“No one in town would hire me, thanks to the Jeep incident,” I told her.
“Then, why does he have milk?” she asked, raising her voice.
It was times like this, which was the majority of the time, that I wanted to slap my sister. This was her son, not mine, yet she was upset that I had bought him milk. When she saw the grilled cheese sandwich I was about to make for him, she would hit the roof. I was beyond caring at this point. I had just told her I couldn’t get a job in town because word had spread about Rio March’s Jeep, and it was her fault. She had caused this.
After being turned down all day, I had gotten home, and Cullen was red-eyed from crying while sitting on the sofa quietly with his coloring book. I waited until Tory left to go on a job hunt to ask him what was wrong. He hadn’t wanted the water and crackers Tory had given him for breakfast, and when he had asked her for milk, she had yelled at him. I hated when she acted as if he should understand that we had very little money. He was a baby, yet she treated him as if he were old enough to understand.
“It’s milk,” I told her.
“And neither of us has a job. What the fuck are you thinking?” she asked me, clearly annoyed.
“I’m going to get a job tonight,” I replied, fighting back the panic that I refused to allow to have any power over me.
“Where? You just said no one would hire you.” Tory was still talking too loudly.
“I don’t have it yet, but I will,” I replied, taking out the cheese from the fridge.
“Where?” she repeated.
I reached for the loaf of bread, then looked at her. “In Mobile. I will be working nights,” I said, then went back to fixing the grilled cheese for Cullen.
“Where in Mobile will you be working nights, Bryn?” She was getting annoyed.
“There is a place hiring that I found in the paper today. It pays more than I could make working anywhere else. I’ll be serving drinks.” I forced a smile for Cullen’s sake.
She didn’t say anything then, and I wasn’t sure if what I was telling her had sunk in or if she was done, trying to get specifics out of me. When I placed the sandwich in front of Cullen, she scanned my body with her gaze once, then narrowed her eyes.
“Are you gonna work at a strip club?” she asked, smirking.
“Don’t,” I warned her, cutting my eyes toward Cullen. I didn’t want him to ever know what I was planning on doing.
“It’s about time. You don’t use those things for anything else,” Tory said, pointing at my breasts before walking past me to go sit down on the sofa.
“Well, excuse me if I never wanted to use them for a source of income,” I snapped, then went to the tiny bathroom we all shared in the studio apartment to get a shower.
I took more time than was necessary simply because the more I allowed myself to think about what I was going to do, the harder it was going to be to go through with it. The life I had lived, the childhood I’d survived, it all had played a part in the woman I had become. Just because I had lost my innocence at a young age didn’t mean I was experienced.
The truth was, no man had ever seen me naked. At least, not since my mother had ended the life of the man who had sexually abused me. Intimacy terrified me, and I stayed away from it. I was modest because it was a security blanket for me. Now, after just turning twenty-one years old, I was going to pretend to be something I wasn’t for money. If it wasn’t for Cullen, I wouldn’t even consider it, but this job promised more money than we had ever brought in, even when we were both working.
If nothing else, my life had made me tough. Because of that toughness, I could do this, and I would. The first few nights would be hard. Time would make it easier. There was no future in my life that this would affect. It wasn’t as if this could come back to haunt me and mess up any grand plans I had. My main goal in life had become making sure Cullen had proper food and a safe place to live. Maybe there had also been that desire to get to The Shores and find Rio March.
Lucky me, I found him , I thought bitterly.
By the time I finished my makeup, I had convinced myself that not doing this would be selfish. It was what got me out the door and gave me the courage to walk in the doors of The Red Stiletto. My heart was slamming against my chest so hard that I was sure everyone could hear it as I made my way to the bar, where I had been told to go when I arrived.