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My cousin is tapping his jeans looking uncomfortable when he tells me, “I need to call Taylor Jane.” Hunter is grabbing for his phone I wished I had confiscated from him back at the room. Pansy couldn’t even wait a day before getting all ants in his pants without his girl, it was sickeningly cute.
I make a vomiting sound which earned me the dirty look I was expecting from him. “Really? We’ve been here all of five minutes. Did you chub out already?” I said getting annoyed. Whit laughed and sucked down his beer like a big baby leaving me on my own.
“Stop trying to get the man in trouble.” Chase chugged his electrolyte concoction. I was convinced he was mad his girl was at home pet sitting for her aunt or something. It wasn’t my fault she found dogs preferable to a veterinarian.
“So who is the special boy around here?” We turned to see a woman dressed in cat ears and a tail slink her way into our personal space. Hunter stiffened leaning back into the bar as far as he can but getting nowhere when she sidled up to him.
I inclined back into him nudging him with a whisper while Catwoman smiled at us licking her shiny red lips. “Dude, stop acting like you’re going to catch a cold here.”
Hunter grunted, the typical response and I decided to push him– except he’s beaten me to it.
“This guy right here.” Before I know it, Hunter has paid the woman a fifty dollar bill and I’m being hauled off to a darkened room in the back of the club. He definitely pulled a fast one on me and I was beginning to feel like a creeper. I guessed it was too much to ask for Hunter to get even one lap dance, but if he was buying, I wasn’t exactly going to say no. I did bring him to a sordid place I found up on the internet as one of Vegas’ top ten seedy establishments just to fuck with him. I knew he wasn’t going to do anything and this whole trip was more about him appeasing me.
Catwoman grazed her fake nails up my arm, exposed by my t-shirt as my head turned to see him pull out his phone and make a call. He was truly whipped and the only reason it didn’t bother me was because I liked the girl he was with like a sister. I was a jerk but I wasn’t that much of a jerk.
“Make yourself comfortable, our best girl, Chanel is coming. She’ll see to all your needs.” Catwoman purred and shut the door leaving me in the small room that looked more like a make shift bang-den than the back room of a club.
Nodding, I tested out the small leather couch. Fake leather greeted my fingers with a sticky residue and a faintly flowered smell, almost like cleaner, but heavily perfumed. Yeah, I was not sitting my ass on some prior dude’s spunk cushion. The hard backed dining room chair looked a hundred times cleaner to me. I sat down making myself comfortable to wait for the woman to show up. Adjusting my jeans, I pulled the denim now from my thighs to give me more room in case I did get excited by a little innocent dancing. Images of Kristen filled my head and I wondered what she was up to taking Taylor and the girls out for their own version of tonight. I wondered if she would hire male dancers and the thought made me frown. I didn’t really want to be here, but I was already here and now it seemed rude to walk out on the girl about to come in here and earn her money for whatever sordid things she did. Maybe I could just tip her really well, hang out and then leave. I could pretend it was a wild time and no one would be the wiser right?
The door opened and shut quickly, the shimmer of an electric blue dress reflected the dim lights of the room blinding me for a moment. “Hello there, cowboy.” A sultry voice smacked out of her lips but all I could see were fishnet stocking legs, tiny ankles wobbling in shiny electric blue platform heels about six inches off the ground.
“Hi there, I was wondering if…” Before I could finish asking her if we could abort this whole shit show I couldn’t get into, her shriek caught me off guard and it was then I took a really good look at the girl in front of me.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Simultaneously we whisper yelled the question to each other shock of recognition flashing in her eyes and I imagined mine as well. A sheen of sweat beaded down my back plastering the cotton to my skin. I did not expect to see this blast from the past standing here precariously in a gentleman’s club of all places. I was in deep shit.
“I think I asked you first,” she said inching her way back to the door. Her hand made a grab for the handle and my opportunity to stop this was evaporating quickly like water in the desert. I got up stalking her to the only exit of the room and placed my hand on the door crowding her in and towering over her despite the stupid shoes on her tiny feet.
“Uh huh,” I shook my head negatively. “I asked you first, Blue. What the fuck are you doing in Vegas?” I stared down into the terrified eyes of my other best friend’s wife who I hadn’t seen since she left New Paltz under a cloud of mystery almost a decade ago. Andy hadn’t said Sierra’s name in years, but here she was a dead ringer for a midget sized Cindy Crawford in her heyday dancing in this shit hole.
Her eyes squeezed shut like she was trying to block me out but I wasn’t going to go anywhere until I had figured out this little mystery.
“H-how is he?” She bit her bottom lip and I dragged her over to the abominable couch sitting her down carefully on my lap. It wasn’t a sexual thing in the least. I was pretty sure my dick turtled back into my abdomen a good ten years into the past. I was trying to comfort her while her body shook like someone had doused her with ice water and the ghosts of Christmas past.
“Sierra, what happened?”
“I had to leave.” The answer simplistic and yet told me nothing at all. I cleared my throat hoping she would continue and she did. “It’s complicated.”
“Isn’t it always?” and I thought about my situation with Kristen. Damn. She was going to kill me if she got wind of this too.
She grunted and her hands rested on my chest as I looked down to see the thin black line of a tattoo circling her finger.
“I couldn’t stay and look Andy in the eyes anymore lying to him.” I had no idea what Sierra would have been lying about but I’m sure skipping town and declining all his phone calls and not telling him was worse than anything else she could have done. Even her grandparents who owned the vineyard in town had no idea where she had gone.
“Yeah, well tell that to your husband.” I grabbed her hand rubbing over the swirls of ink covering her ring finger.
She pulled her hand away trying to leave my lap. I bear hugged her keeping her still. “I can’t. Please, Damien. Just forget you saw me here.”
This girl was out of her mind. Who was going to forget a lovely girl like Sierra? She was nearly waif thin, scared eyes glazed with tears, and hitting a man’s protective instincts like a gong. Andy would flip his shit knowing she had been out here all this time alone doing god only knew what to survive. It physically pained me to respect her wishes.
“Uh, that’s going to be hard to do. You realize I’m the worst secret keeper out of all of us, right?” It gets me a little laugh from her. I remember my buddy gushing over this girl in high school over that laugh that sounded like tiny little elf bells. I couldn’t keep this from Andy. Shit, the moment I walked out of here, Hunter would know something happened. I was screwed and so was Sierra when this all came out exploding in my face.
She scrunched her nose sniffing and ran her hand down my shirt straightening the seams. “You, know, you’re not the asshole you try so hard to be, Damien.” Sierra must have seen something in me my Pebbles missed, it felt good to be understood and I knew Andy’s girl hadn’t had the easiest life until my friend heroically claimed her and then lost her in the span of a year. It was amazing the difference twelve months could make in someone’s life. Multiply that by ten and it seemed a lifetime ago.
“Yeah, well, you’re not the bitch you’ve tried convincing everyone you are. Come back home. I can tell Andy misses you. I won’t lie, he’s pissed, but whatever that is–well, it’s between you two.”
“I don’t know if I can go back.”
“If it’s worth anything, I think Andy needs closure to whatever happened and I think you need it too. Whatever it was and you don’t have to tell me, but should at least be telling him.” Reassuring her, I prayed she wasn’t going to tell me because I knew one too many rum and cokes and I was bound to serenade all of Nevada with this information before the weekend ended.
