Striptease

Cookies

[Everleigh]

"What to wear.….What to wear….What do you wear when a guy asks you out on a date but you don't want to look like shit but you also don't want to look like a golddigger?"

I wondered aloud as I rifled through the clothes in my closet, despair eating away at my insides when I couldn't find one decent enough looking outfit that I could wear for my date tonight.

Plus, I didn't even realize just how many boring shirts I owned!

How was it even possible for someone to own as many plain white t-shirts as I did and still snag a man like Charlie?

And I didn't even have that many clothes!

My clothing options resembled that of my personality; Boring. Bland. Plain.

Sometimes I spruced it up with a little bit of color but that was about it. I wasn't the normal twenty-something year old who could go out partying and not having a care in the world who she took home that night or if she was going to catch an STD because she was dumb enough to have unprotected.

No, I clearly wasn't anything like that.

I was standoffish, guarded like Fort Knox around my mind and heart. I was protective of my friends and family, of myself to a certain extent when it came to certain strangers like handsy customers at the club.

I was tough, ruthless, brave, in a sense.

But that was what I could showcase on the outside.

On the inside, I was terrified.

Terrified I'd mess up with raising Teresa and she'd grow up to resent me and never speak to me again.

Afraid that I'd lose Mikayla once I admitted that I've been lying to her about Elodie not visiting me in awhile, that she wouldn't want to be around me anymore after finding out that I couldn't keep my drug addicted mother away from Teresa and I without getting the local authorities involved.

Afraid that I'd lose my apprenticeship and my only chance at ever making it out of the dirty business of stripping with my dignity intact.

Most of all though….I was scared that I'd lose myself in the process of bearing my true colors to Charlie Wylder.

Because once he found out what I was, a low-income parental figure to a little blind girl who could barely make ends meet and whose mother came around more often than not seeking the substance that could give her the only high that she needed, I knew, for sure, that he'd drop me faster then a burning hot potato.

Because he had no reason not to.

I was nobody.

Literally.

My life didn't even matter to my own mother so why would he care enough about it when she clearly didn't?

But as long as I could keep a grip on all of the hamster balls spinning in my life, as long as I didn't drop a plate from the twenty two million ones that I was juggling like a circus freak, then he could think that I was something beyond a simple paycheck.

That I wanted to be something more than just a girl stripping at a local club. I wanted to create my mark on this world, to be remembered even after I was long gone.

But right now, I was just a girl trying to not spill her guts and secrets to a guy on their first date and I was also terribly messing up my makeup in the process.

"You have got to be kidding me…"

Grumbling with annoyance at the fact that I couldn't manage to line under my eyes with the cheapest black eyeliner I could find at the drugstore that I've had for years since I wanted to "feel pretty" for once, I quickly rubbed the ruined streaks under my eyes away with my fingertips as I tried once more to achieve the perfect lined under eye look.