The Strings That Hold Us Together

by Kendra Mase

  No way.

  Katherine didn’t know what to do. Not saying a word as she made her way back into the penthouse ballroom. It didn’t take long to relocate Jack, striking against the crowd even when he meant to blend in that simple white shirt. His top button had come undone.

  She jogged up to him, not blinking as she gripped the loose hem of her dress in hand. She was surprisingly steady on her heels as she crossed the dance floor. All she needed was to be caught up in some variation of a conga line right now.

  “Jack. Jack!”

  Doing a double take as she came barreling toward him, he looked incredulous, snapping another photo before taking her in. “What?”

  “I think…”

  “What is it, Kit?” He glanced around the room again, maybe looking for that bridezilla mother or where he needed to move next, but his gaze swung right back to Katherine.

  She grabbed onto his sleeve. He looked down at her hand, face softened.

  “I think I just caught the groom fucking the maid of honor in the bathroom.”

  His head snapped back up to meet her eyes, as wide as hers were in the bathroom mirror. “What?”

  Her thoughts exactly.

  His mouth opened, no words escaping for a full second.

  “No, you didn’t.”

  She nodded vigorously in assent. Oh yes, she was pretty sure she just did.

  A loud laugh erupted from Jack.

  At the sound, she bit her lip. Cheeks bloomed with amused color that wouldn’t be going away for a good while.

  He wiped a tear. “You really know how to lighten the mood, don’t you?”

  Kit smiled as well as she looked around the place, spying the two perpetrators leaving the bathroom behind the bride’s mother. Jack’s cheeks might’ve flushed pink, but her—she might’ve rivaled the cherry tomatoes at the salad bar.

  “Not for long,” Katherine murmured, eyes wide as the screams tore past the playlist of sweet forever love.

  Out from the corner restroom, it didn’t look like she was the only person to notice the star-crossed lovers piecing themselves back together after their tryst.

  Jack lifted his camera, and Katherine couldn’t take it anymore. A gasping laugh peeled past her lips too.

  “No, stop. We can’t laugh at the train wreck,” Jack murmured, pulling her into his chest as she shook, a fit coming over her and she couldn’t stop it. It was only slightly muffled by his collar. “This is basically a crime scene.”

  “Is that why you’re taking pictures?”

  “Just a few more for posterity. They aren’t going to want any of the others now. Tell me, do you know if they can get a speedy annulment if the person the groom sleeps with isn’t the bride?”

  “Stop it.”

  “No. Truth or dare?”

  “I thought we weren’t still playing.”

  “Truth or dare?”

  Katherine paused. She wasn’t sure what he wanted her to pick, but her lips had already formed the words before she could think about it either way. “Dare.”

  “Let’s get out of here.” Jack gripped her hand as he guided her out alongside him. It was warm, sturdy. So was his smile, clear and bright compared to all the others he’d given her. That he ever gave anyone Kit admired at the time, so dearly, up on a black lacquer stage.

  Those smiles were ruined for her now.

  “We’re going to be late with the scandal you caused.”

  “I caused nothing.”

  “Mhm. Sure, Kitten. Either way, for once, we may actually be on time tonight.” Jack extended his hand.

  She didn’t even consider not taking it this time.

  The sign was mounted with swirling red neon lights.

  Rosin.

  The head knocker on the front door was encrusted in rusted gold, but it was the first time Katherine ever really noticed it after walking through the front door dozens of other times. An older couple of ladies in fur-collared coats laughed as they exited, paying her no mind.

  In school, Katherine had heard of clubs. She heard about senior weeks and the kind of dark places where people danced under strobe lights. She could imagine them blinking in and out, concealing couples that snuck off into the corners where only a few could see them. DuCain was not one of those kinds of clubs. Neither was Rosin.

  Red and gold shone through the entryway into what was once a foyer.

