A Little Too Hot (7 page)

Izzy pulls her plate closer and pokes at her eggs with a fork. “I think Brittany was saying her roommate was moving out. You could ask.”

I just look at her.

She laughs again. “She’s not that bad.”

“For hell spawn, you mean? Because I swear every time she looks at me it’s like she’s trying to suck out my soul.”

She rolls her eyes. “The demon thing is a costume, Sam.”

“Then
you
move in with her,” I say, throwing a hand at her, “and I’ll take your room with Stephanie and Jen.”

She grins at me. “Nice try, but there ain’t no way I’m letting that demon bitch suck
my
soul.”

I roll my eyes. “So, you coming to Astray with us or what?”

She gives me a wily smile. “Yeah. I’m coming.”

“
A
LL
I
’M SAYING,”
Ginger says, waving the bartender down from her stool, “is that dancing like you guys do objectifies women.”

The opener—some local band that seems to have only one rhythm, so all their songs just blend together into a monotonous drone—is tearing down after their set. The lead singer is a hot Asian chick, and I’m betting Jonathan’s nailed her already.

“It also pays the tuition,” Izzy says from my other side.

I give her a look as Ginger orders another cosmo. Who knew Jonathan’s girlfriend would turn out to be a raging feminist? And I can’t miss the irony here—that the biggest womanizer I know is dating Gloria Steinem. She hasn’t let up since we got here a half hour ago. Though she’s trying to be careful to not full-out diss Izzy and me, that’s tough to do when she seems to believe our current job is solely responsible for the oppression of women.

“You go to school?” I ask Izzy.

She nods. “Got accepted into biochemical engineering at UC Berkeley.”

“Wow. Is that why you moved up here?”

She swirls the thin red straw through her mojito. “Yeah. I’ve always wanted to go, but I couldn’t afford all four years there, so I started at JC and worked full-time to sock enough money away that I could apply as a junior transfer.”

“I’m impressed. Berkeley’s super hard to get into.”

She shrugs like it’s no big thing. “I guess.”

There’s no way I’m telling her I just flunked out of Santa Cruz. And it makes me think maybe Mom was right. Izzy had a goal and busted her ass to make it happen. I’ve never had to work for anything. Mom and Greg took care of everything, and I’ve always just expected they would. Maybe I
have
taken everything for granted.

“See!” Ginger bites the cherry from her drink off the stem. “That’s what I’m talking about. Here’s a girl with a serious brain,” she says, pointing the cherry stem at Izzy, “and she’s selling her body to a bunch of horny men who have no respect for her as a person to fuel their fantasies of superiority over women as a whole. They slip cash into your g-string to establish their ownership—to demonstrate that you’re an object to be bought and—”

“To finance my education,” Izzy cuts in. “And I don’t wear a g-string.”

Ginger looks past me at Izzy and throws her hands up, exasperated. “You should be interning at Lawrence Livermore and discovering the cure for cancer, or developing sustainable food sources for third world countries.”

“I looked into it,” Izzy tells her. “Couldn’t make the rent on what they pay interns, so the cure for cancer will just have to wait until they revamp their salary structure.”

“No offense here, Ginger,” I say, turning to watch Jonathan and the guys as they sound-check up on stage. “You know I love Jonathan like a brother, but I’m pretty sure you knew he was one of the biggest man-whores in the Bay Area before you started sleeping with him. I can’t speak for what goes on between you two, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t have a whole lot of ‘respect as a person’ for most of those girls,” I say, making air quotes. “He was just fucking them.”

“No offense taken,” she says, and I can tell from her expression she means it. “The difference is, sex is a basic instinct. It’s organic and necessary, and, when it’s consensual, both partners benefit. How do you benefit by dancing on stage?”

“Other than the money?”

“What’s the price of your self-respect, Red?” she asks, her eyes narrowing.

“Four hundred a night,” I say a little defensively, then add with a shrug, “and it makes me feel desirable and sexy.”

“You
are
sexy and desirable,” Ginger counters. She waves a hand across the crowded bar. “Any guy here would give his left nut to get into your pants.”

I give her the skeptic’s squint. “So, you’re saying sleeping with those guys would be less degrading than dancing for them?”

She points at me as her eyes brighten, thrilled that I’m finally getting it. “Exactly!”

I don’t even have a response.

