Tori held out one hand, palm up. “Escort,” she said. “Which, okay, that’s—you know, there are escorts who don’t have sex. You get paid to go on dates thatmay or may notinvolve sex.” She raised the other hand. “Sugar baby. You enter into a financial arrangement with aparticular personand, Idon’t know. Probably it’s the same deal as being an escort, like, ‘with or without blow jobs.’”
Okay, that made sense, but—“Who’s going to pay todate me?” Jem had a hard enough time getting dates who didn’t pay for the privilege. He was kind of a bitch.
“Uh, lots of people?” Tori furrowed her brow. “You’re hot. We live in California. Rich people everywhere. The world is your oyster.”
“I’m allergic to shellfish.”
“Oh my God, Jem.” She slapped his thigh, then dug in his pocket for his phone, because she’d never had a strong grasp of personal space. “Look, there’s probably even, like, a dating app for that. It’ll be easy. You just make a profile, set up a couple dates, find a rich loser who’s looking for some arm candy, and give them the boyfriend experience.”
The boyfriend…? “Is that a sex thing?”
“What?” She huffed. “Look, as much as it pains me to say it, I have seen you date. When you’re in it, you’re in it, you know? You’re a good boyfriend. You’re thoughtful, you’re a good cook, you clean up after yourself. You probably pack them lunches with cute little love notes in them.”
That wasn’t totally true. Jem had never written a love note. But he’d written dumb jokes on Post-it Notes for his college girlfriend and put them on the coffee maker for when she had early labs. He liked waking up to the sound of her laughter, even if he didn’t always get out of bed when he heard it.
It broke his heart when she moved to Germany to do her postdoc, but he understood. She had to follow her passion, her research, and Jem had young minds to shape.
“You think someone’s going to pay me for that.”
“Pff.” She unlocked his phone and went right to the app store. In less than thirty seconds, she slapped it back into hishands. “Iknowsomeone will. Look. We’re gonna have to do some research, obviously, but you could do this.”
Jem looked down at the screen. FindMyBaby. Good Christ. “Let’s try extreme couponing first,” he suggested.
“I think you’d have better luck as an investment banker,” Tori told him, but she didn’t push the issue. “Come on. I’ll buy you groceries and you can make me dinner.”
“Deal.”
Jemkeptthinking about it. He thought about it at the grocery store the next week, when coupons brought his bill down to $57.14 from $63.77. He thought about it on Wednesday morning on his way to work as he put air in his rear passenger-side tire and noticed how worn it had gotten. He thought about it when he was waiting with his students for their parents to pick them up. But only a third of them got picked up by their parents; the rest had nannies to do the job. Even the nannies had nicer shoes than Jem, which was galling because Jem was an expert in thrifting designer kicks. Most of their cars cost twice what Jem made in a year.
Of course, the nannies probably didn’t have to pay rent and they didn’t own the cars they drove. But still.
Friday was payday. Jem checked his bank balance at lunch, leaned his head back against the wall, and resolved to find Tori before she left for the day.
He managed it only because she found him first; Tori didn’t have to supervise pickup. She breezed into his classroom just after his last student was escorted out by his mother, who dressed like a Secret Service agent if Secret Service agents wore Versace and Louboutins.
“So,” Tori said.
Jem closed his eyes. “Can I come over and make you and Ivy dinner?” Neither of them could cook for shit, which was especially inconvenient for them now that Ivy was expecting. “And maybe you can, uh… help me with my profile?”
She smiled widely. “Jem Anderson, it would be my honor.”
Ivy worked from home a lot—one of the benefits of the post-Covid life and one she took more advantage of now that she was experiencing the joys of morning sickness.
Eight months ago Jem had come over to make dinner, and afterward Tori pulled him downstairs and ambushed him with “Ivy wants to have a baby.”
Jem had blinked. “Uh.” Tori hadn’t said anything about whatshewanted. “That’s usually a ‘two yes, one no’ situation.”
Tori nodded like a broken bobblehead. “In this case we’re looking for three yeses because neither of us can be the sperm donor.”
“So like… you, Tori Foster, want to have a baby.”
Finally she looked up at him again, cheeks flushed with indignation. “I like kids! I'm a teacher!”
“Yes,” Jem agreed, “and you routinely gripe about how disgusting children are, so… I just want to make sure, you know? That it’s what you want too.” Years-ago Tori—first-friend-Jem-made-in-college Tori—had not.
But people changed.
“I didn’t think I wanted it,” she admitted. “Like, in college, not being able to get pregnant by accident was a huge perk of being a lesbian. But I don’t know…. Then I met Ivy, and she’s so—I mean the woman can do anything. Including make me want kids, apparently.” The flush was sweeter now. Affection, embarrassment… love.Truelove.
