You would’ve thought, over the years, the smell of this place wouldn’t bother me anymore. The overly sweet scent of coconuts and candy blended together with the deep, booming bass, and it was enough to send me hightailing it out of here the minute my shift ended. The Western Lounge was just like every other strip club in Utah that sold alcohol. Pasties and G-strings. The one perk… the girls kept their snatch under wraps. The music, the smell, all triggers that brought me back to where I’d once been every time I punched in. The place was dead today, and I was grateful. Working two jobs had begun to wear on me. Only a few guys lingered by the stage, the pink lights bounced off the black tables and gave me a headache as I washed the last few glasses from the lunch rush. It amazed me, to this day, that guys came to joints like this for lunch. Beer and tits. A mid-day delicacy, I supposed.
I shouldn’t talk shit about this place, if it hadn’t been for the owner, Jaime, who would’ve known where the hell I’d be at this point in my life. Jaime was in his late fifties, sleazy as they come. Salt and pepper hair, pot belly, seventies mutton chop sideburns, and the asshole wore sunglasses whether or not he was indoors or outdoors. Cliché on two legs. But, he’d cleaned my ass up, given me a steady job, and let me sleep in the back room until I got on my feet. When I’d overdosed a little over five years ago, if he hadn’t found me, I would’ve been six-fucking-feet under.
My fingertips were pruned by the time I set the last glass onto the drying rack. Starlee was coming in at two to relieve me. I was supposed to meet up with my friend Kelly at three. She’d recently started up her own women’s shelter and asked me if I wanted to apply for a job. I’d met her at Lifeline while volunteering there, and she was the first female I’d been able to really connect with in a long time. She’d never pushed me for information, and I appreciated that. There was a difference between fighting and surviving. She was a fighter. She took what she wanted. She and her man had once had issues and she’d grabbed the bull by the horns and made shit right. She was married now and I envied that. Not the marriage, but the fight.
Fighters were epic, they were heroes of their own destinies, but me—I was just a survivor. My life, for so long, was a sequence of near deaths and tragic endings. I bounced through each roadblock, floated through, numbing myself with pills and, if I couldn’t afford pills, then heroin had been my answer. I’d survived the streets only because I’d been good at pretending I had no other choice. I’d left home at sixteen, not because I was escaping abusive parents, or a broken home, but because I’d gotten caught stealing money for drugs from the register at my family’s restaurant. A fighter would’ve told her boyfriend no way. A fighter would’ve never fallen into drugs to impress some asshole—a fighter would’ve stopped using drugs the minute she’d found out she was pregnant, pulled her life together, and been a fucking mom.
Sometimes I wished I was able to repress all the shit I’d done into some recess of my mind. Act like everything I’d done was because of my shitty childhood. But I came from a great home and loving parents, attended catholic school, for Christ’s sake. Five years ago, when I’d taken enough heroin for two people, and Jaime had found me unresponsive in the back room, my family had walked into that hospital room like I’d never done a damn thing. Like I was still their little girl and not the plague that had destroyed their hearts. They took me back, broken, and overused, and told me it was water under the bridge as long as I never took another drug again. In my overdosed, drug-hazed mind, I’d known this was my last chance at survival, so I chose right. For once, I chose the path to something better. Things weren’t easy, but the fighter I’d always wanted to be had tried to surface. Every damn day, since I’d left rehab, that strong girl had been fighting to show herself.
Nausea rolled my stomach as I stepped out from behind the bar. Memories tended to fill my gut with bile instead of butterflies like the rest of the world. Starlee was late, and I had to hurry home to shower. I couldn’t show up for my interview in a halter-spaghetti-strap tank-top and booty shorts. Even if Kelly was my friend, she’d most likely throw me out on my ass.
“Jaime,” I hollered over the music as I threw the rag onto the bar top behind me.
He was talking to one of the dancers, Sochi, by the stage, but stopped his conversation and made his way to where I was standing.
“I have to leave. Starlee’s late again. You know I love her but—”
“But you have your priorities. Yeah, I know. This place is a ghost town. Sochi can grab drinks until Starlee gets here.”
Sochi was rail thin, with fake tits and bleach-blonde hair. The guys loved that shit, and it helped she was our best dancer. Tending bar though, I was sure Starlee would get an earful from her once she showed up.
