Resisting Sin (Gold Diggers #1)

Episode 2 : Sugar Rush

"I have a plan."

Jenna Blunt's green eyes were bright with excitement as she spoke. She practically bounced when she entered the tiny living room a second before.

Hayley Denton frowned, tapping her pencil on her sketch notebook. "A plan for what?" she said.

"Oh you know," Jenna said breezily as she walked over. "A plan for us to get the money for rent."

Their apartment building had been sold to a developer a few months earlier. Their lease was ending in a month, but the developer had offered them a new one but at almost twice the rent. They couldn't afford it, and were unable to find another one within a reasonable proximity to Jenna's parents' place. It was extremely important that Jenna be close by to her parents, as they required a lot of care and assistance in their advanced age. The only solution was to find the money to pay the rent somehow. That meant one or both of them getting second jobs, or new ones.

"Did you get a new job?" Hayley said. She herself hadn't any luck finding part-time work. And it had to be part-time. She couldn't afford to leave the job she already had.

Jenna gave a dismissive wave of her hand, before plopping down on a well-worn armchair. They'd picked it up off the street two years ago, where someone had abandoned it. "Nah," she said. "I have something better." She pointed her phone she was clutching to Hayley's open laptop sitting on the coffee table. "You didn't get my email, did you?"

"Huh?" Hayley felt a twinge of alarm. Jenna sent her an email? An actual old-fashioned email? Not Twitter or Facebook or any of a million other social media accounts she managed?

"Go on! Open it!" Jenna was bouncing in her seat. Obviously annoyed at her friend's slowness in opening her email, she moved to sit beside Hayley on the couch.

"Okay, okay." Hayley opened her email. "What's this?"

"It's an invite. I got it an hour ago. I'm allowed to bring a friend, although we have to pay for two tickets."

"Sugar Rush?" Hayley scanned the email. It looked like some kind of party. For people looking for arrangements. "Is this a business networking thing?"

"No, no. It's a party for sugar babies." Jenna lowered her voice mysteriously. "And sugar daddies."

"What?" Hayley almost shouted. She didn't know what a sugar baby was. But a sugar daddy — she knew what that was.

Jenna nodded, ignoring her friend's obvious alarm. "We're going as sugar babies. Obviously." She giggled. "I'm gonna get me a rich millionaire boyfriend."

"You've got to be kidding me." Hayley shook her head. "No way am I going to this. No way you are, either."

"But—"

"It's practically prostitution, Jenna."

Jenna held her hand up. "It's called sex work, okay. The word 'prostitute' is a derogatory word created by men to uphold the patriarchy. Have some respect."

"It's doing something you don't want to. For money."

"You think I'm taking Carlton's shit every day because I enjoy it?" Jenna threw up her hands. She worked as an assistant to a marketing executive Carlton Moore, a thoroughly unpleasant man who would work her sixteen hours a day if he could get away with it. "Most people hate their jobs. But they do it because they need to make rent." She pointed a finger at Hayley's laptop screen. "We need to make rent."

Hayley frowned. The way her roommate was making sense was ... unexpected. "But sweetie," she said. "You really want to date an ugly old man for a few hundred dollars?"