After receiving terrible news about the future of her career, a NYC ballerina becomes a choreographer at a failing male strip club to make some extra cash and spice up her life. What she doesn't expect is to fall for the one man who doesn't want his...
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After finishing a long and fucking awful day at the office, I climbed the creaking steps to my room above my grandmother's club, sweating my balls off. The goddamn air conditioner cut off again, which meant it was back on the list of things that needed fixing around here.
I loosened my tie and undid the buttons of my shirt, sighing in frustration as I unlocked the door to my room.
What a fucking day.
I rubbed at the stubble on my chin, staring blankly out the one window in my bedroom.
Even though I made it a rule not to take work home with me, for whatever reason, Gemma's unanswered wish was still haunting me. After storming out of the ballet studio this morning, I'd been brainstorming ways to make her wish of meeting the Sugarplum Fairy at the Lincoln Center come true.
Too bad I'd come up with nothing.
I still couldn't believe Liberty Ballet wouldn't support a sick kid. My fist landed against the window sill. Nothing pissed me off more than businesses that thought they were too good to give back to the local community that supported them.
I guess I shouldn't have been surprised given Liberty Ballet's reputation as one of the best ballet companies in the city. They charged four hundred dollars for front-row tickets to watch a girl in a tutu flutter across the stage while a rat chased her. A ridiculous waste of money, in my opinion.
Those company dancers wouldn't last a second in my world.
Girls like twinkle toes–the suffocating beam of sunshine I met today–didn't know what it was like to struggle. She had probably always been beautiful and rich and graceful. I shook my head, trying to get thoughts of her out of my brain.
Twinkle toes was exactly the kind of woman a man could get lost in.
A man. Not me. Obviously. I didn't get lost.
It didn't matter how beautiful she was or how I felt drawn to her smile like a goddamn moth. Ballerinas were too delicate and stuck up to bother themselves with sick children and men like me.
I glanced down at the faded white cigarette burn on the back of my hand. No one bothered themselves with me except Mimi and her friends, which was fine by me. They needed me just as much as I needed them, and I didn't need some here-today-gone-tomorrow chick distracting me.
Which was why even though I had a shitty day, I had to get onstage and strip. Which meant me and my sweaty balls needed to get in the shower.
Unbuttoning my shirt, I tossed it in the hamper and made my way to the small attached bathroom. Standing in the small mirror, stripped of my collared shirt, was a man only a few people ever saw.
If my colleagues at The Hope Foundation couldn't see my tattoos and scars, then they could go on thinking I was just like every other suit in the city.
