Unrequited

by Jen Frederick

  God, what a fucking tool I was. There was really no way to get a good look at her, but I was aroused by the idea of her. No. It wasn't the idea. It was the memory. It was the feel of her slim body slick and ready for me, and the taste of her as she ate at my mouth like it was her last meal—or her first. It was all those good things that washed over me in a welcome flood.

  Hoots roused me from my reverie, and when I tore my gaze from the shadow of Winter, I saw the cause. The stripper had moved down the T-shaped stage to stop close to us. She dropped down and spread her knees wide. Her hands slid down toward the apex of her thighs, driving everyone at the table wild. Henry jumped up, placed two fingers between his lips, and let out an ear-piercing whistle. Me? I was irritated she was blocking my view of Winter.

  Winter was avoiding me, but here in this titty bar, I had an advantage she didn't. I was a paying customer, and she was… God, who knew what she was doing here.

  "Don't do anything I would do," Adam murmured knowingly as I pushed away from the table.

  "Where would the fun be in that?" I gave him a wry half grin and moved toward my target. A man in black slacks and a dress shirt stood near a short hallway to the side of the bar. Winter had disappeared down that hallway when I first arrived. Since then I'd seen a variety of men and workers slip away after talking to the guy at the entrance. Most strip clubs had rooms where a patron could buy a private dance—or more, depending on the club.

  "What's up?" the man asked as I approached.

  "Just taking a breather."

  "Our dancers not doing it for you tonight?"

  "It's noisy and crowded. I think it's more the atmosphere. Maybe you have someplace quieter where I could sit and still enjoy myself?" I pulled out a twenty.

  He swiped it out of my hand so fast I almost forgot I’d held anything.

  "I've got a seat in the back." He jerked his head down the hall. "You could have some one on one."

  "That'd be nice."

  "You have someone in mind or just a general preference?"

  "How about that one, right there?" Winter had come up to the bar, resting her tray on it. The bartender leaned close to take the order. I pointed to Winter.

  "Sorry. She's waitstaff. They don't do private performances. How about Ruby? I mean, all those Asian girls look the same, and Ruby's got more upstairs." He gestured toward his chest.

  I wondered if he'd ever said those words in front of Winter. She'd probably deck him.

  "No, I like the more natural look. She's it for me. I've had a bad few months, and she's the one who’s going to make it better." I pulled out a hundred dollars. "How about it?"

  He looked at the money and then at Winter for a long time. Finally he shrugged. "I’ll ask her, and if she agrees, fifteen minutes."

  "Fine."

  "Go on back. Second door on the left."

  The second door on the left revealed a small room, no bigger than a closet, lit with red lights. It had one armless cushioned chair toward the back and a side table. I hadn't yet settled in when the door slammed open. I jumped to the side to avoid getting hit by the flying wood, and I hid a smile so I didn't get struck by the angry girl at the door.

  She was vibrating with emotion. Nearly levitating from it. If she slapped me, I'd welcome it because it would be a response. Finally.

  "I can't believe you did that."

  "Pay for you? Come to the strip club? Wonder why you’re here? What's so unbelievable about any of those things?" She stood there, the door open, with curious people wandering by. I took her by the arm and gently moved her inside and shut the door. When the door closed, a red bulb above the frame came on and music, stripper music, poured into the room.

  This was Winter's cue to strip, but as much as I wanted to see her naked again, I wanted her to talk more.

  "Let me out," she demanded, trying to dart around me to grab the knob.

  Ignoring her request, I leaned against door. "What are you doing here?” As if I had to ask. I knew it had to do with Ivy before she even opened her mouth.

  She pressed her lips together and then with a mulish expression, spat out, “Ivy’s sick. I’m covering her shift.”

  I couldn’t prevent my snort of disbelief, but the last thing I wanted was to talk about her sister. “You’ve been ignoring me."

  "There's nothing to talk about."

