Chapter 6
This is a Taxi and You’re Not Wearing Pants
During parties, I had what you could call a bipolar tendency. One minute I was silent and sulking against the bar and the next I was up on a box taking my shirt of and offering to everyone to take body shots off of my belly button.
And right now, I was on the low wave of things. I was nursing my drink, sitting at a booth, looking at the crowded bar.
It was one of Victor’s old school buddies birthday party. One of his filthy rich old school buddies. The whole bar was close for all of his friends and he had even hired high class strip pole dancers—well that’s how I saw them, from what Victor had told me they were actually circus performers but in my honest opinion it was probably that his friend didn’t want to admit he had hired an entire strip club. Seriously, they were up on boxes, jiggling their asses, some of them doing some pretty impressive contortionist stuff, some were actually dancing around poles, though it wasn’t your cheap, run down the mile, find in every truck stop pole dancing. Okay, I think I saw one or two spit fire, but maybe those two were actual circus performers.
Anyway, it was more amusing to think they were all strippers and would start taking their clothes off soon. There were a couple of those dudes that I wouldn’t mind seeing in their birthday suits. It was a birthday party after all.
Speaking of clothing, I was wearing a really skimpy dress—I mean really skimpy. Victor had bought it for me, it was Versace, it was from the Winter 2013 collection and it was pale pink which worked very well against my olive skin complexion and light brown hair and it made my waist look incredibly thin, but it was strapless and it was short. If I bended, everyone would see I hadn’t graced them with underwear tonight.
I took another gulp of my Scotch and pouted. I like dancing in parties like this but Victor had only graced me with his presence for like, three dances, and they were short and sure he was an okay dancer but he didn’t exactly take the lead, he just followed my movement so it wasn’t my most exciting experience with him. And I couldn’t go and dance with anyone. I didn’t exactly feel comfortable with grabbing some stranger that had gone to school with my too-high-class non-boyfriend and rub my ass and boobs all over them. Maybe I could jump on one of those boxes with the strippers-non-strippers and rub my skimpy dress covered body against theirs?
I wanted to dance god dammit. I missed it.
So, I might have wasted most of my college years partying. I hung around the buildings where the people in art were and managed to find the ones in the dancing troupes. That was how, before I even got to my reading week during my first semester, I met my boyfriend of six months, Myles. Myles knew how to dance. He was hot too, hot damn he was hot. He looked a lot like Eggs in True Blood. The same abs too, you know, the kind of abs you want to wash clothes on, like you know, take your clothes off and rub them on him, yeah. He was hot. And we’d go to parties all the time and that’s how I found my inner dancing slut. Dancing with Myles gave me rhythm and skills. I was not ashamed to admit that Myles made me decent in bed—previous to Myles, my track record only held a precocious ejaculator and a few simple make-outs with random dudes. Myles was the second guy I did it with, and he was generous enough to share his knowledge. It shouldn’t really shock anyone that good dancers were bound to be good in bed—if you got the rhythm up, you got the rhythm down baby. But then he got a scholarship and he moved to California and long distance relationships weren’t my thing so we split up. That was my longest relationship actually.
I was already an insensitive bitch then though, so I was okay with it and I was now a knowledgeable promiscuous little slut out in the wild. It was my time to shine.
Maybe if I had spent more time sitting on a chair studying and not sitting on some strangers balls swiving, I would have gotten my damn Bachelor, instead of you know, fucking one. Obviously, dropping out and taking crappy jobs was a much better career choice—not. I was an idiot.
I leaned my head on my palm, my elbow resting on the table in front of me, my other hand still holding my glass, and puffed a breath to the strand of wild curly hair that was trying to hide my drink from my eyes. I finished it, and then got up, pulling my dress down a little but it just showed more boobs so it was kind of counterproductive.
I searched Victor in the crowd. He was at the bar talking enthusiastically with a group of friends. He looked happy. And it was hard for me to digest because this wasn’t my kind of crowd. My kind of crowd didn’t rent bars or hire high price strippers. My kind of crowd got drunk off Listerine and stole stop signs.
“Fancy meeting you here,” a voice whispered, right beside my ear, and I jumped in surprise, almost dropping my empty glass. I covered my heart with my hand, trying to recompose myself while I glared at the responsible. “Seriously, should I really be worried about you stalking me?” Stranger-Danger guy aka Landon asked.
