by Lexie Ray
Her head popped into view, and she studied me for so long that I was afraid she hadn’t heard me over the music blaring.
“I’m escorting,” I called again, raising my voice even higher.
“I heard you,” she replied coolly. “Who’s the lucky gentleman?”
“Table six, VIP,” I said, jerking my chin in the direction.
I breathed easier when Parker directed her piercing gaze toward Xander, and was gratified, even, when the corners of her mouth quirked up a little.
“Good for you,” she said. “Check in once it’s done, or if you have any issues.”
“All right, thanks,” I said, scooting off to the dressing room. What had Parker seen when she’d eyed Xander? What had made her almost smile? I hoped it was a good sign, and not a bad one — though I could hardly imagine Parker taking delight in the misfortune of anyone. Parker was lots of things, but cruel wasn’t one of them.
In the dressing room, I wiped off most of my makeup, flung my dress off, and wriggled into the jeans and camisole I’d worn when I first arrived at the club this morning. Xander was asking for a first date, and I was going to give it to him. I balled up the dress and shoved it into my purse, along with a pair of heels that could very nearly pass as normal evening wear shoes. I wore plain leather sandals, fretted a little at my chipped toenail polish, and gave myself a quick once-over in the mirror.
I looked like a normal woman, not a dancer, and that was somehow gratifying while still intimidating. The costume, the heels, the makeup, the perfect hair — those were all elements to the mask, to the role that all of us dancers played for men here. A lot of the girls who worked here used pseudonyms — simple names that somehow embodied the persona they sought to be while they worked here. When they exited the building, they could stop being the person they became when they were at the club.
I’d never had much of a reason to take on a stage name, and Faith had never done so, either.
“It’s confusing enough to be myself,” I’d overheard her tell another dancer about it before. “I don’t think I could keep up with two completely different people.”
But now, in street clothes, I was just Sol, the woman I always was. This was going to be a lot more difficult than I imagined — to escort Xander and just be myself. I wouldn’t have a mask or a persona to fall back on, nor the atmosphere and safety of the club to lean on.
It would be just me and him, out in Miami for the day.
How was it that dates were so intimidating? How did people do this normally, in real life? Even Antonio and I had kind of fallen together — schoolmates, first, then friends, then lovers. It was a natural progression of a relationship, and every feeling we had for each other was genuine.
Dating, to me, seemed unnatural. You tried out a person much like you tried on a pair of pants. Did they fit? Would they chafe you after a time, or grow too restrictive? Would they lose their shape, stop making you feel as good?
Dating was a complicated tryout, a situation doomed to fail, a painful coupling of two strangers trying to find the love that so many other people already had.
I’d agreed to do this for as long as I could stand Xander. I hurried out of the dressing room — and away from my building dread — and rejoined the man in question at his table. He blinked at me several times before his smile lit up his face again.
“I almost didn’t recognize you,” he exclaimed. “I was about to ask a gorgeous woman if she was lost and needed my help.”
I flushed and giggled. “Oh, stop. This is just me in my street clothes. It’s a little too early in the day to look as fancy as I normally do here at the club out in the city.”
“Can I tell you something?” he asked.
“Uh oh,” I said, lightly mocking him. “This is how you get in trouble. This is how you get a girl upset with you, and you don’t want to ruin our date, now.”
“Okay,” he said, putting his hands up. “It’ll be my little secret, for now. But I’m pretty sure you would’ve liked it.”
“Enough fooling around,” I commanded jokingly. “Let’s blow this joint.” That was one of the expressions I was proudest of, having picked it up in a movie Antonio and I had watched together at the library. I knew what it meant, knew it was a way to make myself sound like I had more of a command of the language than I actually did, and it usually put people at ease.
Xander immediately popped up from the table, offering me his arm gallantly. “I live to make you happy,” he announced. “Just tell me where we’re going.”
“Not a chance,” I said, grinning at him as I led him out the door, into the bright sunlight that made us both squint after the darkness of the club. “Every part of our date is going to be a surprise. You won’t know what we’re doing until we get there.”
“Fair enough,” Xander said, jingling his car keys. “You just tell me where to turn.”
“Wrong again,” I said, snatching his keys. “You, sir, have had quite a lot to drink. You will not be driving.”
Xander scowled briefly, and I raised my eyebrows, wondering if we were about to have a standoff. Would this grand dating experiment end before it even began?
“You’re right again,” he said finally, jamming his hands in his pockets. “I have had a lot to drink. If we’re being honest, here, I probably shouldn’t have driven to this place. There’s no probably about it. I shouldn’t have. That was pretty stupid, Sol.”
“You’re here now,” I said, patting his back. “You’ve acknowledged your mistake. No reason to beat yourself up over it any longer. We’re going to focus on our date and we’re going to have a good time. Understand? That’s a rule.”
He smiled at me even though I could tell he was still upset at himself. “Rules? I thought the rules went out the door as soon as we left the club.”
“I remember quite clearly that I said we made up our own rules once we were outside the club,” I reminded him, emphasizing the point with a few more taps on his back. “The first rule is: You must have fun.”
