by Jess Bentley
“Oh jeez, here we go,” I sigh, rolling my eyes.
She holds up an instructional finger. “No, you should hear this,” she starts in. “It’s not like those movies you watch, girlfriend. Good loving isn’t just all juices and shaved girl parts and making cow eyes. It takes time to get a good dicking, you know what I’m saying?”
“You’re talking to me from the 1950s, is what I am hearing.”
“Mm-hmm, I’m sure that it is what you hear, but that’s only because you don’t know!” she continues, undiscouraged. “I know you think being a freak liberates you, but the reality is that life is not like porn. Real sex takes practice. No pizza guy you just met is going to give you the proper dicking that a real, dedicated, practiced man can give you!”
“Yeah, all right, sure,” I answer, just to be polite. “And where do the heart-shaped pubes come in?”
“Eh, that’s just for encouragement,” she shrugs, lifting her chin toward the sun. “Just to let him know I was thinking about him.”
“Ha-ha, yeah okay,” I chuckle. Not sure she has a point, but it is entertaining to hear her old-Southern-gal way of explaining things.
“So, what are you planning on doing this weekend, you freaky little thing?” She yawns magnificently, dragging me out of my reverie.
“Actually… I’m not really sure,” I answer. “Dad has to go out of town for a little while, so I was thinking I might pick up another shift at the Krazy Mart? I could pretty much work the whole two weeks solid. Get all caught up.”
“Wait, what?” she asks breathlessly, twisting to face me. She shifts her whole body so that the mountainous curve of her hip is illuminated in glorious detail. Wow, I really wish I looked like that. If I lie on my side, I am lucky to get a foothill.
Mona snaps in the air between us.
“Libby? Are you listening to me?”
I open my eyes all the way and nod seriously. “Totally listening,” I affirm.
“You have a weekend off? Wait… You have two weeks? Alone? Without Sergeant Dad watching your every move?”
“Yeah. Actually he is a colonel...” I mumble, but she is not listening. She has been calling him Sergeant Dad behind his back since I have known her. She thinks he is “smoking hot.” Her words.
She reaches out to me with her metallic nails, scraping plaintively on my forearm and leaving tracks in the sunscreen.
“You gotta hang out with me!” she insists, pulling a face. “Come to Sweeney’s!”
“Oh, I would love to hang out with you! But I really gotta make money to finish out the semester. If I can get enough together to transfer to New York, that would be amazing.”
She nods avidly, her eyes wide. “That would totally be amazing!” she agrees. “Sergeant Dad would definitely have to let you go if you magicked up all the cash all by yourself.”
I squint at her suspiciously. “Right. That is basically the plan…”
She pokes me with one long, pointed nail. “Which is why you should definitely come out with me! Don’t go to the Krazy Mart! Come out with your best pal, crazy Mona!”
“Oh, wait. Come on. No way,” I object, leaning back on my lawn chair. It creaks a warning, and I realize if I go any further I will be dumped out onto the lawn.
She sits up fully, not even caring if the sun is more on her left shoulder than her right shoulder now. That is how I know she is really serious.
“Come on, Libby,” she cajoles. “You can make two, maybe even three hundred dollars a night. How much do you make at the Krazy Mart?”
I shrug one shoulder.
“Libby? How much do you make at the Krazy Mart?”
I do a little mental math, though in truth I know all the numbers by heart. I have run through them so many times, they are practically a mantra. Twelve dollars an hour. Twenty hours a week. A bunch of mysterious deductions later, and I somehow have a hundred and eighty-five dollars dumped into my checking account about ten days later.
“So, it’s less than two hundred dollars, right?” she prods, her voice clear as a bell.
I don’t answer. It sounds so meager.
“Libby? Is it less than two hundred dollars?”
I groan and pout, but I finally have to nod and admit the truth. It is way less than two hundred dollars a day. It’s more like… Oh, jeez.
