“Only by a few months.”

He shrugs. “She’s hot. I don’t discriminate.”

I suck down the rest of my coffee and hand him my empty mug. “She knows you too well.”

He takes it and goes to the kitchen to pour me a refill. “She just thinks she knows me too well. She really doesn’t know shit, because I haven’t screwed anyone else in the month we’ve been official.”

I roll my eyes. “You know grinding against fake blondes in bars counts, right?”

“Why should that count? If I was jacking off in the shower, would that count?” he says, coming around the corner to the living room with a beer in one hand and my mug in the other.

I shrug. “If you were making sense, maybe I could answer that question.”

“It’s the same thing,” he says, handing me my cup and dropping into the sofa.

I roll my eyes. In order to argue with him, I’d have to untangle his twisted logic, and that’s just too hard this early in the afternoon.

We curl into the sofa and watch the Doctor Who marathon, reciting all the best lines, until it’s time for me to get ready for work. I’m surprised when he follows me out the front door.

“You don’t need to come tonight, you know. I’ll be fine.”

He grins. “I’m not going for you. Or,” he adds with a smirk, “I guess I am. I’m even going to stay sober tonight . . . at least until you’re done—just so I know I’m not imagining how hot you are up there.”

I roll my eyes but don’t fight him. I’d rather have the ride than take the BART.

When we walk in, Jonathan heads toward Pete in the DJ booth, and I head for the dressing room. I push through the door and find a black girl at the makeup table, and a brunette with legs up to her eyeballs, sitting on the sofa, slipping on a pair of red nylons.

“Hey,” the black one says, spinning the stool to face me. “You must be Newbie. We heard you were all that last night.”

“Yeah. Hi. Sam,” I say with a lame finger wave.

“I’m Izzy and that’s Brittany,” she says with a nod at the brunette.

Brittany looks up from straightening her nylons just long enough to glare at me.

Great.

“It’s usually more crowded in here,” Izzy says, waving at the room, “but Nora’s still short girls, so Brit and I are doing doubles.”

“Son of a bitch,” Brittany growls from the sofa. I look over and her red dagger of a thumbnail has poked through her nylon, running it all the way to her toes. “Fucking cheap things Nora buys,” she says, ripping it off.

Izzy turns back to the vanity table and finishes with her eyes. I drop my bag near the sofa and find all my stuff in the closet, folded into a box labeled with my name. As I tug off my shirt and start to change, I feel Brittany’s eyes on me, but I don’t turn around.

“Where did you dance before?” she asks, reaching past me into the lingerie closet.

“Um . . . I haven’t really done this before,” I answer, looking over my shoulder at her as I button my vest.

She rolls her eyes. “Figures. Nora doesn’t know her ass from first base.”

“Cut her some slack, Brit,” Izzy says from the vanity, teasing her hair into an Afro and spraying it in place. “She bailed Ben out last night.”

Brittany grabs a new nylon and gets in my face on her way back to the sofa. “You’re new,” she says, running a finger under the tuxedo collar of my vest. “The guys like fresh meat every once in a while. But they always come back to the best, so don’t get used to it.” She brushes past and drops onto the sofa again.

I put on my garter and shorts, then find a empty vanity chair and slip on my nylons. I really don’t want to piss anyone off. I wish Nora hadn’t given me center.

As if I conjured her by thinking her name, she slips into the room. “You girls almost ready?”

Izzy stands from the table. “Good to go.”

Brittany just grunts at her.

“I’ll help you with those boots,” Nora tells me as I clip my nylons to my garter.

Brittany moves to the closet to find her shoes as I’m reaching for my boots. “You fit into those?” she asks with another glare as I pull them down.

I shrug. “They’re a little big, I guess, but not too bad.”

Her jaw tightens as she drops her shoes to the floor and slips them on, then stomps past Nora out the door.

“She tried wearing those,” Izzy says, “but she’s an eight and they ripped her feet apart.”

Nora takes them from me as I sit on the sofa. “Don’t mind her,” she tells me with a flick of her eyes at the door.

“She’s usually on center,” Izzy says from the door with an apologetic squint. “She’ll get over it.”

What am I supposed to say? “Okay.”

She nods and pulls the door shut behind her.

Nora helps me get my legs strapped in, then I throw on some makeup and I follow the others out. When I step through the door behind the curtain onto center stage, all three stages are dark. But just as I peek through the curtain, Big Pete’s voice starts over the music. “It’s the bewitching hour,” he purrs as the stage lights to my right flash on. “And the lovely Izzy is going to lock you in her spell,” Pete adds as she starts to writhe on stage in her kinky witch costume. “The only way out is to sell your soul to the devil,” he says as the stage lights to my left illuminate. “But when the devil looks like Brittany, you’re gonna be paying her to steal your soul.” Brittany spins around her pole in what I now see is a devil costume.

I step through the curtain onto my stage as Pete says, “Or you can give in to sin and let yourself be seduced by the scandalous, salacious, sensual, smokin’ hot Sam!”

My eyes drop from Big Pete and Jonathan, up in the DJ booth, to the crowded pit below my stage in anticipation of the flash of blinding light. And the instant before the stage lights flare in my face, my gaze locks on Harrison’s.

THERE’S N OT ENOUGH time between when I spot him and when I’m completely blinded by the stage lights to decipher if he was real, or a figment of my overactive (and overeager) imagination.

But then I decide I don’t want to know. I want him to be out there. I want to feel his eyes on my body, making me sexier and more beautiful than I really am. So I let myself believe.

As Pete brings the volume up and the music floods my senses, I give in to the fantasy. I tip my hat down over my eyes and pretend that Harrison is the only man out there. My hips begin to sway to the music, a slow, pulsating rhythm. I lift my arms overhead, then work one hand down my curves as I roll my body with the beat. Without really knowing how I got here, I find myself straddling my pole. I plant my legs wide and grind my hips in a slow circle as I glide down to the floor. And then I arch back and ride it, up and down. A momentary flash of coherent thought worms its way through the music into my brain, and I remember that I’m supposed to be making eye contact—collecting tips. I ride the pole back up and shimmy around it, tipping my hat off my eyes and making my way to the front of the stage, where dozens of guys are waving bills. I waggle down to my hands and knees, then roll onto my back and arch up as they tuck money into my shorts and top.

When I stand again a minute later, I see Marcus has moved to the side of my stage. His thick arms are crossed over his massive chest as he polices the crowd in front of me. He’s scary, and I’m glad he’s on my side. He looks over his sunglasses at me and I give him a wink as the music works my body in waves. He shoots me a toothy grin and shakes his head, then pushes his glasses up his nose and returns his vigilance to the men in front of me, who are waving more money in the air.

I move to the music, living out the fantasy that it’s just Harrison and me. If I had that private dance back, I’d do it differently. Maybe I’m not allowed to touch him, but there are other ways I can make him feel me. And I can definitely make him forget his broken heart. I look for him in the crowd when I get the chance and don’t find him, but still, for the next three hours I give him my best.