The Hire

Chapter 1

The card declined three times before the universe finally let me buy a man for the night.

I was three drinks in when I typed my ex's name into a search bar that had no business knowing it. Morgan Hale. Engagement. The results came back before the ice settled in my glass. Not his engagement. His firm's. The Brennan Foundation dinner, Saturday, eight o'clock, black tie, and there he'd be, at the head table, with her hand on his sleeve.

I put my phone face down like it had said something ugly to me.

"Ray." I tapped the bar twice. "Again."

Ray looked at my glass, then at me, then at Dani, who shook her head the way people do at a dog that's about to eat something it shouldn't.

"She's had three," Dani said.

"I've had three," I said. "I'm aware of the number. That's how numbers work."

Ray poured. He had the decency not to look sorry about it.

The bar was the kind of place that smelled like lemon and old money — low light, brass rails, a couple two stools down arguing about a wedding in a whisper that wasn't a whisper. The woman had a ring she kept turning around her finger like it was a problem she was trying to solve.

I knew that move. I invented that move.

"Okay." Dani turned on her stool to face me full. "Say it out loud. The whole thing. Not the version you tell your mother."

I drank. "I need a date."

"You need a therapist."

"I need a date," I said again, slower, "for Saturday. Somebody tall. Somebody who walks into a room like he owns the building. Somebody who makes Morgan Hale look like a guy who peaked at his own bachelor party."

Dani stared at me. "That's the plan. That's the whole plan."

"That's the whole plan."

"Mia." She said my name the way you'd say don't. "You broke up eight months ago."

"Seven and a half."

"You're counting."

"I'm accurate." I set the glass down hard enough that the couple two stools down glanced over. Good. Let them. "He RSVP'd me before we broke up. My name is on a table card at the Brennan Foundation dinner. You know what happens if I don't show? Everybody at that table spends the night feeling sorry for me. Poor Mia. Couldn't hold him. Couldn't even show up."

"So don't go."

"I'm going." I pulled my phone back up, and my thumb did the thing my thumb does now, which is open a search bar and type before my brain can file an objection. "I'm going, and I'm not going alone, and I'm not going with anybody who's going to make me feel like I'm the one who should be embarrassed."

I typed date for hire and immediately hated myself. Then I typed plus-one agency and hated myself slightly less, because it sounded like a stationery store.

The first three sites were the kind of thing that put a man's face next to a price list, and I closed them fast. The fourth one didn't have faces. It had profiles. It had a consultation form. It had a line at the bottom in small gray letters that said discretion guaranteed, which is the exact sentence that means the opposite.

"Don't," Dani said.

"I'm not."

"You're on it right now."

"I'm looking." I scrolled. "There's a difference between looking and doing."

"There's a difference between looking and doing and you've never once respected it."

She wasn't wrong. That was the worst part about Dani — she was never wrong, she just said true things at times that made them impossible to hear.

The form asked what kind of event. It asked the dress code. It asked, in a little dropdown, whether I wanted a companion or a plus-one, and I sat there with my finger hovering, because those are two different words and neither of them was the word I wanted.

Companion. Like a blanket. Like a medical device.

I picked plus-one, because it sounded like I might have had options.

The price came up. Two thousand two hundred dollars.

I laughed. Out loud. The couple two stools down looked again, and the woman stopped turning her ring.

"Ray," I said. "Ray, look at this. Twenty-two hundred dollars. To rent a man. To rent a man. For one dinner. Four hours, max. That's five hundred and fifty dollars an hour for a guy to hold my elbow."

"That's more than I make in a week," Ray said, and went back to polishing.

Dani leaned over my shoulder. "It's a scam."

"It's not a scam, it's got a contract." I scrolled past a page of terms I did not read, which I want to be very clear about, because of what happened later. I did not read the terms. I was three drinks in and my chest hurt and I was looking at a page that said your date will arrive in a dark suit, no red accessories, and will approach you at a pre-agreed time.

No red accessories. Weird little detail. I remember thinking that's specific, and then I didn't think about it again for a very long time.

"It's sad," Dani said. "It's the saddest thing you've ever done, and I was there for the birthday party."

"Nothing is sadder than the birthday party."

