Selena
A week has passed since that horrible night. A week of normalcy, or as normal as it can be. I have a constantly screaming toddler, pissed off teenager, and one feisty pre-teen. This may not be every young woman’s dream life, but I wouldn’t trade my family for the world. After all – they are my entire world.
Once upon a time, I thought I’d be married and having my own children right about now, and if it didn’t happen yet, it would be the plan someday soon. Look how life throws us curveballs.
“Selena!” I hear Luke’s screaming from the kitchen. Shaking my head, I walk towards the living room and find Sabrina shaking the remote in front of him. “She turned off the game. I need to watch this. Coach wants us watching so we can pick up on pointers of how the pros handle certain situations. I want to do well. We both know that scouts are coming to games now. I need this, I need the freaking scholarship.”
In a perfect world, I would laugh off the fact that Sabrina stole the remote from her big brother and tell him to put a sock in it and just do what she wants. I can’t, though. Luke is right, except he is wrong too. He doesn’t need this. We need this. He’ll be headed off to college soon, and I have absolutely no way to help him financially; getting a scholarship for baseball would get him in. He’d get his degree and could go on to do whatever it is that he wants, and I know he wants in the major league. It’s his life dream, and I’ll do whatever I can to help him get there.
I turn my attention to Sabrina whose smile dissipates from her face instantaneously. She knows what I’m going to say before it even passes through my lips. In fact, I can barely breathe before she’s firing off in my direction, “This isn’t fair. Luke always gets what he wants. He gets to watch the T.V. He gets to pick what we have for dinner. He gets to go out whenever he wants. Now he gets to watch this stupid baseball game when he’s been watching T.V. all day! He hasn’t even started on his homework, and what have I done? I finished everything!” Sabrina glares me down, a move I learned at a young age, using it on our father time and time again. Only, she can’t use it on me. I created it.
“Sab, this is Luke’s homework. Give him the remote.”
“I should’ve known you’d side with him again. This is freaking ridiculous. I hate you both! I wish I was with Mom!” Sabrina chucks the remote at Luke and storms out the living room. All I feel is the stinging sensation from the punch in the heart that little girl just gave me.
She wants to be with our mother, the woman who abandoned our family, days after Ellie was born.
Good God. Tears prickle behind my eyes, I’ll be damned if I let a single tear come.
“Shit. She didn’t mean it, Sel’,” Luke says to me, eyes not wavering from my own.
“Yep. I know,” I mumble, glancing around the room, my eyes landing on a picture of my family. It was after Dad died, I insisted that we got some new family photos done. It wasn’t perfectly posed by any means. Luke and Sab were glaring at each other while Evie had a fist full of my hair and yanked.
It wasn’t perfect.
But it was us.
***
“She’s still mad, isn’t she?” I ask Luke who’s now sitting at the kitchen island working on his calculus homework.
“She’s a Jacobson, of course, she’s still mad.” He huffs, tapping the back of his pencil on our tan quartz countertop. “She’s a kid, she doesn’t understand how much is riding on me getting this scholarship, and she shouldn’t have to grow up quickly. You and I both did enough of that for all of us. So, let her be mad. Let’s let her be a kid a little longer, even if she thinks we’re the worst siblings in the world…she’ll get the more of the childhood that both of us should have.” I listen to my baby brother, who is wise beyond his years, and can’t help but agree.
I hate to admit that I leaned on him a lot after our Dad died. I regret it – I should’ve figured out a way to let him be a kid for longer, but I was struggling and felt alone. I know I did the best that I could have, given the circumstances that we were put in.
An obnoxious ding comes from my phone, and I know immediately what it is. It’s the alert I have from my bank that will go off if anything goes in or comes out of my account more than two thousand dollars. I had it set up after over drafting my account one time when the mortgage came out. Now I’m freaking the fuck out because I don’t have enough to pay the mortgage until next week. I called and spoke with them earlier today, and they assured me that they wouldn’t process the auto-draft until I called them again.
Fuck, they lied to me! They just took it out anyways. Goodness gracious, this has happened before. Why wasn’t I more careful? I should’ve moved the cash I had on hand over to my savings, so the transaction would’ve been denied.
I dart over to my phone and find a notice for transaction totaling one hundred thousand dollars.
Oh my god.
I don’t think, I immediately call my bank freaking the fuck out. After ten minutes on the phone with the banker, we figured out that someone wired me a hundred thousand dollars. That means a hundred grand was just put in my account…
She couldn’t tell me right away who wired the money but told me that after she called the bank’s main office and did some digging that she would call me with whatever information that she was able to obtain. For now, I’m just going to act like I haven’t even seen the hundred grand that is sitting dandy in my account.
“Since you’re done with your mild freak out, are you working tonight?” Luke asks, and I nod. I won’t lie, shit went down, and I know that. Things aren’t peachy keen at work. I go in, do my job, and leave as quickly as fucking possible. I feel like I can’t trust anyone that works there, and I can’t. Out of everyone, I thought that I could trust Frankie, and I couldn’t even trust her. Damn. It still makes me sick to my stomach.
“Yep. I’ll be home as soon as possible, want me to text you when I leave?” Luke doesn’t know anything that happened a week ago, and I don’t want him to. It’s my job to protect the kids from everything, even from something that happened to me. I refuse to let them worry, especially when the only thing they need to be worrying about is being children.
“You can if you want. The girls and me will prob be asleep,” Luke mumbles like he usually does.
I take that as my cue to leave the house and go straight to Russo’s. Everything has been relatively normal since last week, or as normal as they ever will be. Maybe in a sense, I have a new normal – go straight to my dressing room, change, do my dance, collect my tips, go back to my dressing room and change, and then I leave. It’s safe, or at least it’s the safest I feel.
