Page 3 of Deliah

T he summer blurred in a haze of tequila, cheap vodka, and nights that started with glitter and ended in havoc.

We laughed until we cried, proper bellyaching, mascara-smudging, can’t breathe kind of laughter.

We were feral. Free. But between the sun and the shots, there were fallouts.

Mostly with Aneeka. She was wild. Unhinged in the best and worst ways.

By month four, I was cracked. Still working, still smiling, still pouring J?gerbombs down tourists’ throats—but I could feel myself coming undone.

And then… I had one of those nights. I’d gone full glam—fake tan, lashes you could feel in the wind, skirt so short it should’ve come with a warning.

Aneeka had vanished with some lad she’d been screwing, and I didn’t fancy going home alone, so I tagged along with Jamie and Sted Head for a few drinks after work.

I was drunk, flirty, and—for once—bored of playing it cool.

I needed something. A distraction. A good fuck.

A reminder that I still had it. That’s when I decided to go on the hunt.

There was this guy, leaning against the bar, nursing a beer like he didn’t quite know what to do with it.

Early twenties, tall, scruffy in a “didn’t pack enough clothes for the holiday” sort of way.

Rough around the edges. Not my usual type—but I wasn’t fussy that night.

I wasn’t looking for fireworks. Just friction.

I swaggered up, hips swaying from the tequila and the heat.

“So,” I said, planting myself beside him, “you gonna buy me a drink or what?”

He raised an eyebrow, half amused. “Bit forward, aren’t you?”

“I’m forward, fun, and wearing six inches of heel pain. You offering or not?”

He chuckled. “What’ll it be, then? Sex on the Beach?”

“I’ll take the drink, and we’ll see about the rest.”

His grin turned cocky. I had him. Wrapped around my little finger in under sixty seconds. Classic.

We had a couple of drinks. I flirted, and he tried to keep up. At one point, he tried to act smooth and said, “Bet you get lads buying you drinks all the time.”

I leaned in, lips at his ear. “Only the brave ones.”

He followed me back to the flat like a puppy on a lead.

Inside, we kicked off our shoes, and I dragged him out to the balcony.

The night was warm, humming with music and laughter drifting up from the strip below.

I lit a cigarette, waiting for him to make the first move.

He didn’t. Just stood there, awkward as anything, staring out like we were at a viewing party instead of five minutes from fucking.

I rolled my eyes, stubbed the cig, and yanked him by the belt loops towards my room.

Clothes hit the floor. Kisses got messy.

But when it came down to it—the actual sex—it was an absolute car crash.

He barely touched me. Didn’t read a single signal.

No rhythm, no passion, just clumsy thrusts and confused expressions.

I lay there beneath him, wondering if I was being punked.

Was this really it? Was this what I gave up my whole life for?

He was slow. Uncertain. Like he thought I was going to leave him a TripAdvisor review afterwards.

I’d had enough. His hands were everywhere and nowhere.

My neck, my boob, my arm—as if he was working through a checklist instead of touching me.

“Just—fuck me like a real man,” I snapped, mid-thrust. “Jesus.”

His face changed. He stopped dead, blinked at me, stunned. Then the ego kicked in.

“You’re rude as fuck,” he spat. “Maybe you’re not all that, yeah? Maybe you think you’re hotter than you actually are.”

Oh, here we go. “Don’t you dare fucking shout at me, you little prick,” I growled, sitting up. “Not in my own apartment.”

He started getting dressed in a rage, fumbling with his jeans like a toddler throwing a tantrum. I got to my feet and shoved him back into the wall. His eyes widened like he couldn’t believe I’d laid a hand on him.

“Fucking bitch,” he hissed.

“Sorry, Mr Pathetic-Grunting-Boring-Sack-of-Shit,” I shot back. “Go crawl back to your hotel and find someone who wants to be shagged like a bag of frozen chips.”

I didn’t care.

He started to get his clothes back on, so I grabbed my t-shirt, rolled my eyes, and walked back to the balcony. Lit another cigarette I didn’t want. Sat on the floor, legs crossed, heart pounding—not from heartbreak, just pure fucking rage and embarrassment.