Jonathan saves me from needing one when he leans into the mic and says, “This first song goes out to my all my favorite girls.” He grins and flicks a salute in our direction, and two girls at a table in front of us squeal and wave their arms in the air, bouncing in their seats. I’d bet tomorrow night’s tips that Jonathan’s slept with both of them.

As Jonathan and the guys launch into their first set, Ginger stands and drags Izzy and me off our bar stools. “C’mon, you guys,” she yells as she tows us to the dance floor. “Time to use your siren powers for good instead of evil.”

On stage, Topher whips his long blond hair in and out of his face, and his lead guitar is like an extension of his long lean body as he cranks out a riff that has everyone is the place moving. Three-quarters of everyone in the bar sings along as Jonathan wails about how girls are like pizza toppings, each one different but none of them bad. It’s one of the first songs he and Topher wrote together when they started the band two years ago, and it’s become their anthem. Any Astray regular knows it.

Ginger, Izzy, and I dance up front, near the stage, and while Jonathan seduces every woman in the room with his voice, I can’t help but notice where his eyes linger. Ginger moves her body to his urging, like a snake to her charmer, and his gaze stays locked on her.

Maybe there’s hope for that boy yet.

Chapter Nine

W
HEN
J
ONATHAN DROPS
me at the club on the way to his gig the next night, Izzy and Brittany are already in the dressing room. Brittany smirks at me as I grab my stuff from the closet. She’s back on center after my demotion.

Izzy mouths,
Ask her,
then flips her eyes at Brittany.

I give her back a subtle shake of my head and a wide-eyed look that screams,
Shut up!

She rolls her eyes at me and heads to the closet for her costume.

God, I should ask her. My only other alternative is to watch Jonathan walk around naked from my nine hundred dollar a month sofa for the foreseeable future.

I shove Izzy aside and grab my stuff, weighing the pros and cons as I change.

“So . . .” I finally say as I’m lacing up my last boot and Brittany finishes her makeup, “I heard you might be looking for a roommate?”

She shoots a glare over her shoulder from the vanity. “Maybe.”

“Um . . .” I say, fighting to keep the grimace off my face, and focus on tying my boot. “I’m sort of looking for a place, so . . .”

Her eyes narrow. “So, what?”

“So . . .” I continue. “I was wondering what you pay for rent . . . or what you’d want me to pay, I guess.”

She spins her stool and stands. “
You
want to move in with
me
. Seriously?”

“Maybe.”

“Seven hundred,” she says, turning her attention to straightening her nylons.

“Where is it? And how big and all?”

“It’s a two bedroom in the Haight.”

“San Francisco?”
Izzy screeches from across the small room. “You have a place in the city for fourteen hundred a month?”

Brittany looks up at her. “It’s rent controlled.”

Izzy turns to me. “Hell! I’ll sell my soul for that. You can have my place.”

We all just look at each other for a second, then Brittany surprises me by plucking at her devil costume and cracking up. When she stops laughing, she flips a hand at me. “My roommate’s moving out at the end of the month. You want to come by and check it out later this week?”

“Um, yeah . . . okay.”

She nods and pushes through the door into the hall.

I give Izzy another wide-eyed look, then follow her out.

We hit the stages and Pete does our intros, and I can’t stop myself from searching the crowd for Harrison as I dance. I know he’s gone. I know I’ll never see him again. But the stupid truth is, even though I know he’s not going to be there, I can’t stop wishing for it.

So, just like every other night for the last week, I suck, my crowd is sparse, and my tips blow.

When I finish my stage shift and Nora tells me I have a private, I’m more shocked than she is. No one’s hired me for the last week. She pushes open the door to the VIP room and I brace myself for Sweaty Man or Horny Guy. But when I step into the room, my heart stalls. All I can do is stare.

Because Izzy was wrong. I’m not safe.

Harrison is standing there, his hands crammed deep in the pockets of his jeans, gazing at me from under long blond lashes.

“I owe you an apology,” are the words that come out of his perfect mouth when I can’t find any. He sinks into the sofa and rubs a hand down his face. “I was totally out of line. I shouldn’t have assumed it was okay to . . .” He shakes his head, and when his eyes rise to mine again, they’re dark with desire. “You are incredibly attractive, Sam, and I imagine myself . . . doing things with you. But what I did was wrong, and I’m sorry.”

I slide onto the other end of the sofa. “It was my fault. I just . . .” I wave a hand at him. “You have to know how hot you are, right? I mean . . .” I feel myself cringe. “But I never should have . . . there are rules and . . .”
Damn
. I’m such a moron.

