Love Tax

“You’re still a virgin aren’t you Sean?” whispered Regina to me as she saw I was ignoring the professor’s lecture.

“No,” I said trying to sound insulted even though it was true.

“Thought so,” she said with a smile. I’d known her since I started taking this class and she actually had become something of a friend. But she was mean and nasty to me, while she did help me out a few times with class notes and homework. She was smart, but I never even once considered dating her. “I could help you out with that if you want,” she said chewing on the end of her pen.

“With you? No way in hell,” I scoffed and returned to try and pay attention to class.

She leaned in close and whispered, “I never said with me…” I looked back at her and she pointed a finger at the girl I’d been looking at instead of paying attention in class. I’d taken this boring Literature class in the first place just to try and get closer to Shawna.

I looked back at her long silky black hair and my pulse quickened. “Are you saying…” I started a little too loud. I tried to collect my jumbled thoughts and whispered back in shock, “She’s a prostitute?” I didn’t really know her at all. I’d had one class with her last semester and only briefly talked with her once, but I was bitten by the love bug hard that first time. I thought our first meeting went well, but then she seemed to go out of her way to avoid me. I figured I must have made a bad impression, but from what I knew of her she was very shy and into reading, very smart and always at the top of the class, but even when I’d sat right next to her she always ignored me completely. With all that I just couldn’t fathom that she would be the type to sell her body to men for money.

“Hey,” Regina quipped, “college is expensive.” She left it at that for ten minutes and I struggled with my morals. My heart said pay whatever cost it took to be close to Shawna, but my brain said if what Regina said was true she must have slept with dozens or maybe even hundreds of guys. And if that was true, I’d just be a nameless John that she could never care about. “Two hundred dollars and I’ll see to it she comes over to spent the night,” she eventually said and my mind became clear.

“Deal,” I said like I was making a pact with the devil. “I don’t have it on me, but I’ll bring it tomorrow.”

Regina smiled, “I trust you. And in good faith, I’ll tell her to come over to your place tonight at nine.” I couldn’t concentrate the rest of the class and just watched Shawna leave the classroom like any other student as Regina ran up to talk with her as they left.

I decided to skip the rest of my classes that day and cleaned up my small dorm room. I hid away my porn and suggestive posters, did my laundry, and even vacuumed the floor and changed the sheets on my bed. Then I showered off and dressed as casually as I could and texted my roommate to go find someplace else to sleep tonight. That’s not usually a problem for him, as he rarely used our room in the first place. If he didn’t have a girlfriend he had tons of friends in several frats and often crashed there for some overnight party or another.

Everything was set for hours as I just anxiously waited until nine o’clock.