If it would have been anyone else, I would have thrown their drinks—because mine was empty—in their faces, but it was just so crazy that I was in the same place as him again, in a town with almost nine million people in it, that I refrained from doing it. “What are you doing here?” I asked him, wide eyed. I had honestly believed I would never see him again. At least never as soon. It had been barely two weeks since I had last seen him.
“I used to work with those guys,” he explained, motioning with his chin towards one of the boxes where the high class strippers were shaking what their mama gave them, his face leaning in towards mine so I could hear his voice over the loud music.
“In a strip club?” I shouted back, a grin on my face.
“Your name,” he replied.
My smile dropped, my eyebrows frowned. “What?” Maybe he hadn’t heard me over the music. Or maybe I hadn’t heard right over the music. Or maybe he was just dodging the question.
“I’m not answering anything until you tell me your name,” he specified.
I rolled my eyes but forfeited. “Danika.”
“Danika?” he pressed.
I raised an eyebrow. “Do you plan on Facebook stalking me?”
He grinned, showing all of his perfectly aligned white teeth. “Maybe.”
It wasn’t like I probably didn’t already have a bunch of stranger perving on my Facebook profile anyway. “Danika Wisher.”
“I used to work in a circus,” the answer came automatically.
“Bullshit,” I snorted and pointed towards where one of his ‘ex-coworkers’ was spinning around a pole with the hand that was holding my empty glass, “these guys are high class strippers.”
“Are they talking their clothes off?”
I slapped his shoulder. “Damn it Landon, give them a minute, we barely just met them.” We looked in each others eyes after, and both burst into laughter. It was kind of wrong, how comfortable I felt with that Stranger Danger Boy.
“I still wasn’t a high class stripper, I was a circus performer,” he tried to assure me.
As if. If I could move like these guys could, I would be stripping my way to fame, and maybe do a movie about my exotic life, like Channing Tatum had. And I’d have a better plot line. But just as many sexy naked chests.
“And you got fired?” I asked, remembering an earlier conversation.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“And you can do what they do,” I inquired, pointing at one of the guys turning around the pole.
“Well, I can’t contort myself like poor Anya over there,” he pointed to a girl with her feet resting on her face, from behind, like seriously, it was kind of gross to see her ribs pop out because of the awkward position, “but for the most part, yes.”
I blinked twice thinking about all the possibilities. Mmmm… I gazed right in his eyes. “Then darling, if you want a job, start a high class stripper business. Or just become a stripper. Honestly, how do you think people can afford college these days?”
He shook his head slightly. “I’m not a college student.”
I snorted and went to take a sip of my drink but then remembered it was empty. I kept myself from groaning. “Maybe you ought to be, since that circus diploma of yours only landed you a job at a high class strip club.”
Landon chuckled this time. “You’re not going to drop that stripper deal, are you?”
I smirked back. “Never. It’s a gold mine of joke opportunities.”
“Fair enough.” He changed the conversation. Smart move. “How do you know the birthday boy?”
“I don’t,” I answered shrugging. I considered for a second how to answer this, and then said, “My date is friends with him though.” Victor wasn’t exactly my date in the sense of what a date pertained to, but that way I didn’t have to explain I was this dude’s on-call sex buddy, since it might be a little awkward.
He frowned slightly. “Your date, huh?”
“Yep.”
“And where is he now?” He looked around as he asked.
I quickly spotted Victor, still laughing with his friends. He was laughing a lot. He had clearly been drinking a little too much. “Over there,” I answered, pointing his way with my chin.
“And what’s your big shot boyfriend name?”
I rolled my eyes. “He’s not my boyfriend. But his name is Victor Rockefeller.”
“Rockefeller…” Landon trailed, rubbing his chin. “So you’re a stalker and a gold digger.”
I knew he was joking, his tone implied as much, but I still faked being offended and slapped his chest with the back of my hand. “I’ll have you know our relationship is purely sexual. I don’t care about his money.”
“Aren’t you the romantic?”
I snorted. “I don’t care about romance.”
“So, you only care about sex?”
I shook my head, making a clicking sound with my cheek. “When you put it like that…”
The man in front of me grinned. “You’re denying it?”
“No,” I waved the matter away with my hand, “it just feels like everyone is telling me I’m some kind of sex maniac lately. I’m not a whore. I’m just in sync with my clitoris.”