“You can’t command someone to have fun,” Xander laughed. “You have to show me a good time. If you make fun decisions for the date, I’m sure I’ll have fun.”
“Excuse me,” I said, putting my shoulders back and jutting my chest out. “Who’s in charge of this date?”
“You are.”
“Then I say you’re going to have fun,” I declared. “I will do whatever it takes to make you have fun. That’s an order. I’m in charge.”
“You want me to have fun?” he repeated.
“That’s right.”
“And you’ll do whatever it takes?”
“That’s what I seem to remember saying, yes.”
His kiss was sudden, swift, wholly unexpected. It took my breath away, made my eyelids flutter closed, made me clutch at his shoulders even as he steadied me with his hands on my waist. It was everything I’d been missing, every hole that had just been getting deeper and lonelier in my life filled suddenly. It was shocking.
It was wrong.
And yet I didn’t push him away, didn’t shove him off of me and tell him he was in violation of a rule I hadn’t even planned on setting. I stood there, rooted to the cracked pavement in the parking lot, and I let him kiss me.
Then, I kissed him back, widening my stance, pressing my front against his and parting my lips, letting his tongue into my mouth as I tried to push mine in to explore his. He tasted like liquor, but I didn’t mind much. I was sure I tasted like ginger ale to him — ginger ale and lipstick. There were worse things — such as the leftover sausage I’d had for breakfast, but I’d been careful to brush my teeth twice before I left my apartment this morning.
When we finally ran out of breath, we parted — almost regretfully. Both of our chests heaved, and if I stood any closer to the man, he’d have had to been carrying me in his arms. It struck me that, to passersby, we probably looked like two lovers, caught in an embrace. We studied each other — me, wary of this new development, and X
ander’s brown eyes, a little distant, on the defensive.
Did he regret kissing me?
Did I regret it?
“Our date’s just beginning,” I said, keeping my tone light. “I think maybe we’re taking it a little too fast.”
“I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “It’s just … I don’t think you know how beautiful you are.”
That statement made me snap my mouth closed and blush. “Beautiful enough for strangers to be making out with me in the middle of a parking lot?”
Xander smiled softly. “That and more. I’m sorry. You’re right. This is taking the date a little too fast. I’ll slow down. I’ll behave myself. You’re in charge. Your rules.”
I swallowed hard. Would it come off as weak if I didn’t want to rule out another kiss? I didn’t want to send the wrong message — even if I couldn’t deny the way the air crackled between us. There was something real there, something powerful, and I’d already given myself the go ahead to leave my morals and principles at the door, to do whatever it took to earn the money to secure Antonio’s freedom.
Was it wrong that I would have fun doing it? Should it hurt instead? Should I loathe it? Why did it have to be horrible?
Hadn’t I been through enough? Couldn’t I at least enjoy myself for this date … this escort service?
“That’s right,” I finally said, smiling at Xander and taking a half step backward. We were still close, but there was now room to breathe a little easier. “I’m in charge. Where’s your car?”
“The black one, there,” he said, pointing. “The end of the row.”
I mashed my finger on the keyless entry button on the key fob and was rewarded with a chirping sound and a flash of lights from the car in question. It was nice — nicer than any car I’d probably ever own — and it even looked like …
“Is this a convertible?” I demanded. “Does the top open up?”
“Sure enough,” Xander drawled, amused at my intensity.
“Why isn’t the top down now?” I asked, almost angry for some reason.
“I tend to like to park it all closed up,” he explained. “Gives people a little less incentive to jack it.”
“Oh.” I twirled the keys on my finger. “But you ride with the top down all the time, right?” It seemed like the most logical thing to do, after all. If a person invested the money in a convertible, that person better have the wind in his hair at every opportunity.
“Honestly, no,” Xander said, a little sadly. “I used to, especially when I first got it. But the woman who used to ride with me in it didn’t like to muss her hair when the top was down. Then I got into a horrible habit of always having it up — in anticipation of that.”
I stopped dead in my tracks and ran my hands through my hair furiously. I shook it out, banging my head a little bit, and looked defiantly up at Xander.
“Do I still look beautiful?” I asked him, daring him to tell me otherwise. I knew for a fact that I’d crapped up my hair — so intricately coiffed to impress men inside the club. Outside, it was going to be another matter, I was swiftly discovering.
“If possible, even more ravishing,” he said, staring at me, making particular eye contact with my lips. I knew he was thinking about kissing me again, and the thought made me suppress a shiver.
“Then I’m going to get behind the wheel of your amazing convertible, and you’re going to tell me exactly which button to push to put that fucking top down.”
As we walked around either side of the car, I had to hide an incredulous laugh behind my hand. What was the matter with me? Why was I so vehement about this damn car? Yes, it was a really nice ride. No, I’d never ridden in one before. No, I couldn’t quite believe that the first time I’d actually ride in one, I’d be the one driving it.
But it was perhaps the sadness in Xander’s voice that had propelled me to action. He’d so obviously bought this car to enjoy it with someone, and that someone had let him down. It made me sad just to think about, and I was bound and determined to make him forget about whoever she was.
