I watched as Colt and Jessa leaned over the iPad. Her hand was on his back, and he wasn’t doing anything to encourage it, but he wasn’t pushing her away, either. It bothered me that I wanted to know what the deal was with them, and so when Colt said something I couldn’t hear and Jessa tipped her head back and laughed, I averted my eyes.
I looked out across the club, imagining what it was going to be like when it was filled with men (and women?), all of them drinking and watching naked women dancing on stage. Would the men be nice? Would they look at me in my skimpy outfit even though there were naked strippers for them to look it?
Well, Olivia, I thought, trying to calm my racing heart, you’re about to find out.
Once Colt and Jessa were done going over the orders, he left her in charge of me, instructing her to teach me what to do.
“You’re leaving?” I asked, trying to keep the panic out of my voice.
Which obviously didn’t work, since Jessa immediately picked up on it. “Aww, Colt,” she said. “How cute. She has a crush on you.”
“You’ll be fine,” Colt said to me. “I’ll come find you later, see how it’s going.” I waited for him to say something else, something comforting, to tell me where he’d be or what it exactly it was he expected of me. We hadn’t even talked about what he wanted from me, why he wanted me to waitress for him. Obviously there was more to it. But he didn’t do any of those things. Instead, he turned and walked away, leaving me alone with Jessa.
My only consolation was that he hadn’t said goodbye to her, either.
“You look like shit,” Jessa said, shaking her head.
“Thanks,” I said, rolling my eyes. “It’s nice to meet you, too.”
“You need make up,” she said, ignoring my sarcasm. “And lots of it.”
She moved out from behind the bar and walked toward the back hallway, disappearing out of sight. I sat there for a second, not really sure what to do, and then finally, I got up and followed her.
“Anyway,” she said, when I found her in the dressing room, like we were in the middle of a conversation and she hadn’t just left me sitting out there like an asshole. “This is the dressing room.”
“Yeah,” I said, not able to resist getting a little dig in. “Colt told me.”
“Don’t,” she said, pushing her hair back from her face.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t act like you know Colt.”
“I wasn’t.”
She bit the inside of her cheek, almost like she wanted to say something else, but then she let out a little sigh, obviously deciding it wasn’t worth it.
“You can use anything you see here,” she said, opening a drawer filled with makeup in all different shades – lipsticks, blush, eyeshadows, liners, and foundations. All of it was still in its packages, neatly arranged and separated. “When you’re done, you can keep it. Don’t put anything that’s been opened back in the drawer. No one wants your nasty used shit. Got it?”
I nodded.
“We pool our tips,” she said. “So don’t even try to think about pocketing anything. They go in a tip jar on the bar, and we split them up at the end of the night.”
“Fine.”
“And since you’re not going to make any money looking like that, I guess I’m going to have to help you.”
She led me over to a dressing room mirror and went to work on my face, smoothing foundation, layering eye shadow, slicking lip gloss onto my lips.
“Better,” she said, when she was done, her tone conveying that she still thought I was subpar.
I turned to look at myself. I did look better. She’d evened out my skin tone, made my lips looked plump and pouty and my eyes smoky and sexy.
“Thank you,” I said, meaning it, even though I knew she’d only done it because if I made more money, she was going to make more money.
She shrugged, like she could care less. About anything. She leaned over the vanity, studying her reflection in the mirror as she arranged her hair around her shoulders. I watched her, wondering what it would be like to be so beautiful. When you were beautiful, people wanted to be near you. They wanted to help you, they thought you were good, worthy of something, whether it was attention or love or money. People wanted to be near beauty, almost as if they thought it would rub off on them.
Of course, there was another side to beauty. It could bring so much power that some people didn’t know how to handle it.
Jessa flicked her hair behind her ear. “The job is easy. You ask the guys what they want. You write it down. You bring it to me. Then you bring the drinks back to the customers. Got it?”’
I nodded.
She pulled the bottom of her vest down a tiny bit, adjusting it where it hit her stomach. There was a dusting of something shimmery on her skin, giving her a glittery glow.