“Yes, you did, Liv.”
IT WAS SEVEN o’clock. One hour before I became a stripper.
I didn’t know what I thought I’d feel like, but certainly not the way I did. As I grabbed my purse and headed out the front door, I felt a strange calmness. No massive doses of adrenaline, no stomach-turning nausea, no hyperventilation. I was calm and at peace with what was to come . . . Then I opened the door.
A familiar ball cap and smile stopped at the bottom of the trailer’s steps. So much for calm, because that was officially out the door thanks to one look at Will Goods. It wasn’t even thanks to an all-out good look at him either as the porch light was still burnt out. I hadn’t had the money to replace it.
“Liv?” Will said unsurely. Probably because I was pretty much gaping at him from my perch on the stairs.
Get a grip, Liv, and get going. “Hey, Will. I was just heading out to work.”
His forehead lined. “You’re going to work this late in the day? You’re not working as the night cashier at the gas station just outside of town, are you? Because that place gets ripped off every other weekend.”
“No, no. Not there. They weren’t hiring.” Yes, when I said I’d left no stone unturned, I meant it. “I’m just doing some training and orientation stuff tonight. I wanted to fit it in before they set me out on my own.” Okay, so some of that was truth, but most of it was a lie. Lying to Will was one thing that made my stomach twist, but telling him the truth would have made it twist ten times more. I had been so sure Will had marched down here to demand to know where I was going at this hour that I’d missed what he was holding. “What’s that?” I eyed the foil-covered casserole dish.
“The reason for my jaunt down the hill. Because I wouldn’t make that jaunt unless it was for something important.” He held the dish out and smiled. “Like food.”
“I don’t understand.” I continued to eye the dish, not taking it. “What is this?”
Will blinked. “Dinner. I might not be that great of a cook, but Mom is when she isn’t hiding from miniature pachyderms. Let’s just say the stars aligned, the meds went down the hatch at the right time with little to no argument, and bam, Shepherd's pie was the result.”
“And your mom did this all by herself?” I asked skeptically. From what I knew of Mrs. Goods, tying her shoes had become a chore.
“I might have assisted in a few keys areas having anything to do with a knife or the oven, but she did the rest.”
“And let’s not forget the whole couple-hundred-foot jaunt you had to make to deliver it.” A small smile moved into place.
“Hey, I can sense your sarcasm, you know?”
“It wasn’t meant to be subtle,” I muttered.
“Fine, have your sarcasm, but that couple-hundred-foot jaunt is dangerous, if not lethal, for me.” Will glanced back at the land stretching between our trailers and swept his arm ceremoniously.
“That’s right, I forgot. You’re as clumsy as a newborn giraffe. I suppose that jaunt is dangerous for someone with your level of grace-impairment.”
“Okay, I think I’d rather have the sarcasm than the in-your-face insults.” Will grinned when he held the dish out again. “Are you going to actually take this thing from me, or are you waiting for it to go cold?”
My sisters had enjoyed a “dinner” of mustard on saltines. I didn’t have the luxury of turning down a warm, filling dinner, whatever his intentions or motives were. Tomorrow night, that would be different, but tonight, I didn’t have the luxury of much.
“Thank you. I know my sisters will be happy to have it.”
I was turning to take the casserole back in the trailer when Will spoke up. “One more thing.” He pulled a small piece of paper from his pocket and held it out. “This is my number . . . I mean, the number up at the trailer. I just thought you all should have it in case anyone needed anything.”
I took it from him because he was right. I didn’t have a working cell phone yet, and if anything happened while I was at work and Reese or Paige needed something, Will was their closest and best bet. “I’ll make sure to put this on the fridge and let the girls know to call you if anything comes up while I’m out.”
“Yeah, yeah. Good.” Will nodded and cleared his throat. “And you know . . . you could always use it, too. Just in case you wanted to ever ‘talk’ again and didn’t want to make the long and treacherous journey up to my place.” Will was smiling, but he was visibly uncomfortable.
