Stella leans close to me and says very loudly, “We mean bitch as a term of endearment. Not an insult.” She shakes her head and sighs. “Can you chill out with the new girl, Pen?”
Penny shrugs and tosses the butter on the counter. “What’s your name, new girl?”
I tell her, assuming she either didn’t hear it or wasn’t paying attention when I introduced myself to Stella.
Penny cocks a brow at me. “That’s a real innocent name for a bitch with a body like that.” She looks me over. “If Shadow gets tired of you, make sure you come talk to me.”
She winks, and the other women whoop and laugh.
“Penny’s an equal opportunity fuck,” Stella explains with a smile. “And one of the most decent bitches you’ll ever meet.”
She motions for me to follow her, so I join Jackie, Penny, and Stella behind the counter.
“We got twenty hungry bikers to feed and, what, twelve girls?” Stella counts on her fingers. “Wait, where’s Bailey?”
The women start talking about who slept with whom last night, who is showering, who’s still sleeping off the hangover from last night’s party.
“Cook like you’re cooking for an army,” Stella says, shaking her head. “Storm’ll pass through by tomorrow and the guys will shop, so anything in here is fair game.”
I can see that the pancake situation is not going well, so I offer to help.
“Fuck, please.” One of the women, whose name I think is Cammy, hands me a spatula. “I’m dying for a smoke. It’s all you, babe.”
She leaves me with a bowl that looks like it has a gallon of pancake batter in it. I take my place in front of the stovetop, where three misshapen pancakes are burning on a massive griddle. I gently scrape off the ruined ones and set them on a paper towel that I plan to discreetly throw away as soon as they’re cool.
I test the thickness of the batter, add a little more milk from the fridge to thin it, and then ladle out five perfectly round pancakes. The women all chatter and laugh as I watch for bubbles to form, and even though I have no idea who they are talking about, I don’t feel excluded. I just sort of fit here.
I flip the pancakes when the bubbles on one side start to pop, and I turn back to make sure there is a baking sheet in the oven so I can keep the finished pancakes warm while I cook another batch.
One oven has sheet after sheet of bacon in it, but the other is set to a warming temp. I add what I’ve cooked to the lopsided stack, and before I know it, Stella has her arm around me and she’s chatting at me like she’s known me forever.
“So, was that your first time with a twelve-gauge?”
I look at her, confused. “Twelve-gauge?”
The women in the kitchen burst out laughing. Stella picks up a banana from a bowl of fruit on the counter, slides her index finger underneath it, and wiggles it suggestively. I immediately realize she’s referring to Shadow’s penis piercing.
I flush and shake my head. “I don’t know what that means…”
“The piercing.” Stella hooks an arm over my shoulder. “Gauge is the size, babe. It’s how thick the jewelry is.” She touches the tip of her index finger to her thumb to make a circle. “Bigger hole in the body fits bigger jewelry. Shadow’s got a twelve-gauge in his pants. I’m not saying I’ve seen it, but let’s just say, I’ve heard about it.”
The whoops and laughter from the women take over the kitchen, but it feels…I don’t know…inclusive. Like they are laughing with me, not at me. I blush hard because they all seem to know—or at least assume—what happened with Shadow and me. “Okay, then I guess it is my first time with a twelve-gauge.”
I know I’ve just admitted the truth to a room full of strange women, but I don’t know. I’ve seen half of them naked and watched a couple of them actually being intimate with the guys in this club. Admitting I’ve seen Shadow’s piercing feels almost modest by comparison.
“Frenum…” Cammy practically purrs yet another word I don’t understand. She shivers. “I dated a dude in college who—” she takes the banana from Stella and pretends to stab her finger right through the middle of the fruit “—who had his junk itself pierced straight through.” She shakes her head and makes a sour face. “He had to sit to pee for months until he figured out how to not spray piss everywhere.”
“Prince Alberts freak me out.” Another woman whose name I don’t know sniffs and shakes her head. “Shadow’s is classy.”
I’ve never considered a piercing classy before, but then I also never considered that some of these women also went to college.
“Where did you go to school?” I ask, slipping another perfect stack of pancakes into the oven.
By the time I’ve cooked the entire bowl of batter, I’ve learned that three of the women have really great jobs. Stella isn’t just the club’s bartender. She’s a bookkeeper who owns her own business. Cammy is a paralegal at a law firm that specializes in divorces, and one of the other women is a therapist. A couple of the girls are waitresses, and one works at a car dealership. These women are smart, interesting, and they have jobs and lives outside of the club. But they all share one thing in common.
“We like to party,” Stella says. “And there’s no place better than here. The guys are generous, and there is a clear pecking order. It’s like being part of the popular group in high school. You know who’s who and what’s what. If the guys accept you, you drink and party for free. There’s always somebody looking for a no-strings-attached good time, and if things get more serious…” She shrugs. “Some of us want this life for the long run. I don’t think Shadow’s the settle-down type, but there’s nobody here who’ll show you a better time.”
My stomach flips over when she says settle down. Why would I even think about such a thing? It’s obvious that we’re opposites—although, based on everything the club girls are saying, maybe Shadow and I aren’t that different after all.
