Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
Sophia
“How long are you gonna make this guy suffer?” My roommate asks with a laugh, walking into my room with a large vase filled with flowers tucked neatly into the crook of his arm.
I’ve only known Casey for a couple of years, as long as I’ve lived in this apartment. I assumed when he wrote to me that he was a girl, so I was pretty taken aback when I was met with a buzzed-haired, keyboard playing, video game nut.
He wound up being the perfect match for the place, though, so we’ve been roommates and friends ever since. He’s basically like a brother to me, now.
“Until he can actually use his words like a grown up and apologize for being an asshole,” I shrug, pulling my flat iron through a section of hair.
They say that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but I would argue that a woman slutshamed by her boyfriend is a pretty damn good contender in that race.
I swipe the flat iron through my hair a couple more times, making sure that the ends are nice and straight, no fly-aways sticking out from the rest, and I reach for the can of hairspray in my bathroom cabinet, giving my head a good misting with it to lock in the style.
On my way out of the door, I grab the flowers that Ethan sent over – he didn’t even bring them to me, he had them delivered.
No note. No text message. Not a damn thing.
Isn’t that just enraging? I toss them into the garbage can next to the kitchen counter, dusting my hands off on each other when I’m done.
·
The club doesn’t usually get too busy on weeknights; maybe a few hundred people rotating through for the entire time that we’re open, but we usually get to use these nights as a bit of a breather. The weekends are when things really get wild and overwhelming.
When the customers get overwhelming.
I make my way toward the employee lounge and shrug my bag off of my shoulder at my locker, following by kicking off my little rubber clogs that everyone I know gives me hell for wearing, but they’re the most comfortable thing to slip into after six hours on my feet in five-to-six-inch heels.
“Sophia!” I turn to find my manager waddling toward me, flailing his hands. “You’re just in time. Get into your blues and head upstairs.”
I groan, throwing my head back. “Can I just work the regular tables tonight? Please?”
“Sorry,” he shakes his head. “You, specifically, have been requested. Chop, chop, get up there!”
It’s not unheard of for one of us to be asked for by name – or by description, but it doesn’t happen as often as it used to.
There are only three people who request me anymore, and it’s always on weekends.
I rack my brain, trying to figure out who else could have had such a good time that they called in to make a request, but I come up empty.
I put on a good show, sure, but I can’t say that I make any effort to be all that memorable.
I’d rather not get called back by the majority of our customers.
I spend as much time as I realistically can slathering lotion onto my skin, giving it a few minutes to soak in before I slip into a lacy, navy blue teddy, cut high at the hip and low at the tit, just like the creepy dudes like it.
I finish the look with a pair of black heels, six inches high and shiny as all get out, strapped around my ankles.
Out of prepping steps and time, I grab a large tray kit and head out of the lounge, making my way up the stairs to the VIP section with my best fake smile and my saccharine customer service voice at the ready.
I realize all too late that I never actually got my table assignment, so it’s a guessing game of where I’m supposed to be tonight.
There’s no way that they could expect me to work four tables up here on my own.
I move through the space, poking my head into each section to find my customers, but from one to three, I come up empty – literally, there is no one up here.
Weird.
Finally reaching table four, I poke my head in, and my stomach flip flops. My breath catches in my throat and my pulse quickens.
“I was starting to think you weren’t gonna show, Sugar,” Eric drawls from his seat on the couch, arms splayed out across the back of it and his ankle crossed over his knee. “Come on, sit.”
“Are you why it’s empty up here?” I laugh, tucking my tray under my arm as I move to sit next to him.
I’m nervous, sharing this space with him. On vacation, he was just...a hot, mysterious playmate. But here, he’s real. He’s an actual person that exists in the same space as me, breathing the same air, and he has such a commanding energy that it makes heat flush my chest.
Shoving down my nerves, I settle into the seat next to him. Okay, maybe settle is a little exaggerative. I tensely perch next to him on the seat. There, that’s closer.
“I told you I’d be back for you,” he answers plainly. Leaning forward, he grabs the menus sitting on the table in front of him and hands them to me. “Is it on here?”
