Neon Burn

by Kasia Fox

  Down the dim hallway. Through the doorway. There sat Tessa, hands folded in her lap, waiting like the good, rule-following girl at the center of the leather bench.

  “Cassandra, this is Tessa’s first lap dance. Give her a dance to remember.”

  The dancer kicked off her heels, which meant Tessa was in for a good grind. Berkley stepped out of the room into the hallway, keeping to the shadowy part of the corridor where she could watch.

  Cassandra got on the floor and parted Tessa’s legs. The girl’s eyes went wide. Then Cassandra pushed her body against Tessa’s and slid up, inch by inch. As her body traveled, so did her hands: caressing thighs, skimming hips. When the dancer reached her breasts, Tessa breathed in but did not exhale. With gymnastic swiftness, Cassandra hopped up on the bench and straddled Tessa on her knees. No wonder Ronnie was banging her. She was good. A better dancer than Berkley had ever been. (Pity the girl whose goal was to be the best dancer at Peaches, Las Vegas.)

  Eyes half closed, Cassandra worked her hands through her hair, running them down her own body as her hips popped back and forth. Cassandra unlaced her slinky top and tossed it on Tessa’s face. When the girl pulled it away, her expression read as nothing less than shocked. Berkley turned away to stifle her laughter.

  “Hey!” a voice thundered down the hall. Ronnie stormed toward her. Poor Skinner. So easy to manipulate. Berkley didn’t betray her satisfaction, keeping her expression neutral as Ronnie moved past her and burst into the room.

  Cassandra was topless, her hips grinding slowly over Tessa’s lap, one of her fingernails carefully dragging the thin strap of Tessa’s dress carefully down her shoulder. Ronnie closed his eyes and held up a hand as if to block his view. “Jesus Christ,” he shouted. “What’s going on here?” Looking over her shoulder, Cassandra lost her balance and tumbled to the floor, staring at Ronnie’s angry red face, asking, “What’d I do? What’d I do?” Tessa doubled over in shame, hiding her face in her lap.

  “That’s my daughter! What do you think you’re doing giving a lap dance to my daughter?!” Ronnie yelled.

  A horrified look came over Cassandra. “I didn’t know!” she protested. “She got me to do the dance.” She pointed to Berkley. Ronnie swiveled. He jabbed a finger and pressed it to Berkley’s chest until she was backed against the wall.

  “I don’t see the problem,” Berkley said, all innocence.

  “Oh you think this is funny, do you?” His voice was threatening, his face so close to hers that she turned it to the side. She was looking down the hallway. A few doors away stood Skinner, watching.

  “I wanted her to have fun.” Berkley refused to drop the act. “Don’t you think lap dances are fun?”

  Ronnie dropped his voice to a low growl. “Do you have any idea how important this girl is to me, Berkley?”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve finally met someone you love more than yourself.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” he hissed, pressing the finger harder, his words hissing in her ear. “Some things are worth more than love. Now get her out of here. Take her home.”

  Dropping his finger, Ronnie stepped back. He took a deep breath and in a calmer tone, he said, “Tessa, Tess look at me.” She looked up. “I don’t blame you for this, okay? Berk here has a sick sense of humor.”

  As passed Skinner, Ronnie smacked him on the back of the head.

  Berkley composed herself and arranged her hair before stepping back in the room. Tessa apologized as Cassandra fastened her top.

  “Sorry girls,” Berkley said. “What a buzz kill, am I right?”

  Cassandra collected her shoes in one hand and left the room muttering, “Bitch” as she passed.

  “And don’t you forget it!” Berkley yelled after her. She turned back to Tessa, expecting to see the face of misery.

  “Now it’s my turn,” Tessa said. “I want to go to Billions.”

  20.

  Tessa threaded through bodies, scanning the faces of people packed into the club. None of them were Cal. He wasn’t here. If he were, she’d know it. Up until now she’d been lying to herself, saying she’d only come to the club so she could tell him off. Now that she knew he wasn’t here, Tessa could admit how desperate she was to see him.

