Damaged Goods

by Nicole Williams

  “What? I’m a business man first and a rule enforcer second. I’d be crazy to fire my highest-paid and most-sought-after dancer.” Jake smiled a very similar one to the day we’d met in the diner and he’d slipped me his business card. “But I know when a girl’s a breath away from giving me her resignation . . . and even though you might be three or four away, I always knew you’d never stay long. I’ve known from your first night that you were here to do what you had to, not because you actually enjoyed the job.” I opened my mouth to interrupt, but Jake lifted his hand. “It’s okay, Liv. No excuses, explanations, or even apologies required. The businessman inside me is sad to see you go, but the repressed feminist is screaming, ‘You go, girl.’”

  Either his words or the way he’d said them or the hand motions he’d made along with them, or all of those things combined, made me smile. “I knew you were a closet feminist all along. Now could you imagine that story?” I lowered my voice a few notes and held an imaginary microphone to my mouth. “Strip club owner and peddler of glitter thongs, lap dances, and pasties admits to being a closet feminist.”

  Jake rolled his eyes. “I’m going to miss your lack of a sense of humor around here, Liv. Or Noelle. Or whatever you want me to call you.”

  “I’m Liv out there.” I pointed at the doors. “And I’m Noelle . . . or I used to be Noelle”—I smiled, realizing Jake was right. I had been a few breaths away from resigning. —“inside these walls. I was two women, but I’ve got to admit it’s nice being just one again.”

  A disturbing, or more like a highly disturbing, thought entered my mind right before Jake’s next words. “Damn. How the hell did Will keep you straight?”

  He’d arrived at the same conclusion, but Jake was looking at it through a different lens. He wondered how Will was able to remember what name to call me . . . but me? I was wondering how Will was able to distinguish between the two of us. How did Will know when he was with Noelle versus Liv? But the realization that made that whole feeling-faint thing make a reappearance—Will and Noelle had rarely, sometimes never, exchanged words . . . They’d shared other exchanges. Will and Liv had exchanged plenty of words and other exchanges.

  When I’d gone into the dark room in The Body Shop with him, I’d gone in knowing I was with Will, living in an alternate reality with him. When I’d been with him in my true life, I’d been with Will, just keeping him behind my steep walls until recently. Whatever life I’d been living at the time, I’d known I was with the same man.

  Will though . . . he’d been with the silent stripper Noelle here and with the complicated neighbor Liv outside. Whatever life he’d been living, he hadn’t been with the same woman. He’d been with two different women. Without the aid of sight and with me remaining silent as Noelle, he’d had no way of knowing that we were one and the same. I’d never mentioned to Will that I worked as a stripper at The Body Shop, and he’d never mentioned to me that he’d visited it.

  Will had been cheating on me . . . with . . . me? How did that even work? However it did, I was going to find out. I was going to make him squirm and explain and answer for his actions.

  “What’s the matter?” Jake asked, studying my face.

  “It just sucks being disappointed by someone you think you know,” I admitted with a shrug, trying to stay unaffected by something that couldn’t have affected me more.

  “Did I miss something? Was there some serious internal dialogue you were just having with yourself I should be keyed in to?”

  I shook my head and tried to smile at him. It didn’t look like he was buying it.

  “Okay, keep it to yourself then, but if you’ll indulge me one parting thought . . .” Jake made sure I was looking at him before continuing, “If you’re searching for a reason to be disappointed in a person, you’ll find something. Don’t let disappointment be the measure of your relationship with a person. Let trust be the measure.”

  Disappointment or trust, neither really mattered in this instance. Whatever way I measured Will’s and my relationship, we came up short.

  BIKING TEN MILES back to the trailer after learning the things I had felt like I was pedaling to Jupiter—the journey just wouldn’t end. I couldn’t stop hearing Jake’s words: Will’s blind—and then I couldn’t stop repeating mine: He’s been with two different women this summer, and he didn’t realize they were both me. I couldn’t decide what I was more upset over—or if I was even truly upset or just more hurt than anything—but somewhere along the way, my ability to reason had been impaired.

