Page 38 of Boyfriend of the Hour

I was pushing; I knew. And rewarded when he almost spit out his drink.

But he didn’t.

And I had to hide a smile myself.

“It’s none of my business,” Nathan managed after he finally swallowed. “It’s your life, Joni, not mine. I would never judge anything you chose to do with it.”

I adjusted the silver strap of the bra top, almost like I was bracing for a blow. If anyone else from my neighborhood had said something like that, I’d have thought they were joking. I felt like I was waiting for the punch line. Emphasis on punch.

“You don’t usually dress like this at the bar,” Nathan said, his gaze flickering ever-so-briefly to my skimpy clothes.

I looked down at them and back up. I thought I saw him looking at my legs, but it was too quick to tell. His eyes were as steadfast as ever, never drifting, never ogling. Not once.

Perfect, he’d said.

What did that even mean?

“I’m on one of the platforms tonight.” I pointed to the staggered stages set into the wall above a row of VIP booths. “I used to dance there every weekend when I was in between gigs. The one in the middle is my old spot.”

Nathan followed my finger like he’d never before observed the architecture of the bar despite having been here so many times. “Oh.”

“Don’t worry. Opal isn’t that kind of club, so I won’tdemeanmyself by removing my clothes.”

I couldn’t help it. It was like picking at a scab covering a much larger wound, knowing that it would never heal unless I opened it up completely.

Nathan only shrugged. “Well, since you’re not wearing very much right now anyway, I don’t think it would make a difference. Although, at your other job, I suppose you’d need to be able to remove the rest easily, correct?”

I sighed. Why was it so hard to get under his skin? Especially when he wassogood at getting under mine? “Ugh. For the record, I’m not a stripper, all right? Not that it would matter if I was, but I’m not.”

Was it odd that I could almost hear a “yet” at the end of my own sentence?

I could practically hear Rochelle cheering from the Bronx.

Nathan turned his glass back and forth on the bar, almost meditatively. “Then why did you tell me you were? Or planning to be?”

This time, I couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “Well, who knows what I’ll be? And bigger boobs would come in useful here. You see what happens with a lot of the male customers. I figured I could turn that into some life-changing tips with the right equipment.”

He frowned, like something didn’t quite compute. “You want an augmentation to serve drinkshere?”

“Oh my God, shout it, why don’t you!” I hissed.

I grabbed a lime and started cutting it far too quickly, given how dull the knife was and the fact that I could barely see it through the tears suddenly clouding my vision. I could practically smell the desperation wafting off me like perfume. Could he? Could everyone in here?

A pair of large, capable hands descended on top of mine, stilling the knife. I looked up to find Nathan standing, having reached across the bar to steady me in my rage.

Every bit of anger fled, replaced by the electricity passing through our touch. And then something I wasn’t prepared for at all. Something like peace.

“Joni,” he said. “Please listen. And try not to slice your fingers.”

I sniffed and shook a bit of hair out of my face, but released my grip on the knife. “What’s the point?”

People around us were watching curiously by now. The other bartenders, dancers flirting with customers, even Tom through the window of his office. But Nathan didn’t seem to notice or care. His gaze was as unwavering as ever, magnified by those simple silver frames, focused wholly on me.

“I’m not good at reading people’s emotions,” he said, just under the thump of bass vibrating across the lounge. “But when I know them well, I can read their bodies. Your eyes are very wet. You are about to cry. So I want to know why. I want to know what I did to make you so upset. Will you tell me?”

I blinked away the tears that were threatening more than ever. “You can’t tell? Really?”

Nathan shook his head. “I know it’s something I said, but I don’t know what. You don’t seem to like it when men look at your body and make sexually suggestive comments. At the sametime, you move with—you hold yourself with so much grace, so much more at ease with your body than most. So, I didn’t understand why you would want to change yourself that way. If it’s what you really want, I won’t say anything more about it. But I…” He released my hands then, only to push his glasses up his nose. One of his few nervous tics, I realized. “I don’t think you really do.”