Landon slightly choked on his drink. “What?” I was about to say again what I had just said but he stopped me, shaking his head, almost covering my mouth with his hand. “No wait, don’t repeat that. You’re even worse they I thought!”
I grinned widely. “Thank you very much. Oh and while we were on the subject of Abbie…” He looked at me like I was a crazy person. I probably was. “Wanna go on a blind date with her?”
Landon closed his eyes and shook his head quickly—it took like half of a second, the way someone does when they’re sort of out of it, like they’ve been thrown way too much information all at once and are trying to clear their head. “You want to set me up with one of your friends?” he finally asked.
Shrugging, I explained, “She needs to get laid and you need to get a life because you live with your mom and you sleep till two in the afternoon.”
“You know next to nothing about me,” he pointed out.
Fair enough. Still, the boy had many opportunities to rape me or kidnap me and he had never taken them, so as far as I was concerned he was reliable. “Well, that’s sort of the point of a blind date, isn’t it?”
“Sorry, not interested,” he finally said.
“So you are gay?”
He stuck his tongue out at me. “More like emotionally unavailable.”
I puffed out air and went to drink but remembered again it was empty. God dammit! As I was glaring at the bottom of my glass, like I could will it to fill up, I asked, “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“That’s supposed to mean that the girl over there,” I looked up just in time to see him point to a blonde girl wrapped around a red drape of some sort, rolling around it, climbing up it, and generally looking darn skilled and graceful, “pretty much smashed whatever I had left of heart to a snivelling mess, and trust me with the heart I have it’s impressive.”
I kept looking at her. The way she gazed out at the crowd now and then and the way she held her head and just the vibe she seemed give out just oozed of arrogance. “You loved her and she broke up with you?”
“More or less, yeah,” he trailed, running his hand behind his head.
I looked at him straight in the eyes, eyebrows raised, challengingly. “Oh, boohoo, poor little Landon. His little feelings got hurt. Want me to put a Band-Aid on your booboo,” I crooned mockingly.
He frowned. “No need to be a bitch about it.”
“Right back at you.” I pushed his shoulder. “Serves you right to love someone. Feelings have that effect on people. They make you vulnerable and fragile and useless and they always hurt you in the end.”
Landon burst laughing, a kind of broken laugh. “And I thought I was messed up.”
“I’m not messed up, I’m realistic.” I made a face.
“Trouble in paradise?”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“With your Rockefeller boy?”
Where was he getting that from? If there was one thing in my life I didn’t question it was my epic sex life with Victor. “No, not at all. Victor and I have a very clear understanding of what our relationship pertains to.”
“Why’d you hate love so much then?”
Because my parents made me loathe love.
I didn’t say that though, of course not, but I said the other thing I thought. “Because unless the two people loving each other die at the exact same time, in every case, love is going to end up breaking the heart of one or two or even more sometimes of the people concerned.” Okay, wow, I was really in my down period of the party now.
“I think we need a distraction before you start cutting yourself,” Landon kept laughing.
I groaned and punched his shoulder again. “Shut up.”
“Wanna dance?”
Well that was out of the blue… I scratched the top of my head. “Huh?”
“Well, it’s either that or get you drunk, but since I’ve already seen you drunk, why not settle for something new?”
I shrugged and put my empty glass down on the table behind me. What could it hurt? And hadn’t I been mentally complaining that I wanted to dance earlier?
So, I followed Landon to the middle of the dance floor where the music completely covered any kind of conversation we could have kept up. It was just beat and heat and lights flashing. In the sea of other moving bodies, we went unnoticed.
His hands rested on my hip and he automatically started to sway with the music, leading me with him.
Something became quite clear right then—Landon had moves. Whether he was really a stripper or not didn’t matter, he knew how to move his body, that was all that matter to me at the moment.
And suddenly I really didn’t care that Victor hadn’t been dancing with me tonight because it never could have competed with this. Let’s compare dancing with Victor to with Landon, shall we? Dancing with Victor, was like dancing with a spastic wooden limbed coordinatingly challenged fat kid compared to dancing with Landon. He actually gave Myles a run for his money.