  “Anything to check?” a man in tight pants and a black suit vest with nothing concealing muscular shoulders asked. He smiled with frighteningly bright teeth under the low glow of Tiffany lamps. Each a different pattern, they lit the pathway of music to match the art deco lines of wallpaper that screamed Gatsby. Katherine could practically see the tower of champagne.

  “We’re headed back to see Queen,” Jack answered, gripping onto Katherine’s neck while he laughed into her skin. “My god, what have you done to me?”

  He hadn’t been able to stop laughing all the way back downtown.

  The crowd was thick in the room aside from them. Women giggled with well-defined cupid bows. Katherine watched as the clustered crowd around the bar cheered with pleasure as a woman dressed only in gold jingle pasties Katherine had to repair nearly every week whipped her breasts one way and then the other. It looked only slightly painful.

  The two of them made their way past and up the stairs, to the dressing rooms Katherine had been in before via the back entrance. Still, her gaze always bounced over the glitter, hairpieces, and limp lingerie slung over the back of each chair. She almost didn’t notice Avril occupying one near the back corner.

  A halo echoed around her petite form from the lights. Her robe hung open to each side. Standing up in high stilettos, the movement nearly caused her chair to spill back onto the floor. Queen was straight out of a fairy tale; if only the princess was a Queen and the Queen was the villain. Bright red curls were perfectly coiffed around her freckled face, painted with merlot lipstick. She threw a loose strand over her shoulder.

  “Finally. Here I thought I would be going on stage without my best and newest supporters.”

  “Reed’s not here?” Jack moved past Kit to give Avril a hug.

  She accepted it with a roll of her eyes.

  “He needed to catch a last-minute flight out with his group. Boring, but we all know he doesn’t like to fly alone.” Avril answered, sounding a little out of breath by the time Jack finally let go of her. “Thus, why you are the best, my dear Jack.”

  “I live to please.”

  Her eyes flicked between them, Jack and Katherine. “You two look like you had a fun day.”

  Katherine licked her lips, but not before Jack answered. “Something like that.”

  “Well, let’s get this show on the road, shall we? Before Cherry comes up to whip all our asses.”

  “You were waiting for us?”

  “I can only shower you with so many compliments, darling.”

  Without further ado, Avril stood on her sky-high heels, strutting down the back-twisting stairwell. Katherine followed along with them, back down to the bottom where the other dancers, including the few they had seen on stage, stood watching the red jeweled vixen in a trance while transferring loose glitter from one pair of boobs to another.

  One of the newer girls immediately did so to Avril, rubbing it into her skin while holding her hair away from her shoulders.

  “Thanks, darling. My tits didn’t quite look show ready till now.”

  “Finally! Where were you?” A very tall woman with curly blond ringlets framing her face swung through the backstage crowd, even pushing back the glitter process to look Avril in the eye. “I thought I would have to send out another Queen search party.”

  “Not my fault tonight, Cherry,” Avril said without a glance in the burlesque club owner’s direction. There was only a wink at Katherine as she turned out toward the stage. A dark red curtain separated them from the crowd, hooting at a goddess dancing on the shimmering granite bar top dressed in nothing but a bright yello
w banana skirt. “Had to adorn myself in the new crown jewels as well as wait for my adoring fans.”

  She’d decided to wear her iconic number then, after all.

  Katherine looked her up and down. Seeing one of Emilie’s favorite corsets she ever made in person was so different than just the pictures. A deep embroidered red, it might have been one of the most spectacular Katherine had ever seen as well.

  It caught on the lights above.

  Avril let out a smooth shot of air from matte lips to the floor.

  When her eyes came back up, chin tilted down, the vixen was taken to a whole new level. A whole other otherness. And the moment she stepped out of the curtain, the hoots and hollers of a pleased crowd turned into a roar.

  Katherine turned her head to look up at Jack, who stood still behind her with that beaming grin. “Happy we made it?”

  Crossing his arms over his broad chest, he didn’t notice she said a word. His eyes, everyone’s eyes, were on Avril.

