"So wait, you're meeting with him today?" Poppy asks me as we walk down the corridor towards our lecture hall. I nod my head, having just finished giving her a play-by-play of my meeting with Mr. Whitlock last night. "That's moving quite fast, you really like him then?"
I shrug and nod my head. "I guess, I just think that this might be the best solution to my situation. He's not a creep, he has money to burn and if it turns out that I don't really like him then it's fine because he travels so much." Even though the circumstances seem to be in my favor so far, it doesn't mean that my luck won't change during negotiation.
"Has he told you how much he's going to offer you?" she asks, speaking in a quieter tone now that we are surrounded by fellow students. I'm not exactly eager for them to hear how far I've fallen in terms of my self-respect, even if I don't really know any of them.
"Not yet, but he told me to quit my jobs so that I would be more available to him. So if I don't need to work then it must be good." We enter the lecture hall and take two seats in the back row. Ambrose is apparently picking me up as soon as the class finishes and although I'm so nervous about going to the meeting, I don't want to keep anyone waiting.
"Wow," Poppy says as she leans back in her seat. "He sounds kind of intense." I nod my head at her statement, he is pretty intense. Watching him treat his staff around him makes me especially nervous, I don't want to sign a contract allowing him to brush me off and treat me like I work for him.
"He is, but at least he's not a creep." Not at appearance level, he could be harboring some dark twisted fantasies underneath. I'll be reading the fine print very carefully to make sure I'm not agreeing to allow him to sacrifice me or tie me up anywhere.
Poppy looks like she wants to say more but the professor has started his presentation, a wall of silence descends over the hall. I try and focus on the material at hand and keep up with the notes I need to make but it's very difficult to stop my mind from wandering off. Last night went better than I thought it was going to go, it almost felt like a real date. But that's not what it was, not to him at least. It was a business meeting and I need to begin to think of it like that.
Sooner than I had thought, the professor wraps up his presentation and people around us start to pack up their belongings and leave the theatre. Poppy and I trail out behind them and walk outside, I scan the road and find Ambrose standing outside the car he brought me to the hotel in last night. He's dressed in a smart black suit with a pair of dark glasses sitting on his nose. I gesture over to him.