12. Conrad #2
Heat climbed up my neck. Before I could answer, Winnie returned, carrying two drinks.
“I hope bourbon is all right,” she said.
“Yes.” Then, because my brain hated me, I said, “You look incredible tonight.”
There. I said it. Out loud. Like a remotely normal person.
Winnie paused. The noise of the speakeasy carried on around us while something quieter settled between us.
“You’ve mentioned that in some form or fashion several times now,” she said softly.
“I know.”
“And?”
I exhaled carefully. “And I apparently need you to know I mean it.”
Color rose faintly in her cheeks. Then she smiled at me slowly over the rim of her glass, and somewhere behind us, somebody started playing a slower jazz song while my heart completely lost its ability to behave professionally.
By our second drink, I’d officially stopped understanding my own life.
Six months ago, my weekends consisted of spreadsheets, late-night emails, and falling asleep halfway through financial reports with the television still blaring downstairs.
Now, I was sitting beside a beautiful woman in an underground jazz club while somebody in rhinestones tap-danced near a taxidermy peacock.
Life came hurtling at you when you least expected it.
Winnie seemed entirely at home in the chaos.
That might have been the most unsettling part.
The more time passed, the more the composed nanny version of her dissolved into someone vibrantly funny and dangerously charismatic.
It was a side of Winnie I’d never been introduced to.
It also made it increasingly difficult to think of her as simply the woman I’d hired to help with my kids.
Somewhere along the way, she’d become... Winnie.
She knew bartenders by name. Knew the pianist. Knew a drag performer in silver sequins named Vivica LaRue who blew her a kiss from across the room and shouted, “You still owe me fifty dollars and emotional closure!”
Winnie lifted her bourbon. “You’ll survive without it.”
I stared at her after Vivica disappeared backstage again. “You have an entire secret life, don’t you?”
She squirmed in her seat. “Everyone has a secret life.”
“No, I think yours might objectively qualify as more interesting than the average person’s.”
“That depends entirely on how much tax fraud the average person commits.”
I nearly choked on my drink.
Winnie laughed into her glass while I tried to determine whether she was joking.
With her, the odds hovered around sixty-forty.
The band shifted into a livelier tune while conversations and laughter swelled around us. At the bar, someone was celebrating a birthday. One corner booth held three elderly women in feather boas aggressively playing poker.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d sat somewhere without checking my phone every ten minutes. Couldn’t remember the last time I’d relaxed enough to let background noise become just background noise instead of something to work around.
Winnie rested one elbow against the table and studied me. “You’ve unclenched.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your shoulders.”
“You’ve been admiring my shoulders?”
She giggled. “It’s hard not to notice. You carry stress like it’s an Olympic sport.”
“Well, I do have three children.”
A gong suddenly rang somewhere deeper in the club. People started cheering, and several patrons started moving toward a velvet-curtained lounge area near the back.
Winnie’s eyes lit up. “Oh!” She immediately set down her drink and grabbed my hand. “It’s time.”
My brain stopped at hand.
Her hand.
Holding mine.
Cool, soft, and devastatingly feminine.
I let her pull me through the crowd because, frankly, I couldn’t have stopped myself from following the woman directly into the ocean at this point.
“Time for what, exactly?” I asked.
“You’ll see.”
The lounge area beyond the curtains looked even more theatrical than the rest of the speakeasy. Circular tables crowded around a small stage framed in red velvet and gold trim.
There were feathers everywhere. A woman wearing a rhinestone corset the color of champagne strutted across the stage to roaring applause while a jazz trio played behind her.
I cleared my throat. “Is this… is this a burlesque show?”
Winnie looked thoroughly amused by my confusion. “Yes.”
“Oh my god.”
“Do you disapprove?”
“No, I’m just surprised.”
The performer winked at our table before peeling off one opera glove while half the audience showered the stage with dollar bills. The entire thing was somehow equal parts sexy and absurdly camp. A bearded man in fishnets performed next and got a standing ovation from the poker ladies.
A woman dressed as a gothic bride removed layers of black lace while fake thunder cracked through the speakers. Someone dressed as a devil did aerial silks to a swing remix of “Bad Romance.”
I couldn’t stop laughing. Not at the performers. Just at the sheer joy of it all. Nobody here seemed embarrassed or self-conscious. People clapped and hollered and tossed cash, celebrating every performer equally, regardless of body type, gender or age.
