Deceit

18 - Accomplished

Yamaris:

I'd been trying to stay calm while waiting for my exam results all morning. The suspense had been killing me since the day I finished the exam, and frankly the holiday Charles took me on didn't help me relax one bit. His proposal caught me by surprise, and I had to question what I did to make him believe our arrangement was more than what was typically expected. I was his eye candy, pleased him when needed, listened to him talk about his problems at home, and shared joy for whatever special things were going on in his life; however, I never said I was interested in marriage.

Honestly I thought he was going to end things between us and try to make things work with his wife. I could always find another man to support my lifestyle, but I knew the money would come in slower. Bunny said I would be a fool to not secure the bag, and Hannah was completely against the lifestyle from the get go. Naturally I had to admit that I was involved with Harlem because I liked him more than I wanted to allow myself to. My attraction to him played a major role in my decision making process.

Bunny was excited to hear I stepped out of my comfort zone, yet she thought I'd be missing some grand opportunity if I chose to be with him. Hannah thought I should use this time to leave the sugar game for good. Hannah's opinion was the one I valued the most as she wasn't in the world Bunny and I lived in. She gave me the wife's perspective and always questioned how I would feel if my husband was sleeping with some hot younger woman. As much as I wanted to continue working towards my goal I agreed with her on this one. Marriage wasn't something I'd ever considered for myself-not yet anyways. Charles was the first and only married man I'd been involved with and it came at a higher price.

A life with someone my age didn't seem like such a bad thing anymore. Of course it would require a little sacrifice, and I was willing to work on that. Harlem made me realize that letting loose wasn't so bad after all. The sex was better, and I felt alive for the first time in years. After being gang-raped at the last college party I attended, the idea of sex for anything except my future was unpleasant. Harlem changed that mentality.

Today I would also find out if my digital advertisement was going to get the green light. I took my time crafting the perfect family friendly design. The background was a soft yellow and photos of all the publications slid into the middle of the screen one by one, visibly overlapping the others before bursting out in a semi-circle with our company's transparent logo in the middle. It was decent for my first design, and I was proud of myself. This kind of work wasn't what I had in mind when I decided to work for a publishing company, but I had to do whatever was asked of me.

An alert popped up in the bottom right corner of my desktop letting me know I had a new email. This was it. My future was in the contents of that email, and suddenly I no longer wanted to know the results. There would always be other chances to take the exam again if I failed, but that wouldn't match my previous academic successes. If I passed, I was going to begin spending my weekends as a real estate agent until I had enough applied experience to open my independent brokerage.

Anxiety rushed through my veins as I hovered the cursor over the email. I wanted to press it, I really did, but the uncertainty was too much for me. My co-worker Ashley entered her cubicle beside mine. She was the perfect person to assist me in my indecisiveness. "Hey, Ashley?"

She rolled over to my cubicle with a smile. "What's up, Maris?"