Page 63 of Craving Paradise
“Yes, it does. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have said it.”
“I thought you missed me as much as I missed you. It’s stupid, forget it.” He turns his back to me and joins in the conversation with my sister.
Jasper doesn’t try to chat with me again throughout our meal.
I see my mother across the room, and she waves to me to let me know to come over to her. I excuse myself from the table and head to where she is standing.
“Sweetheart, you look stunning. Thank you so much for putting in the effort for tonight,” my mother greets me affectionately.
“Of course.”
“In this dress, you are going to fetch such a high price tonight,” she says excitedly, giving me a wide smile.
High price?
“I’m sorry. What are you talking about?”
“The model auction,” she replies, frowning as if I should know what she’s talking about.
This is the first I’m hearing of it. “Model auction?”
My mother lets out a heavy sigh as if exhausted by her youngest child’s questions. “Yes, we are selling off models for a date to the highest bidder. It’s for a good cause, honey.”
She’s doing what? Who thought this was a good idea for a fundraiser?
“Let me get this straight. You’re selling your daughter to raise money for a foundation dedicated to saving women who have been sold for sex?” I question her.
“I’m not asking you to sleep with your date. Why do you have to be so crass all the time? It’s for a good cause, Lauren,” she says, scolding me. “All your brothers and sisters are doing it.” She acts as if I’m the one with the problem because all my perfect siblings don’t seem to have one. “As well as our models from the agency. It’s nothing sordid,” she adds as if I’m the crazy one.
I’m fighting a losing battle here.Give up now. Just nod and wave, Lauren. “No one told me, that’s all. You caught me off guard.”
“Do you not read what happens in our family chats?”
Wait, there’s a family chat? I’m not in the family chat, Mother. Did they just forget about me?
“What family chat?”
“Lauren, I don’t have time for your games. Go get Ines and meet me backstage. The auction is starting in twenty minutes.” And with the flick of her hair, she sashays away from me.
The fact my mother doesn’t understand the irony of what she is doing makes me laugh—all these rich people bidding on strangers to take out on a date. Those are the exact situations they are raising money for, except those dates have worse consequences. I’m not surprised these rich people don’t see this as problematic because they live in their nice little insular bubble. They raise a lot of money for the charity, and it has saved so many people from horrible situations, so if my parents think it’s a good idea, and we raise a ton of money for the charity in the end, the winners are the people the charity saves not the tone-deafness of how we achieved it, I guess.
I walk back over to the table and see Ines and Jasper talking. He has placed his hand on the back of her chair, and she’s twisted all the way around, giving him her entire attention.
Ugh, they can do whatever. I don’t care.
“Ines, we have to head backstage,” I say, interrupting her conversation.
Jasper looks up at me, and I wait to see his smile, but it doesn’t come.
“Give me five,” she says, sounding irritated with me before resuming her conversation with Jasper.
No, because if I don’t get Ines and myself backstage, Mum is going to lose it at me, and I do not want to be on the end of her ire tonight.
“Are you in the family chat?” I blurt out.
Ines turns around and glares at me like I’m an idiot.
“Are you? Because I’m not. I don’t understand why?”