"The birthday party is a monument, Mia. The birthday party is a national landmark. This is worse."

I put in the card number. The screen did that little spinny thing, and then it came back red, and the words insufficient funds came up in a font so calm it felt deliberate.

"Ha," Dani said, without joy.

"Shut up."

"Your mother—"

"My mother took the account off me in June, she didn't tell me, she just—" I stopped, because my voice had done something in the middle of the sentence that I did not want it to do in a bar with a brass rail and two people listening. "She took it off. I have my own card."

"Your own card has ninety dollars on it."

"My own card has ninety dollars on it," I said.

The couple two stools down had gone quiet. The woman with the ring had both hands wrapped around her glass now, and she was watching me the way you watch a car that's about to do something.

I pulled the second card out of my wallet. The one I never use. The one with a limit so low that the company sends me letters about it, like a school report.

I typed it in.

Approved.

"Mia."

"It went through."

"On what card."

"On a card," I said, "that is going to have a very interesting month."

And here's the thing — here's the thing I'd like on the record — when I typed in that number and hit confirm, I wasn't thinking about Morgan. Not really. I was thinking about the way he looked at me in the last month, which was like a man reading a contract he was about to get out of. I was thinking about the table card with my name on it. I was thinking about Lilly, of all people, sitting across from me with that expression she's had since we were kids, like she's already won something I don't know is a contest.

Two thousand two hundred dollars. Four hours of a stranger holding my elbow. If that's not getting what I paid for, I don't know what is.

The confirmation came back before I finished my drink. It pinged so fast it was almost rude.

Your event date has been confirmed.

"That's it?" Dani said. "That's the whole thing? They took your money and that's—"

"Read it," I said, "it says your date will be in contact." I was already standing, already reaching for my coat, already that particular flavor of drunk where you're certain you've solved something. "It's fine. It's done. Saturday night, I walk in with somebody who makes Morgan Hale look like a parking ticket, and then—"

"And then what?"

"And then I go home."

Dani looked at me for a long moment. "And then you go home."

"Don't do that voice."

"What voice."

"The voice where you're being kind to me because I'm being pathetic."

"I'm not being kind," Dani said. "I'm being quiet. Those are different."

Behind me, a man's voice rose up off a phone — a big voice, the kind that doesn't know how loud it is, the kind that thinks a phone is a private room.

No — no, listen. Listen. She's gonna do what she's gonna do.

I stopped. I don't know why. My coat was half on.

Let her cool off. She'll call by Tuesday. They always call.

A woman came out of the corner by the back door — dark coat, mascara going, the ring on her hand now on her hand the wrong way round — and she walked past all of us without seeing one single face, and she hit the door with her shoulder and it banged open into the cold and swung shut so hard the glasses on the shelf rattled.

The whole bar was quiet. Ray looked at the door. The couple two stools down looked at their drinks. The man with the big voice said okay, okay, don't— to somebody on the phone and slid off his stool like nothing had happened.

I stood there with my coat half on.

"That could be you in six months," Dani said, very quietly.

"That could be me now," I said, and it came out flat.

My phone pinged again. I looked down.

Your event date has been confirmed.

Dani reached over and turned my wrist, and read the second line, the one under it, the one I hadn't gotten to.

"Mia," she said. "Did you read the whole thing?"

"I read it."

"You read the top of it."

"I read the email," I said, and I pulled my coat on and pushed my glass away and picked up my purse, "and it says it's confirmed, and Saturday I'm going to walk in there with a man so far out of Morgan's league it's a war crime, and I'm going to eat my dinner, and I'm going to come home, and I'm going to be fine."

I was at the door when she said it.

"Mia." Her voice had gone strange. "The email's got a name on it."

"I know it's got a name on it. I typed my name."

"No," Dani said. "You typed a name. It's got a different name on it, and it says the guy who's coming, and it's—"

The door swung shut behind me before I heard the rest.

Twenty-two hundred dollars. Four hours. One date.

I walked home in the cold with the confirmation still glowing in my hand and I did not read it, not once, not the whole way, because I had already decided what the night was going to be and I was not about to let a piece of paper ruin it.

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Chapter 1 Ends