Thick Love Read online

“You okay?” one of them asked me, but I waved him off, sick of the smell of liquor and sweat, ready to be done with this entire night.

  I didn’t bother with a backward glance and skirted through the throng of people until I slipped into the dressing room.

  Summerland’s wasn’t the danger itself. Not when the bouncers kept drunks out of the backstage. The club was beautiful and elegant; burlesque at its finest, true artists at work. They needed warm bodies, choreographers, dancers. I needed some extra cash.

  Leann hadn’t liked it, as a boss or as a motherly friend, but she didn’t let my little moonlighting gig threaten my job as one of her dance instructors.

  Four months and not a problem. The Summerland dancers liked my choreography. The owner, Misty, was a ball buster, but nice enough to me. Ironside’s presence had never really made a lot of sense. I just didn’t get why Misty let someone like him move around this place like he owned it, but it wasn’t my problem, was it?

  Looking in the mirror in the empty dressing room, seeing myself hidden behind the costume mask with my lips and eyes painted to perfection, my dark hair hidden behind that tight, high-dollar wig and my corset only half-way fastened, I finally got the warning. Ironside had become my problem. He was dangerous and, worst of all, he was slick, playing on my need for some extra bank.

  “Three hundred bucks for a half an hour of your time. I hear you could use the extra bills.”

  “Who’d you hear that from?” I’d asked, trying to not sound as desperate as the man probably thought I was.

  He hadn’t bothered answering. A brush of his finger along the broken zipper of my hoodie and a quick glance at my worn and frayed shoes was answer enough.

  “You’re a beautiful girl, Aly, and we have a special guest tonight. Half an hour and maybe you won’t have to bust ass so hard this week.”

  It had been my aching feet and the looming college tuition I was saving for that had made the decision for me. Still, Ironside had asked me with a smirk, moving the toothpick around in the corner of his mouth. He’d sounded like a snake hissing his way through convincing me to nibble on the forbidden apple. But three hundred bucks? For thirty minutes? That kind of money meant I didn’t eat ramen every day. It meant I didn’t have to take so many shifts at the diner.

  I heard another voice then. This one wasn’t as sweet as my grann and there was no humor in the voice.

  Tu es un putain, it said. I was a whore.

  That was my father’s voice.

  Slut? Is that what I’d let Ironside turn me into? Is that what Ransom had done to me?

  When I stared back in the mirror I didn’t see the flash and pseudo beauty any more. I saw a desperate young woman. The mask caught on my hair when I pulled it off and the dark make-up smeared against the damp cloth I pulled off the table. This mask, this makeup, this costume, this… assumption—it wasn’t me. I knew who I was before Ironside had convinced me that I should use my body, just for a few minutes.

  No. That wasn’t me. That would never be me.

  I wasn’t the shamed daughter of Andre Rillieux who left her home, took her mother’s maiden name and tried to forget who her father expected her to be. That scared girl was gone. I’d left her behind. I’d remade myself in my own image.

  Nights at the diner, days teaching classes at the dance studio and the occasional odd job here and there kept my head above water. I rented the loft above the studio for very little. I took the bus because a car and insurance were impossible for me. I rarely went out. No big screen TV, no cable; no fancy computer, nothing but a Trac phone for me. Somehow, I managed. Plans, goals, intentions—my list was long and lengthy. I knew what I wanted and how I’d get there. Hiding away in shame and embarrassment wouldn’t do anything but slow me down.

  Finally, my face was clean, free from the stage make-up required for tonight’s performance, my brown hair once again loosened from that confining wig. Three faint freckles right on my cheek were visible and I stared at them, tried to focus on those spots to clear Ransom from my head.

  Damn. Of anyone in the world, why him?

  Earlier, Ironside had pulled me aside backstage, leered over my outfit, the expensive, blonde wig, the mask, the corset, and his approving smirk had done nothing but make me feel desperate for a hot shower.

  “This is good,” he’d said. “I think he’ll be into it.”

  “Who is this guy?”

