AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Sunrise… Sunset…” she sings, her bottom lip quivering.
Why am I so bad at this?
“Leopard print,” I say, nodding at her shoes. The shoes I know she loves. She cocks her head and then pulls her foot up onto the bench, but her equilibrium is off and she careens backward. I catch her and stretch her leg across my lap.
“I love these shoes.”
“They’re hot shoes.”
“You think my feet are hot?” she asks, her eyes wide with drunk amazement and something softer. Something deeper… real.
“Everything about you is hot!” Caro says from across the booth.
“Girl!” Caro says, somehow now squatting on the booth like she’s going to pounce.
I start to clear the spillables from her side of the booth.
“Look at those tits!” Caro says. “And that ass! You’ve got a hot, curvaceous body that guys—and girls—absolutely imagine when they’re taking care of business.”
Then Caro starts whipping tater tots at me. “Right, Zeke?”
We both wait for Faye to look up. When she does, I nod.
“Gorgeous. You’re absolutely gorgeous, Faye.”
Her cheeks flush and I feel my heart hammer against my breastbone. This feeling. God, if this is what it feels like to make her blush like that, I need to figure out how to do that every day.
“You think I’m… and I need to…” She leans back against the wall and shuts her eyes. Then she seems to brace herself to make a difficult decision.
“I need money. And I have a moneymaker.”
“Yeah you do, girl,” Caro says with a shoulder shimmy.
“Where is this going?” I ask.
“I know what I have to do, and I suppose if I’m going to stand on my own two feet—”
“Faye, no—” I try to stop her as she pulls herself upright.
“I’m gonna have to figure out how to do it in see-through heels.”
“Yeah, baby girl!” Caro shouts.
“Faye, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
She turns to me and places her hand on my shoulder, as if to keep me calm while she delivers bad news. But the way she leans and wobbles, I’m pretty sure she’s gripping me to keep herself upright just as much.
“I’m a grown-ass woman and as a grown-ass woman with a fine moneymaker—”
“Damn straight, honey!” Caro interjects.
“—I have to make it work.”
“Werk!”
“I will make this sacrifice. I will sacrifice my body to the men who come with theirdollas—”
“Ix-nay on the ollas-day.”
