by Eros, Marata
“Okay,” Kiki says and paces behind me. “I got a weird ass email from Thorn saying that all laps have been suspended. He gives an alternate address for the next lap place. I'm on call, so I still get the emails.”
I pivot toward her. “Yeah... There was some kind of raid tonight.”
Kiki's eyes go from slits to saucers, her brow furrowing. “What? Laps aren't illegal.”
Neither one of us talk about the extracurricular stuff, but someone obviously did. I don't think any of the girls don't do the extras. I might be the only virgin, but I'm certainly no longer innocent.
Kiki exhales sharply, and a strand of dark hair floats around her face. “Bunce was there?”
Kiki's face crumples. “What the fuck is he doing? I mean, he should be in jail, and he's going to lap dance venues?”
“I was the auction girl,” I admit as neutrally as possible.
“Oh shit-in-a-sack, girl.” Kiki's eyes narrow. She puts it all together easily. Pity, sympathy, and fear mix in her expression. “He won you.”
I nod again, my eyes still dry. That’s a miracle. “Yes. I didn't know. It was like it was a setup, but I don't think Thorn knew.”
“How...?” Her brows rise.
“Cops busted in as he was chasing me around the room.”
Kiki puts her hand to her ample, heaving chest. Her throat convulses in a hard swallow. “That was close.”
“Yeah, it was.” My anger rises like high tide, swamping all my other emotions. “He has no right.” I shake, my bad hand trembling with my anger. “Mom is in that stinking mental limbo—lights on but nobody home—because of him . Yet all he can think about is getting at me. What the hell is Bunce doing that he can even afford to come to a place like that?”
“We gotta go to the cops!” Kiki says.
I shake my head. “What do you think will happen if we do, Kik?”
After staring at me for several moments, Kiki answers, “They'll throw your ass in jail because of the extras.”
“Bingo, give the girl a prize,” I mutter. Neither of us says what I'm thinking. I wouldn’t be able to see Mom. I wouldn’t make money. Mom would go into a state home. Ronnie Bunce might go to jail, but maybe not. He's free to come after me. He obviously has financial means.
Somehow.
“It costs a lot of money to be a member,” Kiki says speculatively, voicing my thoughts.
My cell chimes with an email notification, and I ignore it. The kettle whistles, so I pour the water into cups I always keep on the stove top. I stuff tea bags inside the cups.
“How much?” I ask as I face the stove.
“When I worked there, the other girls would talk. It's a short term occupation, obviously.”
I glance at her, and again that silent communication flows between us. It's a grab-the-cash-and-go job. Or become more than a lap dancer. I have an epiphany, and I almost drop the tea.
Kiki's eyes move to my face as she twines the tea bag string around her finger and dunks it. “What?” Kiki whispers, watching my expression as as the lightbulb flicks on.
“Holy crap, I think I know what that creep is doing.”
Kiki studies my face, pumping the tea bag up and down, her eyes full of questions.
“Pimp,” I say emphatically.
A light goes on in her face. “You think?” Her shaky breath skates across her hot tea, and her eyes meet mine over the rim.
“I know,” I say, taking silent inventory in my memory banks. I think about how he acts as though he owns women, especially me. I've witnessed his attitude with Thorn at the club. Of course, I know better.
Nobody owns me.
~ 6 ~
“Do we have a plan?” Kiki asks, pouring more water and leaving the old bag in the cup.
“We?” I say. “Wrong pronoun. Don't own this, Kik. You gave me the idea, and I took the job. It's my mess.”
Kiki leans forward, her hair tangling a little around the tea string. “You didn't bargain on Bunce.”
We sit in swollen silence for a moment.
“True, but there's more.”
Kiki flops against my couch, tea forgotten on the coffee table. “God, what now?”
My eyes aren't dry anymore. The mist of my sadness hangs on tenaciously... but I'm not inviting her to the pity party. Instead, I face it head on. “Remember when I got hit by Mick's motorcycle?”
