Drake was relentlessly hard on Logan. As a child, Logan often came with me to the bar after school or to my house to play. My mother drove him home for dinner but would stop at the top of the long driveway. She didn’t like making Logan walk, but she didn’t want to have any encounter with Drake, whom she called Demented Drake the Demon Dick, though never when Logan could hear.
Logan told me about his father when we were kids. His father was “mean” and “scary,” but his mother was “the best mom in the world.”
I was valedictorian of our high school; Logan was salutatorian. I’d heard Drake ripping Logan apart in the hallway of our school after the graduation ceremony. “How could you let that girl beat you? Did you deliberately get a bad grade so your white-trash girlfriend from a white-trash family could get first place? You did all this because of her?”
I blinked back tears. Not because he called me white trash, but because Logan had a father like Drake. Logan had been late to our graduation party, and when he came in, he’d looked exhausted and furious. He’d also had a black eye.
He hugged me tight and held me close, and I made sure he ate, and then we went off and hung out with our friends and danced all night.
I thought of Drake and shuddered. He was a horrible, dangerous, violent man. Luckily, he was in jail during most of Logan’s junior and senior year, then Logan left for college that summer and rarely lived at home again, so he didn’t have to endure his father’s insufferable nature.
It was my goal to never be in Drake’s presence. I felt this unbridled fury rise in my body even thinking of him and what he’d done.
And Logan didn’t even know.
“I’m almost done designing your T and A Christmas Burlesque Show dress,” Stacy told me. “Your mom is paying me.” Stacy is one of my favorite waitresses. She has a college degree from an East Coast fashion institute, and when she isn’t at the bar, she’s designing and sewing stylish, youthful, edgy clothes and selling them online. She works at the bar twenty-five hours a week so she will always have a stable budget and for the health and dental insurance.
“I’m sorry. What did you say, Stacy?” I was standing in my mom’s office, reading a payroll report. Camellia had put a small pink Christmas tree on a table with red lights. There was a definite bordello feel to it. The “star” on the top of the tree was a Vegas showgirl in high heels.
“I showed my ideas for your dress to Whiskey, and she chose the one she wants,” Stacy said.
“What?” I whirled toward her. “Oh, no. There’s a mistake. I’m not performing. I’m only organizing the Christmas show. I’m not in it.”
“Yes, you are,” she insisted, her eyebrows knitting together in confusion. “You and Logan. You’re dancing together in an act, so you need a dancing dress. Burlesque-style.”
“No. I don’t have any act with Logan.” I shook my head a little too vigorously. “Ouch.” I rubbed the back of my head. “I’m not dancing with him.”
“Oh, hell’s bells, Bellini.” She sighed and threw her hands in the air in frustration. She’s not known for her patience. She is an artist. “Yes, you are. Your mom said so.”
“My mom said so? What are you talking about? This is the first I’m hearing of it.”What in the world?
“It doesn’t matter!” Stacy literally stomped her foot.
I stared at her foot for a second. Did she actually do that? My jaw dropped. “It doesn’t matter that I didn’t agree to do an act with Logan in the T and A Christmas Burlesque show?”
“No.” She seemed cross.Quiteirritated. “Your mom said you and Logan have an act, you’re dancing together, and that’s that.”
“My mom did not tell me.”
“You’re not making any sense.” She looked genuinely perplexed.
“I mean, just because my mom said I’m in the burlesque show doesn’t mean that I am.”
Her eyes widened. “Yes, it does. Didn’t we go over this already? I feel like we’re not communicating, Bellini.” She sighed yet again. I must be absolutely exhausting. “You’ll like what I designed for you. It’ll emphasize that busty bust you try to hide and those long legs. Logan will like it for sure.” She winked at me. “For sure.”
“I don’t care if—”
“He’s hot,” she said, not listening to me at all. She had chosen an outfit for me with my mother, and that conversation was over. “I don’t think Logan dates, though.”
“I’m not dancing with Logan.”
“Yes, you are. Call your mother.” She rolled her eyes at me. “She’ll tell you and get things straightened out.” She sighed and shut the door, muttering something about how I was being “argumentative” and “difficult” and she hoped I was more “appreciative” of her efforts, and I was left sputtering.
I was dancing in an act with Logan for Lady Whiskey’s T and A Christmas Burlesque Show?
Please. No.
No.
