I have to sneak out of the apartment on Monday night because I told Josie that I have to work. Which isn't a lie but it's hard to explain to her why I am going to work at a factory in a tight dress and heels. So I wear a t-shirt and jeans out of the house and then I go down to the lobby of the apartment complex.

There's a small, dirty bathroom down there that I lock myself in and get dressed in a tight red lacy dress that's very short but there's not much cleavage and the sleeves go to my elbows. So it's not my trashiest dress but it's not the classiest either. I wear my pair of black stilettos and add some makeup to my face.

Leaving the apartment, I put on my primer and neutral colors so that it looked natural but now that I'm away from Josie, I put on some dark red lipstick and I wink my eyeliner. I have a busy night tonight so I have to make sure that I look my best.

It's pretty unusual for me to have two clients in one night but tonight, I do. The first man doesn't want sex though, he just wants to have dinner. He needs somebody to talk to, I guess. The second man just wants a quick fuck so the plan is that I'll go to dinner with the first man, I'll let him tell me all of his secrets, and then I'll go hook up with the second one afterward.

I know the receptionist in the lobby of the building so she lets me keep my bag of clothes behind the desk that I can pick up on my way back in so that I can get dressed in the jeans before I go back up to the apartment. Even though Josie might already be asleep by then, I'm not sure because of the nightmares. She's insisted that she'll be fine alone until I get back so I'm hoping that she's right. Things have been easier for her ever since Davis was arrested.

Once I'm ready to go, I put my makeup and cell phone in my clutch where I have to stuff it all in there next to the spare condoms and pepper spray.

The restaurant that I'm meeting the first man at is a nice restaurant that's just about a five-minute train ride downtown. So I get on the train and I head for the restaurant. I arrive right on time and I ask for the table of Dr. Blates who is the man that I'm meeting tonight. I've met with him two times before within the past few months but he's not a regular of mine. As far as I know, he just takes the girl who's free when he's free so he's not picky.

The waitress takes me to the table but the old doctor isn't there yet so I take my phone out just to check on Josie. There's no new texts so I take that as a good sign. But then I find myself staring at the screen, hoping that a text will pop up. Not from Josie but from Micah.

It's only been two days since I broke things off with him and he hasn't tried to talk to me since. Which I honestly wasn't expecting. He seems so stubborn and persistent that I was kind of expecting him to call me at least once or maybe text me and ask me to reconsider.

I haven't known him very long but I already miss having him around. He's a lot of fun and he's cute and he seemed like he cared about me. Or at least like he wanted to care about me. I don't think that he knows me well enough to actually care about me. But if I gave him more time, maybe he would have.

That's not going to happen though because I blew it. I saw Silas and Jay and I panicked and I just blew it. I still think that it's for the best that we don't keep in contact but I'm also realizing that maybe I don't care if it's for the best or not. I miss him.

"Sorry I'm late," Dr. Blates arrives at the table so I put my phone away and offer him a polite smile. "Have you ordered drinks yet?"

"No, I just got here myself," I tell him. I know that I called him 'the old doctor' but he's not really that old. Maybe sixty or so. He's wrinkly, has grandchildren, but it's not like he's walking with a cane or living in a nursing home. And he's a nice guy, so going to dinner with him is actually a pleasant way to spend my evening.

"Great. You know how women giving birth can be. Totally inconsiderate," He jokes as he waves over a waiter. "The poor girl was only sixteen and she was having twins. Can you believe that?"

"That must have really sucked," I cringe at just the thought of giving birth. And two of them? I feel bad for the girl because she had to go through that pain but I don't feel bad that she has to raise two kids. If I could raise a baby at the age of eight, I'm sure that she'll get the hang of raising two at sixteen. "How have you been?"

"Oh, I've been busy. There's always people having kids," The doctor tells me and the waiter arrives to get our drink order. I get a martini and the doctor orders a soda. "I had to deal with a miscarriage last week and those are always awful."

"I can't imagine," I respond.

