I should have thanked her or corrected her assumption, but I did neither. I hurried for the door Lila had left out of hoping she hadn't gone far. This street was getting packed already and finding her among all these people and all these bars would be difficult if not impossible.
I just wanted to have some fun, and she couldn't let me have it. She couldn't stay fucking put for a few minutes. Jesus, she was more trouble than I'd anticipated. Her dark hair was the first thing I saw when I stepped out of the bar. She was standing by a street light only a few feet from the bar.
Her arms were crossed over her chest, and her shoulders slightly bent. Like she was cold and trying to keep warm. That couldn't be it though because it was hot as fuck out here.
"Lila!" I called to her. She slowly turned to look at me and then resumed her stance-like she saw me but wasn't interested in me at all. Or like she was pissed.
I took the few steps to reach her, ready to ask what the hell she had been thinking coming out here alone. But when I got to her she dropped her arms and kept her gaze on everything and anything but me. "Ready for the next bar?" she asked.
She was upset. It was in her tone. "Why did you just walk out?" I asked frustrated by this whole scenario. I'd just started enjoying myself.
"I didn't like that bar."
What? "You don't like a place so you just leave. You couldn't wait to tell me?"
"You were busy." The sarcasm dripping from her voice wasn't missed.
"I was just starting to enjoy myself. Jesus, Lila."
She started walking away then. Like she was angry and wanted to get away from me. I'd done nothing wrong. "Then go back in there and have fun. If that's what you want to do, I have no problem with it." The tone or her voice didn't sound like she had no problem with it.
I reached out and grabbed her arm, stopping her. "What is with you? Are you pissed that I drank shots from that girl's tits? That's what she's there for. Some of the bars here have a lot more than that. It was tame. I wasn't hurting anyone."
She sighed heavily, and then finally turned to look at me. "That's what you like?"
"Drinking shots from a woman's cleavage? Yes, so do all heterosexual men on the fucking planet."
"You don't know her."
"No, but that doesn't really matter."
She studied me a moment. "Have you ever been in love, Cruz?"
What the fuck? How had we gone from me liking whiskey between tits to love? "No, but what the hell's that got to do with this conversation?"
The way she was studying me made me uncomfortable. Like she could see more than I wanted. "Because it seems shallow."
"It's sexy, fun. It's not supposed to be anything more."
Lila didn't reply to that. I let her pull her arm out of my grasp. She finally nodded. "Okay." I wasn't sure what she meant by "okay" and if that was her way of ending this ridiculous talk we were having then good.
///
"Let's go find more sexy and fun things to do," she said as she began walking again.
I fell into step beside her. She went to the very next bar and didn't wait for me to order a drink. Instead, she went straight to the bar and ordered a double shot of whiskey for herself, downed it in one very long gulp, then ordered another.
"Unless you want me holding back your hair out there on the street you need to slow down," I warned. She ignored me and drank the next one exactly the same way. After that, she left me ordering my own drink and walked out to the dance floor. I placed my order with the bartender then watched in shock as Lila Kate let a man take her hand and put her up on a table. The guy on stage called out "What you want to hear sweet thing?"
She gave him a big saucy smile I'd never seen on Lila Kate before. "Poison," she yelled out.
Poison? What the fuck was she doing?
"I think I'm in love!" the guy on stage shouted Then the band started up, and so did Lila. I knew all about her dancing. She'd done it her whole life. It was what paid for her college. But what I didn't know was that beyond the ballet and other fancy shit she'd learned that somewhere along the way, Lila Kate had learned to do something that would make her millions if she ever decided to take her clothes off and take up a career dancing on a pole. Motherfucker.
After I pulled my jaw off the floor, I had to fight the urge to take her off that table and away from all the catcalls and whistling and cheering. Was it sexy as hell? Yes. More so than anything I'd ever seen. Back to the Snow White gone bad thing I'd tried to explain to her earlier. But it wasn't Lila. She had class. She wasn't the kind of girl who did things like this.