Authors Note: This is Part 6 of a story I attempted to write from the point of view of the three main characters, all speaking in the first person. I'm grateful to my editors, Angry Barcode and slutkimmi for their assistance. I believe the story should be read in sequence as it was written. This is a work of fiction, the events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons. All characters are over the age of eighteen, at every point depicted in the narrative.
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Spending the holidays with my little brother and his wife Sherry, I had time to do a little thinking, a little summing up about where I am in life, how I got to be where I am as a 37-year-old woman, and what I want to do with my next thirty-odd years.
It occurred to me that my favorite client John (he's a John, right?) had no intentions of marrying me. That is, if he meant to marry me he would have by now. It's been years now, after all. And even if he ever did leave his wife and family to marry me, every day for the rest of his life he'd be looking at me and thinking about what he left behind to marry a whore. No matter how much he says he loves me, that would always be in the back of his mind.
John wasn't ever going to marry me; it was obvious. Why should he, when doing so would mean giving up the good thing he's got going on? And if we weren't going to have a future as a married couple, then all I had to look forward to was becoming an aging hooker, and that's no future at all.
If I ever was going to make something out of my life, other than The Life, now was the time to take the plunge. I'd managed to save up a tidy little sum over the years, and the family was so happy to see me when I came home over the holidays. It was mentioned on more than one occasion that I'd be welcomed with open arms if I ever wanted to move back to the old home town; it seemed like Fate was beckoning me.