Zeus was silent but the level of fury vibrating through his body stilled and I fell asleep listening to the steady thrum of his heart thinking that nothing and no where had ever felt so close to heaven as this.
When I woke up it was in my deeply shadowed room and Zeus was somehow there, dropping me gently into my bed.
“How did we get in here?”
He hesitated pulling the covers over me then shook his head like he couldn’t believe me. “Tell your dad you need better locks.”
Oh.
“How did you know you’d be able to get inside?”
“Lou, shut up. I’m still fuckin’ pissed at you and the less you talk the better. I got some things to say and then I’m leavin’.”
“Okay,” I agreed easily because now that he’d found me, gotten over whatever made him think we couldn’t be together, I knew I wouldn’t lose him again. “Sit down beside me.”
Zeus looked down at me, a muscle clenching in his jaw. “No. I’m tellin’ you what I got to say then I’m leavin’ and Louise, I am not coming back. I’m pissed because I found you tonight drunk outta your fuckin’ mind with a dumbass kid who woulda fucked you without thinkin’ a fuckin’ thing about anythin’ but gettin’ off. You can barely speak, walk or keep your eyes open. You think I wrote to you through the cancer and all that fucked up shit you had to go through as a kid just to see you piss your life away like this? I stayed away so you would stay good. I’m warnin’ you now, you don’t smarten the fuck up, not only will that buy you never seein’ me again but I’ll get in touch with your cunt father and tell him exactly what you’re doin’ and he’ll send you to a fuckin’ nunnery. You get me?”
Somewhere deep in the shroud of my drunkenness, my heart was breaking.
“I don’t want to be Louise Lafayette anymore,” I admitted.
For the first time that night, Zeus softened. I couldn’t see him in the darkness of my curtained room but I could feel his gentling in the air and it made the pain in my chest loosen.
“You can be whoever you want to, Lou. I’m not tellin’ you to be the girl Benjamin fuckin’ Lafayette wants you to be. I’m tellin’ you to be who you want to be, not anyone else and I’m tellin’ you to do it smart, yeah? Right now, you don’t know who you are, what you want or where you’re goin’, your head is stuck so far up your ass.”
“You don’t have a right to talk to me like this,” I whispered brokenly.
“I have every fuckin’ right. As the man who saved your life once, don’t make me save it again,” Zeus ordered then turned on his heel and left.
He left and even though I woke up the next morning with a headache that clanged worse than broken church bells between my temples and a memory filled with holes, I knew Zeus had reentered my life only to tell me he was leaving it for good.
Four months later.
The brick was hot against my mostly bare back. In fact, it burned, and the texture was rubbing my sweaty skin raw but I didn’t move. I’d spent a long time perfecting The Lean and I finally had it down. One foot, encased in kickass super tall espadrilles that I kept hidden beneath my floorboards, was wedged up against the wall while the other was straight and long, showcasing the long length of my yoga toned leg beneath the beyond short shorts I wore. My arms were crossed loose enough to be look casual but tight enough to press my boobs together, to ride the hem of my white crop top up even higher on my tummy. My chin was tipped down, pale hair perfectly mussed, unlit joint hanging between my lips.
In short, I was rockin’ The Lean and I was absolutely not going to fuck it up by wiggling like a moron.
The sun was practically set but it could get hot in Entrance and it had been a record breaking October. I had the deep brown tan to prove it, tiny tan lines and only around my hips, over my crotch and cut through the cheeks of my ass because I sunned in a thong every chance I could get to slip off to the little knoll in the forest behind my house. I only owned a few and I had to keep them hidden under my floorboards but the effort was worth it to be brown all over.
If Mum or Dad ever caught me, they would’ve killed me but I’d stopped worrying about that a long time ago. They were always telling me not to waste my brain, that I was too smart not to use it. So, I did, just in ways they didn’t like.
To be fair to me though, I always did my homework, got straight As, sat in the front pew of church every freaking Sunday at what felt like the butt crack of dawn, volunteered at the Autism Centre every weekend and never, ever, did anything to disrespect the Lafayette name.
At least, not when I was Louise Lafayette.
As Loulou Fox, I did everything my family stood against.
I gambled, partied, smoked, lied, cheated and generally disrespected all authority, every government given rule.
I was a seventeen-year-old teenage dirt bag and I fucking loved it.
Which was why I was doing The Lean against The Wet Lotus, Entrance’s one and only strip club.
It was a sleazy place with poor lighting, sticky everything and a female owner who was beyond bitter and disillusioned and hated the club even though it was the only one in town and made her a crap ton of money.
She didn’t know who I was or, more specifically, who my father was, or she wouldn’t have let me anywhere near her place.
Loulou Fox, though, she loved.
I was underage but even if she knew it, and Debra Bandera was a wily one, I had the generous curves and the fake ID to pull off nineteen.
Besides, Debra liked me. She liked me because when I’d taken to hanging out after dropping Ruby off and picking her up again at the end of the night, I’d started to help out around the bar and who doesn’t like free labor? Four months later and I was Debra’s unofficial assistant.
I did a bunch of the ordering, everything from nipple tassels to cocktail napkins. I sewed the girl’s minuscule costumes, learned to mix drinks, flirt with men without promising them anything more, mop and sweep the floors, wax and shine the poles and take care of the twelve very high-maintenance dancers. I wasn’t there every night but I was there three times a week on the nights I pretended to go to the support group and it had become, in a way, more of a home than my actual home was.
No one knew Loulou Fox had cancer because none of the bikers, scoundrels, dancers, bartenders or regulars that hung out at the Lotus read the local newspaper or the parish newsletter. I’d be surprised if most of them even knew either publication existed. They probably knew of Louise Lafayette, the Goody Two-Shoes daughter of Benjamin and Phillipa Lafayette. It would just never cross their minds to associate the Loulou they knew—fun loving, brazen and ballsy—with the staid, boring girl they had heard about in passing.
I laughed as I leaned, as I always did when I thought about Louise vs. Loulou, good vs. bad, my very own naughty and nice combination split down the middle into two very separate people.
I much preferred Loulou.
And three nights a week, I could be her without impunity.
“I’ll never get used to seein’ you like that,” the woman who was largely responsible for my new two-sided nature said as she pushed open the emergency door and stepped into the alley beside me.
Ruby Jewel was her honest-to-God given name. Her mother had been a prostitute that found a decent John who married her and provided for her and their two kids. They weren’t a poor family. Ruby wasn’t abused as a kid, she didn’t need the money and she was pretty well adjusted as far as twenty-one-year-old girls went. She just loved to dance, she loved expensive shoes and she loved The Lotus.