  Billions was lit in moody blues and greens. Drapes cordoned off small seating areas on three sides of the packed dance floor, making it impossible to get a good view of the place from one vantage point, unless you were the DJ or among the chosen people on the raised platform at the front of the room. Berkley and Skinner were in the crowd behind her. After the bouncer made them fork over a hundred-dollar cover – it was some sort of charity night – Tessa intentionally ditched them. She didn’t owe them an explanation. Back at Peaches, Berkley had played some sort of twisted practical joke on her and Skinner, well, Tessa wasn’t sure why their driver insisted on partying with them.

  She was standing on the periphery of the dance floor when a girl next to her pointed at the stage. She was pointing at Cal, who was up on the platform by the DJ. It was as if the club lights were positioned to form a horseshoe of light around him. Everyone in his vicinity fell into the shadows. People on the stage glanced at him, shifted position – aware of him yet pretending to be oblivious. On the main floor, a couple of people held up their phones and took pictures. Tessa had never been around anyone wealthy or famous. She supposed this was why people with power were so desperate to keep it; imagine being able to change the energy of the room just by walking into it. This realization clenched her heart. She was drunk and she thought she might cry. She wasn’t special at all. She thought Cal made her feel this way, only her, because they had some otherworldly connection. But it was all a trick of fame. In the end, she was just another face in the crowd, staring.

  The DJ was playing an old Janet Jackson song. One of those songs that made her want to grab a man and dance. Like a moth to a flame burned by the fire, Janet sang. My love is blind, can’t you see my desire. Young people all around her were touching each other. Moving together. Come with me, don’t you worry. I’m gonna make you crazy. Cal was a head taller than the circle of people standing around him talking, looking at him for approval. He wasn’t listening. They turned to see what he was looking at and he was looking at her. I’m gonna take you places you’ve never been before. You’ll be so happy that you came. It was like she stood on one of this city’s moving sidewalks, her body transported across the room directly to him. Like going to him didn’t require thinking or moving her limbs. Reach out and feel my body. That’s the way love goes. Cal hadn’t stopped staring at her. He was waiting. For her. No point hiding her smile. “I found you,” she said at the same time he said, “Where did you come from?” She climbed up the steps and bumped into a bouncer. The man held his hand out, pressing it against her collarbone.

  “This is VIP,” he said.

  “Hey!” Cal’s face darkened in anger. “Don’t touch her.”

  “It’s okay. I’m fine,” Tessa said.

  “I didn’t realize she was your guest. I’m sorry. Please—” The bouncer stepped aside.

  “It’s okay,” Tessa shouted over the music.

  Cal held out his hand to her, as if she couldn’t make it up the remaining two steps without his help. She took his hand. When she reached the top he kept holding on, as if he didn’t want to let her go. A cocktail waitress was immediately upon her, asking what she wanted to drink. “Water,” she said.

  In the time it took for this small interaction, a narrow-faced blond woman pulled him away. They stood to the back of the VIP area. The woman looked like she was desperately trying to conceal that she was on the verge of tears. She looked over Cal’s shoulder and when she saw Tessa watching them, her gaze turned steely. She was the woman Tessa saw in his window that morning.

  “Miss? Miss?” The bouncer tapped her on the shoulder. “Those two say they’re with you?”

  Berkley and Skinner waited on the stairs. Berkley looked irritated. Skinner was ogling the cocktail waitress. Tes
sa nodded.

  “Fuck yes,” Skinner said, when the server asked if he wanted a drink.

  “How’d you get in VIP?” Berkley narrowed her eyes. “Gave ‘em that, ‘Aw, shucks, I’m from North Dakota’ charm?’”

  Tessa nodded to Cal. “He invited me.”

  “Mmm. I see why you were so hot and bothered to come here. So what, you and Callum Quinn are friendly somehow?” Berkley said.

  Tessa turned her back to Cal. She sipped her water.

  “He’s the most eligible bachelor in Las Vegas. That’s his girlfriend he’s talking to. Morgan something. I read about them online,” Berkley said.

  The word girlfriend bludgeoned Tessa; she did her best not to show it. “I just met him in the neighborhood. That’s all.” So he was the type who had a girlfriend and didn’t act like it. Good to know.

  “You know what?” Tessa said. “I feel like dancing.”

  “Atta girl!”