It was all weirdly wholesome.
Winnie leaned closer beside me during one particularly enthusiastic routine involving a feather fan the size of a dining table.
“I used to dance,” she said casually.
I turned toward her so fast I nearly pulled something. “You did not.”
She laughed softly. “I did.”
“There is absolutely no world in which I can picture that.”
“That’s hurtful.”
I laughed. “It’s just… you’re too composed.”
“Oh, I wasn’t always this composed, Conrad.”
Her expression turned solemn. “I had a very strict upbringing,” she continued. “When I first got freedom, I overcorrected slightly.”
I stared at her. “So you were a wild child?”
“I was many things.”
The mental image hit me all at once. Winnie younger, sneaking into clubs. Dancing under low lights in dresses that definitely violated several centuries’ worth of social expectations.
My brain short-circuited immediately.
“You’re thinking too loudly,” she informed me.
“I am not.”
“You absolutely are.”
“Okay,” I admitted. “Maybe a little.”
She sipped her drink slowly, clearly enjoying my suffering.
“What exactly qualified as overcorrecting?”
She shrugged. “That depends on whether you ask the local clergy or me.”
I barked out a startled laugh. “Oh, I definitely need details now.”
“You’re not getting them.”
“Oh, come on. Not even one?”
“No.”
“You can’t casually imply scandal and then refuse to elaborate.”
“That is exactly what I can and will do.”
Another performer strutted across the stage in towering heels and an enormous, feathered cape, the audience screaming their encouragement. Beside me, Winnie was laughing openly.
Maybe it was the drinks. Maybe it was the music. Maybe it was simply exhaustion finally loosening its grip after years of grinding myself into dust.
But somewhere during the second act, I realized I felt young. Like a person instead of a machine wearing human skin. I hadn’t noticed how small my life had become until I wasn’t focused solely on work, kids, bills, schedules, and grief, endlessly on repeat.
Somewhere along the line, I’d stopped existing outside obligations.
It had happened slowly, without me realizing it, after Jade died.
Every piece of myself that wasn’t useful got stripped away one exhausted year at a time.
Hobbies disappeared first. Friends next.
Then spontaneity. And finally, the idea that I was allowed to want anything unrelated to productivity or parenting.
Winnie was watching me. Her eyes were squinted, and she chewed on her lower lip. As if she had the ability to read thoughts, she asked, “When was the last time you did something just because it was fun?”
I thought about it and came up disturbingly blank for several seconds.
“I can’t remember. That’s bleak.”
Winnie didn’t laugh. Instead, she watched me closely, an unreadable expression on her face. “You’re allowed to exist outside of your job and the kids, Conrad.”
The words settled in a deep and uncomfortable space inside me. Obviously, I knew that. But knowing something and believing it were completely different things.
“I think I forgot how,” I said finally.
“You have not forgotten.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Because you’ve been laughing for nearly two hours.”
I looked at her then. Really looked at her. At the woman who had come into our lives armed with funeral wear and impossible patience. She’d steadily dragged all of us back toward something resembling happiness.
Somewhere along the way, the future had stopped being something I merely had to survive.
A performer in glittering gold shorts cartwheeled across the stage. Grinning, Winnie tossed a dollar bill onto the stage. She had surprisingly good aim. The performer caught it mid-spin without missing a beat.
The music swelled again while the next act prepared backstage. Without really thinking about it, I inched closer to her. Not enough to touch. Just enough to exist inside the same pocket of air.
Perhaps Winnie sensed the shift because her smile softened.
My stomach did that inconvenient flip-flop act it’d been performing lately.
The crowd erupted again as another performer took the stage, wearing nothing but rhinestones and confidence.
Winnie let out a wolf whistle, which had me gaping at her in shock.
Somewhere between the jazz music, the ridiculous feathers, the smell of bourbon and perfume hanging in the air, and the realization that I was genuinely having fun, something rearranged itself inside me.
Maybe I didn’t have to spend the rest of my life only being useful.
Maybe I could still be a father and a person.
Maybe grief didn’t have to hollow out every single space inside me forever.
I had crossed the line between pleasantly buzzed and genuinely drunk.
First, my laughter came a little too easily. Then, I became emotionally invested in a feather-fan routine set to a jazz version of “Toxic.” Finally, I had to renegotiate my relationship with gravity when I stood up too fast after the final act.
Winnie caught my elbow immediately. “You all right there?”