"Me neither," He sighs. "All these years of doing this and I still have a hard time dealing with that situation. Jane would always bring the patient flowers. She didn't even know the woman but if I ever told her about somebody having a miscarriage, she'd bring flowers. She always thought that flowers would solve every problem."

"She wasn't wrong," I say. Jane was his wife, who died about a year ago from cancer. That's why he takes me and the other escorts to dinner sometimes, because he gets lonely. He'd been with Jane since high school. They'd built a family together with kids and then grandkids while both of them having careers too. A total power couple. He'd only ever had sex with her and he was determined to keep it that way, so these dates were purely just dinner dates. It's really sad but I give him what I can, which is my attention and my time.

"When our kids ever got sick, she'd bring flowers. Or if they were sad. Flowers. If I was having a tough time in med school? Flowers. All of the time. They were life's medicine, she'd say. I always told her that they were a waste of money because they'd just die and they didn't really help anything. Now, I miss the flowers. Sometimes, I'll just buy some on my way home from work just to smell them in the house like she's still here but it's not the same."

He talks a lot every time that we go to dinner because that's what he's paying for, for me to listen to him talk about his dead wife. It's really sad but it helps him.

"Do you ever buy flowers, Sammy?"

"No, I don't," I shake my head at him. The waiter brings us our drinks and then we order our food. Dr. Blates prefers that I order the lasagna because it was Jane's favorite and so I order the lasagna.

"You should. You might think that it's stupid now but they do make everything better. Nature's romance, you know. When somebody buys you flowers, that's how you know that they're in love with you. Hasn't anybody ever bought you flowers?"

"I've never been in love," I inform him.

"You will," He promises me. "You're still young but somebody will buy you flowers someday."

"Seems like a lot more pain than it's worth," I admit slowly.

"No, it's completely worth it, Sammy," Dr. Blates is quick to insist. "I know that I'm miserable right now but in the grand scheme of life, I had 48 years, 7 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, 10 hours, and 48 minutes with Jane and I loved every second of it. I wouldn't change that for the world."

"I'm kind of a disaster," I inform the hopeless romantic across from me. "So I think that maybe I should start by buying myself flowers before I expect somebody else to."

"You're a smart girl," He tells me with a short laugh. "And you're so beautiful. I know that it's hard to believe now but I was quite the looker back in my day. But I still had to really work for Jane to go out with me. She was stubborn but she was amazing so I knew that I had to do whatever it took for her to give me a chance."

"That's really sweet," I comment. I don't know where his children are so I wonder if they live far away or if there's some reason why he doesn't just talk to his family about Jane when he's feeling lonely. It's not like we do anything that he can't do with his family. He could just call up his son and ask him to dinner to talk about Jane and it'd be just the same thing. I never ask invasive questions though and so I don't ask him.

"Where do you see yourself when you're my age, Sammy?" Mr. Blates surprises me by asking me this question. "Believe it or not, this job isn't a permanent thing. You'll eventually get wrinkly and saggy too."

"I don't want to do this forever," I assure him. "I just want to get my brother through school but after that, I haven't given it much thought. So I don't know where I'll be."

"I know that you don't know where you'll be. But if you close your eyes and just picture it. What do you see?"

I try to really picture where I'll be in my sixties. I guess that would make Casey in his fifties. He definitely won't need me anymore and all that I've ever done with most of my life is be needed by him. So without my job and without my brother depending on me, where will I go? What will I do?

"I like helping people," I tell him slowly. "I see myself working as a social worker, helping the kids in the foster system. Acting as their voice, making sure that they're safe and as happy as possible given their situation. Maybe there's a dog or two on my front porch. In the countryside but not too far from the city. Just far enough away to be detached but close enough to be able to visit on weekends."

"What about a family?"

"I don't see a family," I admit. "I mean, my brother but he's probably moved somewhere else to live his life wherever it is that he wants to live. I guess I could get married but I won't have kids. Ever. I know that for sure."

"Why is that?"

"There's enough children in the world, ones that don't have a home. If I ever decide that I want kids, I'll adopt," I inform him easily.