  So there was the complete and utter what-the-hell? surrounding Will, and then there was the matter of me no longer being employed. I was aware that if I walked back into Jake’s place and asked for my job back, I’d have it, but he’d been right. I wasn’t going to spend any more time than necessary in that place, and I’d stashed a nice chunk of money away. I could get my sisters and me through a good few months while I figured out what to do next, so working as a stripper at The Body Shop was no longer necessary.

  In terms of how nights went, this felt very much like it was one that showed you just what you were made of. All I could hope was that, come sunrise, I was made of just as much, or more, of what I’d always thought. That was what was on my mind as I pedaled up the driveway toward the trailer. It was somewhere between midnight and one, I’d have guessed—way past either of the girls’ typical bedtimes—but a light shone gently through the kitchen window.

  After propping my bike against the porch, I headed up the stairs and checked the Goods’s place. No lights were on up there—no one was awake. Then I remembered what I now knew of Will, and I realized that all of the times I’d glanced up at his place when I’d been coming back from work or sitting restless on the porch steps and assumed he was asleep because the lights were out, he could have just as easily been up. Will didn’t require light to get through life like the rest of us. Part of me envied that for some strange reason, but another part of me swore to never let myself feel anything for Will again—envy included.

  As I made my way inside the trailer, I saw who was responsible for holding the vampire hours. Her unruly hair was more flying out than tucked into her braid, and there was a fresh bandage around her ankle . . . which made me think of Will. Which made me think of what he’d done, not only for Paige, but also for Jake’s brother, Andrew. How could a person that selfless keep two things as monumental as being blind and being “involved” with a girl named Noelle at the nearby strip club from me? Those were yet two more questions to plague me since my move back to Death Valley, but these ones were what I’d classify as the coup de grace.

  “I didn’t realize it was Sugar Bomb Crunchies hour,” I said as I wandered into the kitchen.

  Paige was propped in a chair at the table, slurping down a bowl of cereal. She didn’t even flinch when she heard a voice behind her late at night. The kid was bomb proof. Exactly how I’d always wanted to be and acted like, but the opposite of what I truly was. This summer had proven again and again that I wasn’t bomb proof. I might be able to weather the fallout after it had been dropped, but I wasn’t immune to a bomb’s devastation.

  “It’s always Sugar Bomb Crunchies hour,” Paige replied between bites.

  “What are you doing up so late?” I grabbed the cereal box and poured some into my hand. I shouldn’t have been hungry after the night I’d had, but I was. After popping a few in my mouth, I realized Paige was right. There was never a bad time for Sugar Bomb Crunchies.

  “I was starving. I always seem to be now. It’s like that stupid snake bite turned me into a human eating machine or something.” Paige grabbed the box and poured another bowl. She kept pouring until a few pieces of cereal rolled out and on to the floor.

  I almost smiled. Paige could have gained twenty pounds and still be considered petite. Watching her eat with abandon, Sugar Bomb Crunchies in the middle of the night included, reminded me that even though stripping might not have been the most honorable job in the world, it had taken us a
way from rationing the last box of crackers and condiment jar. I didn’t care that Stripper at The Body Shop in Death Valley, Nevada, would be on my resume for the rest of my life, because my sisters could eat what they wanted when they wanted to.

  Then I realized that I wouldn’t have been able to sit there watching Paige slurp down cereal if Will hadn’t done what he had. Both of our actions, different as they were, had been responsible for this girl sitting beside me, crunching on cereal. I didn’t want to feel gratitude toward Will Goods right now. I didn’t want to feel anything, but if something was going to sneak to the surface, I wanted it to be rage or betrayal or something far less positive than gratitude.

  “What are you doing home so early?” Paige peered at me.

  “I just had one hell of a night,” I understated.

  “You work five night shifts a week, and from the look on your face every morning after, you have a hell of a night every night.”