That seemed out of place though. He’d been nothing but confident on all fronts since I’d met him, and now, handing me a casserole dish and a number for emergencies had turned him into an awkward mess. Whatever the reason, I didn’t have time to figure it out. If I didn’t climb in that Chevelle and push the speed limit the whole way there, I would be late for my very first night. Probably not the best way to impress my boss.
“Well thanks again, Will. I’ll come see you tomorrow so we can get the Suburban up to your place, okay?” I pushed open the trailer door.
“Have a good first night, Liv. See you tomorrow.” Will waved before backing away and heading up the hill.
I wanted to watch him disappear into the night, but I didn’t have time for that. Not to mention I needed to stop fueling my misplaced and likely unrequited attraction to Will Goods. Like yesterday.
I rushed across the trailer and set the dish and the phone number on the old card table in the kitchen. “Reese? Paige? There’s some dinner out here Mrs. Goods sent down for us. And she gave us her phone number in case you all need to get a hold of someone while I’m gone.”
I got a couple of grunts of acknowledgement from their rooms.
“Eat up before it gets cold, okay? I’ll see you girls later.” I was out the door and rushing toward the Chevelle a few seconds later. I hadn’t told my sisters where I was working of course, and they hadn’t asked for specifics. Probably because Paige just didn’t care, and Reese still felt so guilty about last night that she could barely look me in the eye.
Once I’d hit the highway, I was back to my quiet calm. That I could achieve that level of Zen when I was minutes away from stripping for a bunch of strangers but couldn’t stay that way when Will Goods was anywhere around me unsettled me for a slew of reasons. A boy—even a good-looking, generous one with a sweet smile and amazing hands—couldn’t be the thing responsible for unsetting my world. I wouldn’t give some guy, any guy, that kind of power. I might have needed the Suburban fixed, but I knew that wasn’t the main reason I hadn’t slammed the door on Will and whatever bond was forming between us.
I needed to cut that cord—the sooner, the better. Maybe I could find someone else who could fix the Suburban. That would give me a reason to cut Will out of my life immediately. I knew there were a couple mechanics close by, but I hoped they’d be too busy or wouldn’t work on cars that old or any one of the other possible scenarios that would leave me stuck with Will. I didn’t want to say good-bye to him. I just knew I had to.
So maybe not tomorrow but soon.
It was two minutes to eight when I whipped into The Body Shop’s parking lot . . . And I’d thought last night had been busy. In the club world, eight o’clock was still early, but there wasn’t a spot to be found. I would have just parked the Chevelle illegally and high-tailed it inside to keep from being late, but the car wasn’t mine. I couldn’t do that to Will. He didn’t need to say it for me to deduce that the Chevelle was one of his few loves in life.
I was just about to start my second loop of the lot to see if any spots had miraculously opened up when a flashy red car passed me. It was moving fast, but not so fast I couldn’t make out who was driving. It was a girl, a platinum blond, young one, which meant . . . I followed her car into a back parking lot labeled Employees Only. The girl in the red car had barely parked before she was out and running for the back door. Someone else must have been running late too.
I maneuvered the Chevelle between a couple more red cars—from the looks of it, the preferred
stripper car was red, flashy, and expensive—before shoving out the door and making my own mad dash. The same bouncer I’d run into last night was guarding the back door.
“Weren’t you at the front door last night?” I said, braking to a stop.
The bouncer lifted an eyebrow at me before inspecting the clipboard in his hands. “Weren’t you?”
Ouch. I should have put on my suit of armor before exchanging words with Mr. Grumpy.
“Name?” he asked with a note of irritation.
“Oh. Liv. Liv Bennett.” I didn’t realize there’d be a form of roll call to get inside, but I supposed it made sense.
“Not your real name, rookie. Your stage name.”
“Umm, I don’t know. I don’t have one . . . yet.”
A stage name? I hadn’t even thought about that. What was a good stage name? There were the obvious choices: Candy, Diamond, Destiny, Jewel . . . but those were so stereotypically bad. I grimaced thinking about having to answer to Destiny five nights a week. Then again, I doubted a name like Katie or Jennifer would fly.
