She rolls her eyes at me and heads to the closet for her costume.

God, I should ask her. My only other alternative is to watch Jonathan walk around naked from my nine hundred dollar a month sofa for the foreseeable future.

I shove Izzy aside and grab my stuff, weighing the pros and cons as I change.

“So . . .” I finally say as I’m lacing up my last boot and Brittany finishes her makeup, “I heard you might be looking for a roommate?”

She shoots a glare over her shoulder from the vanity. “Maybe.”

“Um . . .” I say, fighting to keep the grimace off my face, and focus on tying my boot. “I’m sort of looking for a place, so . . .”

Her eyes narrow. “So, what?”

“So . . .” I continue. “I was wondering what you pay for rent . . . or what you’d want me to pay, I guess.”

She spins her stool and stands. “You want to move in with me. Seriously?”

“Maybe.”

“Seven hundred,” she says, turning her attention to straightening her nylons.

“Where is it? And how big and all?”

“It’s a two bedroom in the Haight.”

“San Francisco?” Izzy screeches from across the small room. “You have a place in the city for fourteen hundred a month?”

Brittany looks up at her. “It’s rent controlled.”

Izzy turns to me. “Hell! I’ll sell my soul for that. You can have my place.”

We all just look at each other for a second, then Brittany surprises me by plucking at her devil costume and cracking up. When she stops laughing, she flips a hand at me. “My roommate’s moving out at the end of the month. You want to come by and check it out later this week?”

“Um, yeah . . . okay.”

She nods and pushes through the door into the hall.

I give Izzy another wide-eyed look, then follow her out.

We hit the stages and Pete does our intros, and I can’t stop myself from searching the crowd for Harrison as I dance. I know he’s gone. I know I’ll never see him again. But the stupid truth is, even though I know he’s not going to be there, I can’t stop wishing for it.

So, just like every other night for the last week, I suck, my crowd is sparse, and my tips blow.

When I finish my stage shift and Nora tells me I have a private, I’m more shocked than she is. No one’s hired me for the last week. She pushes open the door to the VIP room and I brace myself for Sweaty Man or Horny Guy. But when I step into the room, my heart stalls. All I can do is stare.

Because Izzy was wrong. I’m not safe.

Harrison is standing there, his hands crammed deep in the pockets of his jeans, gazing at me from under long blond lashes.

“I owe you an apology,” are the words that come out of his perfect mouth when I can’t find any. He sinks into the sofa and rubs a hand down his face. “I was totally out of line. I shouldn’t have assumed it was okay to . . .” He shakes his head, and when his eyes rise to mine again, they’re dark with desire. “You are incredibly attractive, Sam, and I imagine myself . . . doing things with you. But what I did was wrong, and I’m sorry.”

I slide onto the other end of the sofa. “It was my fault. I just . . .” I wave a hand at him. “You have to know how hot you are, right? I mean . . .” I feel myself cringe. “But I never should have . . . there are rules and . . .” Damn. I’m such a moron.

“Can we start over?” he says when I can’t figure out how to finish that sentence in any coherent way.

“Start over?”

He gives me a questioning tip of his head. “If you can pretend I’m not a total bonehead, I’ll try not to act like one.”

“But . . . why are you even here? Didn’t you go back to L.A.?”

“We’re going with the San Francisco location, so we’re here setting up.”

My heart pounds out of my chest. “For how long?”

“Until Friday.”

“Friday,” I repeat. Three days. “Will you be back after that?”

His glacial gaze melts. “If I have a reason to be.”

God, I want to be his reason. I think about what Izzy said: that what I do on my own time isn’t Ben and Nora’s business. Could I ask him out? My heart pounds as I open my mouth to ask if he wants to meet up after work, but what comes out is, “Did you see your fiancée when you were home?”

He shakes his head. “She was gone by the time I got back. Only thing she left was the engraved cake knife, presumably so I could stab myself with it.”

I crack up, even though it’s totally inappropriate, and after a second his mouth tugs into a reluctant smile. “So, you were living together?” I ask when my nervous giggles slow.

“For the last three years.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Guess I shouldn’t have waited so long to marry her.”

“Then you’d be getting divorced now and she’d get half of all your stuff, so . . .”

“Most of our stuff was hers anyway.” He blows out a long, slow breath. “Her family has money.”

“So you were marrying up?”

He huffs out a humorless laugh. “In more ways than one.”

I have this irrational compulsion to want to know more about this woman, as if she’s somehow my competition. It’s ridiculous. I bite my tongue and we just sit here staring at each other for a long time.

“You were great out there tonight,” he finally says, but I can tell from the way he says it that he doesn’t really mean it.

“I sucked.”

He settles deeper into the cushions, resting an arm over the back of the sofa, but to my disappointment, he doesn’t touch my hair. “Any particular reason?”

You. Or the lack thereof. “Just wasn’t feeling it.”

“Why do you do this?”

I tip my head at him, confused. “Do what?”

“This,” he says, waving a hand at the room. “Not to disparage your chosen career path, but despite your academic issues, I can tell you’re intelligent, and you’re sweet, and caring, and beautiful . . . why would you choose to take off your clothes for money?”

I’m torn between wanting to kiss him and slap him. “I don’t take off my clothes for money.”

“But you go out there night after night, playing to the debauched fantasies of a room full of miscreants—”

“You’re a miscreant with debauched fantasies?” I interrupt, raising my eyebrows at him.

That gets his smug almost-smile. “Touché. But my point is, you could be so much more.”

“Not according to my mother.”

“Your mother?”

I slouch into the cushions. “The rest of my sad story is, my parents threw me out after I flunked out of school. ‘Tough love,’ Mom said,” I say, making air quotes. “She thought they were enabling me to make bad decisions. My stepdad said he was done throwing good money after bad. So, basically, they finally gave up on me.”

He reaches for my hair and twirls a strand between his fingers, just like he did that first night. “I’m sure they haven’t given up. They probably just hope you’ll learn some responsibility.”

I pull back, yanking my hair out of his grasp. “Are you calling me irresponsible?”

His expression goes wary. “I didn’t say that.”

“But you implied it.”

He holds up his hands. “Just playing devil’s advocate. You said you failed out of school because you didn’t go to class, right?”

I slouch deeper into the sofa and press my palms to my face. “I’m such a fuck-up.”

“You’re not a fuck-up, Sam. You just need some direction.”

His voice is soft and so hopeful that I almost believe him. “So, where do I find that, anyway?”

He shifts closer. “You said you liked your major—film and media. What were you thinking you’d do with it after college?”

“I really wanted to be a sound designer for one of the big studios in Hollywood. It just sounds so cool, you know?”

He nods. “Have you looked into qualifications? Do you need a degree?”

I shrug. “You tell me. You work in the industry.”

He just looks at me for a long second, then clears his throat and rubs the back of his neck again. “I’d have to ask the guys in sound.”

“If I give you my number, could you have one of them call me?”