Lotto Changed My Life
*Author's Note: This is loosely based on a fantasy of mine and a fetish I've had for many years. Maybe the personal aspect made this one so much fun for me. I hope it will be for you, too.
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"Mom! Hey. What's going on?" her 19-year old daughter asked.
"Jenny! Hi. Guess what?"
Before her daughter could answer she blurted out, "I have a new job!"
"Mom, that's great!"
"You know the guy that won the lottery a few months back? The Mega Jackpot thingy?"
Her daughter made an 'mmm' noise then said, "Wait. The hot guy with the amazing hair? Who's like filthy rich?"
Her mom laughed then said, "Yes. Him. Jared Porter."
"Wait. You're working for him?" a now-perplexed daughter asked.
"I am."
"Doing...what?"
"Cooking. And taking care of the dishes. And I'm also doing all of the food shopping."
Jenny Thomas knew her mother's first love was cooking. She'd been a chef for many years and before her husband passed away unexpectedly, she'd been an executive chef at an upscale restaurant in their hometown of Casper, Wyoming. It wasn't exactly London or Paris, but she'd been well paid and a couple of culinary magazines had done features on her.
When Jenny's dad had a heart attack just days after her 17th birthday, she and her mom's world stopped. The two women began relying on one another for emotional support, but even so, her mom was unable to continue working. Jenny managed to graduate from high school, and thanks to the 3.97 GPA and having been on two varsity sports teams, she'd earned a full scholarship to the University of Wyoming in Laramie.
Kim Thomas, and her late husband, Evan, had managed to built up a modest nest egg which had given Kim the cushion she needed to take some time off to grieve and to find a way to go on. Evan had been the love of her life, and even after more than two decades together they still held hands, left one another little notes, and had an intimate life most newly married couples could only envy.
Then suddenly, without warning, he was gone. He had something called a 'left ventricular free-wall rupture' as a consequence of a mild myocardial infarction or heart attack.
He'd been in bed with COVID-19, something he'd dodged since the pandemic began. The doctor who explained what happened to him to Kim told her that his immune system had been weakened, so that when the heart attack came--an attack that shouldn't have done much damage--a part of the wall of his left ventricle ruptured. By the time EMTs got him to the hospital, he was gone.
So getting this job was a godsend on at least two fronts that Jenny could come up with off the top of her head. The first was that her mom was at the point again where she wanted to stay busy, and the best thing to fill her time was doing what she loved the most. Secondly, she'd made a huge dent in the money she and her father had saved, and she was very much in need of a job that provided income.
There was a 'Part Deaux' to the reason Jenny was glad her mom was working again, but she wasn't about to ruin her day by telling her. The truth was that she'd met someone, and this new 'someone' had been so charming and so distracting that Jenny had missed a lot of school, and unless she could turn things around on a dime, her scholarship was in grave danger.
"What's the catch?" she asked her mom, trying not to let her skepticism show through--a trait she got from her late father.
"No. There's no catch, honey. It's real. And it pays very well."
"It better!" her only child replied. "The guy won what? Like...$300 million dollars or something?"
It was actually $323 million and change, and Jared Porter had elected to take a lump sum. After paying a hefty 35% in taxes (Wyoming has no state income tax) he was left will a measly $204 million. He'd spent a little under four million on a gorgeous home he called a mini-mansion and another half million on three of the best cars money could buy. Well, perhaps the fastest cars if not the best with 'best' being in the eye of the...buyer. He'd also helped out his parents, his sister, and an old friend who'd had a rough time of it the last few years.
With the interest he was accumulating on his investments, he still had roughly the same amount of money he'd had before going on his initial buying spree.
At 28 Jared was a very wealthy man. However, once the thrill of buying all of the high-end toys wore off he was still just as alone as he was before the fateful day he'd played the lottery on a whim. He used his birthday numbers, 11-23-19-95 and 28, his current age, as the bonus number. He 'wired them' meaning he played every possible variation of their order with the birthday money he'd been given.
He was beyond stunned when three days later he checked the lottery website online and saw the winning numbers. He sat there in shock for several minutes before pulling out the tickets and culling through them. He held up the winning ticket then reread the winning numbers slowly, one by one, being sure to carefully check each one on the ticket. All five matched. Then he did it again and then a third time
"Holy shit," he remembered mumbling as he broke out in a cold sweat.
The other thing he remembered was the way his hands started shaking. He had so much adrenaline pumping through his body his hands were trembling uncontrollably. His next thought was along the lines of 'so what do I do now' before wondering who he should tell first. And just as importantly, who he shouldn't tell. He also recalled laughing when he wondered if it was maybe 'whom' rather than 'who.'
He'd moved back to his home town of Evansville which was just south of Casper after leaving the Air Force. With a population of 2,749, Evansville was a small town where most folks knew one another. To the residents of Evansville, Casper, with a population of around 57,000, was considered 'the big city'.
Jared moved back to Evansville several years ago. Not because he was lazy but because he was broken. At 22 he married the love of his life, a girl named Shari Conroy he'd met while at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.