Hell on Heels Read Online Free Page B

just above my desk, waiting for my eyes to move down to the manila cardstock and back to him.
    I’m sure people would say I too often bent easily to the will of men. I’m sure some women would say I even lacked self-worth. Self-worth . God, what an idea that would be. Did we even know how to measure self-worth romantically as women anymore? If you asked a man out, you were too forward. If you waited for him to ask you, you were too shy. If you took off your shirt, you were a slut. If you left it on, you were a prude. I mean, who was to say when enough was enough?
    I’d indeed chosen a poor time to mull over the contradicting retrospect of womanhood. The inevitable lose-lose that women seemed to be faced with when dealing with the opposite sex.
    “Well…” He pulled our joint hands towards him. “Do we have an agreeable arrangement, Charleston?”
    If I said no, I was ungrateful. If I said yes, I was somehow a traitor to the female backbone.
    But hey, some liked it bitter and some liked it sweet, and I learned a long time ago it was not possible to be everybody’s cup of tea, and I didn’t care to be.
    Perhaps that was just me though.
    “Agreeable.” I smiled genuinely. “It’s the least I can do.”
    While you may think that was a preposterous thing to agree to, or anti-feminist of me to take money in exchange for agreeing to spend time with a man, it would be wise of you to acknowledge the curiosity it peeked in you.
    Said wealthy politician was incredibly handsome. Said politician was willing to donate an obscene amount of money to the charity I loved more than anything in this world. Lastly, it was no secret that over the years I’d been on countless dates and survived nearly a decade of love affairs with the opposite sex, and yet, I was remarkably lonely.
    I know, I know. How could someone as fond of male affection as I was be lonely? It was easier than one would expect. Hadn’t you ever been in a crowded room and yet felt as though you were entirely alone and unjustly misunderstood? Most of us have at one time or another been enveloped in such loneliness. For me, however, it was a constant. That was how my heart and its ravenous addiction responded to love. I was submerged in affection, yet never full. I was at a loss, doomed to repeat the same mistakes forever. In my self-preservation and unrelenting realism, I had buried myself under a fear of forming actual connections with people, and without connection, we became hollow.
    Sure, I’d been in the company of great men, but let me remind you, great men aren’t always easy to love, and even fewer had the capacity to love you back. And even if they could, love you back that is, would it be enough? Would that one person be enough to sustain me with a lifetime of highs and withstand a copious amount of lows that would no doubt be the fall out of our duality?
    I wasn’t sure.
    Just as I wasn’t sure all the lies we’d been fed as young women growing up were true. I’d begun to wonder if I was advocating for a future and a life I no longer believed in, chasing things that would inevitably turn to dust when I caught them.
    Perhaps I’d never believed in earnest that loving romantically was anything but fleeting. Perhaps it was simply all…wrong.
    For, at first, they taught us that behind every great man was a great woman.
    Wrong.
    Later, they revised and preached that beside every great man was a great woman.
    Wrong.
    Surrounding every great man was a slaughterhouse of women, some great, some not, positioning for the rise of her own empire. It was a difficult thing being Queen of the King, and even if you made it to the crown, bet your ass you’d have to fight dirty day in and day out to stay there, because behind every great woman was another woman ready to take her place.
    Women were constantly in competition with one another.
    Right.
    So, yes. I said yes to the beautiful, great man proving all of societies woes intact. I’d done so a dozen times