I ached for more than my fingers and the sound of his voice in my ear.
I wanted Dylan. The reality of him.
“Layla?” he asked when I was silent.
“I’m good,” I said. “You?”
“So good.”
“I’m going to go home,” I said.
“Call me when you get there.”
—
I left the room and headed out the small exit door to the right instead of going out through the bar, trying to push aside my vague disappointment as some kind of weird reaction to the increasingly bold and daring stuff I was doing.
Instead I concentrated on how freaking crazy it was to have done that.
Me. Annie McKay.
I cannot believe I did that, I thought driving home. I kept laughing. And then cringing. Sighing with anguished excitement.
I cannot believe I did that, I thought in the shower, my hands running over my body. The soap and the water turning everything to silk.
I did not have a stripper’s figure. Not by a long shot. But I was strong and my skin was soft and I was living in my body. All the corners. All the edges. There was not a part of me that I did not feel right now and it was so perfect.
For years I’d been rattling around inside my skin, trying to get smaller and smaller so when the smacks and the pinches and the shoves came, Hoyt might hurt my body, but he wouldn’t hurt me. I never really thought he could tell, that he’d even really noticed me beyond those moments when he was angry.
I’d been wrong. Really, really wrong.
I dried off my skin and in the darkness I walked from the bathroom to my bedroom where the full moon was filtered out a bit by the curtains, which were blowing a little in the breeze.
I went to a strip club tonight. I made myself come while watching a woman give a guy a blow job.
“Who am I?” I laughed, dropped my towel, and lay down, naked on the bed.
But then, a few seconds later, I sat up and grabbed clean underwear from the drawer. I couldn’t explain it. It just felt better to have on underwear. But at least now it was a choice and not a fear.
Point for me.
Excitement and anticipation were battling it out inside me and I felt like Charlie in the Willy Wonka movie when he and his grandfather were laughing and floating up to the ceiling.
I was so damn happy. And proud of myself. I get it—a stupid thing to be proud of, going to a strip club. It wasn’t like I was curing cancer. But still…I was proud.
For the first time in my life, I was proud of myself.
And I booted up the phone and called Dylan, like a sheep to the slaughter. It rang three times and then his voice mail kicked in.
But it was a woman’s voice on the recording.
This is Dylan Daniels. Please leave a message and someone will get back to you within one business day.
What was that?
One business day? A woman’s voice—like a secretary?
And Dylan’s last name was Daniels. How crazy that I didn’t know that. That it was so incredibly shocking to learn that now.
Dylan Daniels.
I hung up before I left a message and stared at the phone like it was a snake.
Quickly, a text message appeared on my screen.
Dylan: Hey. Give me ten minutes. In the middle of something.
It was one o’clock in the morning. Who was in the middle of something at one o’clock in the morning?
After what we’d done at the club?
For the first time it occurred to me to scroll through the phone’s features. I checked to see if by some miracle the Flowered Manor had free Wi-Fi and the phone was hooked up to it.
Would you believe no free Wi-Fi?
I would have to go back to town tomorrow, to the library, if I wanted to find out anything about him. Stalk him on the internet like other girls my age.
My phone buzzed in my hands with an incoming call. I felt somehow as if I’d slipped into water way over my head. Why did everything feel so different now?
“Hey,” I said. So much of my excitement and anticipation had taken a turn and I was anxious. Uncomfortable.
“Hey, you okay?”
“Fine. What are you in the middle of at one o’clock in the morning?” Who the hell are you?
“Just a meeting, a fucking boring nightmare meeting. We just finished. Are you—Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “Baby, I gotta call you back in a second. I swear to God,