Mr. Five-Thousand-Dollar Suit sends me a questioning look, glances back at Julia, and smiles. “Julia.” He says it like he’s tasting it, and I want to smack him upside the head for the lascivious way his gaze is eating her up.
But…I know her, and she’s barely twenty-one. Most of the other girls have a few more years on them.
Her eyes flare open and red steals up her throat and to her face—which honestly surprises me. She tends to not get embarrassed.
“What are you doing here?”
I know, I have no right to worry about a girl I barely know—especially after my lecture to Z—but last night there was a vulnerable bent to her shoulders.
“Dancing.” She shakes her ass, and the suit stands up and stuffs a twenty in her bikini underwear. I glare at him.
“So this is your new job?”
“You gave me the idea.” Her lips tighten as she returns my scrutiny, her sharp eyes daring me to say anything else, an aura of vicious determination in her features.
“Well, I didn’t mean to!”
She does a shimmy thing with her shoulders, which looks hella awkward.
“You’re not doing that great,” I say, frowning. “This isn’t the place for you to earn extra money.”
She blows a kiss at someone.
I exhale. “I’m not judging, you know. I’m just worried. Some girls come here for extra money and never leave. I don’t want that for you.”
Besides, isn’t she a rich girl like everyone else at HU?
She swings around and her corset drops down, revealing a tiny silver bra, showcasing boobs bigger than I gave her credit for.
“I’m fine.”
When a woman says she’s fine, she is not fine.
“She’s beautiful,” the suit says from his seat at the bar where he’s watching her.
“Just go away, Sugar,” she murmurs before turning her butt toward my face and shaking it. “You’re interrupting my routine.”
With a final look at her, I sigh and head to Mara’s office. This isn’t the place to have a real conversation with Julia.
“Did you get back with Bennett?” is the first thing that comes out of her mouth when she sees me. Smoking a Marlboro Light, she’s sitting behind her oak desk, blonde hair rolled up in big curls that frame her face. Wearing one of her velour tracksuits, her legs are jiggling. The computer is open to her accounts, and I figure she’s been working on payroll.
Luis, her boyfriend, sits in a recliner to the side, his eyeballs plastered to the TV as he watches an episode of Shark Tank. A little pudgy with a receding hairline, he’s no Clint Eastwood in his heyday, but he’s a nice guy and not once have I ever seen him give one of the dancers a second look.
I plop down in one of the other recliners. Mara and Luis practically live here so it’s all about comfort. “Now why would you ask me that?”
She waves her hands around her face expressively. “You’ve got this glow. An aura.”
“Do I?” I blush.
She takes off her glasses, pushing them up to her hair like a headband. “Was it the fellow you made the cherry pie for?”
I smirk. “He doesn’t even like cherry pie.”
She pops an eyebrow. “Smart guy. I like him already. But did he eat it?”
“For me, he took a bite, even tried to lie and tell me he liked it.” I grin.
She points a long pink nail at me. “You had sexual relations, didn’t you?”
Color blooms on my face. “Do you have to call it that? Whatever happened to s-e-x?”
Luis gives us a look, gets up, stretches, and leaves the room. “I’m going to check on the kitchen staff, see if they’re ready for tonight.”
Mara laughs, her gaze following him as he walks out of the room. “He can’t handle it when we talk.”
“Well, you do tend to say just about anything.”
She waves that aside. “No really…tell me.”
“What?”
“Who he is.”
I laugh. “It’s no one.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “One-nighter, huh?”
“No.” I falter. “Well, not exactly.”
Z and I said we were pretend.
But the sex in my closet wasn’t. That was real. That was something.
And those words he said to you—honey chile. I can hear my mama now.
A long exhalation comes from me. But what did Mama ever know about men and relationships?
I rub at my chest just thinking about it. She wasn’t worth anything to my father. She was nothing. What am I to Z? I pull out my phone to see if he’s texted me. He hasn’t.
Mara watches me, her scrutiny not missing a thing. “Everything okay?”
I nod. “Just thinking about Mama.”
