Read Big Brother Billionaire (Part One) Online
Authors: Lexie Ray
Big Brother Billionaire (Part One)
BIG BROTHER BILLIONAIRE
Part 1 of 3
L E X I E R A Y
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Dear Parker,
Life doesn’t have meaning when I don’t have you in my arms. Waking up is the cruelest moment of my day because I know that you’re not here with me. Going to sleep at the end of the day is almost as bad because I can’t stop dreaming of you. We’re together all night long, but only in my head. In the morning, I’m equally comforted and devastated.
I miss you, Parker, so much. I hate being away from you. This isn’t fair. I know you’re suffering as much as I am. Write to me. They can’t take that away from us, at least.
I love you.
The best shows didn’t let the audience see the wires behind the high-flying acts. Instead, each eager set of eyes was always exactly where it was meant to be: on the figure highlighted by the spotlight. The performer of the moment was one tiny cog in the enormous and intricate machine of the whole operation, but the audience didn’t need to know that.
They just needed to keep their eyes on the prize and let me work the magic behind the scenes.
The prize was the very magical Maven, gyrating and shimmying to the beat of the song she’d chosen at the beginning of her shift. She’d given that song to Sol, my manager, and Sol had queued it up, coordinating the lights to go along with it.
To satisfy the audience’s other needs, waitresses dressed in demure black dresses worked discreetly around the room, taking care not to distract from Maven, who was swinging dizzyingly around the pole. All eyes were on Maven, willing her to never stop spinning, to never come back down to Earth, to continue to defy gravity and other laws of physics with her acrobatics.
Yes, all eyes were on her, as they should be, except for mine.
I trusted Maven not to hit the ground with a splat, to continue to hold the audience’s attention.
I trusted Sol to man the controls with ease and seamless flow, ensuring no interruption to the show.
I trusted the bartenders to continue making the right drinks, the waitresses to deliver the beverages, the audience to continue consuming the cocktails and beers, and the bouncers roaming the floors to recognize when someone was getting out of line and to hustle the patron out quickly and efficiently without distracting too much from the show.
The show was everything, and everything supported the show—from the girls who cleaned at the beginning of the day to make sure everything was ready, to me, poring over the receipts and records at the end of the night, making sure everything was worth it.
This was my club. It had been my club for years. Things went wrong, sure, as all things are meant to sometimes. However, I always knew how to make them right again. There was no problem I couldn’t solve, no part of the machine I couldn’t quickly tinker with in order to make it run properly again.
I lived and breathed this club. I had poured all of my resources into it, nurtured it, fed and watered it, and made it grow, and it had grown fruit that had surprised even me.
When I started working here during what seemed like a different lifetime, I’d expected the paycheck to at least help me get by.
Now, though, the club had granted me a more than comfortable lifestyle, one that most people would never know and enjoy. I’d been careful. I’d made sacrifices. I’d been hard on my employees.
Through all of that, the club had succeeded. It had been successful beyond my wildest dreams. It should’ve made me happy. No, that wasn’t fair. It did make me happy. It was like a child and a partner all rolled up into one. I felt closer to this place than I did most human beings.
It just wasn’t the same, I supposed, as actually having someone to share all this success with. I didn’t have anyone to go home to and tell how good the day had been to us.
There had been employees over the year, of course, whom I’d felt affectionate enough toward to enjoy the mutual success of this place. If you understood how to work it, the club could be so good to you.
Faith had been one of my brightest stars here. She’d taught herself how to work the pole in mind-blowing ways—scaling to the very top, spinning around, and striking impossible poses that made the audience howl with pleasure and disbelief.
The special thing about Faith, however, was that she hadn’t stopped there, hadn’t been satisfied to be the best. She started teaching her moves to fellow dancers, started taking a few under her wing, showing them what it was to be successful. If she had been interested in staying on here, she would’ve been my first choice for manager. She had everything necessary to be a good one—a desire to succeed, a thirst to learn, and an eagerness to impart wisdom so that others could be successful, too.
Too often, though, love took my best workers away from me.
Faith left the fold to be with the man she loved, and the protégés she trained continued to be my moneymakers, one in particular. I wished Faith could continue working here, but she never belonged. I recognized that from the beginning and understood the desperation that had driven her into my employment.
What I would always be thankful to her for, however, was the trail of successes she left behind, the people she led to great things.
“Last call, Parker. Can I get you anything from the bar?”
I blinked a couple of times, happy to be dragged from my ruminations and back into the frantic but comforting pace of the present. I hated to dwell on things that had already happened, but it was becoming easier and easier to slip into my memories. I hoped that wasn’t a sign that I was getting old.
“Thank you, Sol, but no,” I said, pointing at my practically full cocktail that was sweating beads of condensation on its napkin. “And it’s not your job to keep me soused. Where’s Marnie?”
“I cut her earlier,” Sol said, glancing at a clipboard she’d had tucked beneath her arm. “She wasn’t feeling well, and she didn’t have that many tables open. It was easy to divide them between Claire and Jessica.”
“Fair enough.” It had been a good decision—one Sol would’ve asked me about before making just a few months prior. Instead, she’d taken the initiative to pluck out a weak cog and cobble together a workaround to ensure the machine continued to chug. That was good. It showed me she was gaining confidence.
“Would you like me to do the books tonight and lock up?” she asked, returning the clipboard to under her arm.
“No, no,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll take care of all that.”
“Are you sure?” Sol eyed me critically. “With respect, you look like you could use some rest.”
“That’s just a lazy way of telling me I look old and shitty,” I said mildly. “And you can’t just tack on ‘with respect’ to anything and think you can get away with it.”