  But when the toothpick-gnawing jackass pushed back the curtain and I saw Ransom standing near the chair, looking for all the world like he wanted to run out of the room, my mouth went dry. I must have made a noise, because Ironside let the curtain drop and looked hard at me.

  “What? You know him?” he’d asked.

  Did I know him? What a damn joke. Of course I knew him.

  Over a year of watching him disappear in shame and guilt. Pretending I didn’t see him when Tristian brought Ransom to the studio. Wondering how something that beautiful, that real, could be so lost.

  “Yeah, but trust me, he has no clue who I am.”

  I didn’t explain further to Ironside. He didn’t need to know anything about me, and I’d handled the dance for Ransom the same way I handled every difficult thing in my life—I deflected. I tried hard not to think about how different he looked, how those dark, haunted eyes seemed lighter, a bit freer tonight. I ignored the sensation of that gaze on my body as he watched me dance. He’d stared at me like I was something unreal—an impossible dream, some erotic nightmare come to life.

  After a year of making myself seem small and invisible, Ransom had finally seen me. At least, some burlesque version of me.

  He knew me, he just didn’t remember. Any memory of me, any recall that he’d scared my papa away with a shove into his old Chevy was lost somewhere in that haze Ransom lived in. When I passed him in the studio hallway or ran across him in the parking lot, he barely managed a momentary glance.

  Tonight, though, his eyes were wide open. It was the mask, the wig, the corset, I knew. He’d have never believed the girl in the tight bun, no makeup, wearing baggy t-shirts and worn dance pants was the same one who danced for him tonight.

  But then, Ransom had never seen me really dance. Tonight’s performance wasn’t me performing. Not like I did at the studio. Not like I did when it was just me and the music and the rare beauty of being lost and found all at once.

  The lights, the crowd, the illusion of the dance all called for a different Aly King. Up there on the stage I transformed, swung into a world where no one could touch me, where my body was just another part of the show, no more important than the beat of the music or the light fracturing the darkness.

  In front of him, hidden behind that mask, the music, the sensation conjured by the dance, the rhythm of that melody ripped away my reason. It was an echo of who I was, one that I’d never let anyone see but who nevertheless lurked below my carefully controlled exterior.

  That dance with Ransom, the way he touched me, the way he felt against me…it was an accident, like drinking too much wine at a wedding reception and going home with your cousin’s groomsman. Not anything you want to repeat, not anything you want anyone to ever know about.

  My skin was still flushed, leftover from my orgasm and the quick whip of pleasure Ransom had lit in my body. The vanity top in the dressing room felt cool on my skin as I rested my forehead against it and tried to rid my senses of the smell of him—the faint hint of his cologne that set my nose on fire, the memory of his large fingers over my arms, across my stomach.

  Me zanmi! Don’t start, King.

  In the locker Misty let me use, Ironside had left an envelope with what I guessed he thought was generous tip. Three-hundred and fifty dollars and the black business card with only a number. On the back, looped in thin, messy script was a note:

  Call if you need another job. Plenty of cash to be made.

  The borrowed corset landed on the dressing table, a casualty to my quick change, and I was back to myself, in my jeans and hoodie befor
e the dancers on the stage had begun kicking their legs in a synchronized line.

  Ironside’s envelope was in my back pocket, his card I left in the trashcan behind me. I’d take his money, once, for a few minutes alone with Ransom, but once was enough. I wouldn’t keep my head above water turning him down like that, but I damn sure wasn’t going to beat myself up for a one-time escapade while Timber Ironside watched through a darkened window.

  It wouldn’t happen again. Watching Ransom disappear, the sadness consuming him had been enough for me. Tonight had been a mistake. I didn’t want more of him; I didn’t even want what I’d just taken tonight. After all, with Ransom in school and playing ball, I’d probably never see him again. That made things easier.

  But things are never that easy, are they? You internally reconcile about how things must be, you make plans to accept reality and then boom! Something derails you. Or someone. When I thumbed through my text messages, I realized that avoiding Ransom was not going to be that easy. Typical. I could make grand plans, but seeing them through wasn’t how my life generally works.

