She laughed and gave me a look. “He’s ahunk. But he’s smart, too. More than just eye candy. I wouldn’t trade my husband and kids and grandkids for anything in the world, of course, but sometimes I find myself wondering if Michael is a good kisser. He’s the kind of guy that makes me wish I had been more adventurous when I was your age, you know?”
I do wonder if he’s a good kisser. “Oh, I don’t know,” I said, laughing off her question. “I try not to look at coworkers like that.”
“Sure, dear,” she said with a skeptical smile. “Oh good, the system is up. First, you need to use the login that we’ve provided…”
Allison spent the morning explaining everything we did at the foundation. Donors donated money, or left assets to the foundation when they died. All of those assets went into a big pool which the finance team managed. Investing it in stocks, bonds, and other ways to help the pool of money grow.
The money was then doled out to charities and other causes. Some of this was directed by the donors themselves: one woman donated a hundred thousand dollars to the foundation and wanted all of it to go toward animal shelters, for example. Alternatively, charities could apply to us for grants, which the foundation would then approve or deny. Allison showed me a few pending grants: one from an after-school program, and another for a food delivery service similar to Meals on Wheels, but geared toward people who also had animals to take care of.
My job was to write up all of these grants and send money out each week. It was also my responsibility to research each charity to ensure they were legitimate. There were a lot of fraudulent entities out there, or groups whose values did not align with the foundation as a whole. We didn’t want to accidentally give a grant to a hate group, after all.
Allison took me out to lunch, and then we spent the afternoon going through all the grants that we needed to process that week. It was a lot of work, but I was quickly getting the hang of it. When five o’clock rolled around, I left the office feeling amazing.
I survived my first day, I thought while taking the elevator down to the parking garage level.And I forgot all about the way the CEO talked to me.
While walking to my car, I opened my personal email on my phone. I had been so busy that I hadn’t checked it all day. I had an email notification from OnlyFans about a private message. I opened the app, and an excited tingle ran up my spine as I read it:
Kai: I’d love to meet up this week to discuss working together.
9
Ginny
The rest of the week at work passed quickly. I was busy learning the ropes from Allison most of the time, and I went home each afternoon exhausted. Not just from the work, but from Allison herself. It’s not that she wasn’t nice—it was the opposite. She wastoonice. She talkedconstantlyin between work, especially about her grandkids. As a woman without kids of her own—let alonegrandkids!—I struggled to think of what to say.
I took lots of notes while I trained. I prided myself on only needing to be shown how to do something once, and I made sure to put that into action at my new job. And it worked: both Allison and Michael commented on it.
“You’re sharp,” Michael said after a meeting together on Wednesday.
“Is that a pun?” I asked, pointing at the bandage on his palm.
He laughed. “Completely unintentional. But I’m already certain we made the right call hiring you. Degrees are overrated. Keep it up.” He punctuated it with a smile that left me feeling warm the rest of the day.
My OnlyFans business was going well, too. My subscribers were steadily growing, along with my revenue each night. I made most of my money from the live shows, but even when I didn’t have a live show, like on Wednesday night, my subscribers were hungry for content and paid for all my other premium videos.
I was also attracting what we called “whales.” A whale was a subscriber who tipped a lot, but without being needy or demanding. One whale, whose screen name was Cavs1996, tipped me two hundred bucks! And that was on top of the other fees he paid for live shows and videos. He must have been a Cleveland Cavaliers fan. I had a cousin who lived in Cleveland and he joked that the city was, “The mistake by the lake.” I sent Cavs1996 a private message thanking him for the tip, and did the same for the other few whales I had attracted. Most OnlyFans girls had an automated system set up to send messages to people who tipped, but I liked doing it myself. I hoped that personal touch would keep them coming back.
Either way, I was elated to see my revenue stream continuing steadily. And it was only going to increase if I started doing videos with a partner.
I was nervous about meeting Kai this Friday. Excited, too. I re-read our messages at least ten times that week:
Kai: I’d love to meet up this week to discuss working together.
Kai: What day is best for you? Friday evening is ideal for me, but I can be flexible if need be.
Me: Friday is perfect—that’s one of the nights I don’t do a live show. How about 8:00?
Kai: Sounds like a plan. Do you want to meet at a neutral place, like a coffee shop? I know it probably feels sketchy meeting a random guy at your place, and I want to make sure you don’t feel unsafe.
Me: Thanks, but my apartment is fine. I’ll send you the address.
Kai: Let me know if you change your mind. See you then.
His offer to meet at a coffee shop was considerate and sweet. But I was even more terrified that someone might recognize him. And if they sawmewith him in public, they might connect the dots that I had an OnlyFans account of my own. The odds of that were astronomically low, but I was still afraid of the scenario. I would rather take the chance and meet at my place, and make sure I had the police on speed dial. Besides, Kai being cognizant of my safety was a good sign by itself.
Or maybe he’s just saying that to make me feel safe, and I’ll end up chopped into ten pieces and thrown into the dumpster.
Regardless, the future felt bright. It was the second week of September, and with a little luck I would have saved up enough for a house by the end of the year. That would be a nice Christmas gift for my parents. Then I could quit my OnlyFans side-hustle and focus on my career at NMCF.