  About to ask again, Katherine closed her lips and instead followed the gaze, seeing exactly what Jack did from the moment they walked into the dressing room. A queen.

  Katherine glanced down at her own pink dress collecting at her knees before looking back, squished between dancers, looking at the same thing.

  Avril took each slow step, taking her time to get to the center of the small stage. She tossed a chair around and straddled it. One tall thigh-high black boot was on each side, red hair, red everything, dark as the bloodred lips she spoke with. The Queen was alight with fire.

  “Hello, darlings.” Avril’s deep rasp of a voice was not loud, but certainly loud enough for the people already pressing closer to the small stage.

  After another moment of stares, she grinned, slowly beginning to slap her one hand to her thigh. One thigh and then the other, she drummed slowly, lifting her boots until a clap was a stomp to the ground. Katherine put her hands together to clap to the rhythm with the rest of the crowd following the strange tempo she created. As she continued with everyone through the silence that had gathered in the club, her body ground into the seat of the chair, shoulders rolling to the beat. It was her own music she was making.

  A single hoot broke through and Avril’s laugh was an anthem that clattered through the room in a vibrant echo between a witch’s cackle and a child’s purest joy.

  She waved each of her hands at the crowd. Keep it going. More. More.

  Avril grooved her body up the back of the chair until she was standing, clapping in beat with the music slowly pulsing around the club, a part of this surprise anthem that gained more than any past shout.

  She had yet to take off a single article of Emilie’s carefully sewn pieces. Yet they were all hers. Every single person. Every pair of eyes, transfixed.

  The dancers who vied for the same presence.

  Hers.

  Jack’s.

  The woman beside Katherine hummed, Cherry. Looking up at her, it was easy to see that the woman held as much presence as she did height, plumped lips and heavily lined eyes looked out from backstage in just as much awe as the rest of them.

  She gave Katherine a short nod, knowing who she was through her deliveries and last-minute alterations from the dancers.

  Katherine attempted to clear her throat. “She’s amazing.”

  “She’s Queen,” was all Cherry had to say. Her voice was almost sad, something in it not quite right.

  Attention drawn back to the dance, Avril began one step at a time to the music, she never stopped moving her hips, smirking and teasing the crowd as she unlaced the corset Katherine had just laced up moments before, wrists flicking one way then another. Showing a peek to the crowd, she held it against her, swaying her hips side to side before letting it fly loose with a flourish.

  She held them all in the palm of her hand, slowly peeling her stockings away from the garters after slowly untying each very high boot.

  Avril, Queen, whatever her name was; she could be Persephone, ruling hell. One hell of a Queen indeed.

  Smiling like a devil, wide and bright, she enchanted one and all with each article of clothing that fell and received a flirty kick behind her. Beautiful, strong, graceful, and unabashed, Katherine couldn’t quite settle on a word to describe her as she moved.

  Avril shook her breasts of sparkling pasties once more out to the crowd, giving a wide-mouthed twirl once, twice, on her tiny pointed toes. Her eyes, before going for a third, caught on something in the crowd. Feet turned to ice.

  Pulled out of her stupor, Katherine leaned farther out to see around the edge of the curtain, but she could not see anything in the darkened crowd, whatever had seemed to startle Avril. Avril, who when Katherine turned her gaze back, was already back to grinning toward the crowd, licking her lips in one slow motion as she gave a bow.

  And then another.

  Another.

  As if it was truly her last, like she said, Avril gave one more and tilted that chin up to the lamplit sky that finally found its one and only star.

  Katherine knew that look, that look of understanding, that look of love so much like the one Katherine had when staring at her old sewing kit and model she left behind in the old house where she and her father lived for eighteen years. A room and a house that were still empty, filled with broken furniture from the thrift store and scratched cabinets.

  Katherine, however, like the rest of them, only clapped as their Queen rushed off stage, shoving past Jack’s arms and the concerned gaze that followed her all the way back up the winding staircase.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jack stepped to go after her, but the crowd was too thick. Katherine had to yell for him to even notice she was still there, trying to get to the stairs with him. Before either of them could, however, Avril was already hurtling back down, duffel bag over her shoulder and dressed in a tight minidress.

