Chapter One
When It All Began
Becoming a sugar baby had started innocently enough.
Ever since I’d given birth to my daughter Annalina at seventeen, I struggled financially. I’d been young and dumb and in love with a boy who wasn’t good for me. Born eight weeks prematurely, I loved her the moment I laid eyes on her. She spent the first few months of her life in the hospital and I refused to leave her side.
My mother, a single parent since our father had died when I was eight years old, tried her best to help me out. With two older brothers and two younger brothers, I was the only girl. We’d all been hurting and she definitely became lax in her parenting once she’d gotten a job. Trying to parent five children alone and work full-time, it had been hard for her and I certainly hadn’t made it easier.
Due to my birthday, I was a year behind in school and my daughters birth came in the middle of junior year. Unable to handle her medical issues and school, I dropped out. Never one to do all that well in school anyway, it hardly upset me that I needed to quit. So with promises to my mother that I would help out around the house in addition to taking care of my daughter’s needs, I stayed at home.
Exhausted as I was, I kept my promise. I had my license so I’d drop my mother off work and run my siblings to appointments if they had any, in addition to my daughters’ numerous appointments as well. I cooked and cleaned the house, really showing my mother for the first time in a long time how much I appreciated her.
I loved the fact I got to see my daughter every day, never missing a moment. Her father, a mere year older than I, got a part time job to pay a minimum amount of child support but never came to visit me or his daughter. On her second birthday, he died. The passenger of someone who had been drinking, they veered over the center lane and were hit straight on by a semi. Even though he’d never come around, I cried for my daughter who would never know her father and for myself. As long as he had been alive, I could hope that one day, he would change his mind, but his death meant there was no way to avoid the truth. Except for my family, me and my daughter were all each other had.
My daughter entered school a year late due to some developmental delays. By then, I was twenty-three, only one of my siblings still lived at home besides me and my mother had finally remarried. I attempted to get my G.E.D only to fail it twice. I had always been a poor test taker and this wasn’t any different. In order to make some money of my own, I worked when my daughter was in school for the local fast food chain and slowly worked my way up to shift supervisor. Unable to go any higher due to my lack of education, my wage topped out at a rate that still wouldn’t afford me the ability to live on my own.
Even though my mother didn’t mind us living with her, I did. Ashamed of the fact I couldn’t support myself without her assistance, I spent endless amounts of time trying to find a better job. Without an education though, many doors were closed to me. It was during a lunch with my friends — Angel, Jackie and Maggie — when I was just shy of turning twenty-eight where everything changed.
“Well,” Jackie said, taking a draw of her cigarette before blowing it out softly. “I heard this coworker say that she found another way to make money.”
We were discussing our situations. It seemed as if we did that a lot and perhaps we did. Our lives revolved around work, our children if we had any, and men. A sad state of affairs, but considering I couldn’t afford to do anything except work and sleep, the one lunch a month seemed to be our only time to connect. Unlike most people, we didn’t even own cell phones.
“What she doing, prostitution?” Angel, who was anything but, asked with a smirk.
“Nope. Not technically.” Jackie grinned, leaning toward us to whisper. “She’s a sugar baby.”
I’d never heard this term. As Angel and Maggie pulled back and gasped, I looked at Jackie, confused. “What’s a sugar baby?”
She rolled her eyes at me and sat back, taking another drag of her smoke. “You know, where men pay for ‘companionship’ — well, at least on paper.”
For a moment I didn’t understand, but then I gasped too. “She gets paid for sex?”
“That’s prostitution!” Angel said, frowning. “I just said that.”
“Nah. You don’t get paid to have sex. You spend time with them, and…” Jackie sucked in a breath before laughing. “Sex is just a bonus. Ya know?”
I sat back in my chair, questioning why someone would do such a thing.
I’d never do such a thing, I thought. Or would I?
The more I considered it, the more I wasn’t so sure I was against it. After all, I’d always been desperate for money. It sucked, but that was my reality. I needed money, yet I’d never considered selling my body. If I had wanted to do that, I could’ve just stripped.
Yet Jackie’s words wouldn’t leave my mind and that evening, I searched for the term ‘sugar baby’ only to have an unholy amount of sites pop up. I didn’t sign up at first.
I went to work, came home, looked again and shut it down. For days, this went on until finally, I became brave enough to choose one that looked the most legit and signed up for it. I filled out my profile, refusing to put my pictures up but saying they were available on request due to privacy reasons. The site put up a reminder that said, “Having a profile picture will get you noticed” but I ignored it. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do this, so I answered the questions with as much honesty as I could.
I went on for a week after, waiting and waiting for someone to send me a message. Nothing. So I put in more of a description of myself and again, no messages.
Finally, I gave in and put a picture of me, but with sunglasses on my face. The picture, a rare one of me smiling, seemed to do the trick. I had men messaging me and I took my sweet time reading all their information.
Until I came across Bradley. I knew then that he was the only one I’d even think about doing this for.
And, after a few email exchanges and phone calls, came the invitation to come out and meet him for dinner.
Nothing innocent about it after that.