“No, you’re being fucking ridiculous,” I said, slamming my fist on the desk.
“But- but this is too damn easy to be true! You’re saying you will pay 60,000 dollars for me to get pretty and go out on dates with you, with no obligation for me to provide any sexual favors.” She scanned the documents again. “I mean, there has to be a loophole somewhere. Some clause where it says I have to let you tie me up in a dungeon and-”
“Seriously, Aria, a little respect would be nice. You have already made it clear what you think of me, and you’re not that far off, but there is no need to constantly stab me with your scathing opinions. I’m still your boss.”
“I’ll have to have my lawyer take a look at this,” she said laughing. I was not amused. “See, that’s funny, because I don’t have a lawyer. Us regular people in regular people land don’t have lawyers or butlers or-”
“Do you want me to hire you a counsel before you sign anything?”
She rolled her eyes. “Humor, Mr. Sinclair.”
“Zayden. There is a clause in there about calling me that,” I said, pointing to the contract.
Her laughs got hysterical. “There is a clause? So what, if I don’t call you by your first name you take money off my contract?”
I furrowed my brows. “I wouldn’t do that. But I’d like it if you called me Zayden.”
“Only if you add a clause that says you need to work on your sense of humor.”
“Yeah, we can make that work.” Her eyes were twinkling. “Oh. You are being facetious. Very meta.”
I laughed and then I realized that she was agreeing to the contract.
“So you are accepting!” A kind of excitement I hadn’t experienced in a long time started to bubble up.
“I have two conditions.” My lips started twitching again but she added: “Real ones.”
“Oh. Go on.”
“First, the money will be a loan, not a gift. I don’t feel comfortable taking your money just for spending time with you.” She noticed my smirk and added, “I guarantee you this won’t end in me sleeping with you, so you are not going to get what you want. It’s not fair on you, in any case.”
“We will see about that,” I said, the smirk still on my face.
“We won’t. I already know the outcome of this Zayden.” She was at least calling me by my name already. “Hypothetically, though, if I were to sleep with you, I would be especially uncomfortable taking money from you. That would kind of make me a prostitute.”
“I never intended to make you feel like-”
“It doesn’t matter, since I will not actually be sleeping with you. It’s a loan, which I will pay you back in monthly installments, with a 10% interest after I graduate from college.”
Her words combined with the fiercely confident look on her face made her all the more attractive. “I refuse to take interest, but sure, if it makes you feel better about the whole thing, after you have spent a few years working a real job you can start paying me back. I won’t hold you to it though. I have plenty of money.”
“You will have to, it will be in the contract. And 5%, starting a month after I graduate.”
“Zero percent interest, but you can start the payments six months after graduation. And I’ll put it in the contract. Final offer.”
She sighed. “Okay, fine.”
“What’s your other clause?”
She opened her mouth and closed it a few times, as though unsure if she should speak her next words. “You cannot be physically involved with any other woman during these six months.”
Wait, what?
“That’s fucking ridiculous. I don’t think I can do that. Especially since you keep stressing on just how much I am not going to be sleeping with you either.”
She shrugged. “If we are going to be dating, in public, I cannot be okay with the idea of you going home at the end of a date to entertain some other woman while thinking of me the whole time.”
“It’s cute you assume I’d be thinking of you.”