  "The hell there's not." I said those words as mildly as possible, but I couldn't hide all my anger and frustration. She looked away. In the red glow, she looked demonic in an impossibly hot way. Her slender legs were encased in black crisscrossing tights, and she wore the same tiny shorts as the blonde who served us. The thing around her torso made her small waist even tinier and pushed her little tits into plump pillows that begged to be bitten and licked.

  "You said all you needed to that night."

  "I didn't say enough, clearly, because you've been avoiding me." I dug my fingers into my biceps because I was itching to drag her against me and remind her why she shouldn't be ducking me. "That night was damn good for both of us, and don't try to lie and say it wasn't. I felt you coming all over me. Repeatedly."

  Even in the red light, I saw her flush, and she looked away, biting her lower lip slicked with dark red lipstick.

  "It should never have happened."

  "Because why?" I’d wracked my brains after the first few ignored phone calls and came up with a big zero.

  Winter stared at the wall. “Because of my sister.”

  “That’s a weak excuse. She doesn't have anything to do with us."

  She sighed and ran a hand over the side of her head, a gesture that signaled she was nervous and uncertain. "There is no us, Finn. There never will be. I want you to leave me alone."

  I closed the space between us. Winter was short, and even in her fuck-me heels, she only came up to my Adam's apple. I tilted her chin up. "That's not happening. That night, Winter…shit, you gave me a gift, and I want to talk about it."

  "There's nothing to talk about." She jerked her head out of my grip and ran toward the door.

  Was I being an asshole? Forcing her to answer questions that hounded me for months? No, I didn't think so. I slammed my hand against the door, keeping her in. Her body was slight and trembling under mine, and it didn't escape my notice that we'd been in this position before—only with a lot fewer clothes. I rotated my hips slowly to remind her of all the talking we’d done with our bodies. Her breath quickened, and the pulse on her exposed neck jumped in response.

  She was scared of something, not of me, but of something. Maybe how I made her feel. That was some scary shit if you weren’t ready for it. Hadn’t I tried to ignore it too? But it didn’t work. We’d set a match to a spark, and it was still burning all these weeks later.

  Dipping low, I brushed my lips against the top of her ear. "You've been part of my life since I was sixteen, Winter. I'm not letting you go. You can't use Ivy as your defense forever."

  The name of her sister made her stiffen. "She's not a defense. She's my sister and your girlfriend."

  "Ex-girlfriend," I corrected. "And that was a long time ago."

  "Really? Because it feels like yesterday."

  "You need to let that go."

  The light flashed above us, and the music turned off, signaling the end of my fifteen minutes. Winter sagged against the door in relief. "Time's up."

  "This isn't that big of a town, Winter. You can't hide from me."

  4

  WINTER

  Finn’s words haunted me through the rest of my shift and driving home. What did he want from me? That night he evidently needed comfort. I wasn’t saying the whole night was spent with me comforting him with my body, but I’d known it was a one-time deal.

  Him coming after me like that was beyond confusing. I’d thrown out Ivy’s name like she was a wall that could keep my feelings on one side and Finn on the other. It was cleaner, neater that way. I coped that way. Plus, a one-time thing I could keep from Ivy. A relationship or whatever
it was that Finn wanted, I wouldn’t be able to. She wasn’t in a place where she could take many blows. I needed her to get well.

  She was awake when I got home, sitting on our mom's red and gold chenille sofa, flipping through the late night channels which consisted of infomercials and reruns.

  "How did it go?" She turned the television off and threw the remote on the coffee table.

  "Fine, but you look terrible."

  Her face was drawn and pale. She had bags under her eyes, and her mouth was pinched together in an unhappy frown. If I didn't know better, I would swear she had been on a week long drinking binge. But there wasn't a scent of alcohol about her when I joined her on the sofa, just the sour smell of vomit.

  "I couldn't sleep. Every time I lay down, the room spun and I'd feel sick again. I can't even keep water down." She pointed to the half-full glass on the table.

  "I'm really worried about you, Ivy. Maybe we should just bite the bullet and take you to the hospital."

