Page 27 of A Brother At My Back

“Why not?” he sounded curious.

“I had one of the instructors tell me that because I was a stripper, I was asking for trouble.”

He scoffed and declared, “What a tool!”

“Yeah, Lia and I didn’t go back after the first class. We went back to her apartment and ate ice cream. Besides, he was less about actually teaching the girls anything and more about feeling them up and fishing for a hookup.”

He laughed and I smiled to myself. It was a good sound. I was just finishing up and shut off the water saying, “Don’t laugh. I mean, it’s my job, I would know.”

“Too right, I reckon.”

I worked on drying myself off and practically jumped into my street clothes. His apartment wasn’t exactly warm, and the heat from the shower was quickly dissipating from the bathroom.

I pulled my hair dryer from my bag and thought better of making him wait to shower until I’d dried it in here. Instead, I stepped out and he stood up. It made me smile how quickly he got to his feet. It reminded me of a bygone era when men leaped up from their seats anytime a lady entered the room. Except I was no lady. I don’t think I could ever be considered ‘classy’ not even by today’s standards. Still, there was something about how Nik moved around me that almost made me believe I could be. It was nice.

“I don’t want to hold you up, is there someplace I can plug this in out here and dry my hair?” I held up the hair dryer and he smiled.

“Most of the power points out here don’t work,” he said, “But the one by the bed does, under the chair.”

“Thanks,” I said and he gave me a nod.

“I’ll be out nek minute, no worries.”

I started across the open space towards where he said and turned last moment, blurting out, “And thanks for what you said, you know, about my face. Um, I’m not sure why you called it that, though.”

“What, yer warrior’s mark? Because you are one. You didn’t just survive, Girl. You thrived, you made yer own way. That takes courage that a lot of people lack. That’s a survivor’s mark you can be proud of, eh.”

I blinked but he was gone, inside the bathroom, just the thinnest sliver of golden light coming through the crack in the door. I swallowed hard and went over to the chair that seemed to be serving as some sort of an end table more than a chair. It had a bunch of things on it that I didn’t want to disturb, so I sat on the edge of the bed and plugged in my drier.

I sat up, and brush in hand switched the loud machine on. The warm air was welcome against my scalp and I worked the heat through my long hair, which was a real bitch to dry. Still, I was so not getting on the back of a motorcycle, in winter, with wet hair, helmet or not. Just the thought gave me a cold shiver. I would never get warm again.

I let my eyes wander, as drying one’s hair was typically one of the most boring pastimes on earth. Especially without my setup at home. I’d usually just sit at my little dining room table with a textbook propped on a cookbook stand and read out of my assigned chapters while drying. Don’t judge. I liked to be efficient and look good.

Now I just let my gaze roam around Zeb’s large, rundown, and mostly empty apartment. I twisted in my seat and nearly singed the top of my ear with the drier, I was so frozen by what captured my gaze.

Taped to the wall beside his bed was a crumpled twenty, a smear of familiar red lipstick across Jackson’s face.

Had he gone back to the diner for it?I’d wondered what he was doing, and here it was staring me in the face. Surprising me the most was the fact that my first reaction upon seeing it was that it was a sweet gesture before my general paranoia about everything kicked in.

I went back and forth for several moments wondering about his intent when it came to the bill. Trying to decide whether it was a sordid trophy or whether it was as a sweet gesture that was my initial reaction to seeing it there.

I shut off the hair drier and finger-combed my hair to feel for any excessively damp spots. It took me a full minute to realize I wasn’t hearing the shower run. I twisted back around and he was standing there, watching me, barefoot and bare-chested in just a pair of jeans, his longish dark hair pulled into a short ponytail.

“What is this?” I asked softly, pointing to the bill.

“Ah, shit, uh, for me? A good memory.”

I frowned, “Explain please?”

“Well, you see I went to this titty bar and there was this dancer there, and she’s a pretty thing. Fierce, you know? Out of all the blokes sitting around her stage, she picked me to dance for and I gave her a tip worthy of her show and she made taking it such a part of her performance. It was special. I liked it, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how she took the money.”

He wouldn’t really look me in the eyes and I realized just how shy he was. I studied him carefully and he radiated a certain amount of embarrassment over having been caught with the reminder taped to his wall. I stood up slowly, leaving my hair drier on the small pile of other things on his chair and my brush behind on the floor.

I was firmly on the side of not creepy but sweet when I went to him. I carefully hugged him and his hands lightly went to my hips. He smelled good, earthy and like a clean man, which why did ‘clean man’ smell so damn good?

“I think it’s sweet,” I whispered and he leaned back so he could look me in the eyes, a small smile playing on his full lips. My gaze wandered the intricate whorls and designs of his tattoo from forehead to chin, but only on the one half of his face. I didn’t understand that but I didn’t want to ask and possibly offend him.

“But?” he asked softly, his voice strained, swallowing so hard it very nearly clicked.

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