“What’s her deal anyway? She’s been late a lot.”
Jaime avoided my eyes and pushed his hands into his pockets. “You know, life shit.”
“She using again?” I knew it. The signs were there. She preferred meth, and that stuff ate your beauty like a fly did shit. She was wasting away and he was letting her.
“What am I supposed to do?” He shrugged his shoulders.
“Do like you did for me. Pull her ass in here, lock her in the back room if you have to. She’s going to die doing that stuff.”
“Sweetheart, you’re one to talk. I gave you a job, a roof over your head, and for two years you snuck behind my back. Taking pills, shooting up. I know you had to get high to dance, it’s why after your OD I pulled you, made you tend bar instead. To be honest, I don’t know why the hell you still work here.”
Whenever I had the opportunity, I tested myself. Five years, tending bar, one foot in my old life, one foot in my future. If I could handle it, I knew I would make it and maybe I’d become the fighter I’d always wanted to be.
“I need the money, but I got a job interview, a good place. Who knows?” My lips spread into a smile and I lifted my left brow. “I might actually quit you.”
Jaime’s face split into an eye-popping grin. “I can only hope. You were always too good for this place, Mel…too fucking good.”
“Thanks for that.” I playfully slapped his shoulder and, before I turned around, I said, “Get her off the meth, Jaime. If you need my help, you know my number.”
He nodded and his smile disappeared as I turned toward the back exit.
It was October and somehow beads of sweat collected on my forehead as I walked into The Irene O’Connell House. The place hadn’t officially opened yet, but it was swarming with people, most of whom were construction workers, painters, and from what I could see, everything was pulling together nicely. A small smile lifted the corners of my lips as I walked past the front desk. The first floor was still wide open, and all the chatter from the workers, the beats of their hammers, echoed off the high ceilings.
“Hey, you look lost.” Kelly’s familiar voice rose above the chaos as she yelled from the top of her ladder.
A laugh stretched my smile as I watched her carefully scale her way down in tight yoga pants and a black, paint-stained Avenues Ink t-shirt.
“I would have dressed down if I knew the interview was business casual,” I teased as I waved my hand up and then down, mocking her attire.
Her chocolate hair was up in a messy bun, and she had streaks of white across her forehead. I suddenly stopped worrying about my own sweaty forehead. I’d worried for nothing. Kelly was a down-to-Earth chick. I hadn’t known her very long, but she’d always been kind. I guess mistrusting myself and others was a habit I’d have to learn to quit as well.
“You look good.” She leaned down and dropped the paintbrush into a small bucket of paint that sat on the floor. “Follow me, the second floor is a work in progress, but the third floor offices are the only thing we haven’t had to gut… for now.” Kelly’s smirk lit her brown eyes as they met mine. “No elevator, so I hope you don’t mind doing three flights in those heels.”
“Not a problem,” I assured her.
I was wearing a black pencil skirt, a long sleeve, white button-up blouse, and black heels to match. I might have a tarnished past, but I cleaned up nicely when I wanted. At the foot of the stairs, I removed my heels and let them dangle from my fingers, earning a genuine laugh from Kelly.
The third floor was as she explained. Most of the old offices from the previous owners sat vacant. We walked by a few doors, turned left down a small hall, and then right, through the door that led into her office. The room was huge and mostly empty, except for a big cherry wood desk, a few chairs, and a file cabinet. The back wall was all glass and, even though the other buildings hovered over this one, you could still look out onto the snowcapped mountain range of the Wasatch Front.
“This is so amazing. Shit, Kelly, you should be so proud.” I took a seat in one of the chairs as I admired the view.
“I couldn’t have done it without Liam and his brothers. They’ve helped so much. Who knew Liam had so many connections?” She smiled as she took her seat on the other side of the desk, and I slipped on my heels.
“He’s been at the shop a long time, though, right? He gets to know people,” I offered and she nodded.
“I know, but he never ceases to amaze me.” A blush filled her cheeks, and I almost giggled.
“Still riding the newlywed high, Mrs. O’Connell?”
She huffed out a laugh. “Maybe.”
“Didn’t you tell me you were going to hook me up with one of his brothers once?” I was joking, of course, but her eyes sparkled with ideas as she leaned forward in her chair.