  "And use our savings on that? Haven't I wasted enough of our money? No thanks." The bitter tone wasn't directed toward me, but herself. One of the worst parts of recovery was facing the harm done while addicted. A lot of Ivy's use was because she wanted to forget—her flunking out, her argument with Mom and Dad, their deaths, and every other bad thing that followed.

  "It'd be a savings in the short term if you end up so sick that you need an extended stay in the hospital. That wouldn't be good for our bank account either."

  Bills were a constant state of concern for us. We were slowly digging our way out, but it would be a while before we would be able to move into a nicer place or buy a better car. For now we drove the ten-year-old Honda my parents had given Ivy when she graduated from high school. For me, the money thing was a non-issue. No sense in rehashing the past. I was glad she was alive. I was glad I was alive. And I was glad we were together.

  She twisted her lips into a not impressed with your logic face but didn't have a response.

  "Come on." I stood and offered my hand. "Let's try to get some sleep. You can sleep with me."

  She heaved herself off the sofa and tugged an oversized T-shirt down around her thighs. It said “West Central High,” and by the size and age, I wondered if it belonged to Finn at one time. I refused to ask, though. I would feel better not knowing.

  In my bedroom, Ivy climbed into the twin bed and laid on her side while I stripped off the Riskie's clothes and pulled out sleep shirt and shorts. She looked about ten years old with her blond hair framing her heart-shaped face.

  "Was it terrible at Riskie's? Did anyone try to make you do a table dance?"

  Because the walls were so thin in our apartment, it was easy to hear her when I went into the bathroom to wash off the smoke and sweat of the night.

  "Not at all. I made about three hundred in tips. I had only one person grab me. And the guys from Atra showed up to hassle me." I left out any mention of Finn and him dragging me back to the VIP room.

  "And Jimmy?"

  "He was kind of in a bad mood. He stomped around, huffed and puffed like the bad wolf he likes to think he is, and then left us alone."

  "Did he leave by himself?" She tried to sound like she didn't care, but it was obvious she did.

  "I wasn't paying attention," I admitted. I had been too discombobulated by Finn. "I thought he had that no sleeping with the help rule." I wiped my hands dry and returned to the bedroom. Ivy scooted over and I climbed into bed with her.

  She snorted. "He has a lot of rules that he likes to apply to the staff that don't apply to him. He's Jimmy Risk, you know. Rules are for peons."

  Yeah, there was something there, but if she didn't want to tell me then I wasn't going to press I had my own crush and my own secrets I didn't want to talk about. Besides, Jimmy was bad news in my book and the last guy I'd want for Ivy—not just because he was a strip club owner, but because that was all he owned: nightclubs and strip clubs. For a recovering alcoholic like Ivy, it didn't make good sense for her to be shackled to a guy who had access to thousands of gallons of liquor. It wasn’t ideal that she worked there either, but she needed a job and Jimmy provided the only one since she got out of prison.

  "I never saw him hit on any of the girls. He was in a really growly mood." I’d have to tell her about the VIP room thing. Jimmy or someone else was bound to bring it up. Hey your sister went in the back and gave a private dance to a customer! I didn’t want her to hear it from anyone else. Taking a deep breath to calm my suddenly racing heart, I said, "You know who else was there?"

  "Everyone? I mean, at some point it seems like every male in this city ends up there."

  I ran my tongue over my lower lip, remembering the taste of him. "Finn O'Malley."

  She barked out a surprised laugh. "You're shitting me? What the hell was he doing there? His latest girlfriend not putting out enough?"

  "He was there with some guys I didn't know and Adam Rees."

  "Nice. How'd he look?"

  "Good." I paused, and the silence lengthened between us as I discarded several adjectives that would give away how much I felt for him. How could I describe him without talking about how piercing his blue eyes looked even in the dark light and how hard his body felt when it pressed against me? Or how soft his hair looked, and how I wanted to drag my fingers through it and then pull his lush mouth to mine and kiss him until there was no air left in either of us.

  "I saw him right after his dad died, did I tell you that?"

  I shook my head and tried not to pay attention to the way my heart was squeezing. “Right after or later?”

  A sick feeling roiled in my stomach. Had they hooked up? Talked about getting back together? Was this before or after Finn and I had sex at the trailer?