It wasn’t just the fact that he knew how to move that made him so much better though, it was something else, something unnerving. He never stopped looking in my eyes and whether I liked it or not, I couldn’t look away either. Victor never held my gaze while we danced and if Myles had, it hadn’t had this effect on me, never had register with me the way Landon’s gaze did. He wasn’t looking away and he wasn’t bending over my will. He was leading the dance and that was that. I had to follow. But at the same time it was odd because following him felt like the moves actually came from me, like this was how I would have moved anyway.
I had never been as confused and enthralled by a dance in my life.
Green Velvet’s La La Land started to play. At this point, I had my back to Landon’s chest but still then I could feel his gaze on my cheek, on my temple, on my lips.
And then my eyes connected with Victor’s across the room and I stopped moving altogether.
Sure, Victor and I weren’t exclusive, but we weren’t supposed to go off with someone else when we were actually on a date together. That would have been low, even for me.
“Is your boyfriend pissed?” Landon asked, his lips close to my ears. He had obviously also seen the Spanish god basically gawking at us.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I almost mechanically pointed out, “I should still go though,” I added, turning around to face Landon.
“Don’t you think it’s kind of unfair that I turn you on and he gets to receive all the fruits of my strenuous work?” he asked, his gaze wicked.
I blinked a couple of times. “You lost me at ‘turn you on’”
“You know, it’s not because you—” Before he could finish his sentence a high pitch voice stopped him.
“Landon” someone drawled loudly right behind me. Landon’s eyes widened. I turned around and came face to face with a slightly fuming blonde. “Did you just come here to stalk me? I told you, it’s over.”
I looked at the girl in disbelief while she completely ignored my presence. She was smaller then me because I was wearing killer high heels. In my head, I was stomping on her face, screaming like a pterodactyl. “If you haven’t realized, I’m not the one that came to you, you came to me,” Landon answered, glaring at her.
“If you’re trying to make me jealous, it’s not going to win me back Landon. It’s over,” she replied, pointing at him. Why she seemed to be mad was completely beyond me. If the chick had broken up with him why was she making a big deal out of him being here and out of him dancing with me, because that had to be what ticked her off.
“Yeah, I know, I’m not trying to make you anything Alina,” he shot back, taking a step forward. I bit my lip to keep from screaming “SETTLE THIS WITH A DANCE-OFF!”
“Picking up some random girl in a slutty dress is low, even for you Landon,” she was glaring too now, but this time her glare quickly appraised me.
Oh bitch, you messing with the wrooooong bitch. “Hey, blonde bimbo,” I took a step forward and hovered over her, since I was taller and all, making her step back, “mind getting back to your stripping pole?”
Her nostrils actually seemed to flare. I wanted to laugh. “Who the hell are you?”
There were a few ways to deal with this, but with what I had observed and with what Landon had told me, the bitchy alpha female side of me knew just what to do. “The girl who’s name Landon tried not to shout while he was fucking you,” I replied smiling sweetly.
She gapped at me. “Excuse me!”
“Yeah,” I nodded, still smiling. Landon had cough to hide his surprise. “Sorry if he didn’t give his hundred percent towards the end, he just couldn’t really see the appeal in you.” I looked at her up and down. Okay the chick was good looking, but that wasn’t going to win my argument. “You know, while you were cheating behind his back and he was being a good boyfriend and telling me how we couldn’t do anything because he didn’t want to be a cheater. And trust me girlfriend, the second you dumped his ass, it was mine. And what a fine ass.”
“If there is one thing I know, girlfriend, it’s that there is one girl Landon ever loved and it certainly isn’t you, some tramp nobody he just picked at a bar” she said, going all ghetto fabulous on my ass. Where were her loop earrings? Seriously, she was a skinny blonde chick that didn’t even sound American with her accent. Did she really think she had a fighting chance here?
“Do you mean his sister,” I dug in my brain to remember the name I had seen on my chart at the hospital. I might have sounded dumb most of the time, but I actually noticed things. Oh! “Sophia? I’d love her too, at least be proud of her working at the hospital and all. Or maybe you’re talking about his mother, he did go back to live with her after all. Of course, it seems like she loves her books more than him, but we both know she absolutely adores him.”
Blonde bimbo gapped at me again. In. Her. Face. It was kind of unnerving to realize I knew all these things about Landon though. Oh well, I noticed things, so what? I was finally graced with a “Whatever” before she stormed off to the bathroom.