Then I slid my hand between my legs, shut my eyes, and finished the job myself. Better than he ever could. What a fucking disaster.

The next morning, I was still half asleep, drooling into my pillow, mascara welded to my cheekbones, when Jamie stormed into my room like a pissed-off dad who’d just caught his teenage daughter sneaking out.“Did you have someone back here last night?”

I squinted up at him, my head a war drum of tequila regrets, my mouth dry enough to exfoliate concrete. “What?”

“You were the only one here,” he snapped, eyes blazing. “My iPad’s gone.”

I sat up. Fast. Regret hit me just as fast.“You’re joking.”

“Do I look like I’m fucking joking?”

My stomach dropped. I could still smell the guy’s aftershave—cheap and overcompensating. The memory of him fumbling around like he was defusing a bomb came rushing back, along with the full horror of the night. I didn’t just bring home a disappointment—I brought home a thief. Fuck.

I buried my face in my hands. “Shit. James, I’m so sorry.”

“You better be. What the fuck were you thinking bringing some random back here? You let him into our apartment. Our space. Now my iPad’s fucking gone.

” His voice cracked towards the end, and that was what got me—the betrayal underneath the rage.

He wasn’t just pissed. He was hurt. And I hated myself for it. I really fucked up.

“I’ll replace it, I swear,” I said. “I didn’t think—I just—I fucked up.”

“You think?” he snapped. “Jesus, Deliah, get a grip. You’re not eighteen on your first girls’ holiday. You need to grow the fuck up.”

The thing with Jamie was that he always hit where it hurt.

Not because he was cruel but because he didn’t sugar-coat shit.

And he wasn’t wrong. I had fucked up. Badly.

After a good ten-minute rant about safety and trust and how if he wanted to live with irresponsible nutjobs, he’d go back to uni halls, he finally left the room, slamming the door so hard my mirror wobbled on the wall.

I lay there in silence, feeling the weight of it all—Jamie’s disappointment, the thud of my hangover, the bitter memory of last night’s disaster.

I felt disgusting. Violated. Stupid. The iPad was gone, and so was my last shred of self-respect.

I needed money. Fast. Not just to replace Jamie’s iPad but to claw back some sense of control.

I couldn’t keep living like this—scraping together change for cheesy chips and corner shop fags, one bad decision away from catastrophe.

That’s when I found myself back at the little café around the corner.

Our haven. Our grease-soaked sanctuary. Oversized t-shirts, sunglasses hiding the damage, coffee, and hash browns for the soul.

And Archie—always behind the bar, always taking the piss, always with a side-eye like he’d seen a hundred girls like me burn out before they made it to September.

Archie was in his fifties, skinhead, tanned to leather, and wearing a

gold chain thick enough to tow a car. Proper cockney geezer. Owned the café by day and the biggest strip club on the island by night. He knew everything. Everyone. And he could smell desperation like a shark smells blood. He poured my tea and raised an eyebrow. “You look like roadkill, love.”

“Feel like it,” I muttered, stirring three sugars into the cup like it could fix my life.

Aneeka was sitting beside me in giant sunglasses, orange juice in hand, scrolling through pictures on her phone and laughing at one where I’d passed out in the toilets with a traffic cone on my head. Good times.

And there they were. Like the universe had sent them in just to show me what I wasn’t.

What I could be. We were halfway through our greasy breakfast when they rocked up.

The strippers. You could always tell when it was payday.

They came in loud and proud—heels clacking, perfume trailing behind them, laughter that turned every head in the café.

They were still in last night’s lashes, glitter clinging to their skin like battle paint.

One had a love bite so big I was tempted to call animal control.

They didn’t walk—they owned the place. Strutting in like they were walking into the VIP section of life itself.

Voices loud. Heads high. The kind of women who didn’t flinch when people stared—who fed off the stares.

They were fucking nuts. Confident. Magnetic.

One of them swung her bag onto a chair, flopped down, and shouted, “Oi, Archie, guess who got three VIPs and a yacht invite last night?”

