The Passion Agency Read Free

she thought she could.
She knew because she checked. One clerk put it to her straight.
     
    You don't just come down and fill out some paper work
and sit on your duff for eternity.
     
    So she worked and she worked hard. She worked, like
so many in her position, without any real hope of ever not working
that hard.
     
    Her dreams were going nowhere. She quickly aged
beyond her ability to get them met by a man with money. Her
basketball player catch wasn’t in the habit of giving out money to
his girls.
     
    He believed (and correctly as it turned out) that you
didn’t have to actually spend any money on women if you were rich.
You just had to give them a smell of the bread baking. They’d
simply hang around hoping for a taste.
     
    But as time went on through the middle part of the
2000s, Chris’ money dried up. Not only was no longer making the big
salary but for a while here and there he was no longer making any
money. Yet he spent money like crazy. He behaved like the good
times would never end, even though they already ended years
before.
     
    Many times it was Donna throwing money his way.
     
    When she’d become exasperated and ask him why he
wasn’t out putting that Stanford degree to good use, he would
always fall back on a tryout he was having with some team.
     
    Then he’d disappear like he didn’t want to talk about
it. He's always come back a week or so later claiming he had
impressed some team. At one point, he went to Europe for a spell
and another time he went to Asia for a couple months. Both times he
made a few bucks but then never seemed to have any.
     
    He'd soon return to Donna’s life and Donna's bed.
Chris, Donna, Brea, under one little roof.
     
    Donna working harder than ever. She was constantly
hearing rumors she would lose her job with the city. This was the
one she couldn't afford to lose because it had the benefits for her
and Brea.
     
    The stress was enough without feeling like you were
being used by the guy Donna got with because she envisioned him
being able to make her life easier.
     
    Everywhere she turned, Donna felt like she was
trapped by her lack of money. It was an awful feeling but one that
hung over Donna Casteel’s life since the day Darry walked out the
door and left her on her own with baby Brea.
     
    She knew the dream of running her own business was
the key to breaking out from the cycle.
     
    As time wore on, the idea of being a businesswoman
became a bitter taunt of something that was never going to
happen.
     
    One thing Donna knew about being in the working poor:
dreams, such as starting a business to make decent money and
provide a better life for your family, were fleeting. If you
pursued them, you often did so at the expense of something else. If
you failed, you had no safety net to protect you.
     
    Donna couldn’t afford to lose and when you can’t
afford to lose, you can’t really try to go into business. Not on
your own and not without the clear path being illuminated by
someone who knew it.
     
    Donna was caught in an endless cycle of fear. The
world grew around her and seemingly prospered while she
struggled.
     
    Donna wasn’t a bitter person but she was a
pessimist.
     
    …
    Brea Casteel was almost nothing like her mother. Not
that they didn’t get along. They did. It was really impossible not
to get along with Brea because she was fully and completely
non-confrontational. She lacked any edge whatsoever.
     
    She rejected, for whatever reason and no one really
knew why, things like make up or the latest fashions. She read, and
read a lot, but even that had a certain mystery to it.
     
    What was she reading? Why wasn’t she spending her
spare time with her friends being a high school girl?
     
    It wasn’t a lack of physical beauty. Brea had her
mom’s complection only slightly lighter skinned. She had a small
nose and brown to black hair that fell wherever because she let it
do so.
     
    She just seemed like she was indifferent to the