I’m sure that people would think I’m crazy if they knew exactly what went down a week ago. In a way, maybe I am. I could be. Who the hell knows? I was raised to be a strong woman, to face my fears, to look them straight in the eye and say, “Fuck you,” with a smile on my face. My biggest fear right now is contributing in any way to losing my family, and not working at Russo’s ensures that may happen. I’ve thought about it over and over again, trying to talk myself out of continuing to work here. It would be okay for maybe a week, and then the bills would come crashing in. After a few months, we’d lose the house and be on the streets. At some point, Child Protective Services would step in, and my family would be gone. Everything that I’ve worked so hard to keep together would come crashing down.
So, I was left with no choice. I had to keep working at Russo’s to be able to provide for my family, and I would damn well do that.
For the past week, I have come in here with a mindset, to constantly be on auto-pilot. Don’t think about what happened. Don’t think about the people you work with, or Frankie betraying you. You just work. It was my self-imposed pep talk to myself, and it worked, surprisingly.
I hadn’t seen Frankie since last week, and to be honest, I hope I never see her face ever again. I don’t know what I’ll do in the moment that I see her again. I may scream, cry, or do something unpredictable.
It was just past ten when I went on to dance, everything was normal, the lights, the music, the beat of the bass pumping through the club. And then I notice my other new normal, and his eyes never waver from me.
Christian Steele.
He’s sitting pretty, right in front of the stage, eyes glued to every part of my body. I always noticed how he watched me, in a way that was different than any other customer I’ve ever had looking at me. It’s like he could see me for me, not just Star. Sometimes, I felt like he was staring into the deepest, darkest parts of my soul.
Christian Steele has been a nuisance in my life for the last week. He showed up to every single shift I’ve had at Russo’s, and we’ve gotten into numerous fights regarding me even being back to work. He just doesn’t get it – he doesn’t get to walk into my life and order me around like I’m one of his thugs. I still haven’t even brought up the fact, that he let me leave in his girlfriend’s clothes, and he’s sure gonna hear that from me tonight. Bad Chick by Somo beats through the speakers, echoing through the club.
I glare back at him, hoping that in some way I could be intimidating just the same. I can show him why I am here, how I can make my own money and take care of myself. I also want to show him that unlike some Barbie doll that might be on his arm or be the typical Steele conquest, I am my own woman. I do what the fuck I want. I am who the fuck I want to be, even with the giant mess that my life is.
The beat is dropping, and so am I, dipping it low and making this dance raunchy and powerful, just like the song that plays for me.
My curves pop from side to side and drop down, shaking back up to the top, only to do it all over again. I hear the cheers from all the men who come to watch me, all the men who want me to want them. It just makes me want to give them even more, turning around and bending over, but looking back at them with a sly smile. I make sure my eyes still land on his. Does he know this message is for him?
I go to the pole, knowing I am going to play like I am grinding on the baby tonight. It is like a man I am loving on the dance floor, and Christian is going to know I am not his damn Cinderella. I am a bad bitch, and he has met his match.
It’s been a week since I was used and abused, and I don't take shit anymore, not even from some rich knight in shining armor. Not even if he does what I want and puts a bullet between Varca’s eyes.
Before I know it, my dance is over, and I’m walking off stage, slipping into the back of Russo’s and beelining straight for my dressing room. At this rate I don’t look at anyone, I don’t even have a chit chat with any of the bouncers anymore. Everything has changed.
I go into my auto pilot façade and get work done. It could be worse, I keep having to remind myself of that. Oh, how it could be so much worse. I open my dressing room door and shut it closed behind me. I didn’t like having this weird side entrance/exit at first, but it has proven to be a blessing in disguise.
I immediately walk towards my chair and slide on a black lace thong, then I grab the pair of skinny jeans that mold to me like a second skin, bringing them up over my hips and button them in the front. Just as I’m sliding the button through the hole, I hear my dressing room door fly open. I don’t bother turning back, I’m in front of the mirror and look to see who has come in behind me.
I should be shocked, but I’m so not fucking shocked at all.
Heads would roll tonight.
“What the fuck do you want?” I hiss, venom lacing every single word.
“I want to talk to you about last week, I don’t know everything that happened, but from what the others have told me…”
I can’t stand to listen to Frankie’s bullshit, so I don’t. “Let me get this straight. You want to talk to me about how you set me the fuck up?” I grab my bra, putting it on as quickly as possible. I’m shooting words off again, as I slide my tank top over my head. “That’s what you did, Frankie. You set me up. You even went as far as to make me feel special, like being in this dressing room was for safety reasons. The moment you put me in this fucking room you compromised every shred of safety that I actually had!”
“I didn’t know that he was going to do that to you. I thought he was going to ease you into what he wanted, not fuck you in the lap dance room!”
It’s as if I am having a complete out of body experience. I lose all control, and suddenly, I am right in front of Frankie. Her plump lips are slightly trembling, she can’t even meet her eyes with my own. She knows exactly what she did, as much as she wants to feign being dumb.
I raise my hand and slam it against her cheek so hard that you could hear the crack of skin against skin from outside my room. “You knew exactly what he was going to do to me, and don’t you dare ever fucking act differently. Frankie, you are such an ice-cold bitch. You’re supposed to be the one who watches out for all of us here, our mother hen of sorts, and what did you do…you sent one of your girls knowingly into a situation. Matteo Varca may have been the one that raped me, but you are just as guilty as he is. You put me there.”