“Can we start over?” he says when I can’t figure out how to finish that sentence in any coherent way.

“Start over?”

He gives me a questioning tip of his head. “If you can pretend I’m not a total bonehead, I’ll try not to act like one.”

“But . . . why are you even here? Didn’t you go back to L.A.?”

“We’re going with the San Francisco location, so we’re here setting up.”

My heart pounds out of my chest. “For how long?”

“Until Friday.”

“Friday,” I repeat. Three days. “Will you be back after that?”

His glacial gaze melts. “If I have a reason to be.”

God, I want to be his reason. I think about what Izzy said: that what I do on my own time isn’t Ben and Nora’s business. Could I ask him out? My heart pounds as I open my mouth to ask if he wants to meet up after work, but what comes out is, “Did you see your fiancée when you were home?”

He shakes his head. “She was gone by the time I got back. Only thing she left was the engraved cake knife, presumably so I could stab myself with it.”

I crack up, even though it’s totally inappropriate, and after a second his mouth tugs into a reluctant smile. “So, you were living together?” I ask when my nervous giggles slow.

“For the last three years.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Guess I shouldn’t have waited so long to marry her.”

“Then you’d be getting divorced now and she’d get half of all your stuff, so . . .”

“Most of our stuff was hers anyway.” He blows out a long, slow breath. “Her family has money.”

“So you were marrying up?”

He huffs out a humorless laugh. “In more ways than one.”

I have this irrational compulsion to want to know more about this woman, as if she’s somehow my competition. It’s ridiculous. I bite my tongue and we just sit here staring at each other for a long time.

“You were great out there tonight,” he finally says, but I can tell from the way he says it that he doesn’t really mean it.

“I sucked.”

He settles deeper into the cushions, resting an arm over the back of the sofa, but to my disappointment, he doesn’t touch my hair. “Any particular reason?”

You. Or the lack thereof. “Just wasn’t feeling it.”

“Why do you do this?”

I tip my head at him, confused. “Do what?”

“This,” he says, waving a hand at the room. “Not to disparage your chosen career path, but despite your academic issues, I can tell you’re intelligent, and you’re sweet, and caring, and beautiful . . . why would you choose to take off your clothes for money?”

I’m torn between wanting to kiss him and slap him. “I don’t take off my clothes for money.”

“But you go out there night after night, playing to the debauched fantasies of a room full of miscreants—”

“You’re a miscreant with debauched fantasies?” I interrupt, raising my eyebrows at him.

That gets his smug almost-smile. “Touché. But my point is, you could be so much more.”

“Not according to my mother.”

“Your mother?”

I slouch into the cushions. “The rest of my sad story is, my parents threw me out after I flunked out of school. ‘Tough love,’ Mom said,” I say, making air quotes. “She thought they were enabling me to make bad decisions. My stepdad said he was done throwing good money after bad. So, basically, they finally gave up on me.”

He reaches for my hair and twirls a strand between his fingers, just like he did that first night. “I’m sure they haven’t given up. They probably just hope you’ll learn some responsibility.”

I pull back, yanking my hair out of his grasp. “Are you calling me irresponsible?”

His expression goes wary. “I didn’t say that.”

“But you implied it.”

He holds up his hands. “Just playing devil’s advocate. You said you failed out of school because you didn’t go to class, right?”

I slouch deeper into the sofa and press my palms to my face. “I’m such a fuck-up.”

“You’re not a fuck-up, Sam. You just need some direction.”

His voice is soft and so hopeful that I almost believe him. “So, where do I find that, anyway?”

He shifts closer. “You said you liked your major—film and media. What were you thinking you’d do with it after college?”

“I really wanted to be a sound designer for one of the big studios in Hollywood. It just sounds so cool, you know?”

He nods. “Have you looked into qualifications? Do you need a degree?”

I shrug. “You tell me. You work in the industry.”

He just looks at me for a long second, then clears his throat and rubs the back of his neck again. “I’d have to ask the guys in sound.”

“If I give you my number, could you have one of them call me?”

He nods slowly. “Sure. I’ll pass your name along when I’m back in L.A. next week.”

I get up and look for something to write on, but only find a pen on the stereo stand. No paper. I bring it back and reach for Harrison’s hand, scribbling my name and number across his palm.

I look up to find him watching me with an amused smile.

“What?” I ask.

“You’re touching me.”

My eyes go wide when I realize I’m breaking the rules. But I don’t let go of his hand.

