Play It Safe(59)

By the way, I discovered I had two talents.

I could play pool.

And I could strip.

That was to say, strip like Lash’s girls stripped.

I was the headliner of Lash’s Burlesque Show. Front row seats cost three hundred dollars. The back seats one hundred and fifty.

Lash had twenty girls.

But they all came to see me.

I knew this. Lash knew this. The girls knew this (one of the reasons why my one and only true friend in this world was Lash because even though they pretended, they all hated me behind my back).

Three hundred dollars for a front row and I danced two times during the show. Both times for five minutes, two of those minutes in nothing but sequined panties and spike-heeled f**k-me shoes with two huge, feathered fans held around me and no one ever saw a thing.

I had long legs, great hair, a firm, round ass and a pretty face but it wasn’t that.

The way I danced could make a man who’d depended on Viagra for a decade get hard.

So, clearly, the talents God bestowed on me led me to the path of my life.

I’d learned the hard way to follow and not veer off to try and find some ridiculous dream that included imperfect town squares and handsome cowboys with cute dimples but just go where life led me.

Even if that was a burlesque show run by a closeted g*y man.

I made serious cake. Lash paid me a mint. And he sent a driver to get me and take me home mainly because the losers in the audience often thought they could f**k with me in the parking lot or trail me home.

Brutus (not his name, what I nicknamed him, his real name was Freddie), my driver was two hundred, fifty pounds of black man on a six foot five inch frame.

The losers who trailed me home drove on by when Brutus got out to open my door.

I also got my own dressing room. This was because I was the headliner.

This was also because Lash knew his other girls secretly hated me.

It wasn’t a lavish dressing room with chaise lounges and silk screens.

But it was better than sitting with those bitches who were fake being nice to me.

Lash came up behind my chair and put his hands to my shoulders as I dropped the makeup brush and went for the sequins I’d stick around my eyes.

“Right, Ivey, I asked, you answered, you lied, I’ll ask again,” he said softly. “How’s my girl tonight?”

At his strange question and tone, my hands arrested and my eyes went to his in the mirror.

“I’m doing fine, Lash.”

He held my eyes in the mirror a beat.

Then he whispered, “It’s his birthday.”

My throat constricted.

That was Lash. Something like that, he wouldn’t forget.

Then again, the first one he lived through with me I got drunk, blathered out the whole story and ended the night sobbing in his arms.

So that kind of shit made you remember.

“I’m fine, honey,” I whispered back.

He continued to hold my gaze. Then he squeezed my shoulders. Then he dropped his handsome head and touched his beautiful lips to my shoulder.

Then he let me go and walking out, reminded me, “You’re on in ten minutes.”

“Right,” I said to his back.

He went through the door.

I looked at myself in the mirror.

God, seriously, I loved Lash.

Then I leaned forward and stuck sequins around my eyes.

* * * * *

I was three and half minutes into the dance.

I could hide the hard in my eyes and around my mouth with makeup and spotlights.

They weren’t looking anyway.

All they saw was hair and flesh and all they could take in was the way I moved.

I started in a bra, corset, panties and feathered fans. I had ten sets. Purple with hints of pink and pale pink fans. Emerald green with hints of peacock blue with baby blue fans. Shocking pink with hints of red and red fans.

It went on.

I loved my getups. They were the bomb. And they were the bomb because Lash laid out a wad to get me he best.

The corset went first. Then the bra went. That was when the fans came in handy.

It was all twirls, bends, deep squats, sticking out and swaying my ass slowly, fan flashes and come-hither looks that came with a come-hither smile and fake bedroom eyes that weren’t hard to affect mostly because the makeup did all the work.

The men ate it up.

Two dances, ten minutes, six nights a week and Lash paid me five hundred dollars a night.

The best gig ever.

I was whipping my fans back to front, torso bent slightly forward, head tipped back, lips parted, ends tipped up. I could feel my hair tumbling down my back, my ass pointed out and swinging slowly when my come-hither eyes moved through the tables at the side of the stage and I saw him.

Gray.

Gray.

My heart stopped beating and my eyes locked to his but I didn’t stop dancing.

Oh no.

The show must go on.

Even if the love of your life who crushed your heart who you hadn’t seen in three years was sitting by a stage while you were essentially doing a striptease on said stage.

He looked good. God, amazing. The same, a little older as he would look seeing as he was older, three years older.

Today.

He was sitting, lounged back, one arm out, forearm resting on the table, ankle resting on his opposite knee.

Yes, he looked amazing.