Vanessa #3
I look at the woman with long blonde hair wearing a flowy baby-blue dress with a light-gray boho sweater. She looks like she would be more apt to work in a preschool rather than kicking anyone’s ass.
“Don’t let looks fool you,” Charlie says, amusement lacing her tone.
“Sorry, that just wouldn’t be my first thought when looking at you,” I say to Cece. “No offense.”
Cece smiles and shakes her head. “None taken.”
“Anyways, we thought you may not want to start with anything physical since”—Lucy waves at my face—“but that doesn’t mean we can’t do a little target practice. You going to join us?” she asks, turning toward Freya.
“Not today. I have about thirty minutes to eat and get back to the office for a meeting,” Freya replies.
Ozzy grabs her hand and pulls her away from the group as Freya giggles. “Let’s eat then.”
When they disappear into Ozzy’s office, Lucy rolls her eyes. “Sure, they’re having lunch.” She looks at Charlie. “Go grab Danny and tell him we’re having target practice in the back.”
About five minutes later, Danny brings out a giant black duffel bag and sets up a folding table on the property out back, several yards from the clubhouse’s back patio.
“You ever shot a gun before?” Lucy asks as I survey the myriad of firearms laid out on the table.
“No,” I answer.
I’ve been around them plenty, though. Nearly all the men who came to the house when I was younger carried a piece like it was an ordinary part of their everyday attire.
It was normal to everyone around me, so it became normal to me.
My mother made damn sure to impress upon me that I was never to touch one, though.
“Well, let’s start you off with something small, then. Let you get a feel for it.” Lucy picks up a shorter pistol and slides the chamber back to make sure it isn’t loaded before handing it to me.
“How does that one feel?”
I test the weight in my hand, noting how light it is. “Good. Lighter than I expected.”
“It’s small, but the kickback isn’t as bad as this one.” Lucy picks up another gun, doing the same check before she hands it to me.
“Yeah, this one is definitely heavier.”
“That’s my personal favorite.”
I hand the gun back to her, and she loads both with a magazine.
Before placing the smaller gun in my hand, she checks the safety switch. “When you’re ready to shoot, make sure that’s off,” she says then proceeds to show me how. She hands me a pair of noise-canceling headphones, and I slide them on. “Okay. Let’s see how your aim is.”
Lucy steps a few feet from the table and lines up the pistol with the paper target several feet away. She fires off three rounds, then lowers her pistol. Charlie jogs over to the target and grabs the paper, noting three holes in the general area of where a man’s dick would be.
“Did Jude piss you off this morning?” Mia asks with a laugh.
“Not yet, but it’s still early.”
I look at her nonplussed expression and can’t help but laugh. “Okay, I’m in. If you can teach me how to shoot like that, I’m all ears.”
“Let’s see what you can do.” Lucy shows me how to set my sights on the target. “And when you’re ready to fire, you want to squeeze the trigger slow and steady, not just try to pop off shots.”
I nod without looking at her, using my thumb to turn off the safety. I squeeze like she told me to, but the paper doesn’t so much as flutter.
“Aim for the chest. Hitting a smaller target is harder, especially if it’s your first time.”
I nod and fire two more shots. One lands to the side of the body’s outline and the other a little closer to the center, but not by much.
“You hit the target. That’s honestly really good,” Cece encourages next to me.
I lift the pistol and fire a couple more rounds, but I don’t think those even hit the target.
“It takes practice. My sister and I have been shooting for most of our lives,” Cece says.
“Did you grow up with people who liked to hunt or something?” I ask.
Cece smiles and shakes her head, and Lucy laughs next to me.
“No, we grew up in a cult run by psychos,” Lucy states.
“Jesus, I thought I told you not to just spring that on people,” Charlie says as she reaches for a gun on the table.
I nearly choke on my air. “What? Like an actual cult?”
“Yeah, they had us shooting guns by the time we were seven or eight, claiming there was going to be a Great War and we were the soldiers of God.”
“That’s…” Shit, I don’t know what that is.
“Batshit crazy?” Lucy offers.
“That would be a good way to describe it. How did you get out?” I ask.
“I ran away when they were going to marry me off to a psychopath,” Lucy says.
I turn to Cece. “And you went with her?”
Cece shakes her head. “No. I was too scared. I stayed. A decision I regretted every day. Lucy was the one born with all the courage.”
“That’s not true, Cece,” Lucy says. “You prove on a daily basis that’s not true.”
Lucy comes to stand next to her sister and wraps an arm around her. I step away, giving the two women a bit of privacy.
“She has bad days sometimes,” Mia says, standing next to me at the table. “But she handles it by talking about it now instead of screaming at her sister.”
I watch Lucy say something in Cece’s ear and the other woman nods and smiles before running a hand over her face.
“Okay, Mia. You’re up,” Lucy says. Mia picks up a gun, checks it like Lucy did, and loads the weapon.
An hour later, the five of us are sitting around a table on the patio, enjoying the afternoon sun.
“So how did you end up coming to Shine?” Charlie asks me.
“Bad breakup. I needed to get out of New York, and a friend of a friend told me about the club here.”
“Another dancer?” Lucy asks.
“Yeah. You might be surprised that Midnight Rose has a reputation for being one of the best clubs to work at on the East Coast.” That part is true. The friend part is not.
“Sylvie runs a tight ship. She doesn’t put up with any bullshit from customers or girls that try to start drama at the club,” Mia says.
“How did you get into dancing?” Lucy asks.
That’s a much tougher question to answer.
“I was young and needed money. Got a fake ID and started dancing at a shithole not too far from my apartment. It was that or be homeless.” All of that is true, but the details are slightly skewed.
Of course I leave out the part where it was my stepbrother who got me the ID, and it was he who would’ve thrown me, my mom, and my little sister out on the street.
“Was it hard when you started?” Charlie asks.
I tilt my head back and forth. “Yeah, it was. It wasn’t necessarily my first choice, but it’s different now. When I’m on stage, I’m in control. My body is my instrument, and I’ve gotten good at using it. And it’s kind of fun too, being up there, knowing I’m in charge.”
“Plus the money probably doesn’t suck,” Lucy says.
It would be a hell of a lot more if I didn’t have to give so much to my asshole stepbrother. “No, the money isn’t bad at all,” is all I say.
“What was the deal with the teacher and accountant thing?” Lucy asks, and I laugh.
“The night I met Braxton, I was ready to stab this loser who recognized me from the club I was dancing in at the time. He thought he could buy me for the night, and I had my handy-dandy pocket knife waiting for him to put his hands where they didn’t belong.
Braxton walked into the bar and saw what was going on.
He kind of came to my rescue, or the guy’s rescue, depending on how you look at it, I guess.
” My lips turn up in a smile as I remember looking up at him from my seat at the bar that night.
“He bought me a drink, and we chatted for a bit. I told him I was a teacher, and he told me he was an accountant.”
“Did you believe him?” Mia asks.
“Hell no. We both knew the other was lying, but that was part of the fun. I could tell he didn’t believe I taught third grade or whatever I told him, and I knew he didn’t think I actually believed he was an accountant.
” I shrug. “But that man was charming as all get out. And it was fun playing pretend for a night.”
“The whole night?” Lucy asks with an arched eyebrow.
Instead of answering, I sip the iced tea in front of me with a small smile on my face as I remember what it was like to have Braxton rolling his hips as he pumped into me.
The whole night indeed.