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“Me?” he asked. I raises an eyebrow in an are you dumb? way. He smiled. “Sal. Sal Conte. Why?”
“Because I want to make sure I catch your face in a few months when I’m sitting at the top,” I said, then turned around and walked away.
If no one would take me seriously, if everyone was so sure I’m too soft, that I lack grit, I’ll just have to prove myself.
Easy as that.
Seven
-Lilah-
That’s where my mind is when my phone rings as I’m walking out of Jerzy Girls. I know who it is despite her not having a special ringtone and me not looking at the screen.
I just know it’s Lola. She’s the only one who calls me these days unless it’s one of the girls needing me to sub in for them.
I also know if I ignore the call, Lola will most likely freak the fuck out.
I’ve ignored three calls this week alone. Not because I don't want to talk to my big sister—that's not the issue at all. The issue is my sister owns a thriving bakery, so she keeps semi-normal hours.
She’s baking by seven and clocking out by six, and, gosh, isn’t that just the perfect time to call her sweet baby sister?
Of course, that would have been fine six weeks ago. It would have been the perfect time to call and chat, because five weeks ago, I worked a nine-to-five. A normal job where I was home or heading there when my sister would call to check in and decompress, complain about her neighbor, or tell me about some gala.
But now when Lola calls, I’m dancing on a pole and undoing the ties of a bikini top or just walking off stage, the background noise earsplitting. And calling my overprotective sister with Thong Song blaring in the background isn’t necessarily ideal when you’re trying to prove to her that you are totally fine. Nothing to worry about here.
So even though I’m too tired to have any kind of human interaction, I force myself to answer.
“Hello, favorite sister of mine,” I say as I tap the green button to accept the call.
“Oh, good, you’re alive,” she says, and I can almost hear the eye roll down the line. “God, where the hell have you been?”
“Uh, busy?” I wave at Roddy as I walk out the back door. He’s one of the few bouncers who looks at my face when he talks to me instead of my tits, and he loves a good smoke break behind the club. “I texted you!”
“Lilah, a text sent an hour after I call you that just says, ‘I’m alive, love you,’ does nothing to ease my all-consuming anxiety that’s telling me you are not, in fact, alive.” That’s a fair point. But I’ve also been avoiding her calls because . . . “How are you? How’s the city?”
Because she knows too much about me. Or, my old life. “How’s Adrianna? Any fun new escapades?”
Adrianna was my closest friend five weeks ago, the friend who, when I confessed I had quit my job and work at Jerzy Girls to help with some family shit, stopped talking to me all together.
In truth, two great things came from the chaos that is my life right now.
One, I realized who the real ones were. Lola, the woman who sacrificed everything for me? She’s real. Her boyfriend, Ben, who risked getting shot in order to save her ass? The realest. My dad? The fucking worst. My friends? Nearly as bad. It’s crazy how you can put blinders on for so long and ignore the shitty personalities of people if you want.
And two, I finally understood why I always felt suffocated my whole life. Like no matter where I went, I couldn’t get a lung full of fresh, clean air. Because I was constantly protected, a doll taken out to play then carefully returned to her box for safekeeping.
I’ve been locked in my protected little life since the day I was born.
Protected from my identity.
Protected from the boogeymen my mom and sister feared.
Protected from tainting my image, ruining the illusion my father had created.
“Sorry, sissy. I’ve been busy.”
“At the firm?” she asks, her words . . . suspicious.
Goddammit.
