"Penny?" I call to her. I hear the sounds of melodramatic sobbing coming from the guest bathroom. Goddammit, I do not have the patience for this shit right now.

I walk in and find her sitting on the floor by the toilet, crying her pretty, little eyes out, so stressed about whether or not she should doom the man that loves her to being with her forever. I don't get it. They're both somewhat decent humans and they have amazing sex. What is there to cry about?

She's sweet, but she's a fucking dumbass.

She looks up at me with her face a blubbering mess. She never wears a stitch of makeup, only styles her long, perfect hair into a mess on top of her head and looks goddamn beautiful all the time. Oh, and let's not even mention the genetic masterpiece she's been crying over for weeks now. Her life is perfect and she keeps trying to ruin it for herself as some sort of punishment for the "bad things she's done." She's too much like the idiot I used to be, and I can't take it anymore.

"Penny," I start to say as I sit on the edge of my tub. "You're one of the best friends I've ever had. But this is some bullshit and you know it." She looks up at me pitifully as she cries. "You have one of the greatest men in the world dying to be with you. He's human, he fucked up. Whether you two are screwed up or not, he will never find someone better for him than you, and you will never find someone that makes you as happy as he does. You two need to grow the fuck up and talk about whatever it is you're not saying!"

She hangs her head in her hands and sobs, "I can't."

I roll my eyes. "You can. You're just too pussy to do it." She looks up and glares at me. The bitch is really trying it today. "Life is fucking hard, Penny. We do shitty things, we say shitty things, we make shitty choices. But happy endings don't just happen. We have to make them for ourselves," I tell her, and try to ignore the pain in my chest at the memory. Wisdom comes from experience, and experience from failure, after all. "Just fucking call him. Tell him you want him back, and tell him why you were so scared in the first place." I stand to leave.

"But what if it's not what he wants?" she blubbers. Oh, good lord, shut the fuck up!

"Just fucking call him!" I shout. I leave her alone in the bathroom to continue cry-vomiting.

I've had enough shit to deal with this week; fired again for someone finding out I make a lot more money being appointment-only at the Ranch than I do working my ass off full-time at a hospital. Sex work scares people, it makes them uncomfortable. Being a mother on top of it, people think I'm some kind of monster.

It is very human -- albeit shitty -- to hate what we fear. People are always so quick to judge me without asking me a single question. If they'd ever ask me something as simple as "why" I'd tell them the truth; I would never make my son suffer for my mistakes.

People don't see all the mess I went through to get where I am now. They don't know how life twisted me up and tried to kill me. When my son came along, he saved me, he put me on the right path, he showed me what was most important. But life isn't quite that simple. Bills don't stop when times get tough, and they definitely don't stop once you have a kid.

LA is expensive. A growing boy that eats his body weight in food is expensive. Raising a teenager who is smarter than Einstein is expensive. My son is going to go to college. A good one, which means an expensive one, and he's going to finish it. 

My greatest purpose in life is to make sure his is the complete opposite of mine. I will do anything to make that happen. Anything. And I do.

I worked my ass off as a nurse. When he started school, I went back too. It took me five years, but I finished my RN and got a sizeable increase in pay. I was doing everything right, living my life as society expected. But then he got sick.

When you live paycheck to paycheck, there are no good surprises. When it came down to the bottom line, I needed the money, and I only had so many options to make ends meet. I called up some old friends, applied to the Ranch, and got it. The highest-paid whore may still be a whore, but I don't regret a single thing I do to make his life better.

"Is Penny going to be okay, mom?" Gabe asks me. He walks over, his dark brown hair hanging into his face and over one eye in loose waves.

I don't know why he insists on wearing it so long, but it's what the kids are doing now. I'm lucky he's still too young to grow a proper beard to match all the flannel he insists on wearing. "She'll survive," I say to him as I brush the hair out of his face and behind his ear. He gives me a placating half-smile, though I know he wants to tell me to stop grooming him.

I can't help it. He is the love of my life.

It kills me every time to look at him. Though he's nearly a foot taller than me, I will always see the tiny baby that came four weeks early. I will always remember wiping my happy tears off that tiny, wrinkly forehead while he frowned at me. I make no claims of being a good mother, but that boy is mine, and he is the most amazing person alive. I look at him, and I know I did something right.

"Mom," Gabe snaps me back into reality. He stares at me with a comical grin. "Are you alright?"

My eyes bounce between each of his, taking in the charming heterochromia of his irises. His left a cool hazel, his right a golden brown. He is perfect in every way, genetic defects and all. "I will be," I say as I give him a reassuring kiss on the cheek. He does me the favor of almost hiding his grimace. I playfully nudge him towards the kitchen. "Go eat something. Your teen angst is unbearable when you're hungry," I tease him. He laughs as he makes his way into the kitchen behind me.

I find my purse and brush on a fresh layer of gloss. Penny walks out from the hallway and starts to make her way towards the guestroom. She wipes her little tears from her pretty, little face and closes the door behind her. Maybe that means she'll take my advice. She should.

Penny thinks nothing in life is worth regretting, that it's better to grow from a decision and work to make up for what happened because of it. Her idealism is cute.

I regret almost everything I did sixteen years ago. I regret the mistakes I made, I regret covering my pain in the love of people I knew couldn't give me what I needed. There are many things I would take back. Why let her make the same mistake?

"Mom!" Gabe yells from the kitchen.

"What?!" I return with equal fervor.

"You're going to be late," he reminds me. "Again."

My mouth twists as I try to hide my smile. "Fine. I'm leaving." I walk over and pull him into a sideways hug, kissing his cheek once more. "Be good."

"You be good," he jokes. I'm sure people would find it odd that I'm so open with him. But he knows what I do, and he knows why I do it. It's formal, it's regulated, it's sterile. It's a job, just because it includes having sex doesn't mean it's any different. "I'll see you on Monday," he says, but I still haven't let him go.

"I'll miss you," I say with a grin. He's the proof I've done something right in my life. I may be a whore, but my kid is really fucking cool. "Bye, kiddo."

_____

A/N: The Professional Lover II is complete and available on my profile! Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy a continuation of the story. 

Synopsis:

The year her son was born, Maggie was a college student working as a stripper in Las Vegas when a close friend approached her with a proposition. High-end escorting. Desperate to gain independence and pay off a variety of debts, the offer seems more than tempting. Cut off from her family and their illegally-gained wealth, she decides to make money with the only thing that is truly hers: her body.

As she pursues a profession in sex work as a way to regain control of her life, her dark past comes back to haunt her, throwing quite a wrench into her plans. Maggie tries to mask her previous losses with love in its various forms. But what is the reality of finding true love when your job is getting paid to sleep with other people?