today, and… well, it was already just past lunch.

“Fuck,” I whispered as I let myself into my apartment. I knew that quitting my current career meant missing out on seeing regular clients, but… there was something else about Charlie.

Lots of guys wanted to hire an escort to get over their hangups. Lots of guys were nice, smart, funny, and incredibly dateable. Lots of guys respected me and what I did.

But something about Charlie spoke to me. It was intuition, and I’d spent years learning to trust mine. I wasn’t going to start ignoring it now.

Maybe I was quitting, but I could keep going with regular clients pretty safely, surely.

Or…

“It’s a dumb idea,” I told myself out loud as I heated up a mug of milk for hot chocolate. I deserved a reward for getting a job, after all. “You don’t let clients get close.” That was an amateur mistake.

Unless I wasn’t in the industry anymore.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I dug my phone out, my thumbs flying over the surface of the screen.

Sorry I missed your text. I’d love to meet for a date when you’re free. No gifts this time—just enjoying each other’s company. I had a great time.

Was that too forward? Maybe, but I didn’t care. I had nothing to lose.

I put my phone on the counter face-up and jabbed the screen every minute when it darkened, waiting for a reply. But even after I made my hot chocolate and brought my phone to the kitchen table to keep staring at it like I was about to receive the winning lottery numbers, he didn’t answer.

Fuck. Maybe I’d already screwed up by keeping my work phone off.

Speaking of which, I had an angry message on Scruff from that politician.

Enjoy sucking cop dick, you stupid fucking whore—

As expected, my Scruff profile had been reported, so I couldn’t even open the conversation to see if there was more to the notification. He’d probably reported me to the cops, too, but what could they do? I was careful to send my photos on WhatsApp, not the app. All they had was my phone number and one body shot that I used everywhere.

I grimaced and muted everything but the conversation with Charlie, and then pocketed this phone alongside my personal phone. In comparison, it usually barely saw any use.

Fine. I’d keep myself distracted by cooking supper, which meant buying ingredients. Probably vegetables and things. God help me, I was going to try something fancy, and it was either going to be spectacularly good or a huge mess in the kitchen.

But, for the first time in a while, either possibility seemed fun.

“Let’s do this.”

“Lord,” Adam concluded as he put his fork down and pushed his plate back. “You’re getting better every fucking day.”

I couldn’t resist. “That’s what he said.” I picked at the last few grains of risotto, determined to enjoy every morsel of it. I’d stood still, stirring the goddamn pot until my feet ached, after all.

Adam groaned and waved me off. “I don’t wanna think about that. Can’t we have one moment without your sex life being shoved in my face?”

“Hey, some guys pay good money…” I trailed off, laughing as Adam threw a tea towel at me. “Okay, okay.”

“You’ve got a real job now,” Adam told me, and then he seemed to sense his mistake before I could even begin to glower. “I mean, another job.”

“Smooth,” I muttered. “Yeah, can’t wait to see how this goes.”

“Have you done it before?”

“Nope.”

“Did you tell them you had?”

I snorted. “Obviously.” I’d learned how to do whatever it took to get what I needed, but as it turned out, that hadn’t been necessary. “Dirk didn’t seem to care about anything I wrote down, or even said. I think he was just making sure I could answer a question and breathe at the same time.”

“Hey,” Adam retorted. “I represent that remark.”

“I’d have thought your lungs would be better after a few months here,” I said with a wicked smirk. When he raised an eyebrow, I poked my tongue against the inside of my cheek and mimed a blowjob.

“Oh, you sick bastard.” Adam laughed and blushed from his neck to his hairline.

“Mmm.” I didn’t relent for a moment. I could give as good as I got. “I know you’re running free now that you can. I’ll watch for you on the next Farm Boys Gone Wild.”

Adam grunted and poured me another glass of wine. “I’ll take my shitty paycheck and dignity, thanks. Speaking of which, Bobby said he’s training you. He’s a good guy. Accidentally had twins with a girl and stayed with her, and now he’s trying to provide for them. He’s covering my shift next week so I can go to a pool-cleaning gig. You’ll learn fast from him.”

I sighed as I grabbed the bottle and my glass, elbowing him and nodding to the couch. It was tucked in a long, narrow slice of the apartment that had once been the dining room portion of the combination living room and dining area. With the living room turned into a bedroom, it was all we had for lounging, but it was fine by me.

“We should talk about this.” I wasn’t gonna let Adam escape this time.

“Talk?” Adam looked horrified, like I’d just asked him to clean the drain. “About…?”

