Chapter Seven
Incremental
Lottie
The lights went dark.
I rushed off the stage and Mo was there, throwing my robe
over my shoulders.
He smelled good. Clean. Like soap and man.
He’d had his shower and was back to me before my set ended.
I wanted to pounce on him.
Instead, I shoved my hands through the arms and barely had
my fingers to the sides to pull the robe closed before his big hand had a
powerful grip on my upper arm and he was practically dragging me down the steps
to the side hall.
It was Tuesday night.
Suffice it to say, Mo knowing where it was heading between
us after the threat was over, and me knowing where this was going, we were
impatient for it to get done.
But Mo being all that was Mo, his impatience, like
everything else about him, manifested itself in much larger ways.
The man was a ticking time bomb.
This partly had to do with him wanting to get to know me
better, and it was hard (very hard) to try to keep things casual, keep
a distance, be professional, when we were together twenty-four hours a day.
We cooked together. We ate together. We watched TV together.
And after putting a sheet up over the windows (something I did not like, but
getting what I got after, that being hanging with Mo, I was okay with it) Mo
lounged on the couch opposite mine in my bedroom with his eyes closed while I
read. Even with eyes closed, I knew he was awake, looking Zen (and insanely
fuckable), but he was also undoubtedly alert.
We talked.
We had no choice but to get to know each other better and I
knew I liked what I got (even though he wasn’t much of a talker, and as the
days went by, he got quieter and quieter due to his patience waning more and
more).
I also knew he liked what he got.
From when we first met, Mo didn’t need words to communicate.
And the increase in dancing silver eyes and the addition of soft looks he’d
give me…
Man.
Yeah.
This had to end soon.
Mo’s ticking time bomb thing also had to do with the big lug
wanting to sleep with me.
And by the by, I adored that he’d referred to it
during our Come to Jesus as making love.
But he was very much all guy, and men needed to get some, he
was sleeping in my room, living in my home, watching me strip. The need for him
to do me was so strong, it had a taste, it had a smell, it had a feel, it was
constant and grew more powerful every day.
Not being able to take it there had to be torture.
I knew, because it was torture for me too.
And it was getting worse every day.
Last, but I had a feeling this was the biggest part, Mo’s
impatience had a sharp edge that I did not think had to do with him wanting to
take me out to dinner and ask my favorite color then take me home and fuck me
stupid.
It had to do with the fact that this guy hadn’t been caught
yet and there was something really not good about that.
I didn’t ask. If Mo felt I needed to know, or wanted me to
know, he would tell me.
More, I was thinking it was another way he was protecting
me. And he was that guy. He needed to give that to me.
So even though none of this made me want to jump for joy, I
didn’t push it with him.
Like I didn’t tell him his grip was too tight and that he
needed to slow down or I’d break my neck on my platform stripper shoes while he
dragged me to the dressing room. A place I knew, because he communicated
(nonverbally) he thought was a safe zone, unlike the stage (definitely) and the
hall, and anywhere else that was accessible or visible to people he might not
know.
I just moved with him as fast as I could.
He used the hand he did not have on me to pound on the door
twice, bellowed, “Man coming in!” and as he was hesitating the two seconds he
always gave it so the girls could get situated before he went in, I spoke.
“I’m good, Mo. Safe. Sound. Healthy. Right here. With you.
You’ve got me. Yeah?”
He looked down at me and allowed me to see some of the
harshness bleed out of his face.
Not all of it, but some of it.
I’d take it.
Then he pushed us into the dressing room.
Strippers poured out as we went in, and once in, Mo let me
go and shut the door behind the last girl.
I finally tied my belt on my robe.
“Shit,” he said.
I looked up at him then turned my attention to where his was
and saw Carla wearing her robe, platforms off, sitting at her makeup station,
holding a bag of ice to her ankle.
I rushed her way. “Ohmigod, girl! What happened?”
“Tripped coming off the stage for your set,” she muttered,
eyes cast down to her ankle resting on her knee, her face pinched.
“Did you tell Smithie?” I asked.
She shook her head and finally looked up at me. “I’m just gonna ice it for a bit longer and then get back out there.”
Yeah.
She had to get back out there.
She had two kids from two different baby daddies, both
pieces of shit, the dads, not the kids (her boys were great).
So she had three mouths to feed, her mom, who was a bitch,
her dad, who was a drunk, her brother, who thought they were all wastes of
space, especially his stripper sister who had two baby daddies (in other words,
she had a brother who was a dick).