“Well… Liam and I are hosting a small Halloween party at our place, and I wanted to invite you. Kieran is still single, and I think you guys might—”
A nervous laughed escaped my lips. “I’m kidding, Kelly. I don’t have time right now to date. Two jobs, plus volunteering at Lifeline, equals no life.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Mel, you know you have the job here. This isn’t a real interview. You can work here… full-time. See, no more need for two jobs. I’m only hiring a few people, the rest is strictly volunteer, but you worked so well with the ladies over at Lifeline, and I could use your experience.”
I took a deep breath. If I could quit The Western…
“What would you have me doing, exactly?”
“Well, phase one, the temporary shelter, will be opening in December. I’ll need you to help train the volunteers, help make food, clean toilets. It won’t be glamorous, but you’d be making good money, and you’d help give women and their children a safe place to sleep. It’s going to be hard work, but I’ll be right beside you, washing sheets, and folding towels. And hopefully, after the last two phases open and counseling services are available, we’ll be able to hire more people, and then…” She smiled and it gave me hope. “Sky’s the limit. Back in the trenches for now, but once we’re up and running, if you stay, if you like it, who knows what opportunities could come your way.”
She didn’t know my past. She was offering me more than I deserved, but I admired her drive, her ambition. She’d almost died in a car wreck earlier this year. She got beat up pretty bad, scarred her face, and lost her modeling career, but she persevered, bought this rundown building, and wanted to do something good with it.
“I’d love to work here.”
Her lips split into a smile that reached her eyes. “Really?”
I nodded. “I think what you’re doing is amazing, and I want to be a part of it even if it’s only cleaning shit out of a toilet.”
We both laughed, and as she stood from her chair, I did, as well. “Should I give you the grand tour?”
“Of course.” My brows dipped and my tone suggested she was stupid to even ask.
“I missed your attitude. You don’t text me enough.”
“My life is… very… complicated.” It was the first time I’d ever really given her a clue about my life.
“I gathered as much. I’m still holding you to that girls’ night you promised me back when I was working at Lifeline. I’ll get you to spill all your secrets. It’s only fair, you know all of mine.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” I said as we made our way back to the stairs. “I like the name you chose for the shelter. Liam’s mom, right?”
Her smile dimmed enough that I noticed. “After she died, I wanted to honor her. She was a savior to me, and now she can be a savior to others.”
“Shit, does Liam even deserve you?” I paused at the top of the stairs, and my lips twitched as they fought a smile.
“We deserve each other.” She nudged me with her shoulder. “Halloween, no excuses. My place. Nine-thirty, I’ll make sure little brother is there.”
Why the hell not? If Liam’s brother looked anything like him, at least I’d have some eye candy for the night. I wasn’t on the market. Dating after Chance died seven years ago, the tailspin I’d fallen into…I wasn’t ready to get attached. Attached meant I had to depend on another person, that my happiness was linked to theirs, and when you’re a recovering drug addict, attached was a fucking grenade.
“Nine-thirty.”
“Costumes are optional,” she said, but raised her eyebrows. “But Kieran is… well, you’ll see, maybe come as a sexy nun.” Her smile felt like a private joke.
“Nah, maybe a sexy maid, since that’s basically what you just hired me for?”
Kelly’s laugh seemed to boom inside the stairwell as we walked down to the second floor.
“Honestly, I think to catch his eye, sexy is the last thing you want to be.”
Okay?
“Do you want to explain that, please?”
“Nope.” Her smirk was too cute and, if she hadn’t just given me an out from The Western, I might’ve hated her a little for it.
“Fine,” I barked with my usual sass and passed her on the stairs. “Maybe I’ll come as a stripper.”
Kelly’s head fell back as she laughed a little too hard. “Oh, God, no, don’t do that, you’ll send him running to the hills.”
My smile stayed perfectly in place but my stomach was twisted in knots as I smoothly said, “Stripper it is.”
This was why I didn’t get close to people, to men, in particular. I was who I was. I couldn’t change the things I’d done, and I knew I’d never be good enough for a guy like Liam, or his brother. I might appear on the outside fresh and new and bright, but it was a lie. I was rusted from the inside out, and if they looked close enough, they’d see straight through the shitty rebuild all the way to the ugly, weathered shell.