Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Okay, fine. But if this goes sideways…”
“Nothing is going sideways. Not unless some guy has one of us pressed against the wall with a pervy grin on his face and his dick in his hand.”
Olive grabs the door handle and looks at me over her shoulder. When did my little sister get so damn confident? “Maybe try to breathe a little bit so you don’t look so uptight when we walk in.”
I mumble out, “Rude,” as we embark on an adventure I want no part of. It’s darker than I expect it to be when we walk inside and nothing at all like Lucy’s. Along the sides of the open space are booths and tables, in the center is one large rectangular runway with various poles spaced around it, and a bar at the far end. A pretty popular one by the looks of it. There are just asmany younger people as older, and the farther inside we get, the more the song pumping through the speaker hits me. I’ve never heard it before, but it’s seductive in that way that entices the dancers to sway their hips, keeping all eyes on them.
We find our way to the bar, my heart in my stomach. Nearly every stool is taken, but Olive squeezes close to the corner and looks down the bar top for a bartender. I’m pleasantly surprised how comfortable she seems since I’m still mildly freaking out. How is it that my baby sister seems older than me? How is she not freaking out right now?
I take in the establishment as she works her magic. The place is packed but not so much that you can’t squeeze behind chairs or make your way to the back of the building where the bathroom sign hovers above two doors next to a staircase that twists and follows the wall.
My eyes flick to the dark ceiling but instead of worrying too much about what could be happening upstairs, I take in the walls. There’s not a decoration in sight. No paintings or pictures of sexy women. It only amplifies the fact that we’re in a strip club.
Not far ahead, there are women sliding their bodies down poles in skimpy—but honestly sexy as hell—thongs. Two of the four girls aren’t wearing tops, their chests round and perky above thin waists and supple backsides.
Shelves of liquor line the walls behind the bar, and the two women bartenders work seamlessly, zipping from one customer to another in shirts that barely cover their boobs. I turn around at the same time one walks up to help Olive, her grin wide and charming as she wipes her hands on a towel before tossing it over her shoulder.
My sister leans in, says something I can’t make out then holds up two fingers.
The pretty bartender winks at her. I have no doubt Olive sizes her up—because hello, she’s gorgeous and who wouldn’t?—but before she walks off, Olive slips a card out of her clutch and that’s when it finally clicks. She’s giving her a fake ID, and I can’t believe I’m only realizing it now. How we shouldn’t even be here because she’s not old enough to legally drink. There’s also the fact that she’s on medication that shouldn’t be mixed with alcohol.
She twists around and hands me one of the shots the pretty bartender slides across the bar top. She clinks it against mine. “We’re going to pretend that for just onenight I can have this,” she says.
“Olive,” I warn, glancing around before saying in a low voice, “You’re not supposed to be drinking at all. Not with the antidepressants you’re taking.”
Her gaze darts off to the side, and she does this thing where her chin dips for half a second before she raises it and looks at me head on. “Actually…I stopped taking them.”
Wait…shestopped? A million questions buzz around me. My parents took Olive to the doctor after a boy convinced her she was something special just to turn around and make a laughingstock of her. She needed the meds to help her see the glass half full again when all she wanted to do was cry. I had no idea she was considering stopping or that she even had.
“Olive, you can’t juststoptaking medication like that. You have to wean yourself and then?—”
“Violet, relax,” she interrupts. “Everything is fine.I’mfine. I did what the doctor told me to do when I was ready to stop them.”
“But why didn’t you tell me? Do Mom and Dad know?”
She glances down at our shot glasses. “No, and I don’t want you telling them, either. I don’t want them to worry about mewhen I'm better, Violet.” She gives me a look that tells me I better not tattle. “I mean it.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you stop?” I ask.
“Because I feel better. The doctor told me that only I would know when I was ready. That no one else could decide it for me. It’s why I haven’t told anyone. I was weak for a short period of time, and I needed them, but I don’t anymore. I’m strong, and honestly, I just want to enjoy the night with my sister instead of talking about something that should stay in the past.”
“And then tomorrow you’re going to cut your fake ID in half?” I press my lips to my shot glass and down the liquid in a rush, breathing through the trail of fire it leaves in its path. Chills spread out over my arms, and I wince. “Oh my God, that’s awful.”
“Really? It’s my favorite.”
Olive guzzles it like a pro, and just like that we’re no longer focusing on how she made a huge decision, one that closes a door to her past and opens another to her future. One with more happiness and love and spirit. I look at her, taking in the way her bangs fall over her forehead and the blush on her cheeks that enhances her beauty. She’s right. We both deserve, for one night, to live in the moment and not let our pasts define us.
I glance back at the bartender who hovers at this side of the bar and lock every little emotion I’ve felt in the last few weeks behind a trapdoor. The liquor doesn’t taste that great, but just for a little while, we’ll stay. And then, we’ll leave.
“You’re serious?”I shout as loud as I can.
Twenty minutes after we got here, a few people at the bar vacated their stools and we stole them. There are guys on either side of us that we’ve been talking to. They’re not quite our age, the man to my right has a dusting of gray hairs in his beard and fine wrinkles that sit next to his gorgeous green eyes, but they’ve been decent so far and haven’t tried touching us inappropriately.