Archie rolled his eyes without looking up from his paper. “Hope you left ’em with their wallets, darling.”

The girls cackled. They were feral, unapologetic, and they’d decided a long time ago not to give a single fuck about what people thought—and were better for it.

I couldn’t stop staring. It wasn’t just the clothes or the tits or the noise—it was the energy.

They radiated something untouchable. Like they’d seen things, done things, and come out the other side shinier and sharper.

Girls like that didn’t get walked over. Girls like that didn’t let heartbreak keep them up at night.

They twerked by the till and threw notes at Archie like it was part of some private joke.

One of them pulled out a wad of notes so thick it could’ve been used as a weapon.

“Four grand this week,” she bragged, grinning like a girl who knew she was winning.

My sausage rolled off my fork onto the floor, and I didn’t even notice.

A coach full of pensioners drove past the café, and Archie, without missing a beat, shouted, “Go on, girls, give ’em a treat!”

And they did. Flashed their tits like it was the Queen’s Jubilee.

Archie laughed so hard he nearly dropped his ashtray.

I just sat there silent, watching, processing.

That was the moment. Right there. The glitter.

The noise. The unshakeable confidence. It was like someone lit a fire under me.

It wasn’t just about money anymore. It was about being seen.

Being powerful. Being untouchable. I wanted to be the girl who walked in loud, not the one slumped in sunglasses with guilt for breakfast. I didn’t just want a job. I wanted power. That’s when I said it.

“Got any jobs going at the club?”

Archie looked up, blinked once, and then burst out laughing. “You? A stripper?”

I mean… fair. He only ever saw me looking half-dead, inhaling hash browns like they were oxygen.

Aneeka choked on her orange juice. “You’re not serious.”

I shrugged. “Why not?”

Archie leaned on the bar, looking me up and down with a smirk. “You need to be fit to be a stripper, Deliah.”

Cheeky fucker. I threw a napkin at him. “Watch it, or I’ll show you fit.”

He grinned, clearly enjoying himself. “Come back tonight. Dressed up. We’ll have a chat.”

And that was that. No CV. No interview. Just blind panic and a half-eaten sausage.

As soon as we left, Aneeka started. “You’re seriously going to strip?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered. “I just… I need the money.”

“It’s stripping, Deliah. STRIPPING. You flash your fanny and hope for fifties.”

I snorted. “Sounds better than scraping two-euro tips and dying of heatstroke in that bloody bar.”

She crossed her arms. “What’s your mum going to say?”

“She won’t.”

“And if someone from home finds out?”

I paused. Then looked her dead in the eye. “Aneeka, I actually couldn’t give a fuck.”

She didn’t reply. Just sighed and pulled out a cigarette. Lit it like she was mourning the death of my innocence.

That night, we got ready like we were off to seduce the whole island.

Heels, lashes, skirts that were belts. Aneeka still refused to strip, but she came with me anyway—for moral support, she said.

But probably because she didn’t want me alone with Archie’s leery smirk and the insanity I was about to step into.

Walking back into the café that night felt like walking onto a movie set.

It looked different in the dark. More neon.

More dangerous. Like something might happen.

Something big. Archie looked up from behind the bar and gave a slow whistle. “Fuck me. You scrub up well.”

“Cheeky twat,” I muttered, smoothing down my skirt. He leaned forward. “So you both want to be strippers?”

Aneeka laughed. “Not me. Just her. I’ll do the bar if you’ve got anything going.”

Archie stroked his chin, pretending to think it over like he was casting a porn film.

“All right,” he said eventually. “You.” He pointed at me.

“Monday night. Trial shift. Let’s see if you’ve got the bottle for it.

And you.” He turned to Aneeka. “You can pour pints and look pretty. Just don’t fuck up the tills. ”

And just like that, it began. My new job.

My new identity. My new fucking life. I didn’t know it then, standing there in knock-off heels and a borrowed push-up bra, but that moment—hungover, desperate, furious about a stolen iPad—would be the start of everything.

Not just a job. Not just cash. It would change who I was. Forever.