"That's noble of you," Mr. Blates tells me. "I was too selfish to think that way when I was young. I wanted kids and I wanted them to be mine. It was mostly a vanity thing, I wanted them to look like Jane and me. I wanted them to be like us."

"I wouldn't want my kids to be like me," I say. "I mean, you obviously know what I do. Can you blame me for wanting kids that are completely separate from my DNA?"

"You're too hard on yourself," He insists. "Your actions don't define you, Sammy. It's the reasons behind your actions that make you who you are. And you are an escort because you like helping people. You just said so. You like being the shoulder that people cry on. That doesn't make you a bad person. I think that the world would be a better place if your DNA was replicated, you know. I think that the world needs more people who like helping rather than wanting to be helped."

"I also really like sex," I remind him and it makes him laugh. He rarely ever laughs so it makes me feel proud of myself for saying something that's worthy of a laugh from him.

I guess that I've never really thought about it like that but it does make sense. I do like helping people, it's just all that I've ever done. Casey didn't need me to raise him as much as I did—Cynthia was there and I guess Davis was too—but I forced them to let me take care of him. I forced him to need me... maybe that's just because I need to feel needed. And maybe that's why I've gotten into this business—because I need to be needed. And the men that I work for, they do need me.

They need a shoulder to cry on or they just need somewhere to put their dick. Either way, they need me. And I'm helping them. Which is all that I've ever done.

"Everybody likes sex," He informs me. "Well. Okay, not everybody. But most people. That doesn't make you a bad person."

"You're very open minded," I say to him with a small laugh of my own. The waiter brings our food and so I start to dig into the hot lasagna. "I bet you made Jane very happy."

"I'd like to think so."

He talks about Jane for the rest of the night and once I finish my lasagna, we have about twenty more minutes to talk. He talks more about his late wife and he talks about his kids a little bit too. He vents some about work, delivering babies and dealing with the hormonal pregnant ladies. He's a sweet old man and like I said, spending an evening with him is not a bad way to spend an evening.

And once our dinner is over, I have to get going because I have another 'date' to get to. So I say goodbye to Dr. Blates and he kisses my cheek goodbye.

I'm meeting the second man at a motel that charges by the hour and is notorious for being a hookup spot for hookers and their johns. It's not a really classy place but it's not the worst place I've ever had to meet somebody.

I go to the motel room that I was given earlier and I knock on the door. On the train ride over here, I made sure that my makeup still looks good and that I still smell good for my second meeting of the night. I used a breath mint to get rid of the lasagna taste in my mouth.

The door quickly opens and the man, who is much younger than Dr. Blates but still older than me, steps aside so that I can come in.

"You're Sammy?" He asks me as I'm walking into the room.

"I sure am," I confirm with a nod. "What can I do for you tonight, honey?" Because for some reason, they like it when I use endearing names like that.

"I want to try this," He shows me a porno on his laptop which is a normal thing that happens because a lot of curious guys use escorts to fulfill their sexual fantasies that they're too afraid to bring up to their girlfriends or wives.

"That part is fine," I say, pointing to the left part of the screen. I then move my polished finger to the other side. "But this is going to cost extra."

"Money isn't an issue," He promises me. "I forgot to ask the lady about your limits."

"For the right price, I don't have any limits."

That makes the guy smile and he shuts the laptop, putting it on the dresser and then he lightly but quickly pushes me onto the bed. I make sure that my clutch is in reach just in case things go south and I need to get my pepper spray but this guy is in a hurry because he only scheduled for two hours and he seems like an ambitious kind of guy.

So he starts taking off my dress and I start getting into the whole thing because, as I had just told Dr. Blates, I do like sex. And what this guy wants to try seems interesting so I'm kind of excited to try it. There isn't much that I haven't tried yet in my two years of being in this business but this one, I haven't tried.

Although I'm giving this guy all of my effort, he's only got 85% of my attention because I'm still thinking about what Dr. Blates said and how it's starting to make me think of Micah again.

So here I am, 85% thinking about the stranger getting naked in front of me and 15% thinking about Micah, and I'm thinking about how much I want to buy him flowers.