Chapter 20 #2
The burning sensation starts at my collar and creeps up my cheeks.
It’s the bourbon. “I panicked,” I confess.
At her doubtful look, I sigh. “My mother did it to me once, when I was young and upset about having left a favorite toy at home or something equally important to a small child. My father didn’t have patience for tears, and she was failing at keeping me silent.
Maybe she panicked too, but it worked.” I take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“She was very good at hiding her tears, but I found her crying in her studio once. I went up to her, hugged her, and blew in her face, just like she had done to me. And she laughed. And cried some more. And held me tight, promising everything would be fine. It was a lie, of course, but…” It became something of a comfort.
I don’t expect Louisa to understand when I don’t even understand.
Under the table, Louisa’s foot nudges up against mine and stays there, pressed along the inner side of my shoe. “Tell me about her?”
My fingers tap on the table before I can still them.
I don’t talk about my family—this is already more than I’ve ever told anyone.
But Louisa’s dark eyes hold mine in the dim light of the bar, and something eases in my chest. “She was a ballerina.” There’s so much more I could say.
Something about the roses she loved and filled the house with, or about how, when she laughed, it was like the sun coming out.
I could talk about her charity work or how exhausting she found her social calendar.
Or how she’d sit on the beach and stare at the ocean for hours every summer spent at Martha’s Vineyard.
How angry I was when she died. How much I miss her now.
I don’t say any of it, and after a moment, I lift my glass to my lips.
“Did you get your love of dance from your mother?” Louisa asks.
Interesting. “How do you know I love to dance? Stripping could be an easy job with some nice perks.”
A secretive little smile spreads across her full lips. “I saw you dancing with the mop.”
Embarrassing, but I’d care more about that if she looked a little less delighted.
“She taught me to dance,” I admit. “My father wouldn’t allow her to perform, and he wouldn’t let her teach me, but he was away on business a lot, and I was persuasive.
” There’s a ring of condensation on the table from my glass, and I touch a water droplet with the tip of my finger.
I’d learned from Grace’s obituary that he had died of a stroke a few months before she had passed away, but sometimes it doesn’t feel real that the man who made everyone miserable is dead.
“She had a studio in the house, and she laughed more there. That was the only place she ever really did.”
Louisa’s smile dims. “She’s gone?”
I toy with my glass, grateful to have something to occupy my hands.
“Prescription drug overdose, or so I was told. My senior year of high school.” She’d struggled with depression, but whether her overdose was intentional or not, the fault lies with him.
“My father never laid a hand on her, but he cut her down every chance he got, stripped away everything that she was. I think, once I was old enough, she took the only escape she could find.”
Louisa doesn’t offer me empty words. She merely reaches across the table and gently touches the back of my hand. She doesn’t pull away when I turn my hand to take hers.
“Are you an only child?” she asks after a moment.
It would be the easiest thing to tell her I am, but I turned my back on Grace for years. I can’t do it now. “I had an older half-sister from my father’s first marriage.”
“Were you close?”
“As children, yes. But I lost touch.” I intend to leave it at that. My shitty history is mine, and I prefer to keep it bound up tight and locked away, but the alcohol is loosening my tongue, and the warm, understanding look in Louisa’s eyes draws it out. “I was disowned.”
She doesn’t say anything, just holds my hand until the words tumble out to fill the space.
“I went to intern for my father the summer of my sophomore year at college. He caught me in the copy room on my knees, another intern’s dick in my mouth, and he kicked me out.
Cut me off financially. I was angry. I turned my back on him, and on Grace, too, even though she hadn’t done anything. ”
My throat is tight, but Louisa squeezes my hand.
“I didn’t want any reminders of that life.
I moved to LA. Did some modelling. Returned to dance.
Moved to Vegas. Learned that some people would pay a lot of money for my company.
” The bitter little laugh doesn’t go with the casual tone with which I throw out the last few lines.
Bringing the conversion back to sex work is like pulling the emergency cord to replace one tangled-up parachute with another.
Louisa’s eyes are big and wide and sad, but she doesn’t take my bait. “What happened to her?”
“She passed away. Two years ago.”
My throat works to swallow, but I can’t get past the lump.
All of the feelings I’ve pushed down are knocking at the door.
I pick up my drink and take a gulp. The burn helps, but that grief is still sitting there like a rock in my chest. I should’ve been there for her, but I’d been too full of myself, too proud, too stupid.
Nothing has really changed. I’m still that asshole.
Louisa’s hand is still sitting there when I set the glass down. I lace our fingers together because it feels right. And maybe because it feels so right, I need to destroy it. “Can I tell you something? Something hypothetical?”