“But Mona, I’m still nineteen. I can’t just walk into the club and expect them to, what, let me serve beer? Valet cars? What would I even do there?”
Her eyes slide to the left, the only hint of guilt she is even going to show. I have a pretty good idea what Mona does, but not 100 percent. She told me that she is a bartender, and that they occasionally have what they call “lingerie shows.”
Stripping is illegal in this county. Apparently, there is some kind of exception made if you happen to show up for work in your underwear and feel like dancing around while men give you money. Something like that.
She holds up her hands, palms out. “Okay, just hear me out… You’ll just be a beer girl, all right? Take a bunch of the heat off me. I can always use the extra help on a Friday. There is only usually two of us working there, and the guys can get really thirsty, if you know what I mean. I’ll get you a fake ID.”
I feel my eyebrows going up. “A fake ID? Like you have that kind of thing just lying around?”
“Yeah, you can use Tammy’s, don’t you think? She’s blonde like you.”
Tammy is Mona’s older sister. She went right into the Army after high school and got deployed immediately. Her bedroom looks just the way she left it, except for all the stuff that Mona borrowed and didn’t put back yet.
“Tammy’s ID?” I repeat, incredulous. “Is it even still valid? Do they expire? And it would say I was twenty-three. Who is going to believe I am twenty-three?”
Mona rolls her eyes extravagantly, pushing back a bushy mass of curly, shining hair with her palm.
“Ty isn’t really going to be interrogating you, you know what I mean? He’s going to take one look at you and that supermodel body and basically be thrilled you showed up. After all, why would he even suspect you are lying?”
I glance down at my long, not-very-curvy, not-entirely-formed body and try to imagine anything supermodel about it. Nope. Not really. Just a gangly tomboy, like always.
But then, I do have blonde hair and big brown eyes. Freckles. I look “wholesome” I hear. From the glances I have been noticing, I guess I must at least be worth a second look.
“Yeah, okay,” I grumble, more or less seeing the logic of her plan.
Two hundred dollars… Three hundred dollars… I mean, that’s some serious money. I thought that I could maybe make half of the cash that I needed to get to New York while my dad was gone. Eight hundred dollars. Working at the Krazy Mart, picking up a couple extra shifts? Maybe even mowing the lawn or two? I mean, there are definitely enough young men on base to keep most of the lawns pristinely manicured, but maybe somebody would take pity on me?
In my desperation, I even considered a bake sale. Cooking. Not in my top-ten list of skills. But desperate times, you know what I mean?
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. How hard could being a beer girl be? I know how to open bottles of beer. Read labels. Hand things to people. I mean, that’s pretty much it, right? And listen to some shitty music while drunken soldiers play pool and act like nobody can see what they do when they are off-base?
Maybe I could do that.
“So what would I wear?” I ask carefully.
Mona gasps and claps her hands quickly underneath her chin. “Yay! Amazing!” she hoots triumphantly. “You can wear whatever you want! Actually… Let me dress you! Let me pick something out! It will be awesome!”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I object. “That may be a little bit too far. I know how you like to dress. I don’t think I would look right like that.”
She reaches out and pokes me right on the top of my bathing suit bottoms, sending a surprise thrill through my lady parts.
“
Says the woman who just waxed her chocha,” she smirks knowingly.
I flinch away, immediately grateful to see that my dad is approaching the door. Reflexively, I leap from the lawn chair and snatch the towel to wrap it around my middle.
Mona springs into action too, but in the opposite direction. She stretches out slowly, flexing her toes as she hears the screen door slide open. Then she drapes her legs over the side and twists to standing, supple as a cat.
“Oh, Colonel Warner,” she coos charmingly. “I didn’t realize you were home.”
My dad steps out into the sunlight, his eyes flickering toward her for only the briefest of seconds. If he notices how shamelessly she flirts with him, he has never let on. Absolutely nothing like that leaks through his exterior. My dad is 100 percent Army morals and honor. He would never risk doing anything that would reflect on his sense of duty and propriety.
