“Fuck off, Cole,” Seren grumbled, turning back on the couch, slamming herself down with a shake of her head. They never saw eye to eye, even if they managed to squash the animosity away for Leo.
“I wasn’t talking about you, troll,” Cole said as he strolled into the room. Without asking for permission, he scooped Leo out of Avery’s arms and wandered off toward his bedroom, cooing and hushing my son with no other word spoken.
It was fucking cute. I hated that I liked it so much.
Leo had two people in his life that could be a father figure. Avery and Cole. Together, they did a decent enough job. Cole bringing in that special Diaz grumpiness that we missed from Luca. Jesse was around often, but he maintained a distance his twin failed to. Around the same time things had exploded for Luca and me, Cole told me Jesse had ghosted. It hadn’t lasted long, but things had been distant between them ever since.
My heart constricted again. For some reason, lately I’d been feeling extra down. An ad for Spirit Halloween came on the TV as my ass hit the cushions. Ah yeah, fall time. The trees got all depressed and so did I.
Job number two. Grinding my pussy against a pole with heavy rock music playing while a crowd cheered me on. I’d never stopped stripping and dancing on stage, only when the bump made its late appearance and for six months after it while my body settled.
It paid well, and I enjoyed the release it gave me, the thrill. Gripping the pole, I tilted my torso back, letting my hair sway and my tits jut out. Despite the way Leo had ravaged through me, or maybe because of it, stripping gave me power over myself. Even with stretch marks and less firm boobs from the breastfeeding, the audience still hollered for me. There was nothing like it.
I wasn’t anyone’s mother when I danced. There were no battles about macaroni cheese for the third night in a row or a new aversion to bubbles in the bath to contend with. I just got to be. To feel the music and move.
The ribbon came down from the ceiling in a dramatic flourish, the music beating faster as I wrapped myself up in it, twisting and twirling in a way that was now so familiar.
I grinned when the audience gasped as I let go and rolled suddenly, but only the tips of my hair grazed the stage. The rest of me was on display, every inch under the spotlight as I rotated in a slow spin.
This was my goal, a future I envisioned. Teaching others strip aerial dancing. Sounded ridiculous written down, but I loved it. Using my skill and my need for easy cash to whip up something new. The few times I’d managed to get some of the other dancers that worked here up on the ribbon, it had looked sexy as fuck. I had videos of myself, too, Seren behind the lens muttering compliments every few seconds.
They made me smile, and I contemplated sending them to Luca just to screw with him, but never did. Assuming his number hadn’t changed, it still sat on my phone, taunting me on the occasion I scrolled past it. The photos remained filed away for me to stare at when I needed a self-esteem boost, the look in my eyes always enough to remind me I was okay. I was doing just fucking fine.
Tonight was doing a sufficient job on its own though, and as I began climbing the ribbon again, some of that heart squeeze let up.
I could convince myself it was getting easier.
Twenty Seven
Luca
Watchinghowshemovedon that stage fascinated me, even after all this time. Being here, in this club, was nothing new for me. I hadn’t missed a single one of her special performances in the two years she’d been doing them. She thought I was gone, I saw the sadness behind her eyes when she posted photos online, the way she watched Avery and my son together at the park. It was a wistfulness, a craving for it to be right, correct, whole.
I stayed in my familiar corner of the club, right by the door, watching her. It wasn’t true that you could sense someone’s gaze on you. Because her gaze had never locked with mine. She was oblivious.
The music shifted to something softer as she climbed that ribbon like a damn tree, wrapping the purple fabric around her ankles and thighs, falling into a move that looked impossible. Sexy. Her confidence had grown, her skill relaxed. Effortless.
The crowd gasped and whooped, murmurs of deviant satisfaction and how to buy her for the night making me tense my jaw. She didn’t do that. I wouldn’t have stayed in the shadows for a fucking second longer if she had. I held my fists at my side, trying to ignore the fuckhead in front of me guffawing with his buddy.
“You reckon I could bend her out of shape? Fuck her so good she gets stuck like that,” the slimy bastard said, the oil from his hair products sliding onto his forehead. A gut so bulging if he walked face first into a wall with an erection, his belly button would hit it first.
“You think she’d take us both at once?” his friend, with a slicked back, balding ponytail, laughed, almost knocking his beer over with the sheer humor he’d pushed out into the world. The fuckers were drunk as anything, swaying and shouting. The bouncers would be here soon to kick them out.
And I felt like an asshole standing in the shadows listening to it. Not doing a thing. They needed a fist to the face like I needed to breathe.
Zelda moved again, her body rolling with so much damn grace she looked made of water. I soaked her in, ignoring the fuckheads. I missed her. Not a month had gone by since she’d left that I hadn’t laid eyes on her, but it was never close enough. The urge to touch her, the phantom memories of her beneath my body, it was never satisfied.
I watched her bump grow, aching to touch it, to slide into her while her tits leaked everywhere. I saw her move into the place with her friends, the smile on her face becoming more real with each passing month. It wasn’t stalking. Just observation.
“Look at those tits, too, bet I could stretch them with my teeth ‘til she squealed…” Greasy Forehead chuckled to himself, his nasalled voice making my eyebrow twitch.
Zelda continued dancing, soaking up the attention. Far from this dank corner where the depraved hid.
It was getting harder not to touch her. Love on her. All of it. I lost it all the day Henry found us. My home, my friend, my company. The woman I figured out I fucking loved and had just screwed everything up with.
She left me, left us all, after I fought with her dad, after she saw the damage we would cause. The grief on her father’s face isn’t something anyone would soon forget. I didn’t blame her then, it was all fucked. I let her go. Gave her the space.
She looked happy now. It warmed me. Made me fucking angry, too. I was as screwed up as ever, just better at hiding it now.