  Instructors: Be at the studio tomorrow morning at 8. There are only a few months of preparation left until the Christmas recital.

  Volunteers: We have a planning meeting at two tomorrow. Do not be late! (This means you, Ransom)

  See you all soon,

  -Leann

  3

  “It was an accident.” I knew I was talking to a picture on my phone, I knew that wasn’t rational, but I had to tell her about what happened. Even if she couldn’t hear me, I had to confess.

  Three in the morning. My private room. The dancer filled my head. I could still smell her on my hands, could still feel the brush of her body against mine. My stomach cramped from the jerk it made when those wide hips, those plump curves had me coming.

  “I tried not to…”

  She wouldn’t hear my excuses. I knew that. The face remained unchanged, sad. It wouldn’t change and I didn’t expect it to. My phone felt cold in my hands, the screen fuzzy as I pled with that face.

  “It was an accident.” Because that’s what it had felt like. Thinking of the dancer, not Emily. Thinking of thick, blonde hair, not soft, fine ginger. I touched my chest, over my heart, precisely in the spot where I’d had Emily’s face tattooed. Still, that image hadn’t stopped me last night. I kept thinking of brown skin and wide hips, not faint freckles and long, pale legs. It had been wrong, touching myself back here in my room, thinking I’d never get hard. The lap dance had been a fluke. I couldn’t do it on my own, hadn’t been able to since…. But I tried, anyway. Stupid me. And now the guilt was overwhelming.

  Three in the morning and had I touched myself without thinking about punishment. I had touched myself because I wanted to, because the dancer had made me feel something other than shame. And I wanted to feel that again and again. I wanted that perfect stranger to make me feel it.

  “I didn’t mean it.”

  Emily wouldn’t answer. Silence, no matter how long I stared at the phone, expecting a reply and then, the worry took over, settled into my chest until I thought I would break, until I needed a release from the tension.

  “I didn’t mean it!” This time the shout came fast, desperate and leaned against the doorframe, giving up when she still wouldn’t answer. “I swear, I didn’t mean it,” I said, punching the beige walls, cracking the drywall and busting open my knuckles to free myself from the weight of my regret, my guilt, and now my shame.

  Do you ever mean anything?

  My parents’ house is on the lake, just forty-five minutes from New Orleans. Once, years ago, the lake house had been my mother’s prison. When I was a kid growing up, before my parents found each other again, when it was just me and my mom living in that tiny rental in Nashville, she’d have nightmares. They were usually loud, shook the walls of that two bedroom house. She’d scream and cry out as though she’d been through a war and not just endured the shitty childhood with an alcoholic mother who smacked her around when she didn’t do what she was told.

  Once, I asked her about those nightmares. Told her she reminded me of the soldiers I’d seen with PTSD on the news.

  “I didn’t return home a hero, Ransom. I barely survived my battle.”

  I’d never understood her, not really, not until my own battle begun right out on this lake.

  It was cooling, fall flirting on the breeze. The tall magnolia trees that lined the back side of the house swayed and twisted and from the crack in my window I could hear the slow rustle of the waves against the dock. I was procrastinating, biding my time as I always did when I came here. The longer I stayed away, the more patience, more nerve it took me just to leave my car. There were too many ghosts in that house. Too many memories that reminded me of who I’d been and what I’d done.

  “Brah!” the little voice yelled at me from the front door. It was the same small voice that hadn’t shut up since he started speaking at nine months old. He was smart, too talkative for a baby, but Koa still couldn’t pronounce my name right and Dad’s attempts at teaching him kaikua’ana for “brother” hadn’t been successful. “Brah” came out of his mouth easier than my mom liked, but there is no correcting my little brother. Nearly two years old and a small gap between his tiny front teeth, Koa stared at me with his hands on hips trying to pretend that our father wasn’t just in the doorway. “Br-ah!”

  He was bossier than my mom. Two and a half feet tall with a mop of curly black hair and that little shit ran the house like he owned it. Koa stomped his foot.

