luxe (sebastian stan)

Two

By the next night, the encounter with the man was already out of my mind. There were so many creeps that wanted to know the girls' names that they were hardly memorable. The only thing that really stuck out from the others was how high strung I was that night and how dangerously attractive the man was. There was no way those two things should go together. There was no way I could be attracted to a man that forced every stop sign in my body to tell me no, but thank God I know how to listen to myself.

We didn't get home from the shift until 4 in the morning last night and by the time we returned, Vanna walked lazily to the couch and fell on it, immediately going to sleep. Being the one that was still awake but barely, I peeled her eyelashes off, grabbed a baby wipe from the bathroom and wiped off her makeup before I proceeded to take a shower and get ready for bed. Once I returned to the living room dressed in sweatpants and a hoodie, I took a blanket out of the coat closet and draped it over Vanna so she wouldn't get cold. Call it an act of love, but it was more or less so that she wouldn't gripe about being freezing when she woke up.

"Morning, princess," I said as I made eggs the next afternoon and watched amusedly as Vanna shuffled over to the kitchen table, "How was your night?" Vanna made a grumbling sort of sound before putting her head down on the table, "I'm so fucking sore." As I planned, the eggs were done when the toaster ejected the bread, so I plucked the bread from the toaster and made an egg sandwich. Carrying the dish over to the table and sliding it to Vanna, I patted her back and said, "The massage gun should be coming in tomorrow so you should be able to work out those charlie horses soon." She made another grumbling noise before sitting up and eating the egg sandwich. "How do you make an egg sandwich taste like an orgasm?" Vanna asked as she took another bite. "Because it's made with love," I said as I made myself an egg sandwich and sat down at the table with her.

Our day before going to work was uneventful, just the usual two hour nap and an attempt at yoga before giving up and putting on TV. Did I do the stretches right? Probably not, but damn I felt limber. We clocked in at the usual time and Vanna went to the locker room to go prepare for the night while I went to the bar with Ruben and helped him get ready.

"Abram's late," I noted and Ruben scoffed. "Abram's always late." I rolled my eyes, "Abram's late for Abram, dumbass." Ruben threw me a rag and I began to wipe down the bar. "He said he wasn't coming in until later tonight. Apparently he's got some meeting he needs to get dolled up for. Even asked me to fetch the fancy champagne out of the back." "Ooh, is this meeting with a lady?" I joked as I left the bar and began setting up tables. "No idea," Ruben said, "He was being weirdly secretive about it. Like he thinks we don't know about his secret family."

The sound that escaped me was horrendous. I turned to face Ruben, astonishment illustrated on my face, "He thinks we don't notice when someone who is not Gwen is sucking on his neck nearly every night?" "That or he doesn't give a fuck." "I'm gonna have to believe the latter. I refuse to Abram's that stupid," I shook my head and resumed setting up the tables before rejoining Ruben at the bar for the shift.

Unsurprisingly, the club was packed tonight. Considering it was the weekend, none of us were surprised. A couple of bachelor parties came in and requested private dances for their grooms to be, which made me internally gag. I never understood the whole stripper for bachelor party thing. It just felt like cheating without doing the action, but who was I to judge? I'm the one making money off of their infidelity.

At one point in the night, we were out of cranberry juice for the cranberry vodkas, and when I checked the back there was no juice to be seen. "Hey, I gotta talk to Abram," I shouted at Ruben over the music. "What?" he shouted back, "You can't, he's in his meeting." "I'll just play dumb," I winked before leaving the bar and heading to Abram's office. Instead of knocking and allowing Abram the chance to tell me to go away, I opened the door and interrupted Abram's meeting. "Abram! I'm so sorry, I didn't know-" as I apologized to Abram, I saw who he was talking with: the man from last night. "Why the fuck are you here?" I basically shouted at him, entirely forgetting Abram and the reason I came in.