She also had a killer bod she knew how to move.
This meant she was on a stage, dancing in a thong, when the
last thing she wanted to do was go home after doing that to her two young boys
and then look them in the eye over Cheerios the next morning.
It wasn’t like I didn’t get Mo’s point about stripping. I
did.
And Carla was Mo’s point.
Smithie paid well, but tips were essential for all these
girls (including me) to up our quality of life (for some of us, significantly),
and if we had dependents, give them some modicum of a quality of life.
These thoughts on my mind, I started in shock when Mo
hunkered down beside me and said quietly, “Lift the ice. Let me see.”
I was shocked because he didn’t often engage with the girls.
After our last two days together, I understood this was not
about him disapproving of them. It was about him being not such a talkative
dude. But also, he was there to look out for me, not make friends with them.
And last, he was in our space and therefore he wanted to make it as safe for
the girls as he could when he couldn’t exit said space, so he didn’t call
attention to himself (an impossible task for a guy like Mo, but you had to hand
it to him, he tried).
I stared at his bald head fighting the desire to run my
hands over it as he took a look at her ankle.
Then I stared at his large, long-fingered, veined hand as he
gently prodded it.
Okay, he could drag me around with little effort.
And clearly he could go gentle.
I did not need to learn that about him when he was
off-limits.
Shit.
His head tipped back to look at her face when he asked,
“Scale of one to ten, ten highest, what’s the pain?”
He was still gently prodding her ankle.
She answered, “Three.”
I turned my gaze to her face and saw the pinch tighten into
a wince with each prod.
Mo straightened, muttering, “Ice back on.”
Carla put the ice back on.
Mo then looked down at me and I knew by his expression he
didn’t miss the winces that did not say she was at a pain level of three.
He confirmed this by saying, “Most urgent cares closed, she
needs to get to the emergency room.”
“No!” Carla cried, and Mo and I turned back to her. “No.
It’s gonna be fine.”
“It’s probably not broken but it’s a bad sprain,” Mo told
her.
“If it’s sprained, I’ll be off the stage for a week,” she
returned anxiously.
At that, I crouched down to her. “Carla, you can’t dance
with a sprained ankle.”
“The ice will work,” she told me. “I just need to give it
more time.”
“You need to see to it and give it time to heal if it needs
that so it doesn’t get worse,” I pointed out.
“It’ll be okay.”
“Just check it out.”
She shook her head with agitation. “I can’t go to the
emergency room. This isn’t urgent. I’ll be waiting forever. And I have to be
home to let my neighbor go. I pay through the nose for her to come over and
stay late to watch the boys. She gets pissy when I’m
even later.”
In a normal situation, I would offer to go relieve the
sitter after my last set.
Mo would never agree to that, so I told her, “I’ll call my
mom.”
Carla shook her head again. “You can’t do that, Lottie. It’s
after eleven at night.”
I grinned at her. “My mom loves kids, she loves you, and
she’s the kind of person who gets off on doing things for folks. And you know
Tex. He’s the king of wading in when a damsel is in distress. They’ll be all
over it.”
“Tex might scare my boys,” she muttered.
This was true.
“Maybe, but in the end he’ll have them eating out of his
hand,” I told her the truth. “But right now, they’re asleep and you’ll be home
before they wake up, so they won’t even see him.”
She looked at her ankle then at me. “I can’t be off the
stage for a week, Lottie.”
I reached out and gave her wrist a squeeze. “Just go to the
hospital. Find out how bad it is.” I scooted closer on my platforms and
reminded her, “And you know, if you have to take a break, we’ll take care of
you. You know that, babe.”
More shaking of her head. “I can’t ask the girls to help me
out. You all have your own bills to pay.”
“You won’t have to, but we will, and we won’t be pissed
about it. We’ll only be pissed if you don’t take care of yourself. And anyway,
Smithie would rather cut off his own arm than have you and your boys in a bind.
You know that too.”
She glanced up at Mo before she whispered to me, “Smithie
has a lot on his mind.”
All the girls knew about my sitch.
Everyone had been interviewed and they’d all been tasked to keep an eye out for
a possible crackpot that tweaked them, as crackpots were wont to do.
It sucked they were in on this, and knew this was happening
to me, thus they were worried about me, and it gave me more fodder for nursing
the hugest grudge I’d ever held, this being against said crackpot.
Through these thoughts, I shot her another grin, and after I