Honey Read Free Page A

sometimes be tender afterward. He’d scoop her off the floor and sit her on his lap in the vintage modern wingchair that only he was ever allowed to use. At those times, he’d take out his carefully pressed and folded handkerchief and use it to dab cum from the corners of her mouth.
    â€œSo long as you keep taking care of me, I’ll keep taking care of you, got it baby?”
    After six years together, their tainted fairytale was finally reduced to its rancid essence: a business deal, a transaction. He wasn’t ever going to leave Katharine, not when the time was right, not ever. He’d given up the pretense years ago just as Honey had given up first the hope and eventually the desire. So completely had she sold herself, she might as well be walking the streets. At least whoring that way would be honest. At least then she’d get to choose. “My ass is my own,” or so the sex workers’ slogan said. She’d believed that once, had murmured it beneath her breath like a mantra. But she gave up that right, any right to dignity and self-determination the day she accepted Drew as her exclusive, the day she’d quit the agency and stood beaming smiles as he signed the first of six one-year leases on “her” apartment. The posh Park Avenue co-op had started out as a castle-in-the-air but these days felt more and more like a gilded cage—a prison.
    By a fluke, she’d found FATE—Faith, Acceptance, Trust, and Enlightenment—an informal meet-up for former adult entertainers living in New York City. Through the frank, nonjudgmental sharing of their struggles and triumphs, members strove to make peace with their pasts and “write” their unique new life stories. The weekly coffee klatch met from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. every Monday at the Soho walkup of their group leader, Liz.
    At first, Honey had been skeptical. She was never much of a joiner, preferring solitary pursuits such as journaling to sharing her thoughts and feelings face-to-face. But what had started as a social outlet had quickly become a lifeline. Liz, Brian, Peter, and now Sarah had become more than friends. They were her people. With its salvaged furniture and strewn-about kid’s toys, Liz’s felt far more like home than her own place did. And yet even there, with them, she couldn’t be totally truthful, didn’t dare let down her guard. The secret that was tearing her apart inside was the very one that she couldn’t admit, not without getting thrown out of the group.
    She hadn’t really left the life.
    She might not work for an “agency” any longer, but she was still accepting money in the form of apartment rent and clothing and jewelry in exchange for sex. And that ongoing choice had brought her to … this .
    Moving into the main room, silent except for her soles crunching on broken glass, the stillness seemed to resonate with the echoes of their earlier one-sided argument.
    â€œWho the hell have you had in here?” Drew demanded, sniffing the air as if catching a whiff of contraband cologne. “Who have you been fucking?” He slammed his scotch glass down so hard on the side table it was a marvel the vessel didn’t shatter.
    â€œNo one, no one’s been here but you, darling,” she’d answered, modulating her voice to come off as calmly as she could, even as her heart threatened to hammer a hole through her chest.
    Barring the housekeeper, who popped in for two hours every other week, and the super, who’d recently repaired the dripping kitchen faucet, leaving a cloud of Old Spice in his wake, it was the truth. She hadn’t even had her FATE friends over. When Liz had asked if they might move the weekly meeting elsewhere while she was having her apartment painted, tempted though Honey had been to volunteer, she knew better. Drew liked things a certain way—the towels folded and draped over the bath rack just so, the decorative