Page 5 of Triple Play

Usually men take that as an opening—to tell me all the ways they’ll fuck me. To say how they’re gonna be the best I ever had, even as I’m counting the seconds left in the song.

John bites his lip. It’s hard to tell in the dim lighting, but his cheeks might darken slightly. “Yes,” he breathes. “Whatever you want.” As if he’s mine for the taking.

One song ends. Another comes on that vibrates the speakers in a deep melodic growl. It’s romantic or as romantic as a strip joint called the Ugly Duckling can get. I match my movements to its tempo, slower, slower, until it’s less like a grind and more like the two of us working in sync: the way a good dance attunes your body to a partner’s. The way good sex attunes your body to a partner’s.

Usually I train my gaze over the customer’s shoulder. John’s eyes are green, and they catch mine, and I’m breathing with him, and I can’t look away. The song slows. We’re barely moving. He traces a hand down my face—fingers at my cheek—and looks at me like he has a question on his tongue.

Kiss me, I think, louder. Something I shouldn’t want. Something I do.

Maybe it shows, because he pauses then gently but firmly pulls me off his lap.

For a few seconds, we both catch our breath. He parts his lips—oh, here it comes. I’m seeing someone. I can’t do this. Goodbye.

“Did you always want to be a dancer?” he asks.

That catches me off guard, even if it’s a normal question. Some guys need the lie of, Yeah, I’m doing this to pay my tuition, like they’re rescuing me even as they’re coming in their pants.

But John said dancer and not stripper. If this is the last time we see each other, what’s the harm in the truth? “Yes.” It comes out as breathless as I feel. “I wanted to be a ballerina.”

John studies me, like he’s reassessing my build—I’m short, heavier than I was when I seriously did ballet, wearing boots instead of open heels because ballet isn’t kind to your feet. “I could see that.”

It didn’t work out. Something I don’t need to say, because I wouldn’t be here if it did. Growing up, my parents told me if I made the smart choice—which for them was the safe choice—to go to college, to get my law degree, everything would work out how it should. Well I didn’t and it didn’t. Guess they were right. That’s too much to put on John, any night but especially tonight. So I settle for, “Thank you.”

“You like being on stage?” he asks.

“I do.”

“Huh.” He says it like he doesn’t understand that as a worldview. “I guess people don’t boo you, right?”

“Boo?” I laugh. “Not really. But, well—I’m not everyone’s type.”

He looks at me again, this time in surprise. Guys call me beautiful all the time—sometimes as a compliment, sometimes as an insult—but John’s forehead is pinched in genuine confusion. “De gustibus non est disputandum, I guess.”

I glance down at his work boots as if there’s been some mistake, because that sounded like Latin. “Wait, I think I know that one,” I say before he can translate. I wrack my brain for the vestiges of high school Latin—what I took because my parents told me classics majors had the highest rates of acceptance to law school, and didn’t I want to ensure my future success? I should know what that phase means, but of course, I don’t. Latin, atrophied like an unused muscle. I shake my head. “Never mind.”

“It means, in matters of taste, there can be no dispute. Even if…” John’s hand caps my shoulder, fingertips playing with the straps of my top. “Some dudes are idiots.”

“That I’ll drink to.” I raise my club soda and he taps his cup against it. He drinks, long and deep, like something is bothering him. Half this job is helping guys forget the world beyond the walls of this club. I could climb back in his lap, whisper things in his ear until he looked up at me with unrestrained lust.

“Everything okay?” I ask him, instead.

“Fuck.” He sets his beer down and pinches his nose with his hand. “Remember that promotion? I got it.”

I blink. So not a partner. A new job. “That’s good, right?”

He heaves a shrug. “It’s gonna mean a more public role—a really public role since I’ll be working in Boston and not Worcester. That town’s pretty unforgiving.”

I snort. Boston. Yeah, we’re Massholes. “We are honest and direct with our feedback.”

At least that gets him to laugh. “Well, I’m probably gonna get honest and direct feedback about my batting average.” He says it and then his eyes widen like he didn’t mean to.

So not an heir to a maple syrup fortune. An athlete. A baseball player. With his size, I would have assumed football. With the slight French flavoring his accent, it could have been hockey.

I’m also not surprised he kept it from me.

Professional athletes treat dancers one of two ways: you either know they’re an athlete within five seconds of meeting them or they get tightlipped like we’re using them for the money. As if they hadn’t tacitly agreed to be used for their money when they walked into a strip club.

Or a third option: how John’s looking at me in faintly pleased embarrassment.

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