  “Yeah, buddy, I’m coming inside,” I promised him before he could finish the wobbly step he made away from the door. Dad had him by the waist of his tiny red shorts and off the ground before I shut the car door. In a few steps I was close enough to take Koa from Dad and bounce him in my arms. But right away I knew something was off—the little body was warm, and his eyes were unusually bright. I frowned up at my father. Kona shrugged, rubbing his eyes. “Fifteen month molars. Your mom says he’s getting them way too soon. It’s this whole thing.”

  “You got me.” The boy wiggled in my arms and I handed him back to my father. “This,” I said pointing to the tall curls looping down to nearly cover Koa’s eyes, “is getting ridiculous.”

  “Tell me about it.” Dad swept Koa’s bangs off his forehead. “We’ve been busy.”

  “I bet.” The little monster squirmed out of my father’s arms as we walked inside, skirting the litter of trucks and Legos that scattered here and there on the floor. “Real busy it looks like.”

  The place looked nothing like the sterile, empty house we’d moved into almost three years ago when we’d come home to settle my grandmother’s estate. My mother’s mother had been very-old-money rich, very pretentious and concerned with appearances. There hadn’t been any pictures of my mom in this house, and certainly none of me, since I’d never met the woman and she likely had no idea of my existence.

  Then mom and Kona reconnected, and soon after they got married, she was pregnant with the little monster currently digging through a plastic bin of Tonka trucks. I doubted my grandmother would have appreciated the comfortable clutter on her marble floors or how all of her wingbacks and ornate furniture had been strewn with SpongeBob plush toys and miniature footballs.

  The floor was covered—trucks, stuffed monkeys (his current obsession)—miniature hockey sticks and pee-wee football pads and about a dozen wooden and plastic blocks. I took the truck Koa handed me, frowning when he pulled on his ear. “You sure this is just his molars coming in?” Koa let me move his hair back, but wouldn’t sit on the leather sofa next to me.

  Dad slumped into the sofa cushions, looking tired, dusting flour from his wrinkled t-shirt. “Yeah. We took him in Friday. The doctor said it’s normal.”

  “Something you would know if you answered your phone.” Shit. My mother’s tone came into the room before she did. I didn’t like the sharpness in her voice. It told me I’d pissed her off yet again.

  “
Brah! Brah.” Those demanding swipes against my leg caught me off guard and I skirted the Tonka truck Koa kept offering me.

  “I got it. Here,” I said, handing Koa the dinosaur that was digging into my back between the cushions. Again he pulled on his ear and I felt useless watching him wobble out of the room and into the small play area that had taken over the dining room.

  My mother finally appeared, looking miserable and swollen, and more tired than my father even though he was the one who he seemed ready to nod off next to me on the sofa.

  Still, she was beautiful. There were shadows under her bright blue eyes and her chestnut hair was longer, fell past her waist in a thick braid and thin wisps of hair stood out around her face. But her cheekbones were still high and arched, her fine, thin bones giving her the look of a Lady and not the bad ass musician she’d become.

  “Mom?” I met her in the middle of the room, attempted to grab the plates in her hands. “You actually cooked something for lunch?” The look she gave me was cool and annoyed, but I ignored it, fully aware that you should never, ever say anything stupid to pregnant women, like “hello” or “how are you?” Especially if it’s anything to do with their weight, their looks in general or them being incapable of doing anything at all. In fact, it’s a general rule of thumb, so I’d discovered, not to say anything but “you look so beautiful” or “you can’t even tell you’re pregnant” to them.

  “I mean, should you be doing all that?”

  But, I didn’t always follow my own advice.

  “I’m not helpless, Ransom. I’m pregnant.” She refused to relinquish that tight hold on the plates and moved around me, using her protruding stomach to push me to the side.

  “Very pregnant.” I mumbled, stepping out of her way.

  “What does that mean?” My mother had the ears of a wolf and could level even the biggest bully with one glare. I was on the receiving end of that glare and despite how annoyed she was with me—I had no clue what sin I’d committed now—I gave her a big smile. It matched the one beaming on the sofa, the one attached to my smug, tired father as he watched Koa playing.