  The server handed Berkley two shots, one of which she passed to Tessa. Tessa was already drunk. She squeezed her eyes shut as she tossed it back. The alcohol licked her body like a flame. The blond woman strode by, slightly hunched and shading her eyes with one hand. Tessa watched her go down the stairs and bolt for the door of the club. Cal was standing behind her. She could smell him, feel the heat of his body, knew he was there.

  “Another broken heart?” She said this casually, turning to face him. Now she was playing the part of someone else. The cool girl.

  “Who?”

  “Tall. Blond. Your girlfriend, up until a minute ago?”

  “I don’t remember. I’ve been looking at you since the second you got in the room.”

  Tessa could felt her cheeks turn strawberry. She touched them with her fingertips.

  “She wasn’t my girlfriend.” He moved in close so she could hear him over the music and because Berkley appeared to be eavesdropping. “If I did have a girlfriend, how would that make you feel?”

  “Normal.” Tessa exhaled a puff of air so sharply it blew up strands of her hair. “Men like you always have girls around them. So.” She over annunciated the words because of her bleary head.

  Cal took her by the hand and pulled her to the back of the VIP area, away from Berkley and Skinner.

  “I’ve been thinking about you.” Cal stood so close she could feel the dampness of his skin in the hot club. The smell coming off of him was of faint cologne or a recent shower but also desire. He wanted sex from her. Why her? Was she the first woman in a decade who hadn’t thrown herself at him full force? The second they had sex, Cal would be finished with her. She wasn’t going to be yet another groupie fawning over him, giving him exactly what he wanted. His eyes darted back and forth across her face. “What are you thinking?” he demanded.

  “I want to dance.”

  “I don’t dance.”

  “Why are you here then?”

  “I made a commitment. Charity.”

  The DJ blurred the songs together. Whatever it is the party’s underway. Tessa sang along. So tip up your cup and throw your hands up.

  “I love this song. I’m going to dance with someone who doesn’t have a girlfriend.”

  “Don’t play games, Tessa.” His voice was low, gravelly with irritation.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I don’t want you to dance with anyone.” He braced himself against the wall with one arm, leaning into her. Lifting her chin, Tessa arched her back against the wall. The music in the club pulsed. Cal’s jaw clenched. His eyes were a steely grey. Up close his skin had very fine freckles, the sort you couldn’t see until someone was close enough to kiss you. She wanted him to kiss her.

  “I want your tongue in my mouth,” she whispered.

  Immediately Cal bent and pressed his mouth to hers. Her hands were on his face, the scratch of his stubble on her palms. Her mouth for him. Their tongues met, curved around each other. He tasted of a sweet, prickling heat. Cinnamon gum. Her whole body was a birthday sparkler firing into a dark night.

  Abruptly he broke apart from Tessa. He was still close, bent over her, his lips brushing her ear. “Not here,” he said. “People are watching.”

  She ducked out from under the arm propping him against the wall. Down the stairs she went, so fast it was like falling. She pushed her body into the sweaty crowd of people moving together. Skinner joined her on the dance floor, followed by Berkley, a shot aloft in each hand. Tessa shook her head as Berkley pressed the shot glass to her lips. Berkley tipped it into her mouth, sent much of vodka dribbling down the front of her dress. What she tasted of it made Tessa feel sick. She pushed through the people to get off the dance floor, gripping the handrail up to the VIP area. Cal was waiting at the top of the steps when she got there.

  “I’m leaving,” he said.

  “Okay.” She blinked and tried to focus on his face.

  “I want you to come home with me.” He looked… worried?

  “Relax. I’m fine. It’s only that I’ve only had more drinks tonight than maybe…” she cocked her head like she was really thinking, “…maybe my whole life, like combined?”

  “Who’s that guy out there with you?”

  He was staring at a fixed point over her shoulder. Tessa squinted. He was looking at Berkley and Skinner who were staring. So were the people next to them. Other people too.

  “Oh, he is our driver.”

  “He’s your driver? He’s drinking. Come, Tessa.” He swallowed and added, tightly, “Please.”

  “I don’t go home with strange men.”

  “I don’t trust the people you’re with.” He shook his head. “She keeps feeding you alcohol.”

