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“So our girls don’t have to listen to the gross shit men like you say,” he countered, flinging his tea towel over his shoulder and tossing my plastic cup instead of getting me another drink. “You’re cut off, guapo. Go play or go home.”
I pouted, but pulled out a small stack of bills and moped my way over by the stage. The girls were as gorgeous as I remembered, and I couldn’t get enough of their tight little outfits — but even here, even drunk, I had fucking aprons on both of my brains. Pink aprons. Mia’s aprons.
A woman who appeared to be exactly my type climbed into my lap virtually the second I sat down, but for some reason, I felt ... nothing. Nada. Zilch. Cero. “Well hi,” I said anyway, never one to be rude. “What can I call you?”
“Whatever you want, chulo. Everyone else here calls me Nevaeh.” She rolled her hips in a way to almost get my attention, it just wasn’t quite enough.
“You’re an excellent dancer, Nevaeh. Practice makes perfect, or formal training?”
“Practice. Been here since I was eighteen, practicing even before then. Who’s on your mind handsome? You don’t do something this long without being able to read a man’s eyes.” She leaned in, lavender filling my nostrils as her glitter glued itself to my shirt. “You can call me her name if you want.”
“That would be insulting as hell to both of you,” I mumbled, but I couldn’t deny that most of the blood in my body was finally traveling south. “Speaking of insulting, I’m too drunk to ask this question with any kind of tact, so forgive me. But is this what you wanna do, or maybe not so much?”
She stilled, pulling back to look at me like I was a martian. “Don’t do that. Don’t be that drunk guy. We all choose to be here, okay?”
“Yikes. Yeah, I wasn’t trying to be like that. How about I just throw myself out and save the bouncers the trouble?” I wanted to explain that I hadn’t meant it like that — that I wasn’t trying to be a savior or suggest that she couldn’t possibly want to be there, that I was just going to offer her some stock tips if she was looking for a way to make some money and get out. That I knew equal pay was a joke, education was damn near inaccessible, too many parents abandoned their families and our foster care system set kids up for failure and not success. That too many people like me ignored those either trafficked or shoved into this life when they didn’t want to be there. That I didn’t want a lap dance from someone who didn’t want to give me one, and I was trying to ask for legitimate consent to even be sitting under her.
I wanted to explain all of that, but I knew it wouldn’t come out right, so I took the out when she got up. “I’m sorry, Nevaeh. I promise I really didn’t mean anything by it.”
I tipped her as reasonably as I could without being insulting and held my hands up when I faced the bouncer to tell him I was leaving willingly, then walked back to my hotel instead of taking a cab.
I needed the exercise, needed the fresh air, needed the time.
As always, I was making all the wrong moves with all the best intentions, and it was going to get me nowhere.