“Mick, huh?” One side of her mouth lifts into an amused tilt.
I slowly nod. “Yeah.” I meet her dark eyes, and something she sees smooths out her features.
“Okay...” She snaps her fingers. “You were seeing the headache doc.” Her brows rise.
“It's more than a headache.”
Her eyes search my face, her posture tense. “What?”
I spit it out like a chunk of barf. “Brain tumor.”
Kiki had been leaning forward, but she slumps back again. I know then that it's more of a stunner than I thought. Nothing shuts up Kiki.
Finally she looks at me. “Why the hell didn't you tell me, Faren?”
I look at my hands, the left scarred from many surgeries, the right smooth and perfect. I lift my shoulders. “I... it was too much.”
Kiki blows out a breath that sounds like a deflated balloon. “Oh my god. Jared McKenna... the job… Your mom!”
I don't wince at the tone. Those are the same things I considered though not in that order.
“Yeah,” I say, taking a sip of my cool tea, grimacing, then setting it down.
We sit in silence, Kiki staring at the solid sheet of black that meets my window, midnight fast approaching. She looks at me. “I know this sounds hard... and shitty...”
“Months.”
Kiki puts her head in her hands and cries. “That's not long enough!”
I nod. Hell yes, it's not . I reach into the almost-empty tissue box and pluck out three tissues. They float and settle on her thighs like discarded clouds of sadness.
Kiki crumples them, her eyes pegging me with such intense sadness that I have to breathe through my own grief. Her wet face, the snot mixing with her tears, is too much. The reality is worse than what I’d envisioned.
“Are you sure, Faren?”
Her hope nails my sadness to the walls of emotions. It squirms for freedom.
“Yeah.”
“This is how you want to spend your... time? With a billionaire strip club owner, running from your stepfather, and dancing on laps?” Kiki shakes her head, trying to make sense of my reasoning.
Anger boils inside me. “It's about my mom. They'll put her in a state home!”
Kiki stares at me. Then slowly nods as my angry eyes beat the hell out of her. The situation makes me so mad, but Kiki's here, and she's asking the questions I don't want to explore
“True. So what's your excuse with Jared McKenna?”
I can't stop the blush that rolls over my skin in a hot wave of recall. “Wow, you've got it bad,” she says, watching my reaction.
“He has something I need,” I reply, not meeting her eyes.
Kiki leans forward. “I'm really sorry, Faren. You're my best friend, and I can't stand... can't even think...” She hiccups another half-sob.
“Don't,” I beg.
She nods, struggling with her emotions. Finally, Kiki wrestles them into submission. “Any guy has a cherry picker, Faren.”
I get a visual of a giant penis with a gizmo at the end- virgin slayer. I frown.
“He's your boss, he's...” She rolls her eyes as if the whole scenario is unbelievable.
Because it is.
“He's Jared McKenna. So far, you've been lucky the hunk-o-love moneybags hasn't put two and two together.”
Not yet but soon. “Not so far.” I put my hands under my butt and jiggle my legs.
“When he finds out you're a dancer, that your mom was... hurt by Bunce—”
“He knows.”
Kiki's brows shoot up. A laugh escapes my throat, which is so tight with grief I didn’t think it w
as possible to laugh. “He's had me investigated. I mean, he googled me.”
Kiki narrows her eyes. “That's just weird. I don't know if I should think that's flattering or you should run like hell.”
I laugh again. “I kinda told him that.”
“And?”
“Mick doesn't think there's such a thing as coincidence.”
Kiki shakes her head. “No guy believes in fate.”
I just stare at her.
Kiki whistles. “Huh, he's a different dude.”
“A different, filthy rich dude.”
“Yeah.” Kiki shoots me a significant glance. “Let's address the filthy part.”
I sigh. “I don't know why he peddles visual flesh.”
Kiki barks out a laugh and points at me. “Making me laugh in the middle of this revelation is pretty smooth.”
We fall silent again.