She thinks on my response for a moment before settling back in her chair. “Well, maybe it’s a good thing to not forget the past and the bad things she went through. Just don’t let any man get the better of you, especially that Bennett. I never liked him.”
“I know. You’ve told me ten times. I wish you’d told me earlier.” I toy with the straps of my purse, feeling partly annoyed with her—or maybe it’s myself I’m frustrated with. There were times I suspected Bennett wasn’t being honest with me, nights when he came home later than normal from a gig, moments he wouldn’t meet my eyes when I asked about girls who kept coming up and gushing about when was he going to play at the club again. My hands clench. I let him deceive me.
She sucks on her cig. “You say that, but you’re just as stubborn as Lily. She said a hundred times she was done with George, but she always let your daddy right back in the door, even fresh from his wife or drunk from a bar and smelling of cheap perfume.”
“I’m not her.”
It hurts to hear those stories, even though I know they’re true.
“Good.”
I have no illusions about my father. His “legitimate” family was more important, and it was a huge embarrassment to have his mistress and bastard child in the same small town. When I was eight, he gave Mama twenty-five thousand dollars and a new Mustang, told her she had to leave Davenport and move thirty miles away to a new town where his wife didn’t have to worry about running into her at the supermarket or his kids seeing me at school. He promised to come see her, and I guess he did sometimes. It wrecked her to move away, to leave behind the place she grew up. Her parents were buried in Davenport. But, she put on a bright smile and made the best of it, promising me a new start. Those days are blurry to me, a memory that’s out of focus. I knew how fathers were supposed to be with their kids, letting them sit on their laps and ruffling their hair, but he never did those things.
Mara’s gaze is soft. “Sug, you okay?”
“Yeah, it’s just been a weird month.”
“Ah, honey.” She pats my hand. “You’re going off to law school soon. You have your entire life ahead of you. Don’t be down.”
I stare down at the cup of tea she set down in front of me.
“Plus, we should take a vacation this summer. Maybe Belize. Belize has monkeys. You love monkeys.” She smiles up at Clint on the wall. “I bet Clint loves monkeys. Remember that movie Any Which Way But Loose? Damn, that was funny.”
I agree. She’s made me watch them all.
Sweet Mara. She did her best with me, and she’s always talking about vacations, but money is tight, and I wonder if it’s even feasible.
I stir the tea, trying to change the subject. “The new girl out there, Julia—how long has she been here?”
“Came in a few days ago and Candi was a no-show, so I hired her on the spot. Kinda young looking, but the suits like her.”
How have I missed her? I guess she’s here late when I’m not. “She’s my roommate and she’s practically a baby. You should let her go, Mara.”
She thinks on it. “Nah, she’s doing good. Ain’t nobody gonna lay a hand on her in this place. We run a tight ship. Plus, her drug test was spotless. Slim pickins around here, I tell ya.”
I exhale. I knew she wouldn’t listen.
She sticks her tongue out at me. “I used to strip and I turned out fine.”
“I know, I know, but she was really off last night and I’m not sure she’s cut out for this.”
Mara sighs. “She could like the attention. Some do it just so they can piss someone off, their daddy or an ex.”
I shake my head. “Just keep an eye on her.”
“Will do.”
Luis pokes his head in. “Hey, ladies, a Mr. Winchester from Birmingham, Alabama, is here to see Sugar. I told him you were talking, but he insists.”
Standing behind the barrel-chested Luis is a tall, wiry man with silver hair, small round glasses, and eagle-sharp eyes. There’s a flat, somber look to his face, and I get chills when we make eye contact. Sometimes you get a bad feeling about someone right away, and honey, I have one.
25
Sugar
“Miss Ryan, your father, Mr. George Mitchell III, passed away two days ago after a long battle with brain cancer. I’m sorry for your loss.”
The words land like little grenades in the small office, stifling everything for several seconds. Mara’s eyes are bugging out and her mouth is a circle of surprise. Even with the heat blasting in the room, I’m cold and rub my arms.