  The glitter on her chest continued to catch light all the way out the back door.

  “We need to go out now,” Avril quickly said, tugging Katherine to follow her toward the back door.

  “You don’t want to stay till the end of the night with the girls?”

  “I just want to go out and celebrate!”

  “What are we celebrating?” Jack asked, catching up behind the two of them. Shoving the barred door open, the chilled hair pulsed against Katherine’s face.

  Avril didn’t answer. “I just want to go out and drink and see everyone.”

  “DuCain then,” Jack supplied. He glanced back at Katherine as they made their way to the Jeep. “Unless you’re still tired.”

  “Tired?” Avril twisted around, horrified by the word.

  Setting her jaw, Katherine shook her head, trying to catch Jack’s eyes, that seemed to land everywhere else. “No, I’m good.”

  Avril whooped. “Let’s go then!”

  All the way to DuCain around the block, Avril told them about the day she had from Pilates to dance class to rehearsal and finally the performance with the girls, and then on her own. “I haven’t had so much fun in that place in ages.”

  “We had some fun today, ourselves, didn’t we, Kit?” Jack asked as he pulled into the parking lot behind the looming theater.

  “Jack showed me all around the city.”

  Avril’s eyes twinkled. “Where’d you take her?”

  He shrugged, shutting off the Jeep. “Wherever the city took us.”

  “I saw Jack’s photo at the museum.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “Why?” Katherine asked.

  She shrugged, opening up her door. Katherine immediately followed suit. “Jack is very touchy about his art.”

  “Queen.”

  “What? It’s true, isn’t it?”

  Katherine turned to look at him as he opened the side door. “Were you nervous?”

  “No.”

  “He’s always worried it will ruin his big bad dominant rep.”

  “What?” Katherine laughed at that. From what she had heard as well
as seen of Jack’s reputation of being the most in-demand dominant at DuCain recently, with little to no days off, she doubted his reputation could be tarnished by being an art school dropout.

  In fact, it seemed to fit.

  Jack shrugged again and said nothing just as Nik caught his eye from the bar. Waving him over, a few people already stopped Avril. Trying to give her room, Queen gripped Katherine’s forearm, keeping her pinned under the attention until they too finally made it to the bar. Two drinks were already waiting for them. Avril drank them down rather quickly. Cringing at the burning sensation of the hard-brown liquor, Katherine pushed hers toward her friend.

  That was what Avril was now, her friend.

  “Why, thank you, darling.” Avril took another sip to show her appreciation before waving over the bartender. He smiled at Avril, though Katherine had never noticed him before. One side of his head was shaved, while the rest flopped over to one side. “What do you want?”

  “Um...” Katherine floundered for a moment before Avril stopped her, leaning over the bar.

  “Any ideas what that means?”

  The bartender looked Katherine up and down. From below the bar top, a crystal glass was produced. “I think I got it.”

  He pushed the glass toward Katherine.

  Both of them watching her, Katherine slowly lifted the cup toward her lips. Expecting the sharp burn of whiskey, she was pleased when the clear liquid only made her twinge before settling. Her eyes widened.

  “Gin girl after my own heart,” the bartender said, cleaning off the top of the counter before moving away. “Let me know if you two need anything else.”

  “We will!” Avril called before settling back onto her stool, legs dangling where only her heels reached the bar beneath her feet.

  Katherine took another sip of her drink. She didn’t know what it meant that she liked gin, but she did. It tasted herbal and light.

  “You look rather comfortable.”

  With a smile, Katherine only shrugged. She guessed Avril was right. She was pretty comfortable at DuCain, even more so than at Rosin, when she felt like half the girls were always asking for extra sequins to be sewn on or chatting around her for hours without including her in the conversation. Here, everything and everyone just was, including Katherine.