“He didn't get rich by accident,” I say. “He wanted to fly airplanes but invented some fuel-saving thingie, and now he's got his own planes, pilots, the works.”
Kiki's nose scrunches up, then she wags her finger. “Uh-uh. No.” Her expression tunnels down to skepticism. “So he makes bank with the invention. He was a real guy before—”
“Kinda a real guy now too,” I say, somehow keeping a straight face.
“Stop with the sarcasm, ya witch,” Kiki says.
I smile. She can almost make me forget.
Almost.
“He's Mr. Right Now?”
I cross my arms in a huff. I can’t explain the enigma of chemistry. I've never felt it before, and I've had tons of opportunities. Why does it have to be Mick? Why couldn't losing my virginity happen with some anonymous fool who can give me the experience without caring about anything more?
My shoulders sag.
“I don't know. I can't explain it. I just know that it's not fair for me to offer him what's not there.”
“Faren,” Kiki says, as serious as a heart attack, “you gotta know he wants more than a few fun humps.”
Kiki thrusts her hips back and forth with a cocked brow, and I laugh again.
I know Mick and I share something. I keep saying we don't need to go further, that we can be casual. Somehow, he nods and says the right words while his body moves against mine like ownership, forever... and maybe the promise of something I can't contemplate.
Love.
The L word is worse than a curse right now. It's a have not.
“He can have anyone for a fuckfest, Faren. He doesn't need you.” Kiki folds her arms, deep in thought. “This is going to sound awful because you know I think you're a little hottie, but”—her eyes apologize—“he can have any hot piece of ass he wants. Experienced tail.”
“I know.” I shrug with a small, sad laugh. “I don't understand it either. The more he knows about me, the more he seems determined to have me.”
“And?” Kiki says.
Truth time. “And I want to let him.”
Kiki stands, and I do too. She walks over and hugs me, some five inches shorter than me. “You don't have to do this, Faren. You want an anonymous guy to take your virginity? Done. You want to quit the laps? I'll give you the money. You want me to make an anonymous call to the cops and let them know their local high-end pimp is wanted for attempted murder?”
Her eyes hunt in mine so deeply I feel as though she's mining my soul.
“I'll do anything to make this better.” Kiki cups my face and swipes the lone tear that tracks down it, pulled by gravity, eased by her finger.
“Tell me what I can do. Because, god damn , you don't want love mixed in the witch's cauldron here.”
I'm so overwhelmed by her generosity, I can't speak. The lump in my throat chokes me. Our eyes lock.
“Don't tell me you're falling for... Mick?”
I say nothing.
I don't have to.
“Oh shit, honey...”
Kiki wraps me in her arms as I sob. The pity party's begun, and she’s crashed it. Just like I knew she would.
What are friends for?
~ 7 ~
Bryce again.
One-two-three, he huffs through his leg extensions and for the first time, my mind wanders during a session. It could be because Doc Matthews is pressing for protocol.
I have big decisions to make about radiations, chemotherapy and the rest.
I don't like “the rest.” I know the counteractives will make me sicker than the actual progression of the tumor's growth. They'll screw up the things I want to gain from the short life I have left. I can't allow it. So I'll go in and sign a novel's worth of release forms.
They don't want to be responsible for my decision.
My phone chimes with a text just as Bryce finishes his set.
He stands and grabs a terrycloth hand towel from a peg that reads Bryce, and he gives me a penetrating look that's part glare, part inquisition.
“You're not all here today, Miss Mitchell.” He wipes sweat off his forehead then drags the towel up his forearms.
You're not all here...
True. Definitely not all here. I don't answer with the whole truth. “I have a doctor's appointment, and I'm... thinking too hard.”
“Huh,” he says, staring at me.
“Headaches,” I supply, and Bryce's brows cock to his hairline.
I sigh. “Y'know, migraines.”
He nods, and my shoulders drop as my mind skitters across things like another therapist taking my patients when I'm gone. I shove the thought away, latching onto the conversation at hand.
