Glimmer ends it before it gets out of hand, against her better judgement.

“The session is almost over,” she tries. She rubs her thighs and palms together, her eyes downcast as she collects the remnants of their stripped-away clothes. David watches her, feeling a pang of disappointment etch in his heart as he sees her moving away.

“Glimmer,” he says, his fingertips caressing her arm. “Wait?”

“What?” Glimmer snaps at him, her head still downcast as she picks up the clothes like wrinkled memories. “What,” she repeats, now softly.

David flinches and retracts his hand. “Can we talk? Just for the last few minutes?”

Glimmer feels the yearning for him. He touched her arm, which felt warm, so she rubbed her fingers there. She looks around, worried that the hidden camera in the room might see her like this. The last thing she wants or needs is for her employers to see David as a possible person of interest to use against her somehow… You didn’t connect with clients emotionally and physically. She looks at him and sighs. “You’ll get in trouble if you stay past your appointed time. I- I’ll get your clothes, and you rinse off.”

It pains Glimmer to see him trust her without question. He nods and looks around the room. “Fine, but I won’t be long. We still have 5 minutes.”

As David showers, he feels the grime and sweat wash away while he scrubs himself clean. He hurries, rushing the rinse so they can spend a little longer. When he gets out of the open bathroom, though, all he sees is his clothes folded and placed near the bathroom archway. Another pang as he sees Glimmer is no longer inside the room either. He gets dressed quickly and rushes outside in a frantic search in the hall, but she is long gone. “Damn it.”

Glimmer’s shift was over with David, and to make sure she didn’t humor the idea of being in love with the client, she left quickly and sat on her couch, cold beer in hand, with a cup of noodles on the table in front of her. Her mind is elsewhere, and her body jolts with fragments of memories of his phantom hands, still squeezing her tenderly.

“That was stupid,” she sighs. “How old are you, Glimmer?”

She sees her reflection on the black mirror of her flat-screen TV. She considers going back to the club to find David and drag him out so she doesn’t have to pretend, hold back, or be constrained by a buzzer, but she talks herself out of it. Traffic was terrible leaving, it’ll be worse going…

The rest of the week, she sees more clients… nearing 32 clients, regulars, and newcomers… And not one of them came close to being what David was to her.

The Pink Heat employers enforced strict rules. Clients could get as close as connected to their “girls” as much as they wanted. That was good for business. Returning revenue and recurring customers were good as long as that’s as far as it was ever meant to go…

Girls, or even boys who got attached to clients, would lose their ability to please the many others they were expected to please, entertain… and make feel unique. The act was easier to uphold when it was copied and pasted. When it was plastic love, you could carry it and give it. What she felt for David was tender and personal… She knew it was real and was now scared she had lost it.