Birthday Girl

e smoke.

I scan the parking lot and spot my sister’s Mustang off to the side of the building. Every night, one of the bouncers walks all the girls out to their cars, just in case a crazy fan decides to try to catch one of them when they’re alone.

Walking into the club, I’m all of a sudden shrouded in darkness, the heavy beats of the music vibrating the floor under my feet. It’s warm and smells like fog and perfume. Unlike Grounders, there’s no smoking allowed in here, and instead of ancient wooden floors with dirt lodged in all the cracks, a gleaming black floor squeaks under my sneakers.

“Hey, Peaches!” a woman calls. “What are you doing?”

I turn and see Malena through the window of the little box office. She never charges me a cover, of course. I don’t come here for that.

“Cam around?” I ask.

“She just finished on stage,” she replies. “She’s probably on the floor somewhere now. Go on in.”

“Thanks.” I give her a smile and walk into the club, the little knot in my stomach tightening more. I’ve never bugged Cam here unless I had to. Some of the ladies’ sisters or friends will sit in the back with the other dancers and hang out and socialize, but it’s hard for me. I can handle seeing my sister naked, but I have a problem seeing others see her naked. Fathers of friends from school, an old boyfriend…even women from around town who come in packs for a girls’ night out to ‘do something different’, but I know they’ll leave and just talk shit about the dancers the next day to anyone who will listen. Looking out from behind the curtain and seeing my elementary school bus driver or something would throw me for a loop. I don’t know how she does it.

The room is cast in strobe lights, rotating up, down, and around, while bulbs line the edges of the stage that protrudes out into the crowd and is surrounded by tables on both sides. It’s not a big place, but there are two separate pedestals with poles and their own lights where dancers can dig deeper into the audience away from the main act.

Stopping at the bar right inside the entrance, I look around for Cam’s brown hair, probably styled big enough to make any Texas woman jealous. There’s a good amount of patrons tonight. Loners, a few couples, booths filled with men scarfing down steak and burgers, who look like they just left the office, and a larger party of young guys I don’t recognize.

Gwen, one of Cam’s friends, places her hands on the arms of a chair and lowers herself back into the seat.

And into the lap of the man already sitting there.

Supporting herself with her arms, she moves and grinds, rolling her hips and laying her head back on his shoulder. My skin warms, and my breathing turns shallow. I’ve seen her or any one of the other girls do this a dozen times. It’s him that has me mesmerized, though.

Her customer looks in his late twenties, a young man in jeans and a T-shirt, but he’s handsome and fit. His eyes are downcast, looking over her shoulder and down the front of her body as she moves on him. His hands, unable to touch her, clench the arms of the chair, and I look up, seeing his jaw flex.

Taunting, teasing, captivating his attention and dangling something he wants right in front of him and then yanking it away, because he can’t have it…

In this brief moment, I wonder if I’d be that good.

“I see a few eyes on you already.”

I turn my head, seeing Mick Chan, The Hook’s owner, standing around the corner of the bar. Mick is a middle-aged, ex-wrestler who married a stripper and decided he wanted to spend the rest of his life in a bar, so he and his wife opened this place and have lived happily ever after since.

He smiles at me, his black T-shirt stretching across his still-muscled chest. “The money we could make together,” he says with a wink.

I turn my eyes back to the room, holding back my snicker. Dude should seriously start a booth at the high school career fair, so he can snatch up women as soon as they ripen to the legal age of eighteen rather than keep harassing me.

“Your sister says you don’t have the head for this, and I’m supposed to leave you alone, but Jordan—”

“I didn’t come here for that,” I snip. “I came to talk to her.”

I finish scanning the room and am about to head to the back, but he suddenly moves toward me, his tone calm but stern.

“You see these customers at Grounders, too, right?” He glances to the crowd and back to me. “It’s the same guys you serve there, isn’t it?”

I lift my gaze back to the tables and booths, recognizing some. It’s a small town. So, what?

“Why do you think they go there at all?” he asks, narrowing his eyes on me. “I have a chef and a better menu here. Trained bartenders. Cleaner bathrooms. Why not spend all their bar time here?”

“Because Grounders is cheaper.”

“Because Grounders sells sex, too,” he fires back. “These boys go to Grounders for you, Shel, Ashley, Ellie…not the cheap beer and peanut shells all over the floor. Why do you think there are no men working there, after all? Shel hired you, because of the way you look.”

I don’t say anything but just focus back on the stage where I see my sister walking out from behind the curtain. Mick watches me, and I can almost feel his breath on my neck even though he’s three feet away.

“Don’t kid yourself,” he tells me. “They’re still looking at you like a piece of ass, even with all your clothes on.” And then he glances up to the stage and my sister swinging around the pole. “She just makes a hell of a lot more money.”