Page 25 of Dust to Dust

It had been a hell of a day.

At the knock on the door, I frantically snatched my top off the floor. “Yes?”

Paula peeked her head in. After eyeing me curiously, a smile twitched at the corner of her lips. “I hear congratulations are in order.”

I bobbed my head. “Yes, Mr. Kavanaugh told me.”

“You can start tomorrow night.”

My mouth gaped open. “So soon?”

She laughed. “We don’t have a training program here, so there’s no reason not to get you in the rotation.”

“Right. Sure. I can totally be here tomorrow.”

“You can do your audition dance for the first week, and then we’ll talk about switching things up.”

I nodded. “Sounds good.”

“Great. You can get dressed now.”

“Thanks.”

As I started over to my bag, Paula said, “I think you’ll want to do that in the dressing room.”

“Oh, okay.”

She gave me a knowing smile. “We don’t have any mirrors in here, and you’ll want to fix your makeup.”

And with that, she left me to my mortification.

“Oh my God!” I cried at my reflection in the dressing room mirror.

To my horror, my lipstick was a smeared mess, not to mention my mussed hair. Paula probably thought from the looks of me that Quinn had fucked my brains out. Embarrassment filled me that she probably thought that’s why he’d given me the job.

When I made my way out into the main room of the club, I hightailed it over to the bar where I’d left Brooke. To my utter horror, a beer sat in front of her while a twenty-something looking guy chatted her up.

Or knowing Brooke, it was the other way around.

“Time to go,” I said as I walked up.

While Brooke nodded, the guy reached out for her hand. “Do you really have to go?”

At Brooke’s plastered-on smile, I realized she hadn’t truly been interested in him and was just passing time. “Yeah, I do. It was nice talking to you, and thanks for the beer.”

“Can I get your number?”

Brooke opened her mouth, but I interrupted her by saying, “Maybe in two years when she’s actually twenty-one and is using a real ID, not a fake one.”

With a snort, Brooke hopped off the stool and let me drag her off. “I can’t believe you were talking to him.”

She rolled her eyes. “Seriously? You took forever, and I was bored out of my mind. What else was I supposed to do?”

“Try not getting hit on by older men?”

“Whatever. He was harmless. So, how did it go?”

“I got the job.”

---