Page 14 of Tequila & Lace
Women were conspicuous even when they thought they weren’t. I heard a few “Oh my God.” “Who?” “Where?” “Him?” “Holy shit!” “Fuck me!” “He’s hot” and then “Shhh, you’re being too loud!”
I laughed around a pull of my beer as I looked into the reflection of the mirror at Nancy. She wasn’t looking back, but she did look like maybe she was trying to explain to her friends how someone like me could want someone like her.She needs better friends.
I finished my beer in two gulps, set it down and stood. Time was ticking on the two hours she’d paid for and her friends needed to be out of the picture. As I walked the good fifteen feet to where they were sitting at a long, counter-high table, I heard hushed whispers and then silence as I stopped by Nancy’s side.
She was sitting on the far end and looked up at me through the curtain of her light brown bangs, her hand playing with the straw of her drink nervously. I could feel all five sets of eyes on me, waiting for me to speak. If I were any Joe Schmo, I’d probably be nervous walking into the lion’s den, but instead I smiled and nodded hello.
“Ladies,” I greeted.
“Hi,” they said in unison.
I turned my attention to Nancy. “I’ve had a pretty shitty day, but I saw you from across the bar and the way you were smiling and laughing caught my eye. I was wondering if you’d like to finish your drink with me?”
Nancy’s eyes became huge again. I wasn’t sure why. She knew this was coming. Her face was a little flush too. Maybe she’d thought that Saddles & Racks was too good to be true. You’d get what you paid for; especially when it came to me.
“Don’t leave the man hanging, Nance,” one of the friends remarked.
“I’d… I’d love to,” she finally agreed and began to stand, but I reached out my hand and helped her up. She reached down and took her glass while she smiled at her friends. It was the first real smile I’d seen from her since I’d been at Gold Spike. After I’d stopped at the bar to order myself another beer, I led her to a corner table on the opposite side of the bar where I was before so we could have privacy to talk.
“That was perfect,” she breathed, her smile still as wide as it was when we’d left her friends.
“Those are three words I don’t get tired of hearing,” I joked. She let out a loud laugh and I looked toward the table where her friends were sitting. Sure enough, they were all looking at us. “Do you ever get the feeling you’re being watched?”
She stopped laughing. “Not usually.”
I reached up and grabbed the end of her shoulder-length, curly brown hair. “Why do you think your friends get more attention?”
“Just look at them.” She waved a hand in their direction.
“Are you referring to their looks?”
“Well… yeah.”
“Sugar, I’ve known some beautiful women with shitty personalities that make them the ugliest bitches around. It’s not what’s on the outside that matters.”
“But you wouldn’t have bought me this drink if I wasn’t paying you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have been here tonight to buy you the drink, so that’s true. But when I walked in here looking for you, I knew who you were because you lacked what the others had. You need to have that spark. You’re beautiful. Who cares if you’re not a size zero. Really, my dick would break you if you were a size zero.”
Her eyes widened and I chuckled. It had been awhile since I’d had a date who was this shy. Usually, my dates wanted a good, hard fucking—if it got to that stage. It had to be natural as if we really felt the attraction between the two of us.
She swallowed hard, then took a sip of her drink. “So… um, how did you become an escort anyway?”
Well, we had another hour to spare.I could kill it by telling her the story. “I’d just gotten out of the Army and moved back to Malibu. I had no idea what I wanted to do, and the last time I’d been home was when I graduated high school.”
“Wow, you’ve been an escort for a long time then.”
I smiled. “Not that long. When we had leave, I never went home because there was someone I never wanted to see and I always thought I’d run into her.”
“Oh, an ex-girlfriend.”
“Right.” I nodded.
“But the Los Angeles area is huge.”
“L.A. is huge, but Malibu is small and so was the group of people we hung out with.”
“So she stuck around after high school.”
