“He’s like Bruce Wayne.” Natalie sniggered as she took a swig of her bottle.

Yes, he was just like him: rich, famous, handsome, and a playboy. The difference was that Bruce Wayne had an important job—defending Gotham from evil villains. Luke had grown up with money and would always be rich, even if he never shouldered any real responsibility. My mind fell into a fantasy as I imagined what it would be like to be filthy rich, to not have a care in the world. Dining at the most fabulous restaurants in the world, staying at five star hotels and paying ridiculous amounts of money for bottles of vodka at the VIP section in clubs. How could anything be savored when it was so easy to get?

I was reminded irresistibly of the whole sugarbaby thing, and I wondered if Luke was on one of those websites. No way. He was way too gorgeous. Still, it was fun to fantasize about it.

I looked at Natalie’s face and wondered if she’d be receptive towards my idea, but she looked back at me with a rather serious look and I lost my nerve.

“Hey, listen. I don’t want to rush you, but I really need money for rent this month.”

My chest tightened. “Yeah, I know. I’m working on it, I promise.”

I could feel her quiet disappointment and I stood up from the couch to head straight for my room. Natalie was the only family I had and I hated myself for putting her in this difficult position. I sat myself in front of my computer and stared at the screen. My mouse hovered over the registration button to make my sugarbaby profile. I felt very nervous about it. I had never done anything remotely resembling online dating. I had never had time for dating, and admittedly, I was terrified of men.

This is stupid. I should at least wait to see if anyone contacts me.

But there were only two weeks left in the month, and Natalie needed her rent money. I looked around my room as my fingernails dug into my palms and tried to find something that I could sell. My closet consisted of clothes from the Salvation Army and some gifted to me from Natalie’s family. There was my old Super Nintendo system sitting in the corner, but that would net me at the most a couple hundred dollars. The only real asset was my computer, and I couldn’t give that up. Everything else was been passed down. Natalie usually gave me clothes that she would no longer wear. It was lucky that we had the same body type. Everything that I owned was frayed and unwanted. Natalie bought every stick of furniture in this place. The one exception my dresser, which I bought in a Craigslist ad.

My eyes stung. I’m so fucking poor. The helpless feeling suffocated my chest—I couldn’t deal with it, I couldn’t handle this. Natalie would marry Ben and I would be alone, with no one to care about me.

Just wait a few days.

I clenched my fists as a tear rolled down my face and splashed on the dirty carpet. I bit my knuckles to keep myself from sobbing out loud. I didn’t want Natalie to hear. A voice screamed inside me, repeating the same question over and over—What am I going to do?!

I waited in the dark, hoping that a brilliant idea from the back corner of my mind would suddenly scream out something I had never considered. But all I could come up was—I don’t know.

My head was pounding from the stress. I crammed two aspirin down my throat and ripped off my clothes to change into my pajamas. I could deal with my crisis in the morning.

Chapter 2

My car’s gas tank was dangerously low when I parked it behind the soup kitchen I volunteered at every Tuesday. What started off as an annoying thing to beef up my resume eventually became an activity I looked forward to each week. I had so much in common with a lot of the homeless people that I didn’t feel like I was such a failure when I was there. A lot of the regulars volunteered information about their past when they realized I wasn’t some kid doing this for college credit. They told me about how their families kicked them out, or how they grew up terrorized by foster families, and ran away only to be drawn into a seedy street life. Their stories made me realize how lucky I was to have someone like Natalie in my life. Without her, I could’ve ended up in a group home somewhere.

Clenching printed recipes in my hand, I used my key to enter through the back and wove through the stainless steel kitchen. The back was a maze of ovens, huge, walk-in refrigerators, and stoves. Near the front was a long counter that opened to the cafeteria, which had three bland, yellow walls with fraying posters affixed to them. Cheap, fold up white tables and chairs filled the floor.

After months of work, they finally let me cook my own recipes. Sometimes it was hard to think of ways how to turn canned green beans into something edible, but I think I did a pretty good job. Most of the homeless here never had a real, home-cooked meal.

I waved to one of the volunteer cooks. Shelly was a forty-year-old single mother of two who had gone through hard times. Her son was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, and sometimes I’d hear her arguing with her crappy HMO insurance company on the phone.

“How’s the job hunt going?”

My insides rotted at the mention of my least favorite conversation subject. “Badly,” I admitted.

She gave me a sympathetic look and patted my arm. “You’ll get something soon.”

I slid the recipes over to her. “I figured we should make some stew today since it’s getting cold, and use whatever rice we have. We still have a bunch of carrots, right?”

She looked at it. “Yeah, this will be great. Let me run it through Carol.”

I rolled my eyes. Carol was in charge of the kitchen and didn’t like how much I spent on groceries. A soup kitchen couldn’t exactly afford the best cuts of meat, and it wasn’t a surprise when Shelly returned with an apologetic smile. “She said to use the leftover ground beef in the freezer, not the chuck.”

I slammed my fist on the stainless steel counter. “What the hell is she talking about? You don’t put ground beef in a stew!”

It was annoying how little control I had at this place. Carol always found something to criticize about my recipes. “Kale is too expensive. Use collard greens instead.” Or “Just use the brown rice. Do we really need two kinds of rice?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Relax, Jessica. This place runs on donations.”

“I know, but the chuck needs to be used for something. Why not this?”

Leaving Shelly and the others to make the stew, I switched my focus to making bread pudding out of all the stale bread we had. The local bakeries donated their stale products after I asked them. What was useless for them was great for the soup kitchen, and we made breadcrumbs, bread pudding, stuffing, meatloaf, and French toast out of the discards. Anything leftover filled the bird feeders next to the garden.