  The front of Tessa’s dress was cold and wet. Her cheeks felt hot. The club had deteriorated to flashing images of dancers, music. She covered her face with her hair and nodded. “Okay then.”

  “What?” he parted the curtain of her hair. She dropped it and shook her head.

  “Okay. Take me. But they’re not going to let me go.”

  Looking to a man skulking a few feet away, Cal raised both his eyebrows and his chin. The man moved toward them.

  “What does Berkley drink, Tessa?”

  “Champagne.” She tilted her head, knitting her eyebrows. “Oh. And martinis. Have you tried those before? Turns out they’re very gross.”

  In a low voice, Cal murmured something to the man and pulled an unopened bottle of champagne from the ice bucket next to them. “Say its compliments of an admirer,” Cal told him. “Tease it out. Offer to have a drink with them. We’re taking off.” Then he smiled and patted the guy on the shoulder and laughed like they’d been having a casual conversation.

  “Who’s he?”

  “Derek.”

  “…and who is Derek?”

  Cal said nothing.

  “Is that personal? You have a personal relationship.” Even Tessa could hear herself slur her words. She cringed.

  “He’s part of my security team.”

  “You are your own security team.” She squeezed one of his arms, and was surprised by how hard and thick it was. Her hand lingered too long.

  “When you’re a big guy and when people recognize you, some clowns try to jump you just to say they did.”

  Tessa squinted, watching Derek cross the VIP area to Skinner and Berkley.

  “Maybe it’s not nice if I leave, though?” Tessa thought of Berkley watching her get the lap dance. Knowing that Ronnie wouldn’t like it.

  Derek held out the bottle of champagne to Berkley.

  “Follow me,” Cal said.

  Berkley touched her hair, licked her lips. Derek was a handsome man. Tessa looked back to Cal and found herself staring at his back heading out a door at the back of the VIP area. She leapt up and tripped along, clumsy in her heels. When he got to the door, he stopped and turned back to look for her.

  “I can’t keep up,” she said. He reached out for her. She grabbed his hand and he pulled her through the door. When it closed behind them, he
scooped her up and carried her. The swift motion of it, surprised her so much she laughed out loud. No man had ever carried her. It struck her as hilarious. He carried her out a back hallway in the casino and into the parking lot.

  “You make me feel…” she sighed.

  “Tiny?” Cal supplied.

  “Is that what all the girls say to you? Gross. Lemme finish.” She smacked his arm. “I was going to say a million feet tall.” She threw her head back and looked at the navy sky, paled along the horizon by the strip’s lights. A helicopter chopping the air above. Eventually he’d have to put her down. She didn’t want him to. They reached his car and he stopped. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him until she was breathless. Then he kissed her neck and she breathed in the shampoo smell of his hair. The air was fresh and warm outside.

  Cal set her down. Grabbing his shirt, she pulled him to her. He pushed her back against the warm metal. She waited for his mouth on her mouth again. Moving down to her neck, her breasts. Wanted it. He was hard against her stomach. She exhaled. Closed her eyes. Anticipation knifed her body. What was this? This feeling, that another person could change the pulse of her blood with the touch of his fingertips, that if he didn’t touch her she would die from the ache building inside her?

  A metal door behind them shrieked as it opened.

  She felt his body withdraw. She opened her eyes.

  “Get in the car, Tessa,” he said. “We have to go.”

  She got inside. He reached over and buckled her seatbelt before he tore out of the parking lot. Cars and semis streamed over the city streets, yet Las Vegas seemed quiet. Lights blurred outside the window. The pane of glass was cool against her cheek. “This feels good. I’m tired,” she said.

  “You can go to sleep,” Cal said. “I’ve got you. I’m not going anywhere.”

  21.

  By the time they’d reached his house, Tessa had passed out. Cal carried her from the garage inside. Sasha’s voice ran through his mind, lecturing about non-disclosure agreements, signed consent forms, items in the gossip section about him making out with a girl in a club. No sooner than he’d had these thoughts, Cal was disgusted. He was sick of himself. Sick of caring if his personal choices were bad for business. He was just a kid from Queens who got in a lot of fights. Ugh. Even that grossed him out. He’d seen his own origin story in print so many times, even the true stuff had started to ring false.