“The way you treat sex work like it’s dirty, and by extension, like I’m dirty.” I’d had just enough wine to loosen my tongue.

Adam gaped for a moment. “No!”

“Dude, when you say stuff like dignity about appearing in porn? That makes it sound kinda shame-y.” I wasn’t going to go into technical language like slut-shaming, but he might not give me much choice. “If I weren’t getting paid for sex, would you still be so uncomfortable about me hooking up with guys all the time?”

“Yes,” Adam muttered, but it sounded more like stubbornness than truth. He wasn’t meeting my gaze.

I raised my eyebrows and waited.

“Maybe not,” Adam finally concluded, then drew a heavy sigh. “It just seems so… wrong that you feel like you have to do that.”

Back to familiar territory we’d trod a hundred times. I decided to take a different approach. “So, every time you’re on a date, the other guy pays for dinner, and you give him a handjob even if you’re not super into him because you feel like you owe him? That’s technically sex work.”

Adam looked like I’d slapped him with a cod. His mouth opened and closed, and his nose crinkled. When he found words again, he protested, “But it’s not!”

He was getting hot under the collar, but I knew him well enough not to let that scare me. Even his raised voice didn’t get to me anymore. The first month or two had been tricky, but I’d dealt with those associations pretty well, I thought.

“But it is,” I responded evenly, not letting him get away from this. “It’s sex for paid compensation of one kind or another. Hell, whenever you flutter your eyelashes at your boyfriend to buy you something—the general you, since you’re a single loser…” He threw a pillow at me and I caught it and carried on without interruption. “It’s sex work when you have an expectation of money being spent and sex being given.”

“I don’t like thinking about that,” Adam told me, making a face. I appreciated his honesty, at least. “It’s not… that’s not what I was taught.”

“We all think about twenty bucks for a blowjob hookers in the truck stop bathroom—like they aren’t people, too, but whatever,” I muttered, pushing that anger aside for now, “like that’s the only kind of sex work there is. Escorts are rarer in the gay world than the straight world, I think, but we see them as classier, right? But what about porn? Phone sex? Sugar daddies? When your laptop breaks and you ask your man to buy you a new one and suck him off while he’s browsing the Apple website?”

Adam covered his ears and rocked back and forth. “Dude. Uncomfortably specific.”

“Whatever,” I laughed and tossed the pillow back at him. “It’s a good laptop.”

“Oh, God! That laptop? I’ve touched that laptop!” Adam shook his hands like he needed to disinfect them, but I could see it—there were gears turning in his head that I hadn’t seen before. “Man, so I guess that’s right. It’s all kind of one big industry.”

“And I give freebies sometimes,” I added. “I hook up, too. You treat it all just as weirdly.”

Adam tilted his head, and I appreciated that he was thinking about it. “I guess cause you’re giving away something you sell?”

“You help me move heavy things sometimes when you wanna be nice. Same thing.” He didn’t get to pretend he was heartless. “People are allowed to do the thing they do for work for fun, didn’t you know?”

Adam blushed, and then he snorted. “Fine. Fair point.” He didn’t even have an insult to come back with, which meant I’d really hit home. Why he was embarrassed about being a pretty decent guy under all that bluster, I didn’t know.

“You watch porn? You don’t get to make fun of sex workers,” I told him with a grin.

He hummed and leaned back, hugging the pillow to his chest and picking up the glass of wine again. “I guess you’re right, man. Sorry.”

Whoa. An actual apology. It was tossed out there casually, like he didn’t really care, but he was watching me closely.

I shook my head. I was never gonna get used to Adam’s quirks and his bluntness, but the weird vulnerability in places, and the way he acted like he didn’t care but still got het up over the littlest shit. “Yeah. Thanks.” It would have been nice to come to this understanding before quitting sex work, but… “Oh, right. That’s the other thing. I’ll be working a lot less now. Maybe not at all.”

“What?” Adam gaped at me. “But I still need the apartment to myself sometimes.”

I snorted. “I can still go on dates, loser. In fact…” I trailed off.

“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow. “You’re not Pretty Womaning this shit, are you?”

I laughed. Nothing could be further from the truth. “He’s a cool guy, but no. I’m quitting because I don’t wanna end up in jail, man. I can’t afford that shit. If I get a date out of it, whatever.”

It only sank in later, after we finished the bottle of wine and I still hadn’t heard back from Charlie and I’d checked half a dozen times, that I’d never sounded more like Adam than when I’d said that. Acting like I didn’t care, when for reasons I didn’t understand, I really did.

Had I fucked up my chance before I even knew about it?