Sol frowned. “Sorry. Jennet told me it was the best way to get away with saying offensive things.”
I wanted to laugh, but I kept my mouth in a straight line. Laughing would give me the wrinkles I was trying to avoid.
“Are you telling me that you’re trusting Jennet on lessons in manners?” I asked, unable to keep one corner of my mouth from turning upward. That probably cost me fifty dollars in expensive serums and creams.
Sol’s frown could now be classified as a scowl, but her smooth skin would resist wrinkles for years. “Good point.”
Jennet had been Faith’s roommate—another bright light Faith had introduced to this club. I’d taken her on as a part-time DJ, and she’d excelled at it, even dealing with a drunk and unruly customer at one point. She’d been another one taken away by love, however, and I’d recently attended her fairy tale wedding.
I wondered why Sol stuck with this. She was happy with Xander, her boyfriend, and he made no qualms about her working here. The club had been where they’d met, after all, and it held a special place in their lives. But would the day arrive when he’d ask her to move on, to do something different for the sake of his pride? I hoped not. Sol was too good to lose.
“I’m fine to stay here, as always,” I said. “I’m sure you have plans with Xander, after all. No need to keep him waiting when I’m more than capable of closing up.”
“I wasn’t trying to suggest you’re not capable,” Sol argued, and I had to again fight a sappy smile. Sol had been so meek, so shy when she’d first started working. She’d been Faith’s best and most devoted student.
It had been a pleasure watching her become more confident, even as she had to fight for things no person should ever have to fight for—like being able to live in this country when her life was in danger in the home she’d fled. The fact that she would contradict me over something now showed me how far she’d come.
She was probably ready. I was the one who wasn’t.
“I know you weren’t,” I said, shaking my head at her. “But go. Leave early for once. Enjoy the time you have with Xander.”
I’d bet anything on the fact that Sol didn’t realize she brightened every time someone mentioned that name. It did things to my heart I didn’t like to admit.
“If you insist,” Sol said finally, feigning grumpiness that I didn’t believe for a second. She was good at this, but the long and strange hours could wear on a person—and all of her relationships outside of the club. It was why so many of the girls here were friends and spent time together socially when they weren’t working. It was easier to maintain a sisterhood and friendships with people who stayed up at all hours rather than those who had to wake up to work a regular nine to five.
The last girl performed, the music shut down, and the bouncers encouraged lingering customers to weave their way toward the door. The lights came up, and the cleaning crew started picking across the tables and carpets, removing all signs that the customers had been there, emptying ashtrays into garbage cans and garbage cans into the dumpster out back.
I took a sip of my cocktail and grimaced, realizing I’d let it sit for so long that it had gone warm.
Rising from the table where I’d watched all the action, I walked to the office, my heels hurting me more than they should, making me contemplate buying something not quite as high. I shook my mind free from that thought. Three-inch heels would turn into two-inch heels would turn into flats would turn into orthopedic loafers and a cane. I wasn’t ready to wither away, and the shoes would be the first white flag waved to the march of time.
Still, I slipped them off and let my stocking-encased feet rest once they were hidden beneath my desk. Sol had slipped all the cash from the registers into a single bag for me and left it here, along with all of the receipts of the night. I tried to imagine her in this chair, scrutinizing these numbers and analyzing what bottles to buy, what bottles to push, which waitresses to work each section, what was giving us the best profits.
It was surprisingly painful to imagine. I wasn’t anywhere near ready to let go of this place. I could let it go, financially. I didn’t need it like I used to need it. Now, my need was more of an addiction than anything. I needed to be here, needed to be an essential cog in the machine.
I was nothing without the machine. The world was too big and lonely without it, and I had too many memories if I couldn’t immerse myself in this work.
I needed it and yet…I was grooming Sol specifically so I could let this place go. If she didn’t already realize it, I was sure the idea was starting to grow in her mind. I was giving her more responsibilities than I’d given anyone. She deserved the riches that this club had granted me. If I could continue to pay it forward, maybe I could find a way forward in my own life.
I’d made so many mistakes that I was beginning to wonder if there was still a way forward.
Or did the best of times lie behind me?
I shook myself. It wasn’t like me to be so indecisive, so unsure of myself, so…maudlin. I clicked on the desk lamp and flooded the surface of my workspace with warm yellow light. I rummaged around the top drawer until I located a pair of glasses; I didn’t like to admit needing them to read the receipts.
Then, it was blissfully mindless math. It required all of my focus, giving me a blessed respite from all of my errant thoughts. Math was so simple. There weren’t any hidden messages here, no regrets, just addition and subtraction.
However, there was always the moment when I’d tallied the last figures, written the profits down in the ledger, packed up the money for delivery to the bank on Friday, and was forced to face the fact that it was time to leave, time for the machine to rumble to a gentle halt until opening the next afternoon.
It was my least favorite time of the day.
I knew that most of the girls looked forward to the end of their shift. They were eager to spend the money they’d earned on food and drink and bills and whatever else, eager to go home to the people who loved them.
I loved this club and loved my home, but I didn’t love the silence of everything, of locking up one empty place only to unlock another empty place when I reached the condo.
I never meant to be ungrateful. The condo was amazing, something I’d worked for all my life. I’d endured the cockroach infestations of dilapidated studio apartments in parts of Miami I didn’t feel safe in at night. I was living the American dream, the one where it didn’t matter where you started from—if you worked hard enough, you’d eventually make it.
That was the tricky part, though, the idea of making it. What was the point of a life where you could sigh contentedly, lean back, pat your stomach, and decide you’d had enough, that you were satisfied?
