~ Jules
Chapter One
I yank up the bustier that shows more boob than I’ve ever revealed in my life. “This uniform sucks.”
My best friend Cali peers innocently from across the aisle of the Blue Casino locker room. “You look good in that uniform. You should be thanking me.”
The plan after college is to work at Blue Casino and save up as much money as possible before graduate school in the fall. Cali says she didn’t know what the uniforms looked like, but she knew.
Cali grew up near the Lake Tahoe casinos. She could have warned me and I’d have chosen a different position, like, say, dealer. Instead, I became a cocktail waitress, convinced it would be less center-of-attention.
Given that my nipples are an inch from greeting the world, I’m thinking, not so incognito.
Cali’s been trying to get me back out there since I broke up with my cheating ex-boyfriend. I thought she meant emotionally, but Jesus, this is out there.
Waitresses and female dealers swarm the lockers, stripping and pulling on fresh uniforms allocated by the casino at the start of every shift. Some prepare to take to the casino floor; others are finished for the day and dressing for home.
The woman next to me shimmies into a gold lamé skinny dress and stilettos.
Clearly, some people have bigger plans than me tonight. I tug on my jeans and slip on black flats.
“Heads up,” Cali calls.
The device that tracks running distance flies through the air.
Cali had a two-second hankering for exercise this week. She ran a quarter of a mile and gave up. Apparently, she decided now was a good time to use her nonathletic skills to return my device.
It veers several feet to the right, and I lunge and flatten my stomach to the bench, catching it with my fingertips before it crashes to the ground.
I look up, exasperated. “You’re like two feet away. Were you even aiming for me?”
“What?” She blinks innocently. “I’m making sure your reflexes are in working order.” She shuts her locker and swings a low-slung purse over her shoulder. “How was your work night?”
I grab a few more items and close my locker as well. “They started calling me Snow White.”
No need to elaborate on who “they” are. While Cali lives the high life of a dealer in cushy training sessions, I’ve been slaving away, slinging drinks in three-inch heels and trying to keep up with the veteran waitresses. For some reason, they’ve chosen to haze me out of the dozen new seasonal waitresses.
Cali gazes up, her mouth twisting as if she’s actually considering the nickname.
I drop my voice as we pass workers on our way out of the casino’s basement. “I do not look like a princess.”
She pinches her thumb and forefinger together. “A little. But with a huge rack.”
I open the door to the casino floor and raise my voice to be heard above the clanging and buzzing of slots. The sound is only slightly below deafening levels at this time of night. “They’re not that big. I’m sporty. Athletes can’t have big boobs.”
She looks at me skeptically. “You need to be proud of those babies. Like me.” She grins and sticks out her Victoria’s Secret-enhanced breasts.
There’s a chance I inherited my rack, as Cali puts it, from my mother, who does have impressive boobs. I might also have inherited her looks, only her hair is a few shades lighter than my nearly black locks and she has true green eyes. Mine are hazel, less obvious. I like my eyes.
I’m sure the Snow White nickname has something to do with my dark hair and pale coloring. I’m equally certain the veteran waitresses think I’m young and naïve and not tough enough.
I deliver ten drinks to their twenty, because I can’t freakin’ find my customers. The crazy patrons move around the casino floor like they’re pollinating slot machines. I’m spatially oriented; if people aren’t where I left them, I can’t find them. So yes, some of the hazing is warranted. But if the other waitresses think I’m naïve, they don’t know me very well.
No one raised by Chantell Dubois could remain innocent. The woman changed her name to something that sounds like a French bordello, for Christ’s sake. I’m Genevieve, or Gen as my friends call me, but in spite of my mom’s fetish for anything French, I’ve kept her maiden name of Tierney—a hundred-percent Irish surname.
As much as my mom wishes it, there are no Frenchmen in our bloodline.
Technically, I could be French on my father’s side, but since I have no idea who he is, the point is moot.
