up to her.
Now that she thought about it, her most liberating moments – the times when she felt the most free, the most herself – were all at Caché.
She looks up to me, jesus. Could you have picked anyone worse, Bailey?
When it was finally time to get ready for work, Valentine was more than ready for her evening to start properly. She'd spent most of the afternoon in her room, staring at her burner phone, hoping Ari would text it.
After she'd started escorting at Caché, Del had gotten her a burner phone – a cell phone under an account that couldn't be traced back to her or the club. She kept client info in there, the people she had dates with, the ones who were regulars at the club, and it was the only number she gave to those same people. It was also the number she gave to her all her coworkers. Only Del and Charice had her real phone number.
She hadn't given Ari her real number because she may have been an idiot, but she wasn't a complete moron. She wasn't going to give Ari any more access to her real life than she already had.
It didn't really matter anyway, though, because he didn't text.
Before she started changing, she tried to give her grandmother dinner, but that night turned out to be a rough one for Gam-Gam. She wasn't in the mood for soft carrots and mashed potatoes. Or cheese. Or her nutritional drink. Or water or milk or tea or anything. She wanted a beer, goddammit, so someone get her a beer! When Valentine told her that she couldn't have beer, she decided to throw a fit.
After cleaning soft carrots off the windows and potatoes off the pillow covers, Val crawled into the bed and held her grandmother until she'd fallen asleep again. Then she gently climbed back out and tucked the elderly woman under the covers.
No one tells you. No one ever tells you it's going to be like this.
After all that, she wasn't in the mood to take the bus. So she took Ari's advice and after she got dressed, she burned fifty bucks on a cab to get to the club. She could take the bus home at the end of the night. She left her backpack upstairs in her locker, then she made a beeline for the bar in the Club Room.
“Feeling good, Val?” Gary the bartender asked as she walked up to him. It was fifteen minutes before the doors opened, so it was staff only in the room, thankfully.
“No,” she replied, walking behind the bar and going straight for the coffee.
“What's up? Client giving you trouble?” he asked, raising his eyebrows when she took a drink straight from the pot.
“No,” she repeated herself.
“Oh. Stuff at home?”
She took another gulp.
“Yup.”
“Gotcha,” was all he said as he gently pulled the coffee pot away from her. “Now how about save some of this for the rest of us?”
She moved around to sit on a stool, and at the same time, DelVecchio came out of the hallway and strode towards them.
“Big night tonight!” he shouted, clapping his hands together before doing a ridiculous dance.
“You're going on Dancing with the Stars?” Gary guessed. Val laughed loudly at the mental image.
“No,” Del said, shaking his fists like maracas. “We got the bachelor party to end all bachelor parties here tonight.”
“Oh yeah? Who is it?” Gary asked.
Del named someone so famous, even Valentine's jaw dropped, and she was usually good at hiding her reactions to stuff like that.
“Why is he here? I thought he lived in L.A. now,” she said, flabbergasted.
“Yeah, yeah, but he's here for a game, and I guess some buddy from college is getting married here, his old best friend or whatever. That friend happens to be a member here, so a couple hours ago, I get a call, and wham, bam, sweet jesus, thank you ma'am, they tell me they're coming here. Tonight. A party of thirty, and that don't even include the staff and PR people,” Del was so excited, he was practically vibrating.
It was ridiculous, really. Marco DelVecchio was probably far richer than their celebrity guest, but stuff like that tickled him for some reason. He liked fame, he liked the glitz and the glamour that came along with it. Liked the money that inevitably followed in its wake.
“I wish we'd known,” Gary groaned. “I hope we don't run out of anything, and I doubt there's enough cash to make all the