No, really. I’m not making this up. He is that guy. In real life. Captain America.
“I just wanted to say goodbye before I head off-base,” he smiles at me, instantly transforming into the warm, reliable father figure I adore.
I tuck the towel securely under my arm so that I am properly covered before rushing toward him. At the last second, I stop.
“Oh, wait, I’m covered in sunscreen,” I explain, disappointed.
“Too late,” he announces as he takes me in a full hug, kissing the top of my head tenderly. “I will just have to smell like coconut the rest of the day. It’s a small price to pay.”
Mona hovers behind me, subtly posing but not daring to really throw herself at him. I’m glad, because then we could not be friends. I can accept her crush, but that would definitely be too far.
“Are you really going to be gone for two weeks?” I mumble into his jacket.
“That’s what they’re telling me,” he answers, which is his standard answer.
Sometimes things go long. Sometimes he’s back earlier than expected. You just never really know. It’s whatever he is asked to do.
“Okay, well, be safe!” Which is my standard answer.
He can’t really tell me what he is going to do, and I know better than to ask. But he never makes me feel unsafe, and I never throw guilt trips at him. Well, not in the last five years or so. When I was younger, I would go full tantrum any time he tried to leave me with my grandparents or one of the aunts. But once we moved to North Carolina, we made a deal: he would trust me to be by myself for small amounts of time, and I would trust him to always return in one piece.
Seems to be working out so far.
“I’ll miss you,” he murmurs before pulling away, flashing me his famous smile before he changes his expression to the serious, guarded gentleman that he shows to everyone else in the world. That’s the brief, professional glance he offers Mona before he retreats into the house.
When he is safely away, Mona fans herself extravagantly, rolling her eyes and pretending to swoon.
“What a man!” she declares, affecting the Southern Belle accent that really grates on my nerves. “Why, is it me or is the sun just blazing today? I feel… absolutely twitterpated!”
I open the screen door and gesture that she follow me inside. “Yeah, yeah, get a grip,” I mutter.
Theatrically, she refuses to get a grip and sashays into the small, wood-paneled den still fanning herself with her hand.
“No… I really feel I am past the point where I can turn back! Libby… oh, Liberty Jane, the room is going dark!”
“That’s because we just got inside,” I grumble, barely playing along with her spontaneous drama.
Like a sheepdog, I shuffle behind her, gently nudging her toward the front door. Every few seconds, she turns around to make sure that I am still annoyed. It seems to give her pleasure. When I finally get her all the way to the foyer, she changes her demeanor instantly, giving me a wrinkled-nose smile and innocent shrug.
“Okay, well if you will not let me dress you, I will send you a list of outfits I would deem acceptable, okay? Pick you up at eight thirty?”
A little voice chirps somewhere deep inside my brain, suggesting that maybe this is a more dangerous idea than Mona is really admitting. Krazy Mart is safe. Krazy Mart is boring.
But Krazy Mart is also pretty cheap.
“Okay, eight thirty,” I finally agree, pasting a thin smile on my face. “And you can send me that list of outfits. But I’m not making any promises.”
She raises a fist of triumph. “Yes!” she announces, before striding out the front door and jogging across the small front lawn that separates our driveways.
It’s nice to give her a little bit of joy, and I’m sure it’s going to be a good time. Absolutely sure. What could go wrong?
Chapter 3
Libby
Once my dad is on the road for a solid thirty minutes, I feel pretty confident that he isn’t coming back and can take some time to get ready. After a brief shower, I douse my skin in vitamin E, hoping to counteract whatever damage the sun just did to it.
Padding shamelessly naked around our small but efficient house, I fix myself a snack and pin up my hair into curlers while I consider what to wear.
Mona seems to have a never-ending assortment of bodycon dresses and very tall high heels. That is basically her work uniform. I don’t really have anything like that, but I do have a couple of simple dresses. Maybe one of those will work?