After a moment he flips it, so our hands are palm to palm and our fingers line up. My heart pounds as he weaves his fingers between mine and closes them, enveloping my entire hand in his. “I won’t tell if you don’t,” he says, his voice low.

All I can do is shake my head.

His other hand, on the back of the sofa, lifts from my hair to my face, and he trails a fingertip over my cheekbone. “Do you have any idea how gorgeous you are?”

My heart slams against my rib cage and there’s no way I can answer. When his finger trails to my mouth and he traces it along my bottom lip, I forget to breathe.

But then he lowers his hand and lets go of mine. “Sorry. You just make it really hard to follow rules, you know?”

I nod, my lips still burning from his touch.

There’s a knock and Nora pokes her head in. “Time’s up.”

I stand, and Harrison does too. “I’ll pass this along,” he says, holding up his hand with my number.

As great as that would be, I can’t help hoping he decides to call me himself. “Don’t stab yourself with the cake knife, okay?”

He smiles.

I turn for the door, but before I step through, I look over my shoulder. “ ’Bye, Harrison.”

He nods as Nora closes the door behind us.

“What was that all about?” she asks.

“He just wanted to talk.”

“He paid two hundred dollars to
talk
to you?”

I shrug. “I guess.”

She scowls at me and shakes her head. “You must be one hell of a conversationalist.”

I head to the dressing room feeling so much lighter. I feel like all the tension from that last time we were together was eating me alive, and now that I’ve seen him again, and we’ve talked, that I can move on from whatever that was. Maybe that whole closure thing isn’t just a bad cliché.

B
UT THE NEXT
night, when I see Harrison giving me that liquefying gaze from a table near the back, I know nothing is closed. Because, at just the sight of him, things start happening in my body. So I pour it all into my dancing. My body moves to the music, trying to dispel all the desire—the aching need. As the crowd forms around my stage, I lose sight of Harrison. But I know he’s still there. I feel him in the way the air is electrified.

After shift, I’ve got four privates, and it’s pure hell as each one stalks through the door and isn’t Harrison.

The second to the last is an Asian-looking guy with pocked skin and a droopy right eyelid, and there’s something about the way he looks at me that totally creeps me out. “Mr. Chang is a VIP, Sam,” Nora tells me after she leads him in. “Give him what he paid for.”

I look at her with wide eyes and mutter, “What did he pay for?”

She rolls her eyes at me. “Just give him your best,” she says, and clicks the door closed.

What the hell?

The guy settles into the sofa, and I dance without looking at him. I’m counting songs in my head to keep track of the time, and by the fourth song I’m starting to feel a little better. He’s still creeping me out, but if he was going to try something, I think he would have done it already. So when, at the end of the fifth song, he stands and moves to the stereo, turning off the music, I sort of freak. I back toward the door, in easy reach of the knob.

“Take off your top,” he says in a choppy accent.

That’s all I have to hear before I’m out the door. Nora’s just coming out of the dressing room when I get to it.

I shove her back inside and close the door behind us. “That guy wanted me to take off my clothes.”

She blows out a slow breath. “I’ll take care of it. Just wait here.”

I sink against the dressing room door after she slips out, but when I hear Ben’s voice I crack it open and peek out in time to see him usher Creepy Asian Guy into his office.

“Let’s get this done before you sail,” he says just as the door clicks shut.

I pull the door closed and drop onto the sofa. I still have one more private, and if it’s not Harrison, I’m going to do some serious bodily damage to the poor bastard.

Nora pokes her head into the dressing room. “All clear. I’ll go get your next.”

I take a second to fix my makeup, then cross the hall to the VIP room and head to the stereo, turning up the music again.

“Hi, Sam.”

I spin and find Harrison just closing the door. His eyes give my body a long, slow caress before they rise to my face.

I’m shaking as I tip my head at the sofa. “Sit. I’m dancing for you tonight.”

He takes his beer to the sofa and sits as I turn up the music. I close my eyes for a second, trying to get the adrenaline pumping through my veins to settle, then start to sway my hips to the rhythm. I weave my fingers through my hair and let my body pulse to the beat, but I don’t turn to face him until I have the tidal wave of desire under control.

The air becomes static with a palpable electric charge, and when I turn to him, he’s got his arms spread over the back of the sofa, grasping the fabric as if he needs to hold on to keep himself seated. I dance closer and stop just in front of him, smoothing a hand down my body. I see him draw a breath and hold it as I let my fingertips slip beneath the low waistband of my shorts.