I Was Worth a Fruit Platter
782 Views · Ongoing · August
I got pregnant the year we could barely afford to eat.
My boyfriend, Mason Caldwell, took out an online loan to pay for the abortion. At least, that was what he told me.
While I was recovering, the best thing I ate was a $2 chicken leg from the discount grocery store.
It broke my heart to watch him work construction all day and deliver food all night. So after three days in bed, I took a serving shift at the private club where my friend worked.
“People fight over these shifts,” she told me. “Good money, big tips. I only squeezed you in because I know things are rough.”
Then she added, “You just serve drinks. Nobody gets to ask you for anything else.”
That night, I found Mason in a VIP room, seated in the middle of a crowd that hung on his every word.
He ordered seven or eight bottles of red wine at $25,000 apiece. Someone said the watch he gave a bottle-service waitress was worth $220,000.
After midnight, he wiped the lipstick off his cheek and reached for the bike helmet beside him.
“Mason, you're still playing house with that woman? Still playing the delivery guy and the factory worker?”
“Your dad's on your ass about getting married. End it already. If she finds out who you are, you'll never get rid of her.”
Mason laughed. “She's not smart enough to figure it out.”
I stood in the dark beside the door, holding my empty tray, my head down.
The clinic had charged $600. The food he'd bought me over those three days came to $30.
$630.
Exactly the price of the fruit platter on their table.
That was all I had cost him.
My boyfriend, Mason Caldwell, took out an online loan to pay for the abortion. At least, that was what he told me.
While I was recovering, the best thing I ate was a $2 chicken leg from the discount grocery store.
It broke my heart to watch him work construction all day and deliver food all night. So after three days in bed, I took a serving shift at the private club where my friend worked.
“People fight over these shifts,” she told me. “Good money, big tips. I only squeezed you in because I know things are rough.”
Then she added, “You just serve drinks. Nobody gets to ask you for anything else.”
That night, I found Mason in a VIP room, seated in the middle of a crowd that hung on his every word.
He ordered seven or eight bottles of red wine at $25,000 apiece. Someone said the watch he gave a bottle-service waitress was worth $220,000.
After midnight, he wiped the lipstick off his cheek and reached for the bike helmet beside him.
“Mason, you're still playing house with that woman? Still playing the delivery guy and the factory worker?”
“Your dad's on your ass about getting married. End it already. If she finds out who you are, you'll never get rid of her.”
Mason laughed. “She's not smart enough to figure it out.”
I stood in the dark beside the door, holding my empty tray, my head down.
The clinic had charged $600. The food he'd bought me over those three days came to $30.
$630.
Exactly the price of the fruit platter on their table.
That was all I had cost him.
















































