Page 9 of Bad Wolf

I’m the only one who issupposedto know that it actually tells a story that’s all too true. No one who works at the club knows my past. How I came to be here in the first place.

I dry heave into the waste basket and Joan rubs a hand across my naked back.

When I finally lift my head, Trinity slowly shakes hers. My eyes start to mist, and I plead with everything I have. Beg her not to make me sing this song.

“Barry will have a fit and you know it,” she says of the sketchy owner that runs this joint.

“He won’t even think twice about docking your pay. You’re the only one that can do this. You just have to get through three and a half minutes and then you’re done and can go home. I’ll take you myself.”

Before I can utter any more words, I’m maneuvered on stumbling legs and pushed out into the eerie silver and white light, my body barely managing to keep me upright, as the DJ announces my show name.

With bile starting to rise in my throat and tears threatening, the opening bars to “The Lonely” play and I know I have twelve seconds to find my voice or embarrass myself completely. And let’s face it, tonight has already been a disaster.

So, with literally nothing left to lose, I try to find my center and count down the beats.

Three, two, one.

2 a.m., where do I begin?

Crying off my face again

The silent sound of loneliness

Wants to follow me to bed

I'm a ghost of a girl that I want to be most

I'm the shell of a girl that I used to know well

Dancing slowly in an empty room

Can the lonely take the place of you?

I channel every bit of resentment I feel towards my father into this song. How I’m stuck in this never-ending cycle of debt and shitty apartments.

Of never living my life for me. Of the crippling loneliness I feel every day. Every day since the moment I said a goodbye that no one heard.

And my number brings down the house. Even the girls are clapping in the wings.

They come to join me, and we take our synchronized bow. My eyes scan the burgundy crushed velvet couches, but Knox is nowhere to be found.

Mr. Madden is though, and he has a very concerned look on his face, and Troy, well he just looks pissed.

The girls climb down onto the floor into the eager group of flirty men who shower them with praise and offer to buy them drinks. I book it off that stage so fast, I nearly lose my legs from under me. As I dash down the corridor to the dressing rooms, I’m grabbed from the side and pulled into a darkened room, where I’m slammed against a cold wall. It was aggressive, but it didn’t frighten me.

I know who it is, my body reacts the way it always did, only he doesn’t smell the same anymore. His cologne is expensive now, I can tell, but the sandalwood and the spice and the whiskey on his breath, do something new to me.

A grown-up wave of awareness, need, and want zaps straight to my core as my eyes adjust to the dark.

I’m shaking at his touch on my arm, even if it is a punishing, bruising hold and I can’t honestly make sense of what I say next.

“Now you’re just a stranger with all my—”

“Don’t spout that shit at me. What the fuck are you doin’ here?” he grits out.

It feels like all the air has been sucked out of the room.

“I…in the club or—”

---