Chapter 44
Mat
The car comes to a stop on a narrow side street. We’re in the theater district downtown. It’s not an area I know well. It’s dark and feels kind of seedy at this time of night.
“Are we in the right place? D’you think we’re going to a show?” asks Will, with a lashing of excitement in his voice.
Fun fact about Will, he loves theater and performance art. Absolutely loves it. Never remembers to book tickets to shows on his own, but whenever anyone else organizes for a group of us to go and see something, he’s always the one who has the best time. I can tell he’s amped.
A shadow emerges from the cover of darkness before I can answer him.
The shadow moves and morphs into something otherworldly.
It’s dark. I can only make out flashes of silvery skin.
A neat profile. A dirty smile. Then all of him steps into the glow cast by a streetlight.
My heart squeezes, and I feel the familiar clench of fear and excitement that grips me whenever I see him.
His hair is down, lustrous raven that frames his beautiful face.
He’s wearing his signature black jeans and combat boots, but instead of his usual assortment of ripped or cropped T-shirts, tonight he’s wearing a white button-down shirt with a yoke neck and soft, billowing sleeves.
His eyes are elaborately made up, blackened with kohl, and smothered with wet-look glitter.
“Holy shi…” I start.
“Wow,” Will finishes succinctly.
Trouble jerks his head toward a door with a No Entry sign above it. “Come on. We’re going to be late.”
We follow wordlessly as he leads us down a dim passageway that opens into a theater. Music is playing. An announcer is asking that people switch off their phones and most of the crowd is already seated.
Trouble flounces past stragglers and points out three seats, front row, center stage.
“These seats are incredible,” says Will. “How’d you pull this off?”
“Shh,” says Trouble.
The show starts, and it is fucking fantastic.
Honestly, there’s no other way of putting it.
The first performance starts off with a totally innocent-looking, curvy blonde woman who walks on stage demurely dressed in a pin-up-style red dress and almost immediately relieves herself of most of her clothes.
My jaw drops, and Will and I do an extensive double-take.
Trouble’s shoulders shake gently with laughter.
Trouble, being trouble, has brought us to a burlesque show.
And not just any burlesque show. This is burlesque on steroids.
It’s so fucking hot that I hardly know where to look.
It’s the last thing Will or I expected, but we’re sure as hell not complaining.
Each performance is more amazing than the last. More risqué too.
The dancers are diverse in race, gender, orientation, and body type.
The atmosphere in the audience is fantastic.
It feels inclusive and good, and the feeling is contagious, spreading through the crowd and infecting everyone with pure joy.
It’s the first time Will and I have been in a place like this since things started with Trouble, and it feels really wonderful to be somewhere like this with people like us.
By the time intermission rolls by, we’re all laughing and hollering and cat-calling and inhibitions are dropping around us like flies.
“Geez, Trouble, where the hell have you brought us? Don’t you think you’ve corrupted us enough as it is?” jokes Will as we wait in line at the bar for our drinks.
“A feast for the bisexual eye, no?” asks Trouble, widening a pair of impish eyes.
“Yeah. It really is.” Will’s expression turns earnest. Really earnest. “It’s amazing. I love it. Thank you for bringing us.”
The show starts again, and hilarity abounds. Bras and jockstraps hit the stage floor at breakneck speed. Hot, sequin-clad bodies shake and twirl things I didn’t know people could shake or twirl.
“I have to take a call,” whispers Trouble as an act ends. “It’ll take a while. Stay here, okay? Don’t come looking for me.”
“But you’re going to miss…”
“Shh,” hisses Will as a woman walks on stage and grabs another in a close hold, and they set the stage on fire with a tango that oozes sex and stealth and unbridled aggression.
That performance finishes and the next one too.
I’m distracted, looking around for signs of Trouble.
I can’t enjoy myself fully without him being here.
I know he said not to look for him, but he’s taking a worryingly long time, so I’m starting to think that maybe I should.
I’m about to ask Will about it when the show host comes on stage and does a hilarious bit about the struggles he’s faced dating both men and women.
Will’s eyes are fixed on the stage, chest leaning forward, hands curled in his lap, one hundred percent focused.
