Page 12 of John Wilder Gets Schooled
I swiveled and thrust and ground against Louise, who was gasping and fanning herself, and when the chorus swelled, I stood and ripped my pants off, leaving me wearing nothing but my thong. I spun around and straddled Louise and dropped the handcuffs into the plunging neckline of her dress, flashing her my best sexy smile. She gasped and grabbed the nearest cocktail, draining the glass while I danced and teased and flirted and made her feel like a goddamn queen.
When I shimmied off Louise’s lap and did a circuit of the room, more than one set of hands slid over my ass, which could have been creepy except it was followed by the snap of elastic as dollar bills were tucked into my waistband. And hey, who could blame Louise and her friends for getting a little handsy? I had a fantastic ass.
I worked the room and I worked those ladies until they were all out of dollar bills, and when the song came to an end and I picked up my shirt, they let out a collective “Aww” of disappointment.
“Sorry, ladies,” I said, “time’s up.”
A short, perky blonde who was obviously several cocktails deep grabbed her purse, pulled out a fifty-dollar bill, and held it out. “Are you sure you can’t stay for one more song?”
I hesitated. Money was money, but I was so fucking tired.
The next thing I knew, they were all scrambling for theirpurses and holding out tens and twenties. “Pretty please, Officer?” the blonde said, a gleam in her eye.
And hey. I might not have gone to college, but I wasn’t stupid.
“I guess I can stay a little longer,” I said and lined up the next track.
Twenty minutes and two hundred dollars later I made it out of there. As I drove home, my back twinged again. Maybe picking Louise up in a bridal carry and swinging her round hadn’t been the best idea, but she’d been so damn happy about it. Honestly, middle-aged ladies were my favorite kind of job. They didn’t cross the line from handsy into scary, they always had a good time, and they tipped real well.
By the time I drove home and slipped inside the front door, it was past eleven and I was struggling to keep my eyes open. I needed to shower, but someone—Danny, probably—had already converted the couch into a bed, and it looked so damn tempting that I ended up collapsing across it, groaning in relief as I sank into the mattress. I’d just lie here for a minute before I showered and checked on Gracie. That was what I told myself anyway, but it turned out to be a lie.
As soon as my head hit the pillow, it was lights out.
I woke up to the sound of cartoons and blinked my eyes open to find Gracie perched on the end of the bed, a plate of apple slices on her lap and her gaze fixed avidly on the TV. She was dressed and already eating her midmorning snack.
I didn’t know if I was grateful that one of the guys had stepped up so I could catch up on my sleep or ashamed that they’d had to.
Both, probably.
And I was still tired as all hell.
But once I got the hang of this parenting thing, it had to get better, right?
CHAPTER 4
AVERY
Moving into my new house wasamazing. It was only a small place, and it wouldn’t feature in any of those house flipper shows as anything except the “before” house, but it was all mine. Well, mine and the bank’s. Well, the bank’s. But on a teacher’s salary and with the economy the way it was, this little house was my best opportunity to get a start on the property ladder. I wasn’t sure it counted as a property ladder if you basically intended to live on one rung for the rest of your life, but at least in my own place I’d never have to deal with landlords again. No, Mrs. Finnester, that black mold wasnotcaused by me taking too long in the shower.
It didn’t take long to unpack, mostly because I’d been living out of a couple of suitcases for the past few weeks, and I’d gotten rid of all my furniture before moving here. My TV, which had been living in the trunk of my car, had surprisingly survived, so I set it up on the floor of the living room and then unrolled my air mattress in the main bedroom. My old bed frame, which had seen me through childhood, had been getting wobbly as hell because I’d moved a bunch of times and it had never really recovered from being taken apart and put back together again, and I had a new one on order. It was due to arrive next week, along with a dining table and chairs, a couch, some bookshelves, and a desk. My firstreal adult furniture that I’d bought with my real adult paycheck and that hadn’t been purchased by my parents when I was on my way to college or scavenged from the curb outside the dorms after the graduating seniors dumped it there. Things would actuallymatch.
My parents were coming to visit next week with a bunch of my stuff, like the boxes of books I’d had stored in their garage forever, so I hoped my new furniture would be here by then. My air mattress and the TV on the floor wouldn’t exactly give off the adult, professional, and homeowner vibe that I was going for. I was the youngest of seven kids, and I thought it was a little hard for them to let the last one go, you know? I wanted to show them that I had this.
It was the middle of the night when I realized I didn’t have this.
So, the thing about growing up in a house with six older siblings was that it was never quiet. Never. You couldn’t even use the bathroom for more than thirty seconds without someone banging on the door. Mealtimes were barely controlled chaos. Holidays?Insane. And I’d moved from home straight to a college dorm, which hadn’t been much of an adjustment at all. I was still sharing a room, still lining up for food, and still yelling at someone to turn their music down, I was trying tostudy. After college I’d lived back at home again for a bit and then with roommates, but now, for the first time in my life, I wasalone.
The motel hadn’t counted. The walls there had been thin and someone was usually talking right outside in the parking lot, and people were coming and going at all hours. It wasn’t as shady as I was making it sound, probably. Just, it hadn’t been quiet like this.
Quiet like, was that creaking sound the house settling or was it the footsteps of the knife-wielding killer encroaching on my bedroom? Or worse, what if it was a raccoon?
Okay, so maybe that wouldn’t be worse, but at least if I was going to be murdered, I wouldn’t have to worry about how to trap a raccoon. Because that seemed like one of those things thatother homeowners seemed to know, and they’d laugh at me because I didn’t. Like replacing a washer, or fixing a lawnmower, or draining a water heater, or the million other things I’d never had to learn before.
The more I thought about it, the more it felt like maybe that knife-wielding killer was actually the best scenario here.
I wished I could say that I tossed and turned until morning, but I was too conscious that any movement might give away my position to the killer, so instead I lay there and stared at the door until the first rays of morning light filtered through the window. A truck crunched its gears as it drove down the street, and a couple of birds squawked brightly. I rolled off the air mattress onto the floor, climbed to my feet, and started the day feeling tired, itchy-eyed, and kind of stupid.
Nothing about my new house seemed threatening in the golden morning light. I shuffled my way toward the kitchen and, after a bit of trial and error, found where I’d put the toaster yesterday. For some reason it had seemed important that it had space in the cabinet, which was dumb because in practice I knew it’d be living on the counter with my coffee machine since I’d be using both of them every day. My days of shitty gas station coffee were finally behind me, and that alone made buying a house worth it.
