Hell on Heels(7)

“As I was saying, I’m not sure if you follow politics, Charleston, but I have taken a very public stance with my campaign on providing better education at a district-wide level should I be elected.” I nodded again. This I knew from the articles I’d read in the paper. “I believe that a part of providing children with the opportunity to garner the futures they deserve is by providing them with a better and more rounded education. I think we are losing children, and teenagers especially, to a variety of twenty-first century plagues far more frequently than we should be comfortable with.”

He was mesmerizing as he spoke, and I was quickly in awe of him.

“I believe one of those plagues is addiction.”

My throat burned, the fire in my chest scaling its walls for freedom. “I agree wholeheartedly.”

“We have to fight for change, and I believe this is a fight your charity has already broke ground on. So, if you’ll have us, we’d like to sponsor The Halo Foundation in that fight.”

I saw it. It was impossible not to see it. There was a reason he was the city’s front-runner, and it wasn’t because he was good looking, though that didn’t hurt. It was because Beau Callaway was a living, breathing saint and he didn’t even know it.

“We’d be honoured to have your campaign spearhead our sponsorships.” I shook a little as I spoke. I was struggling to maintain an emotional equilibrium.

The week of the gala was always emotionally taxing for me.

“I’m glad to hear that.” He stood, buttoning his suit jacket once again. “I’ll have my assistant contact you this afternoon to coordinate anything you need from us.”

I stood as he did, following the somewhat abrupt end to a quick but otherwise very deep meeting. “On behalf of the Halo Foundation and myself, I want to say thank you. It’s not often we have sponsors that are so passionate about what we do,” I said, and I meant it. Standing in front of him, outstretching my hand, I wished I had more eloquent words of thanks, but in that moment, my grief was plunging in and out of my heart, making it hard to breathe.

“I just have one condition.” His hand tightened around mine.

“Oh?”

I wasn’t surprised by this. It was often when making sizeable donations that the sponsors had conditions, though usually they were ironed out prior to the ending handshake of a meeting.

“To thank me for the donation, I’d like you to let me take you to dinner.”

“Oh.”

Using the hand not joined with mine, he pulled a sealed envelope from the inside pocket of his grey suit and held it just above my desk, waiting for my eyes to move down to the manila cardstock and back to him.

I’m sure people would say I too often bent easily to the will of men. I’m sure some women would say I even lacked self-worth. Self-worth. God, what an idea that would be. Did we even know how to measure self-worth romantically as women anymore? If you asked a man out, you were too forward. If you waited for him to ask you, you were too shy. If you took off your shirt, you were a slut. If you left it on, you were a prude. I mean, who was to say when enough was enough?

I’d indeed chosen a poor time to mull over the contradicting retrospect of womanhood. The inevitable lose-lose that women seemed to be faced with when dealing with the opposite sex.

“Well…” He pulled our joint hands towards him. “Do we have an agreeable arrangement, Charleston?”

If I said no, I was ungrateful. If I said yes, I was somehow a traitor to the female backbone.

But hey, some liked it bitter and some liked it sweet, and I learned a long time ago it was not possible to be everybody’s cup of tea, and I didn’t care to be.

Perhaps that was just me though.

“Agreeable.” I smiled genuinely. “It’s the least I can do.”

While you may think that was a preposterous thing to agree to, or anti-feminist of me to take money in exchange for agreeing to spend time with a man, it would be wise of you to acknowledge the curiosity it peeked in you.

Said wealthy politician was incredibly handsome. Said politician was willing to donate an obscene amount of money to the charity I loved more than anything in this world. Lastly, it was no secret that over the years I’d been on countless dates and survived nearly a decade of love affairs with the opposite sex, and yet, I was remarkably lonely.

I know, I know. How could someone as fond of male affection as I was be lonely? It was easier than one would expect. Hadn’t you ever been in a crowded room and yet felt as though you were entirely alone and unjustly misunderstood? Most of us have at one time or another been enveloped in such loneliness. For me, however, it was a constant. That was how my heart and its ravenous addiction responded to love. I was submerged in affection, yet never full. I was at a loss, doomed to repeat the same mistakes forever. In my self-preservation and unrelenting realism, I had buried myself under a fear of forming actual connections with people, and without connection, we became hollow.

Sure, I’d been in the company of great men, but let me remind you, great men aren’t always easy to love, and even fewer had the capacity to love you back. And even if they could, love you back that is, would it be enough? Would that one person be enough to sustain me with a lifetime of highs and withstand a copious amount of lows that would no doubt be the fall out of our duality?

I wasn’t sure.