He lays his hands in his lap and crosses his legs. His condescending look and the way he glances at his watch just make it that much harder to speak.
“I’ll be back.” I drop my eyes.
I want to tell his smug face to go fuck himself, but I won’t. I did my research. He’s the best, and that’s what I need. That’s what I have to have. “I don’t know how, but if you think there’s a possibility I can win, I’ll figure out how to get you the money.”
With that said, I scoop up my garbage-picked North Face backpack and slip my arms into my jacket. He won’t meet my eyes. As I turn toward my left, he’s no longer visible anyway thanks to one of my foster mothers dunking my face into a bucket of bleach and water after she judged my bathroom cleaning skills as inadequate.
I trump your inability to look at me with my inability to see you. So there.
“I have a trust fund.” I swallow and heave a heavy, internal sigh, listening to the lie trickle out as naturally as I breathe. “I just have to get my executor to release the money. It shouldn’t take long.”
His incredulous glare and my pathetic lie are the last things we exchange before he’s looking at my back, and I’m shaking my head, trying to figure out why I do that.
Even with two jobs, I’ve only managed to stuff $543 under my mattress. I have less than thirty days to come up with ten times that amount.
Yet, running to the bus stop, it’s not the seemingly insurmountable task of getting $5,000 together that’s on my mind. It’s this tension in my chest—picturing those Monet blue-green eyes that looked straight into mine an hour ago.
He didn’t only meet my eyes, he held them like they were his.
Who is he, and why is he affecting me? I thought I was immune to men. I’ve spent the last decade making sure of it.
“You have twenty fucking minutes to be on that fucking stage, we clear?” Tito, the manager of Club Paradise, grumbles as he blows smoke in my face from the doorway.
The closet-sized dressing room stinks from years of spilled drinks and just about anything that can be smoked, the walls covered with drama written in lipstick or eyeliner. Maybe even blood. “Randal Coburn has a three-inch cock!” and “Misty Sunrise better watch her whore ass!” just a sample of the history of drama at Club Paradise.
“Leave her alone. She’ll be there.” Sissy waves her hand in the air dismissing the narrow-eyed, younger version of Danny Devito.
“You shut up.” He points at Sissy, then his eyes trail from my head down. “And you need to lose ten pounds. Twenty would be better.” He hisses at me.
“Get out of here, asshole.” Sissy shoves him toward the door.
With his shoulders hunched and his head forward like a bulldog, he’s gone.
I wish I had her moxie. But, I just look away. I’m always looking away.
“Here, hon.” Sissy shoves a tall glass topped with a paper umbrella into my hand. “Don’t worry about him. Have a drink.” She knows I don't drink even though I turned twenty-one a couple months ago. She has the bartender make me a Shirley Temple with an umbrella every night we work together. It makes me feel a bit cheerier, even if it doesn’t create the desired numbing effect.
“Thanks.” She’s helping snap the three-foot tall, virgin-white, feathered wings onto the clear vinyl straps around my neck and shoulders. The stupid things weigh at least twenty pounds.
If I were a real angel, I’d never be able to fly with these. I’d fall right out of the sky and down into hell.
“All set. Beautiful as always.” Sissy takes a long drag on her glass pipe, and the sweet smell fills the makeshift closet-dressing room. “You want?” She squeaks out the words, attempting to hold the smoke in her lungs while taunting me with the ornate, pink pipe.
“No thanks.” I shake my head even though she should know better.
She lets out a long misty, white breath over my head.
“You are the straightest stripper I’ve ever met, you know that?”
“Am I?” I wince a little at the word “stripper.” I don’t think of myself as a stripper and debating my job title as well as my mind altering substance intake is not on my agenda either, and Sissy takes the hint from my unusually sharp tone.
“So, what did he say?” She asks in a hushed whisper and leans toward the mirror where our eyes meet in the reflection.
“Shhhhh! I told you we can’t talk about it. No one can know, okay?” I keep my voice as low as I can as my eyes dart to the door.
“Who’s listening to us in here?” Sissy shrugs, looking around.
“Just—I don’t want to talk about it here, okay? Please, don’t ask me again. You never know who’s listening.”