I sang “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye” under my breath.
“Stalker…” Landon mumbled softly beside me.
I laughed and turned to him, smirking “You’re welcome.”
He sighed, looking in my eyes. “How did you know she cheated on me, I didn’t even tell you.”
I shrugged. “I know the signs.”
Landon shook his head. “You’re a very strange girl.”
Still smirking, I replied, “Thanks, now will you consider dusting to cobwebs out of my friends Batcave. Just a good old, slam bam right in the clam.”
I was rewarded with a laugh. Good. People that sulked for too long were a pain in my ass. “When you put it like this… no thank you.”
“Would you rather be a boyfriend,” I said boyfriend like it was a dirty word.
“I would rather nothing.”
“You’re boring.” I scrunched my face mockingly. And then I frowned a little. “Did you really just come here to see her?”
Landon shrugged. “No… not really,” he mumbled, his hand at the back of his head.
“Oh boy, you got it bad…” I shook my head feeling bad for the guy. I was lucky that I never had to deal with crap like feelings. “Well, I suggest you take off now, unless you want to chat with your other stripper friends, because I’m going to go soon, and if you’re still there when blonde bimbo gets out of the bathroom, my epic lie will crumble.”
He sighed. “Yeah sure, you’re right… I’ll go.”
I nodded. “Good. ”
Landon nodded too. “Alright…” the corner of his mouth lifted a little. “Until next time Danika”
I smiled a little. Yes, next time. I doubted we’d see each other again though. It would be too many coincidences for a lifetime. “Goodbye Landon… oh and just so you know, even if I don’t know you all that well, from what I do know and I tell you this whole heartedly, you deserve better.”
With that, I walked away and headed straight for Victor. When I reached him, he squealed, actually squealed my name and wrapped his arms around my neck.
“Whatcha doin’ stranger?” he slurred, playing with my hair. It seemed like he was getting completely sidetracked by that simply gesture.
I laughed. “Come on my Spanish god, your carriage awaits.”
“Can’t I drink moooore,” he asked in a drawl, pouting.
I shook my head, rolling my eyes, but there was still a smile on my face. I rarely saw Victor drunk. It was quite an amusing sight.
“Actually, I have other plans for you,” I whispered in his ear and a grin split his face in two.
“I’M LEAVING NOW!” he shouted, and started for the door. Of course, he was kind of wobbling, so I had to help him get to it.
We quickly got a cab—it was his driver’s night off—and drove to his apartment, while he kept playing with my hair and laughing for no reason.
Part of me was a little sad that he wasn’t asking me about Landon. I knew he had seen me with him.
He was drunk though. And of course one of the reason why this relationship worked so well was because there was none of that “I saw you with another girl so now I’m going to burn all your photos and call the police and give them an anonymous tip that you hire hookers at your office to sniff coke off their asses during lunch breaks” so I really shouldn’t be complaining about anything. I shouldn’t want him to be jealous.
Maybe it was just my female pride talking. Maybe I was just tired.
“Your eyes are so pretty. I never know if they’re blue or green,” Victor whispered, trailing his finger tip under my eyes.
“They’re blue.” I smiled at him.
“But they look green,” he whined.
I smiled more and pressed my palm against his cheek. “Maybe your definition of green is in fact blue for everyone else?”
He narrowed his eyes at me while one of his hands traveled to the edge of my dress. “Or maybe you’re just being a smartass because I’m slightly tipsy.”
“Entirely drunk would be more exact,” I replied and laughed. “You gotta be smashed to have your hand down my pants with someone else in the car.” I turn in my seat, to kiss the corner of his mouth, my whole weight on my left side.
“This is a taxi and you’re not wearing pants.” His hand trailed down to my butt, easily sliding under the fabric of my dress and made a groaning sound at the back of his throat when his hand came in contact with skin that should usually be covered. “Or underwear for that matter,” he murmured huskily.
“Horny little shit,” I whispered against his lips, and slightly grazed my teeth along his jaw, my fingers digging in the back of his neck, holding him in place.
“Sexy she-devil,” he breathed back, his hand wrapping where my thigh became my ass, his fingers touching somewhere they really shouldn’t be touching in public.
And that’s when I straddled a Spanish god in the backseat of a cab. Hey, I’m sure the poor taxi driver had seen a lot worse.