The Strip - Max

3 / Baby Steps

A little warning - this chapter includes a sex scene... the entire book will contain sex scenes. This one in particular might be a little... rough.

Experts would probably agree that a young teenage girl probably shouldn't spend significant portions of her time hanging out at a strip club or a bikini bar. Or any of her time, for that matter. I guess I didn't get the memo. I had abandoned the pretense and hassle of being locked out of the motel room and just found a place in the dressing room to spend at least one of my two nights in Malbec each week. I learned how to do hair and makeup, so it wasn't all just sitting around and getting dolled up with no place to go. I helped the girls. I felt like I belonged.

Megan tried to get afternoon shifts at Bunny's so I could hop off the school bus a block away from the bar and ride home with her after her shift ended. I would sit and do my homework in a corner table out of the way while I waited. Natalie picked up shifts whenever they were available, so she usually worked late on weekdays and weekends. Staff and patrons alike welcomed me and even offered up tidbits of advice for essays and assignments.

The only other place I spent long spreads of time was at school. Saved for a few friendly teachers and a nice old lady that worked in the office, it wasn't the most pleasant place to be. It didn't help that everyone knew where my aunt and cousin worked, and I was somehow a slut for being associated with them. Talia Jackman and her personality doppelganger, Margo Lindy, made sure to remind me of my place in the school's social structure. And at some point, in ninth grade, they discovered my mother's shadowed past and her road to an early death and added that to their tool kit along with a retracted news article that claimed my father's death was also a suicide. They were the untouchable darlings of the school, and I was just trash from a questionable family in Pikeville. Unwelcome.

Those experts can suck my ass. The only places where I felt like my life was worth something were those places I shouldn't have been.

"I'm working until close," Megan said as she collected my empty plate. "Ryder is going to give you and Natalie a ride home."

I looked across the lounge and saw Ryder with a few of his friends while my cousin strolled the stage in a tiny pink bikini. I could tell he was watching her. His head moved to track her position while the others laughed at something that had been said over cold beers and chicken wings. There was something about the way he watched Nat that made me jealous. I could look around the room and see a hundred eyes all locked on her body but there was something different about his. Two years of coy flirting hadn't seemed to turn his attention towards me, but I couldn't even understand why I wanted it in the first place.

The end of the evening came, and I had packed up my books and followed Natalie out to Ryder's truck. I swung open the door and slid across the bench to the middle position as I had done a thousand times before. Nat hopped in beside me as Ryder pulled open the driver's door. The seating arrangement had a purpose. Ryder's fingers would get to exploring Nat's thigh if there wasn't a chaperone present and positioned between them. It didn't stop anything from happening between them later on, but it ensured I would make it home before the naughtiness began.

"So, tell me," Ryder started, "Bridget, when are you going to start working at Bunny's?"

"I'm... not..." I stammered, feeling awkward about being the focus of his attention.

"She turned sixteen last week and Bunny has been on her full time about it," Natalie responded.

"I'm just not. I mean, look at you and the other girls. Why would anyone—"

"Shut the fuck up!" Nat roared. "You're gorgeous. She's gorgeous, isn't she, Ryder?"

Suddenly I felt empty. I waited for his reply and wished it would never come. I was so sure he would disagree, perhaps not directly with the words he would say, but the tone in which he might say them. A lie where the truth is exposed by body language and that hesitation that hangs heavy in the conversation while the respondent is trying to formulate a somewhat believable response. I was so sure he would stammer and stumble with a "ahhh, yeah, sure, she's ahhh, pretty," that I didn't actually hear the words he actually spoke.