  I didn’t give Paige enough credit for being observant. Reese had always seemed to be the hypersensitive one of the three of us. I fell somewhere in the middle, and Paige was on the other end. I’d miscalculated though. Paige picked up on plenty of things. She just internalized them better than us.

  “That’s why tonight was my last night.” I’d had no idea I was going to tell Paige I’d just up and quit my job. I didn’t want her to worry we would find ourselves in the same predicament from a couple months back, because I would never let that happen again, but from the look on her face, worry was the furthest thing from her mind.

  “It’s about damn time,” Paige said as she crunched a bite of cereal.

  I lifted my eyebrows. I knew a 15-year-old saying damn was a long way off from the other things a teenager could be saying or doing, but Paige wasn’t just any other teen. She was my sister, and if I didn’t expect bigger things from her than just being normal, who would?

  Paige rolled her eyes with true expertise as she sighed. “Don’t get your thong in a twist.”

  My eyebrows went from raised to coming together instantly. “What did you just say?”

  Paige’s eyes scanned the ceiling—a sure sign she was scrambling for an explanation—before focusing on her cereal. “I meant panties. Don’t get your panties in a twist.”

  “But you said thong.”

  “A thong is a pair of panties.”

  “Paige,” I said in that warning voice I rarely used with the girls.

  Paige dropped her spoon in the bowl and looked me in the eye. “I know what you do, okay? Or what you used to do.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Paige rolled her eyes again. “That you worked at The Body Shop as a stripper.”

  A string of curses ran through my head. I could have tried to deny it, but I reminded myself how important honesty was with the people I cared about and how deeply betrayal cut when that trust was broken. Hell, I’d lived that lesson a couple times over tonight. I sighed. “How long have you known?”

  “I guess I’ve known-known for about a month, but I suspected from pretty much the first night you ducked out of here with that duffel bag and that guilty look on your face.”

  “How did you find out? Find-find out?” I clarified.

  Paige lifted a shoulder. “There was this super senior at school talking about spending his birthday at this strip club and going on and on about this new dancer . . .” Paige’s expression went from no big deal to a partial wince. “He might have snapped a picture of her at work. At work, if you know what I mean.” Paige and I shifted in our seats, both looking about as uncomfortable as we could. “Not that that was at all awkward, but I played it off like I didn’t know you. When Super Senior wasn’t looking, I grabbed his phone and erased the picture.”

  I was tempted to step foot into The Body Shop one last time so I could wring the neck of every bouncer who hadn’t been watching when some jerk-off had decided to snap a picture. There was a no-photo policy in the club for a reason. One big reason was so that little sisters wouldn’t find out their big sisters were at a strip joint by seeing a picture of them “in action.”

  “God, Paige, I’m sorry. I meant to tell you and Reese, but no time exactly seemed ideal to bring up I was stripping to pay the bills, you know? I didn’t want to lie to you. I just didn’t want to admit the truth that much more.” Right then—as I explained why I’d kept my big secret from the people I cared for most in the whole world—I had a flash of understanding for why Will had kept his from me. It was a flash I wished I’d never had because, even if that were the reason he’d kept his blindness from me, that didn’t explain or excuse how he could be with Noelle and then move on to Liv. “Does Reese know?”

  Paige nodded. “Yeah, I told her a couple of days after I found out.”

  I couldn’t even be upset that both of my sisters had known about my job and said nothing to me. I couldn’t be mad at them for respecting my desire for it to stay a secret. “Are you mad at me for lying? Disappointed for doing what I did?”

  Paige gave me a funny look. “No. Why would you think that?” Picking up her spoon, she stuffed another bite into her mouth. “I mean, sure, I wish you would have just told us what you were doing instead of giving us this elaborate story about packing boxes for a janitorial supply company, but I get why you did it.”

  “You get why I did what?” There were a whole string of “whats” she could have meant.

  She raised a shoulder. “Stripping and not telling us that you were doing it.”

