Page 5 of Watch Me

What have I done?

“Fuck.”

I pick the pieces of my lingerie up from the floor and rescue my money purse from under the bench without looking at him, as if I can undo what happened if I move fast enough.

“Hey,” he says in a concerned voice.

But I can’t meet his eyes.

I just cheated on Tate, and that’s all I can think about.

I did exactly what he was afraid I would do—the one thing I kept telling him again and again I never would.

Stripping isn’t like prostitution.

How many times did I tell him that?

It’s just dancing. No touching.

“Hey,” says Nick again, a little louder.

“Sorry,” is all I can muster.

I slip through the curtain without looking back at him and rush past the bar, ignoring the looks as I scurry through the crowd naked, laser-focused on getting to the dressing room and away from what I’ve just done.

NICK

I’M RELIEVED TO arrive home to an empty house, a rare occurrence since Tate hardly ever goes out. Tonight, his car is not in the driveway, and there’s no sound of video-game gunfire ricocheting up through the floor when I walk in. I bought this house to get closer to my son, but right now, I’m grateful I won’t run into him.

My head is a mess, my thoughts too incoherent to hold a conversation, and my body is on fire, burning up with pornographic memories. After Mata Hari, or whatever the fuck her name is, left the booth, I sat there in shock before composing myself and walking out. I couldn’t speak to my friends or pretend to be interested in anything. I accepted another birthday shot, feigned drunkenness, called an Uber, and left.

The one thought that keeps running through my head over and over is simply: What the fuck?

I’ve been to strip clubs before, had lap dances before, and nothing has ever even come close to going off-script like this.

From the minute I saw her on stage, wrapping her body around the pole and contorting herself to a strangely gothic cover of an eighties pop song—all of it so completely different than what stripping is supposed to be—I was gobsmacked.

She was abnormally attractive, abnormally athletic, and abnormally inventive. Strip clubs are generic and tired, but David was certain I’d have a good time if I went, and he was right. She was exceptional, and I was instantly drawn to her.

But what happened in the booth took things to a whole new level. Some strippers go further than others, but none have ever guided my hand down to their pussy. None have ever had an orgasm on my lap. Every time my thoughts circle back to it, my balls contract, reminding me of how very close I came to coming myself, and how much I still need to, now.

I have to reassure myself that I didn’t do anything wrong, didn’t misread any signs. She’s the one who moved my hand, who pressed her pussy up against it, and dropped her head back over my shoulder as she rode my fingers. I have to reassure myself that there wasn’t a subtle cue I missed, some sign I ignored that made her run off afterward. From top to tail, everything about my experience with this girl was so strange and dreamlike that my mind is still making sense of it.

Lying down on my bed, I close my eyes, and I’m right there all over again, pressing my erection through my clothes against her ass, moving and swaying and grinding in unison with her. I start stroking myself, remembering the impossible softness of her skin, the sweet, wet dew of her pussy that I never washed off my hand.

The thought of the juices from her cunt on my fingers now, running up and down my shaft, makes a small moan escape my lips. What a strange girl. What a strange, wondrous, bewitching, fucking exquisite girl.

I imagine myself in that booth again, unzipping my pants this time, slamming my cock into her right there, feeling her quiver around me as she comes, and within seconds I’m squirting into my hand, breathing raggedly as my heart hammers with my release. I collapse against the cushions just as I hear the front door closing downstairs. Then I hear a sound that truly surprises me: the soft tinkle of a feminine laugh.

I hold my breath, listening intently, focusing my ears to pick up the tiniest of sounds in this large, airy house.

Tate is twenty-three years old, a handsome guy by anyone’s measure, and I’ve often wondered if he ever dates or has a girlfriend. In the six months we’ve been living together in this house, he’s hardly ever gone out. He spends his days sleeping and his nights playing those annoying fucking shoot-em-up video games.

The sounds subside, and I assume he’s brought her downstairs to his basement lair. I wonder if he’s cleaned it up for her. The fact that Tate has a girlfriend and I had no idea is just another reminder of how little I know him. There’s so much time that I’ve missed.

Not that I wanted to miss any of it. But when Rebecca and I broke up, it was easier to follow my job when it led me around the world—to lose myself in the illusion that I was making money for them so that Tate could have a better life—than to stay here and face the dissolution of our family. I believed that working hard was the best way for me be a father to him. That what I couldn’t give to him emotionally, I would make up for with opportunity and privilege.

It’s what I’ve always done, given gifts or money when I couldn’t be emotionally available. At least, that’s what Rebecca always said. She enjoyed painting me as some unfeeling brute, incapable of connecting on a human level, and so I left to give them space, and make money for Tate’s future.

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