“Did you go out after you left?” she asks, fussing with her wig as usual.
“Yeah, Mila. Did you go out?” Rachel asks, making no effort to hide the fact that she’s been texting Brynn non-stop.
“I did,” I say.
“With whom?” Lainey asks.
“Yeah. With whom?” Rachel parrots.
I smile up at her, though it’s not a friendly smile, and then look over at Lainey. “Lain, will you help me grab some more wine from the back?” I ask, making it very obvious that Rachel isn’t welcome. I half expect her to follow until a couple of guys walk in, heading straight for her section, and she has no choice but to stay. I can’t help but smirk at that.
They’re all the same. Rachel, Brynn, and Amanda. Girls who peaked in high school and have been riding the wave ever since. In a place like this, where shiny looks and fluttering laughs are everything, they can just about pretend that’s the way life works. I would know; I used to be like them. One of them. But my life had a way of humbling that part of me. My dreams were a tier higher than waitress with the highest cut skirt and the most dollar bills stuffed in her bra. Yet here I am, all the same. Life is funny like that, though I’d say it’s sense of humor is a little dark.
“Okay, start at the beginning,” Lainey says as soon as the cellar door is closed. “What happened after I left? I was going to give you a ride home when I realized you were walking, but I didn’t see you and you didn’t answer your phone. Honestly, I was a little worried.”
“So Niko asked me to stay after,” I tell her, keeping my voice low even though the room is sealed.
“God, what for? He didn’t have you shining silverware, did he? Because it’s Rachel’s turn to do that, but she always finds a way out of it.”
“No, uh, he needed me on inventory….” I say and wait to see what her reaction is.
“Niko askedyouto doinventory?” she asks. By the way she says it, I know she knows what inventory is. “That’s wild. Brynn and Rachel are the only ones from the Cockpit that Niko cross-trains forinventory. How did you get so lucky?”
“So you know about it?” I lower my voice even more. “About the…fight ring?” I whisper.
She nods with a smile. “Oh, sure, everyone knows about it.” Lainey grabs a couple of bottles off the rack.
“So why didn’t I know about it?” I ask.
“Because we don’t talk about it. It’s illegal, you know? The way they do it anyway. But you’re serious? He asked you?”
“How could I be lying about something I didn’t know about?” I ask.
“So what was it like?” she pressed, scratching under her wig.
I think about it for a moment; the noise and lights and energy all pouring back into my mind. It’s fresh because I haven’t slept. “Loud. Fast. Kind of scary,” I admit.
“I heard those girls make bank,” she says, checking the list and grabbing another bottle. “Three times what we do.”
“I heard that too,” I mumble as I count how much prosecco we have. This place may be marketed for men, but the women those men bring in like their mimosas.
“What do you mean, heard it? You didn’t do well?” she asks.
“I wasn’t there long enough to do well. I spilled a drink on one of the fighter’s laps and he lost his shit.”
“Shut up!” she says, both mortified and enthralled. “What did he do?”
“He grabbed me,” I say.
“Oh my god. Then what?”
“And then one of the guys in the ring hopped out and pulled me away from him. They almost got into a fight right there in the middle of the high tops.”
“God, you really do have all the fun,” Lainey says, shaking her head. “What was he like? The guy that saved you, I mean? I heard they’re rough.”
I think about what I want to say. I am bursting at the seams to tell someone what happened last night. Especially since the star of the story was such a wet mop earlier today.
“He was…unexpected,” I tell her, checking my watch. We still have thirty minutes before we open.