  “Yeah, but you can’t be exactly thrilled with what I did. You couldn’t stop from thinking that I was doing something Kitty would, or probably has, done at some time during her life. You couldn’t help but wonder if I was on a slippery slope to becoming her.” I reached for the box of cereal, poured another handful, and stuffed it into my mouth. This was one hell of a conversation to have with my littlest sister over a card table late at night. I hoped a couple handfuls of sugary cereal would keep me chugging along through it.

  “The only slippery slope you’re on, Liv, is the one that’s on the other side of becoming Kitty Bennett.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I admitted sadly, dusting crumbs off of my hands.

  “Too bad. I do.” Paige shook her head at me. “Everything you do is with us in mind. Nothing Kitty did was with us in mind. It’s as simple as that. You care—she didn’t. You’re not in the process of becoming her or anywhere on the slippery slope toward becoming her. So ease up on yourself a bit because, damn . . . I keep worrying I’m going to walk into your room and find chunks of you scattered all around because you finally burst.” Paige went back to her love affair with her cereal.

  I smiled. I couldn’t help it. Something I’d been dreading revealing for weeks had been addressed, glazed over, and we were back to cereal. Some things I really did make too big a deal over . . . actually, maybe most things I made too big a deal over. “First off, Paige, you watch too much Kill Bill if you keep holding your breath to find bloody chunks of me scattered around my room. Second”—I continued when she opened her mouth—“don’t say damn.”

  “Can we visit the Hoover Dam this summer? I want to go into Dam Management.” Paige flashed a wicked smile. “How long did that little Dutch boy keep his finger plugged in the dam? What are dams made of?”

  I rumpled her hair and shook my head. “And third,” I interrupted, giving her a warning look when she opened her mouth to continue proving her dam point. “What in the world are you doing hanging out with a senior? A super senior at that? You’re a freshman, Paige. Be smart, okay?”

  Paige and I shared a smile.

  “Well, if I want to know how to not act like an impressionable, naive freshman walking through the big bad high school halls filled with dangerous things like senior and super senior boys . . . I think I know who to go to.” She waved her spoon at me.

  “Hey, I’m the expert on getting through school without falling victim to the high school boys’ superior bed-luring tactics. D
o you see any toddlers or children scrambling around at my feet?”

  Paige checked under the table then glanced at me. “No, but I do see two teenagers strapped to your back.”

  Hearing my fifteen-year-old sister make such mature remarks made me both sad and proud. My little sister had grown up just as fast as I had. “Yeah, but I’m strapped to both of your backs too, so I suppose we’re square.”

  Paige considered that then shrugged before digging back into her cereal.

  She’d come close to finishing another bowl when I asked, “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  She finished her bite. “Because it wasn’t a big deal. Because I don’t look at you and see a stripper. I see the person who came home to help Reese and me. Being a stripper isn’t what you are, Liv. It’s just something you do, a small piece of what makes you you. I mean, Christ, it doesn’t define you or anything.”

  This conversation too closely mirrored my conversation with Jake earlier. Keeping secrets and those secrets defining you and everything in between were the themes of tonight, and I recognized as Paige said those words—that being a stripper didn’t define who I was—that Jake had been right when he’d said being blind didn’t define Will. It was a piece of him, but certainly not the entirety of him. When I thought of Liv Bennett, the first word that popped to mind wasn’t stripper, and Will’s first word to describe himself likely wasn’t blind.

  “Did you know Will was blind?” I asked. If he’d been able to fool me and I’d been around him far more than Paige, he’d probably fooled her as well.

  “Uh . . .” Paige glanced at me like I’d tripped something. “Yeah. It’s not exactly some great big secret. The guy’s blind, Liv, not hiding a bowling-ball sized birthmark on his ass. Blindness is a little tough to cover up.”

  I closed my eyes and cussed another string of internal curses. Paige had known. Reese probably had too. How in the hell had I not known? “Did he tell you?” That’s the only way they could have known. He was too good at hiding it or explaining away the few hints that indicated it.