I nod, with my heart jumping into my throat, silently pointing to the HOUSE SPECIALS list.
He wouldn’t.
Would he?
I guess I don’t really know him all that well, maybe it’s his thing. He does love to play a game of predator and prey; maybe this is an easy way for him to get exactly what that game gives him.
Power.
Control.
“Explain it to me.”
“It all depends on who’s working,” I say, pointing down the list, “I would be vodka. Crystal is red, Summer is the tequila, Ashton is the rum...so on and so forth.”
“So the prices,” he says, pursing his lips in thought.
“Half an hour of free use.”
With a nod, he reaches for my tray, plucking the sharpie from the pad of paper sitting on it and pulls the cap off with his teeth.
He scribbles through the HOUSE SPECIALS on the first menu, the second, the third.
..until they’re all covered in thick black ink, and my heart skips at the gesture, just a little bit.
“Now that’s out of the way,” he smiles, settling back into the couch, “get whatever you want to drink and tell me what you’ve been up to since you ditched my sorry ass.”
We spend the next hour sharing a couple of bottles of really expensive champagne, laughing, and catching up as if this is the most normal thing in the world.
As if I didn’t ask him to chase me down an alleyway.
As if we don’t have a set of matching-in-their-own-way tattoos hidden just beneath thin layers of fabric.
As if I haven’t spent every waking minute regretting not hopping on that plane with him and leaving everything else behind.
I tell him about my newfound cosmetology school dreams, to which he replies, “What the fuck is cosmology?” And I laugh harder than I think I have in weeks.
For a while, I forget that I’m even at work. It isn’t until he strips off his leather jacket and drapes it over my shoulders that I remember that I’m sitting here in lingerie, in a club that I wish every day that I could get away from, and I know that I probably never will.
And I realize that I’m sitting way, way too intimately with him for someone who has a boyfriend.
But I don’t move. I keep my ass planted firmly in his lap, his arm draped over my shoulder sending a familiar shiver trickling up my spine.
“Eric...why did you come back?” I finally ask him.
“I told you I would.”
“Right, but why? I mean…”
“Do you know how much time I spent looking for you, Sugar?” He asks, topping off our glasses. “I wasn’t about to find you and pretend you didn’t exist anymore.”
“Why buy all the tables?”
He pulls in a breath, taking his arm from my shoulder to bring his hand up to the back of my head, scratching at my scalp almost possessively. “Keep assholes like that blond guy and his buddies away from you. Oh...sorry, that guy’s your boyfriend, right?”
Is he jealous?
“Yeah,” I breathe. “Well, maybe. We got into a fight the other night.”
His entire body tenses around me, but he doesn’t move other than to massage his fingers against my scalp before draping his arm back over my shoulder. “Over what.”
“You, actually,” I laugh.
“Did he hurt you?”
“God, no,” I answer with a shake of my head.
I tell him everything, every single little detail about that night, from Ethan’s pouting to my kicking him out; and all of the gifts that he’s sent instead of the only thing that I actually want from him: a proper, grown-up apology. With words.
The entire time that I’m talking to Eric, I let my body melt into his, eventually bringing my hand up to the one that has draped over my shoulder, intertwining my fingers with his. A blush heats its way across my cheeks, flooding my system.
He’s literally been inside of me, tasted me; but his hand in mine has my heart racing.
His free hand trails over my thigh, his fingers dipping between my legs, and he lightly traces a finger over my pussy through the lace of my bodysuit, like he’s waiting for an invitation to touch me, and I almost give him one.
Almost.
“Eric,” I breathe, “I have a boyfriend.”
“For now.” His hand travels up the length of my body, slowly, torturously, until he reaches my hair. He twirls the buttery strands between his fingers, bringing them to his face to breathe in the smell of my shampoo. “You do this because of him?”
“Eric,” I warn.
“That’s a yes.” His mouth rests close the shell of my ear, less than a hair away, and he whispers, “You’re not a blonde, Sugar.”