“Tell me your real name,” David asked before she could go put his order in.
She laughed. Cherry wasn’t her real name, of course, but it had been her nickname since she was a baby. Even then she’d had red hair. No one ever believed that Cherry was practically her real name. Only her mother ever called her Jillian, her given name.
“Cherry is my name,” she said, and then, before the man could protest, she hurried away.
David watched the waitress go, her ass swinging back and forth beneath that dastardly short dress. And then someone else caught his eye, and David sighed.
“Here comes this prick,” David said to his men, Mark and Kyle. They looked over and smirked.
The man who owned Fire House was young, only twenty-five. He had been born into wealth and had opened a few successful clubs in a few different cities by the time he was twenty-three. He liked Chicago, though, so he spent most of his time there. He was thin and nervous looking, with a large hooked nose and beady eyes. His name was Nathan.
“Hey there, David,” Nathan said as he slid into the booth next to him. While Nathan had started out with clubs, he had expanded into the drug game, though he was nothing but a speck to David. Still, it paid to be nice.
“Nathan,” David said in his cool and collected voice.
“I got something big going,” the club owner said, unable to keep a smile from spreading across his face. “I thought I would come offer you a place.”
David returned the smile, but his had malice. “Nathan, the day you have something you could possibly offer me other than bottles of champagne, I’ll jump off a fucking bridge.”
Nathan blinked, his mouth hung open. Then he shut it, smiled again, and nodded. He stood up and turned. “Fair enough,” he called over his shoulder, and then he was gone. David watched him go and then turned to his men, and they shared a laugh.
2
Cherry was tired. Her feet hurt, because her black pumps were uncomfortable. Her tits were sore, because the hard wire of her push-up bra cut into the soft flesh of her underboob. The thong she wore was uncomfortable, and after spending hours walking through a haze of cigarette smoke, vapor, and horrible smells that cheap guys sprayed on themselves before a night out, Cherry was covered in stench.
Still, it was good money, working at Fire House. She couldn’t deny that. She was fresh out of college and had been working there for a year before she even graduated. Men liked her, so they left good tips and bought more drinks. Her boss, Nathan, liked her, since those men were buying more drinks, and although it was brain-dead work, Cherry liked it, since she was making a lot more than most of the people she had just graduated with.
The nights that David was there were the best. He tipped a lot. He bought a lot. She knew he wanted her. She wanted him too, but she wouldn’t let herself get involved with him. She hadn’t been involved with anyone in a long time. School had been taking all of her time during the day, and work at night, but now she had a lot more free time, and she had been taking the offers she got from men at work a lot more seriously.
“Hey, hon, can I take you out?” one man might say.
“Come back to my place,” another would say.
She definitely wasn’t looking for cheap sex, so those second guys would get a smile and an easy “no thanks” line. The first, though, she considered. She needed to go on a date; it had been so long since she had done so.
And of course David Carr wanted to take her out. He asked her every night he came into the club. That night was no exception. He had been joined by a number of people at his private table, including a blonde bimbo with fake tits who seemed to be trying to get into his pants but was growing increasingly agitated by the fact that David was pawning her off on one of his friends.
“You should come out tonight,” David said. “What time do you get off?”
Cherry smiled and bent down, flirting with the good-looking man, making sure he got a nice view down the low neck of her dress.
“Three in the morning,” she said. “You want to take me out to breakfast?”
David laughed and nodded. She watched him. He had perfect white teeth. “I’ll take you to breakfast,” he said. “I know a place with the best pancakes.”
Cherry straightened up and shook her head. “I can’t tonight,” she said, though she had never been so close to accepting the man’s offer to take her out before. She couldn’t though. She liked nice guys, and David Carr was the epitome of a bad boy. He dealt in crime. Everyone knew it.
Cherry turned and headed back into the kitchen. Most people in the club were there to drink, dance, and hook up, but the place did have a small kitchen, white and silver and pristine, where a couple chefs made hors d'oeuvre for those who ordered it.