“No name, no admittance,” the bouncer said, scanning the sheet of paper on his clipboard. “But it looks like the boss man hand wrote a name I don’t recognize. I’m guessing this is you.” He flipped the clipboard around, pointing at a name on the bottom of the sheet.
“Noelle? That’s my name?” There was too much coming at me too fast for me to decide how I felt about the name. I supposed I should have felt relieved I’d been given one so I didn’t get sent away by Banana Brain, who’d obviously decided he hated me on sight.
“So? Are you or are you not Noelle?” He crossed his arms and gave me that same condescending look he’d given me last night.
It was so great making friends right off the bat. “Fine. I’m Noelle. Can I get inside now?”
The bouncer swung the door open, his face smug. “Have a nice first night, Miss Noelle.”
“Have a nice night camped out at the back door, jackass,” I muttered once I was inside.
I took a cursory glance around. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but this wasn’t it. The hall I’d wound up in gave no indication that a full-fledged strip club was on the other side. There weren’t any vulgar posters adorning the walls or dirty underwear littering the floor. It was clean, quiet, and sterile. Almost like a hospital. I started making my way down the hall—wishing for a magical trail of arrows I could follow to figure out how I would get through my first night here—when a door at the end of the hallway burst open.
Jake came out, a smile-slash-smirk moving into place when he saw me. “I was wondering if and when you were going to show up.”
“I told you I’d be here. I’m here.” I waited for Jake to come to me. I didn’t know where I needed to go, but no doubt he did.
Jake checked his watch. “You’re here, all right. A minute late, but here.”
“You can blame Bird Brain out back for making me late. He pulled the Gestapo act on me when I didn’t know my name. Or my”—I made air quotes—“name.”
“What do you think?” Jake stopped and slid his hands into his pants’ pockets. He was decked out in his standard suit. Tonight’s was a light gray, tightly tailored one he’d paired with a scarlet tie. The guy knew how to dress, I’d give him that.
“Of what?” There was a lot to “think” about here.
“Your name.”
I still hadn’t made up my mind on that. “Does it have anything to do with Christmas?” Other than the month of December, I’d never heard that word-slash-name uttered.
Jake’s smile widened. “It most certainly does.”
I lifted an eyebrow and waited.
“Because the day you agreed to come to work for me, Christmas came to town,” Jake said, money signs flashing in his pupils.
“I hate Christmas.” For obvious reasons. Christmas amplified to the tenth power whatever steady state a household held. Someone who occupied a happy, peaceful household loved Christmas because all of that happy . . . peaceful . . . stuff was jacked up during the holidays. Someone who came from a household that had written the book on chaos and instability loathed Christmas. Like I said, for obvious reasons.
Jake ignored my comment and started moving down the hallway. “Have you found the dressing room yet?”
“The . . . dressing room?” Really, that had to be an oxymoron in a strip club.
“Thirty seconds into the night, and you’re already giving me a hard time. I should have known better than to hire a smart girl.” Jake glanced back at me and shook his head. “Have you found the changing room? There, is that better?”
“Seems like a more accurate assessment of what it actually is.”
Jake stopped outside a door. Before pushing it open, he muttered, “God help me with this one.”
I was about to snap something back when I stepped inside the “changing” room. There was no other response than to snap my mouth closed. I’d seen depictions of changing rooms in strip clubs in movies and on television, but I’d thought that was dramatic and well, illicit, to up ratings. I’d been wrong.
Everywhere I looked, bare chests were on display. Girls moved about the room sliding into selectively sheer costumes, spraying plumes of hairspray into their mega-long, big hair, and slipping into shoes that fell more in the stilt category than the heel one.
“Ladies!” Jake funneled his hands over his mouth to cut through the din in the room. “This is Noelle, the new girl. Be nice and give her a hand because there’s plenty of money stuffed in those wallets out there to go around. The better she does, the better you do, the better we all do.”