  “Right after.”

  Relief rushed through me so fast I felt dizzy. I wished he’d said at least one word about this the other night. But then, would it have really made a difference? I hadn’t thought about Ivy before that night and sure as hell not during. I squirmed beside her, but she didn’t notice.

  She was lost in her own memory. "I ran into him at the Walgreens on 48th and University. I'd run out of tampons and peanut M&Ms. He was buying bottles of Everclear. I asked him what he was doing and he said ‘getting shitfaced.’ Anyway, he looked good then. Of course, he'd always looked good. That wasn't the problem with us,” she finished with a slight curl of her lip. Was that disgust or dismay?

  It was an opening, a tiny one, but I dove through it and kicked the door open. "What ever happened between the two of you?"

  As if there was something she could say that would make my own actions okay. Yes, they'd been broken up since she was twenty and that was five years ago, but Finn was still her ex. And it felt wrong. Even when it was so good.

  "Oh, God." She flung an arm over her eyes. "That was a shit time in my life, Winter, and I did a lot of things I'm ashamed of."

  "Sorry, you don't have to tell me."

  Losing a parent was like receiving blunt force trauma to the side of the head. You never really fully recover, but you could move on. When our parents died in a car wreck on New Year's Eve when I was sixteen and Ivy was nineteen, there was a time there I thought we'd died too.

  Ivy’d already had a bad drinking problem. She'd flunked out of her first semester at college and had come home defiant and unapologetic. They'd argued, and then the accident happened. After that, Ivy couldn't pull herself out of the tailspin. She was sober just enough to fight for my guardianship so I wouldn't have to stay in foster care for two years. But after the petition was granted, she let go, as if the court battle had sucked out every atom of her self-control.

  We'd had the life insurance policies, so it seemed we'd make it financially. Ivy paid off the house and set aside money for my college. Or so I thought.

  But Ivy's drinking turned into drugs, and the money from the insurance ran through her fingers like water through a sieve. I didn't learn the full extent of the damage until I tried to pay for my
first semester at Central. The check bounced, my admission got denied, and I had a long screaming match with Ivy that ended with bitter tears on both sides.

  I mortgaged the house to pay for her first stay at rehab and sold the house to pay for the second. But once an addiction had a hold, its grip was so tight you couldn't pry that person loose with a bulldozer. She had to crawl out on her own. That was the lesson I had to learn. Margo, Ivy's sponsor, said I still hadn't learned it. Margo thought I should move out, but until Ivy could stand for herself, I wasn’t leaving.

  "No, it's good for me. That's what recovery is all about, right? Asking for forgiveness from the ones I've hurt. Step eight, right?"

  Step eight: Make a list of all persons harmed, and when wrong, promptly admit it. I’d learned those steps in the Al-Anon meetings.

  She sighed so deeply and so long that I wondered where she got the oxygen. "I cheated on him. Several times."

  "On Finn?" I didn't mean to sound so incredulous, but that was inexplicable to me. If she had Finn, why look elsewhere?

  "I was drinking. I would get drunk, and I would hook up. Finn wasn't into the party scene like I was. He played intramural sports and he went out, but even then he didn't drink hard. He started leaving me behind because I'd refuse to leave a party even if I had a test the next day."

  "Did you break up with him?"

  "No, he finally broke up with me after some chick in his chem lab started making noise that she'd love to be in his pants."

  "Do you miss him?"

  She was silent for a few too many heartbeats, and the guilt of the one night eight weeks ago made me hot and cold. Was it shame or something else? The memory of that night was filled with contradictory emotions. There was the bliss of being held by Finn and the glory of having his big, strong body rub against mine. There was his shocking lack of inhibitions and the mind-numbing pleasure he brought forth because he knew what to do with his body and was constantly listening to mine. But underneath it was the thought—like sand in the bottom of your shoe that you can't find but knew was there abrading your foot with each step—that I shouldn't have done it. The best time in Ivy's life was when Finn was her boyfriend. Post-Finn, her life was a disaster.