“All right, alriiiight,” rumbles the host in a voice that’s gravelly and deep, purposefully and shamelessly seductive. “Are you ready?”
The audience whoops and a few people shout, “Hell yes!”
“Hmm, I don’t think you are,” the host teases, putting on an exaggerated little pout. “You think you are, but you aren’t. You’re not ready for the next act. You can’t handle the heat.”
This time people start cheering loudly.
The host looks slightly impressed. The audience cheers louder and some people start stamping their feet.
“Okay,” says the host. “You asked for it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Hope you can handle it…” He pauses dramatically, drawing the moment out and chuckling as the volume in the place reaches epic proportions. “Here…Comes…Trouble!!!”
“Huh?” says Will.
“D-did he say Trouble?”
The curtains twitch, and rich oxblood velvet glimmers and cracks open.
The stage is empty. Lit by a single, smokey spotlight that lands dead in the center.
The light goes out. The entire theater is cloaked in black.
Hard, decisive strokes of a keyboard float through the darkness and fill the room as “Sign of The Times” by Harry Styles starts to play.
Harry’s voice is mournful and husky, a gentle falsetto. The stage is big. Vast. Black floor. Black backdrop. There’s a hard, hollow doof as the spotlight hits its mark. A single light hits a figure that fills the space with total command. A curtain of dark hair gleams, obscuring a face.
“Oh my fuck,” croaks Will.
Catcalls pierce the air around us and several people scream, “Trouble!”
My heart starts to pound. My breath exists in a vacuum.
Every ounce of oxygen has been sucked from my lungs.
My eyebrows fly up when the figure on stage flicks his hair, exposing a familiar face.
A beautiful face. A beautiful person. A rare combination of muscle, bone, and skin glows as if lit from within.
An unreal creature held together by nothing but magic graces the stage.
Blue eyes flare. He looks in our direction.
Soft, knowing lips quirk up at the sides.
He’s still wearing the shirt he wore earlier.
He has the same boots on too, but he’s replaced the jeans with a jet-black kilt with a check of fine, glittery thread woven through it.
A kilt.
A fucking kilt.
He is trying to kill me.
I become vaguely aware that there are people on stage with him.
Two women. Possibly the same ones who did the tango earlier.
They’re both wearing tuxedos and have their hair slicked back off their faces.
They approach Trouble slowly, circling him as if they’re apex predators and he’s the prey.
One of them reaches for him. She gets close, but he spins out of her grip at the last second, moving across the stage straight into the arms of the other.
She attempts to catch him too, but he spins back again, whipping his body back and forth between them as if he’s as light as a feather.
As if he’s made of air. As if he walks on the wind.
As if they’re a breeze and they’re blowing him back and forth.
As the song gathers force and reaches its first major surge, the keyboard whines in precise, forceful staccato, and the woman on the left catches hold of Trouble’s shirt.
Buttons snap open. The audience sucks in a sharp breath.
Will gasps beside me. Trouble spins out of her grip and out of his shirt in one fluid movement.
His chest is bare. Light bounces off hard muscle and solid bone.
The other woman catches him next. She’s behind him, with both arms around him, holding him firmly.
Possessively. I can’t breathe in. Or out.
She works her hands down his chest, finding the opening of his kilt, flicking the button, and worrying it until it comes undone.
Will leans forward in his chair more than he already was.
“No,” he whispers. “He wouldn’t.”
The woman’s hand clenches into a fist around the fabric.
Trouble looks at the audience and raises a perfectly arched brow, then he drops his chin and gives a devilish flicker of white.
It’s a blinding smile that looks exactly, precisely like sin.
He waits for the beat, teasing us, working us up, and the second it hits, he twists out of her grip and out of his entire goddamn kilt too.
“Ggguk,” I say.
“Holy shit,” breathes Will.
“Ooooh,” says the rest of the audience.
Trouble now stands on the stage completely naked except for a pair of chunky combat boots and a skimpy pair of black lace hotpants.
He looks fucking unreal. He’s an entity.
A force. An ode to male glory. The entire crowd blinks.
There’s a short pause and then a murmur of shock as they clock the outline of his massive cock.
“Aaaah,” they say.