Jake motioned around the room, and I didn’t miss the slow smiles forming on most of the girls’ mouths. Everyone seemed to like Jake, but there were a fair number that liked him.
“It’s the great circle of life in this strip club. We’re all connected, which means we work together, we keep the ‘I’ out of team, and we leave no woman behind.” Jake scanned the room. “It’s a Friday, and I’ve got a shitload of V.I.P.s rolling in tonight, so let’s keep the bullshit and hair-pulling to a minimum, got it?”
“And why should we go out of our way to be on our best behavior for you, Jake? Just because you said please?” The blond from in the parking lot earlier stood in front of a mirror outlined with bright bulbs. Really, breasts that size would mean, in thirty years, she’d be hobbling along with one nasty hunchback.
“You’re telling me a heartfelt please is worthless to you ladies?” Jake covered his chest with his hands.
In answer, a bunch of brows went up around the room.
“Fine. If there’s no drama tonight, nothing that takes me refereeing you all like you’re a bunch of rugby players, your tip-out will only be twenty-five percent. How’s that for a heartfelt please?”
A chorus of excited claps moved around the room.
“A bunch of vultures, that’s what you ladies are.” Jake gave a dismissive wave, but he clearly enjoyed the bantering as much as the women did.
“And you’re our fearless leader. So what does that make you?” A petite, attractive redhead approached us with her hands on her hips. She was one of the few whose tatas were covered. But only about halfway.
“Cherry, just the girl I was looking for. Noelle, meet Cherry. Cherry, meet Noelle.” Jake made the introductions then checked his watch. He was a compulsive watch checker.
“Hey, nice to meet you, kid. And it’s Cherry because of the hair, not because of the other thing your mind goes to first in a place like this. That cherry”—she winked—“has been gone a long, long time.”
“But nobody out there needs to know that,” Jake interjected, leaning into me, “because it’s all about the . . .” He raised his brow and waited.
“The illusion. It’s all about the illusion.”
Jake’s eyes closed as a dreamy smile formed. “Damn. That’s like music to my ears.”
Cherry and I both shook our heads.
Jake checked his watc
h again before beelining for the door. “I’ve got about two dozen V.I.P.s to glad-hand right now. You girls think you can manage?”
Jake was looking at Cherry and me, but it was the rest of the girls around the room who answered. The standard response seemed to be Blow me, but either that didn’t faze Jake or he was too one-foot-out-the-door to notice.
“Well, Noelle.” Cherry turned to me, scanning me up and down a few times. “We’ve got a half hour to get you ready for the ball. Consider me your fairy godmother for the night, about to wave my wand and create a stunning transformation.” Cherry flicked her wrist like she was holding a wand. “You ready for this?”
My immediate response was Hell no, so I went with, “Let’s do this.”
Cherry smiled then inclined her head for me to follow her. “My staging area is back here. Jake dropped off a new outfit for you earlier, so while you work yourself into that, I’ll help you with the rest.”
As I followed Cherry down the aisle between vanities and mirrors, I very much felt like the new girl, and not the new girl who’s welcomed with open arms and minds. Every time I dared make eye contact, I was met with glares that varied from irritated to lethal. I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve the evil eye this early in the game, because I had about as much experience stripping as the Quaker Oat Man, but apparently I’d done something to earn a target on my back. At least Cherry seemed cool and willing to wait to form her opinion about me until she’d actually gotten to know me.
“What’s your story, Noelle?” Cherry stopped at a vanity in the back and pulled open a drawer. “And please, I’m not one of your marks out there that you need to tell a sob story to. Don’t tell me your mom’s sick or your boyfriend left you with a heap of debt or your fiancé was killed in action in Iraq. I’m a co-worker. You can tell me the truth.”
Excellent. So my actual story was what most of them made up stories about. It seemed this career choice and I were meant to be.
Most. Depressing. Thought. Ever.
“I have a feeling you’re going to think my truth is a lie, so should I tell you anyway?”