“Yeah, my mom gets those once in awhile,” he says.
We stand awkwardly for a moment. Then Bryce asks, “Am I about done?”
I am.
I push through my emotions. “Yes, you've got almost full extension now.” I narrow my eyes, thinking about how hard he must have worked to finish his sessions early. My brows arch. “I guess you were doing your homework?”
Bryce grins. “For this? Yeah.”
I hear the part that he doesn't say— not for school.
“Listen, Bryce—”
He gives me the hand. “Nah... don't need a lecture about my future from my physical therapist.”
I smile. “Okay.”
Bryce nods and turns away. No limp anymore. He pivots back, and I see the light bulb of a question on his face.
“Yes?” I ask.
His eyes travel to my hand. The left.
“Is that why you do this?”
I don't look at it, but I feel the subtle tremble. “Yeah.” I give him steady eye contact.
“Can I see it?” Earnest. Young. Leave it to a teenager to go where adults fear to tread.
“Okay.” I don’t want to show anyone—ever.
I hold out my hand, and he towers over me. Bryce was a lineman on the football team before he wrecked his knee, and I feel the acute disparity in our sizes.
He’ll play again. We made sure of it—together.
Bryce's large hand opens my left hand. My fingers slightly curl, but the pinky sticks straight out, frozen. The twisted pucker scar on my palm is just off center. He runs a finger over it, and my entire hand convulses.
His eyes sweep to mine. “Why does it do that?”
I swallow hard. “It...” I collect myself as he hangs on to my hand. “There was nerve damage from the wound.”
His eyes darken. “Who did this to you, Miss Mitchel?”
I try to lighten the moment. “I thought you hated me?” I give a small smile, and he frowns. He doesn't take to my effort at distraction.
Bryce shakes his head. “No, I never did. I hated the therapy.”
I nod. I knew that. I gulp again. “My stepfather.”
“Jesus,” he whispers in horror. He looks at my messed up hand, a raw ball of pink flesh stares back at us.
It’s pretty horrible, bare to the scrutiny of a teenager whose main gripe is not playing football.
“Can you use it?” he asks.
Not much. “Ye
ah, some.”
His anger is palatable. It beats the air between us into a thick trench of emotion. “Where is this dick nozzle?”
I burst out laughing, and he lets go of my hand. “Dick nozzle, huh?” I grin, the tension evaporating.
He replies, totally serious, “I was editing that.”
My brows quirk. Wow, editing. Must've had a really choice comment.
“I hope they find that bastard,” Bryce says.
I hope so too. My palms sweat. I have laps tonight in a new location. I don't know what I'll do if Ronnie shows. Somehow, I don't think Thorn will give two shits who Ronnie is. Why does Mick have that prick in charge?
More questions than answers. Ones I can't ask without giving away what I'm doing.
After Bryce leaves, I reach into my smock and pull out my phone.
A text from Mick.
Of course.
A thrill shoots through me with dread at its heels. Mick is circling so close to the truth. Truths I don't want him to know.
Before I leave the clinic, Sue asks how my visit to the doctor went.
I thank her for the recommendation and say it went well. It's just another of many lies. I'm becoming expert at sinning by omission.
I have the papers to sign and my mom to see.
And money to collect off the lust of men.
But... I look at the text from Mick. Apparently, no circumstance in the universe can distract me from him. I'm getting sucked into the vortex of Mick.
I want to see you.
I want to see him too. My hand shakes as I text back the most important word of the day.
When?
*
I load ice into a washrag that I press against my eyes. It'll take the swelling down to something I can hide with makeup.
The tears come no matter how hard I resist them.
My mom's situation is worse. They’re talking of moving her to the state facility. The discussions have moved to down payments for retention.
Like my finances are incontinent.
I have two weeks to come up with ten percent of the year’s care of my mother, or she'll be moved.
My right hand throbs from the papers I signed at the hospital. Do I hold them liable since I don't want drugs that lengthen my short life but make what's left diminished?
