Page 3 of Deliah
Oh, here we go.“Don’t you dare fucking shout at me, you little prick,” I growled, sitting up. “Not in my own apartment.”
He started getting dressed in a rage, fumbling with his jeans like a toddler throwing a tantrum. I got to my feet and shoved him back into the wall. His eyes widened like he couldn’t believe I’d laid a hand on him.
“Fucking bitch,” he hissed.
“Sorry, Mr Pathetic-Grunting-Boring-Sack-of-Shit,” I shot back. “Go crawl back to your hotel and find someone who wants to be shagged like a bag of frozen chips.”
I didn’t care.
He started to get his clothes back on, so I grabbed my t-shirt, rolled my eyes, and walked back to the balcony. Lit another cigarette I didn’t want. Sat on the floor, legs crossed, heart pounding—not from heartbreak, just pure fucking rage and embarrassment.
Then I slid my hand between my legs, shut my eyes, and finished the job myself. Better than he ever could. What a fucking disaster.
The next morning, I was still half asleep, drooling into my pillow, mascara welded to my cheekbones, when Jamie stormed into my room like a pissed-off dad who’d just caught his teenage daughter sneaking out.“Did you have someone back here last night?”
I squinted up at him, my head a war drum of tequila regrets, my mouth dry enough to exfoliate concrete. “What?”
“You were the only one here,” he snapped, eyes blazing. “My iPad’s gone.”
I sat up. Fast. Regret hit me just as fast.“You’re joking.”
“Do I look like I’m fucking joking?”
My stomach dropped. I could still smell the guy’s aftershave—cheap and overcompensating. The memory of him fumbling around like he was defusing a bomb came rushing back, along with the full horror of the night. I didn’t just bring home a disappointment—I brought home a thief.Fuck.
I buried my face in my hands. “Shit. James, I’m so sorry.”
“You better be. What the fuck were you thinking bringing some random back here? You let him into our apartment. Our space. Now my iPad’s fucking gone.” His voice cracked towards the end, and that was what got me—the betrayal underneath the rage. He wasn’t just pissed. He was hurt. And I hated myself for it. I really fucked up.
“I’ll replace it, I swear,” I said. “I didn’t think—I just—I fucked up.”
“You think?” he snapped. “Jesus, Deliah, get a grip. You’re not eighteen on your first girls’ holiday. You need to grow the fuck up.”
The thing with Jamie was that he always hit where it hurt. Not because he was cruel but because he didn’t sugar-coat shit. And he wasn’t wrong. I had fucked up. Badly. After a good ten-minute rant about safety and trust and how if he wanted to live with irresponsible nutjobs, he’d go back to uni halls, he finally left the room, slamming the door so hard my mirror wobbled on the wall. I lay there in silence, feeling the weight of it all—Jamie’s disappointment, the thud of my hangover, the bitter memory oflast night’s disaster. I felt disgusting. Violated. Stupid. The iPad was gone, and so was my last shred of self-respect. I needed money. Fast. Not just to replace Jamie’s iPad but to claw back some sense of control. I couldn’t keep living like this—scraping together change for cheesy chips and corner shop fags, one bad decision away from catastrophe.
That’s when I found myself back at the little café around the corner. Our haven. Our grease-soaked sanctuary. Oversized t-shirts, sunglasses hiding the damage, coffee, and hash browns for the soul. And Archie—always behind the bar, always taking the piss, always with a side-eye like he’d seen a hundred girls like me burn out before they made it to September. Archie was in his fifties, skinhead, tanned to leather, and wearing a
gold chain thick enough to tow a car. Proper cockney geezer. Owned the café by day and the biggest strip club on the island by night. He knew everything. Everyone. And he could smell desperation like a shark smells blood. He poured my tea and raised an eyebrow. “You look like roadkill, love.”
“Feel like it,” I muttered, stirring three sugars into the cup like it could fix my life.
Aneeka was sitting beside me in giant sunglasses, orange juice in hand, scrolling through pictures on her phone and laughing at one where I’d passed out in the toilets with a traffic cone on my head. Good times.
And there they were. Like the universe had sent them in just to show me what I wasn’t. What I could be. We were halfway through our greasy breakfast when they rocked up. The strippers. You could always tell when it was payday. They came in loud and proud—heels clacking, perfume trailing behind them, laughter that turned every head in the café. They were still in last night’s lashes, glitter clinging to their skin like battlepaint. One had a love bite so big I was tempted to call animal control. They didn’t walk—they owned the place. Strutting in like they were walking into the VIP section of life itself. Voices loud. Heads high. The kind of women who didn’t flinch when people stared—who fed off the stares. They were fucking nuts. Confident. Magnetic. One of them swung her bag onto a chair, flopped down, and shouted, “Oi, Archie, guess who got three VIPs and a yacht invite last night?”
Archie rolled his eyes without looking up from his paper. “Hope you left ’em with their wallets, darling.”
The girls cackled. They were feral, unapologetic, and they’d decided a long time ago not to give a single fuck about what people thought—and were better for it. I couldn’t stop staring. It wasn’t just the clothes or the tits or the noise—it was the energy. They radiated something untouchable. Like they’d seen things, done things, and come out the other side shinier and sharper. Girls like that didn’t get walked over. Girls like that didn’t let heartbreak keep them up at night. They twerked by the till and threw notes at Archie like it was part of some private joke. One of them pulled out a wad of notes so thick it could’ve been used as a weapon.
“Four grand this week,” she bragged, grinning like a girl who knew she was winning.
My sausage rolled off my fork onto the floor, and I didn’t even notice.
A coach full of pensioners drove past the café, and Archie, without missing a beat, shouted, “Go on, girls, give ’em a treat!”
And they did. Flashed their tits like it was the Queen’s Jubilee. Archie laughed so hard he nearly dropped his ashtray. I just sat there silent, watching, processing. That was the moment. Right there. The glitter. The noise. The unshakeable confidence.It was like someone lit a fire under me. It wasn’t just about money anymore. It was about being seen. Being powerful. Being untouchable. I wanted to be the girl who walked in loud, not the one slumped in sunglasses with guilt for breakfast. I didn’t just want a job. I wanted power. That’s when I said it.
“Got any jobs going at the club?”