Within a few minutes, I was spoiled completely rotten, the wind tousling my hair as we sped down the street. Xander laughed at my obvious joy, and I was surprised to realize that I was happier than I’d been in months — the happiest, probably, since Antonio had been gone. And all it had taken was a spin in a convertible. Why was life so simple sometimes and so complicated otherwise?
Out of breath and stopped at a red light, I cocked my head to regard Xander. He’d ditched his tie and rolled up his sleeves, but he was still in really nice clothes.
“Do you think that maybe you’d like to slip into something a little more comfortable?” I asked. “We can stop by your house or wherever so you can change, too.”
Xander winced a little. “I’ve set up residence in a hotel, I’m afraid,” he said. “Don’t you worry about me. I’m perfectly comfortable. Do your thing.”
Whatever had happened, Xander had been exiled from his home. That was terrible — to lose the physical location of home and the person you thought of as home in one fell swoop. I was getting more curious by the minute to find out what had happened to this man, but I was also getting more determined to take his mind as far away from that pain as possible. It was too close to my own pain, too close to losing Antonio and giving up the things we shared one by one to try to reunite with him once more.
Right now, I just couldn’t think of Antonio. It wasn’t fair to either of us. It wasn’t fair to Xander. If I was going to do this thing, I was going to take it all the way. I didn’t want to half-ass it and lose out on a dime I could’ve earned if I’d put my all into it. It wasn’t worth it just to do it halfway.
I wheeled in to a parking lot and pulled into an open spot. I reached for the button to put the convertible’s roof back into place, but Xander captured my hand.
“You know what?” he asked, smiling. “I’m feeling a little bit stronger in faith today. Leave it open. The car needs to be aired out, anyway. It gets too stuffy when the roof’s on for too long.”
I smiled at him and we both got out of the car.
“Welcome to the first stop in our date today,” I announced, holding my arms out grandly. We’d arrived at a green, rolling park, a slice of an oasis in the middle of the city. When I’d first gotten to Miami with Antonio, it had been the tall buildings that impressed me the most, the marvels of human engineering. But the longer I stayed here, the more I appreciated the surprising pops of green throughout the concrete and steel and glass that glittered in the hot sun.
“I like very much where this is going,” Xander said, looking around at the park.
“You have no idea where this is going,” I teased him, laughing. “You probably won’t be thanking me later. But first, a quick bite for lunch.”
It was the middle of the week, so there weren’t many people around. That was all the better for the hot dog stand. We got our meals quickly and piping hot, both piled high with fixings. Nearly every bench in the park was empty, but I wandered to a grassy knoll, kicking my sandals off in favor of feeling the blades of grass beneath my bare feet.
“Here’s perfect,” I sighed, settling down on the grass and taking the first bite of my hot dog. “You know, you should’ve changed. I don’t want you to stain your nice clothes.”
Xander plopped down beside me, taking an even bigger bite than I had. He didn’t wait to chew and swallow before he began talking, either. “Sol, let me assure you: I give zero shits about my clothes. Erase the worries from your mind.”
I laughed at the expression, filing it away for use at a later date.
“So, are hot dogs regular fare for you?” Xander asked, watching me launch into mine with gusto. I realized I’d only picked it because it was the closest offering to where I wanted to go — and the cheapest. He had, of course, picked up the negligible tab, but I supposed I could’ve taken us anywhere. I didn’t want to tell him that hot dogs were regular meals. Regular meals were usually whatever I could
scrape together with the least amount of time, money, and effort possible.
“No, a rare treat,” I said, smiling as I took another nibble of mine. I’d asked for chili, cheese, and onions on the dog, which made it impossible to eat without getting dirty or keeping my dignity intact. Chili cheese hot dogs were a messy task, but one I was definitely up for. Really, I’d just picked it because it seemed like all the protein would stick with me the most, keeping the hunger pangs from gnawing at my stomach later.
It was a strange and sad thing to be living in the same kind of poverty here in America, the land of opportunity, as what I’d endured in Honduras. But I had very important reasons for doing so.
“I can’t imagine that you eat a lot of hot dogs,” Xander observed. “You’re too skinny for it.”
“I can eat whatever I want,” I told him breezily. “The dancing burns everything away.”
“Salsa dancing,” he said. “You have some pretty good moves.”
“Thanks.” I licked chili residue from my fingers, savoring the spices.
“Where’d you learn? Back home?”
“Yes.” The bread was getting soggy, so I tried to pick up my pace of eating. It was hard with all this conversation Xander was trying to engage in. Couldn’t he see I was in the middle of something?
“And where’s home for you?” he asked.
“Cuba,” I said, barely able to get the word out after I stuffed yet another huge bite of the hot dog into my mouth. The lie was getting easier and easier each time I told it. I wondered if, someday, I’d wake up and believe it myself, forgetting about everything and everyone I’d left behind in Honduras.
Sometimes, I felt like that would be easier.
“Really!” Xander exclaimed, raising his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for Cuban. I’d have lost that bet.”
“Why would you have betted in the first place?” I asked, raising my eyebrows to match the expression on his face. “Are you a betting man? Do you like to throw your money around?”
“If I have something worth betting on,” he said, smiling and rubbing his thumb in the corner of my mouth. “You have a little chili, just there.”