Better When It Hurts (Stripped 2)

“Let’s get one thing straight,” Blue says, his voice deadly even, belying the wild look in his eyes. “If it were up to me, you’d leave this club crawling on your fucking hands because I’d have taken a bat to your knees. Understand?”

He waits until the guy gives a quick, wide-eyed nod. The sound of his choked gasps fill the space.

“Instead I’m going to let you walk out of here. Your ass. On the street. Got it?”

There is a pause where I imagined the guy arguing with him. No way. It’s not fair. It’s my fucking party. I’ve heard every one of those excuses. I know Blue has too. Maybe that’s why he seems to lean in, pressing his forearm harder on the guy’s throat until he chokes and sputters and nods his head.

“Good.” Blue steps back, and the guy slumps against the wall. “Now get out your fucking wallet.”

Now the guy does argue, his voice thin and wheezy. “I’m not paying her. She didn’t finish the fucking dance.”

“You should’ve thought of that before you put her in a choke hold. Now pay up.”

The guy must realize he’s lost, especially when Blue looms in the opening, the only way out. A handful of bills are tossed around me like confetti. I watch one land on my knees with a sense of unreality. It’s all so strange—being hurt, being used. And Blue coming to save me. So strange and yet familiar too.

Blue drags the guy outside and disappears for long minutes. Only when Candy appears to help me up do I realize he’s not coming back.

* * *

Candy leads me through the floor, ignoring the curious stares of the customers.

She’s one of my fellow strippers at the Grand—and my only friend. When we started here, we were both young and hustled hard. On top of the fucking world. Just a few years can change all that. Maybe I was still young in years, but it felt like I’d been dancing and fucking and fighting off men all my life. And really, I had been.

She knows almost everything about my past, more than I know about hers. So she wasn’t surprised to find me practically catatonic on the floor of a VIP room. It didn’t used to bother me—when men grabbed my wrist, when they forced me. They’d have to really hurt me to get a rise. But lately I’ve been getting more sensitive. In this profession, that could be dangerous.

Because the Grand had once been a fancy theater, there’s an enclave with a musty sofa between the dressing room and the showers. Candy settles me there and covers me with some kind of blanket. I don’t even know where she got a blanket—maybe it’s a cape from someone’s outfit.

She leaves my side for a minute, and in her absence, I hear the chatter from the girls.

What’s wrong with her?

She think she’s too good to work?

Someone fucked her up.

They know better than to talk about us where Candy can hear. She’s the queen bee, and I wouldn’t exactly call her a benevolent ruler. But I can’t blame them for wondering. Yeah, someone fucked m

e up. It shouldn’t matter if a customer touches me. If they rough me up. I should be able to shake it off, but I can’t. So I guess I do think I’m too good to work. At the very least, I’m too broken.

And as for what’s wrong with me? That list is too fucking long.

Candy returns with a glass of something that’s definitely not water. “Drink,” she says, pushing it into my hands.

It burns on the way down. “Shit. What is this?”

Then she puts something else in my hand—a small white pill. “Swallow.”

“I charge extra for that.”

She gives me a faint smile. “Come on. You’ll feel better.”

“That’s what they all say,” I grumble. But I take the pill, swallowing it down with whatever liquid’s in the cup. I don’t know what either of them are, and it doesn’t really matter. Candy always has the good shit. That’s what I need right now—good shit to make me feel human again. To make me forget.

I feel the warmth spread through me almost immediately. It’s like she’s taking care of me, giving me milk and cookies in the form of alcohol and drugs.

The girls in the dressing room are quiet again, only murmuring to each other or back out on the floor. After all, we’re here to work. And even if they wanted to gossip, Candy remains by my side.

“You can go,” I tell her.