As I stand in front of the full-length mirror holding this pink frilly thing in front of me, I realize there is no way in hell this church dress is seeing the inside of a bar. Absolutely not. That just ain’t right.
But I know I have to have something. I mean, this is my chance to cut loose, right? This is my opportunity. What do I want to wear? Surrounded by a roomful of strangers, what do I want them to think of me?
I have no idea.
But what I do have is Google. Okay… and Pornhub. Biting my lip, I stare at the screen of my laptop for a few seconds and then finally type in “lingerie models Sweeney nightclub” and hope to get a few video hits.
And… there they are. I guess everybody uploads videos about everything these days. There are clips from twenty seconds to several minutes, dark and taken from weird angles, but still, I get the gist.
Though the image is totally pixelated, I can hear the bass music thumping underneath the chatter of the crowd as the videographer moves through the bar, narrating the whole experience. He sounds pretty excited. I guess the event is pretty popular.
After a few seconds, the crowd parts, and a young woman in a purple, transparent negligée floats by. She pauses to blow a kiss at the person who is holding the cell phone. The camera tips down to catch her Lucite heels, then slides back up to her fluffy blonde hairdo before she glides back out of frame.
Then the camera sweeps around, focusing on the grinning face of the person taking the video. I recognize him, though I have only ever seen him from far away. That’s Ty, the club owner. He inherited Sweeney’s from his uncle or something, and by all accounts he’s doing his best to turn it into the sort of place his uncle would’ve been mortified about.
So, okay… I guess it really is what I thought it was. After clicking on a few more videos, I see the same thing. Guys acting like drunken primates, girls wandering around in their underwear looking like silent movie stars.
That’s not too bad, is it? I mean, there really are bartenders and beer girls there too. It’s just a little rambunctious. It’s not the end of the world.
Actually, it sounds kind of… hot, really. Kind of dark, kind of forbidden, definitely different than the evening I would have had in store at the Krazy Mart.
But my stomach twists. Will I fit in there? I’m going to stick out like a sore thumb. I’m going to stick out like a sore, scabby-kneed tomboy, to be more precise.
I shift my weight and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror again. My tan lines mark out glowing white triangles on all the important bits, enveloped in golden skin. Really, not too bad. I mean, obj
ectively, I guess I look okay? Not like Mona. But also not like the adolescent that I always picture in my head.
Straightening, I put my hands on my hips and force myself to look right at myself.
“Liberty Jane,” I say out loud in a stern voice, “you look fine. Don’t be such a wimp. Hike up your panties and go play with the big girls.”
That little pep talk almost does it, but then I still feel a little shy. I know just what I need. Some inspiration. Just a bit. Just a little encouragement.
Opening a private tab on my browser, I search for the keywords that I know will bring up the video I like the best. It’s pretty naughty. In fact, I don’t think I would even tell Mona about it, but ever since the first time I saw it, it has been my hands-down favorite.
Slowly I settle into the chair, only barely acknowledging the cool vinyl on the backs of my thighs as the video flickers to life. I leave the volume on low, mostly out of habit. I like to hear a little something, at least. But I don’t want it blasting out full-throated groaning.
Even though I know what’s going to happen, I watch the tiny screen with rapt attention. Some brunette walks into what looks like a college dormitory. She is expecting to find her boyfriend, I suppose, but he is not alone. His high school best friend is there to visit. The best friend is wearing a baseball jersey. I guess the idea is that they were on the same baseball team. The boyfriend is not wearing a shirt.
When the girlfriend walks in, you can see it in her eyes immediately. She wants them both. There is no discussion. She doesn’t even ask. And the guys never even seem to negotiate between themselves. It’s just known, psychically or something. Easy as you like.
As soon as she takes that first step toward them, it is all understood. The events are set in motion, and there is no turning back.
She actually goes to the best friend first, which I thought was shocking the first time I saw it. She doesn’t even ask her boyfriend for permission. She walks right up to the best friend and kisses him, her mouth open, her long fingers kneading the back of his neck while he kisses her.
