He also told me I didn’t have to come over Wednesday, because he’d reconnected with his bud, Jim, and they were going out to some sports bar to have dinner and watch the game.
I remembered Jim. He was a nice guy. He and his wife had gotten divorced around the time Mom and Dad did.
And I was glad Dad was finding ways to get out of the house and be with people that weren’t me.
Dad also let me off the hook for that night, saying he was going to try some new recipe, which meant Axl and I could eat and hang before I had to go to work without me having to be anywhere it wasn’t really my choice to be.
And tomorrow night, Dad was going out to dinner with me and Axl and then he and Axl were going to take in the show.
I was a little nervous about that.
But I was also a little excited for Dad to see that I was dancing because I loved it, and although the memories were jaded, the bottom line was, he played a part in giving me that.
The only thing hanging over our heads was that Axl had double parent duty tomorrow, seeing as he was having lunch with his mother.
He’d heard not one word from his father, which I thought was awesome.
And from his take on his mom’s texts, he said, “She sounds like she has it together.”
So that was tentatively awesome too.
And last, Axl and I had brunch plans with my mom on Sunday.
I wanted to see Mom, I missed her. It’d been way longer than a minute (too much longer).
But I had to admit, I really loved my first Sunday with Axl when it was just him and me most of the day. Being lazy and making love and eating when we were hungry and playing Pac-Man.
With our schedules, and just how life had been when we started, it’d all been go, go, go and drama. We didn’t have a lot of downtime.
And that Sunday, I’d discovered that rejuvenating with Axl was the best.
So after this brunch with Mom, I was going to suggest to Axl that, if we could, we made Sundays our days.
I had a feeling he’d go for that.
But now, we’d all been called in for a meeting at the club and I had no idea why.
I just hoped they hadn’t assessed how the Revue was doing, weren’t pleased with it, and we were going back to just stripping.
I didn’t want to go back to stripping.
I didn’t have a problem with it. I was good at it, made great money, the club was safe, classy, for the most part the clientele was all right, my fellow dancers were the best, so was management, and I could move my body and get in the zone.
But being able to build my routines and roll them out, that had been another creative outlet I’d come to seriously enjoy.
So on the way to that meeting, I’d realized, with Axl in it, and my relationship with the girls back on track and as strong as ever, not to mention Dad being cool, and work having turned into something that I dug doing, I was in a zone where I actually liked my life.
No.
I loved it.
For the first time, I thought …ever.
And that was mammoth.
So I didn’t want anything messing with it.
Although I worried (because that was me), it would surprise me that the Revue wasn’t working. The place had been packed every night, regardless of the higher cover charge and drinks prices.
But I was a dancer, I wasn’t a businessperson.
What did I know?
“No clue,” Pepper answered my question about the meeting, but although she was answering me, she was smiling across the room.
I looked that way to see Ryn approaching.
“Could be anything, knowing Dorian,” Lottie said.
She was right.
Dorian was a rare breed. Idea man as well as action man.
And he didn’t let grass grow.
We greeted Ryn and she asked the same thing as me.
“Anyone know what this is about?”
We all shared our negatives, then Pepper went on to share she had the same worries as me.
“God, I hope we don’t go back to just stripping. I haven’t shown my tits since I did ‘Cold Hearted’ that second week. And I gotta say, it’s kinda refreshing being able to keep my kit on.”
The last couple of waitresses straggled in as Smithie and Ian came down the stairway that led to Smithie’s office.
But Smithie didn’t approach the gang gathered around the edge of the catwalk.
He took a seat at the bar as Ian came to us carrying something that looked like rolled-up plans.
Weird.
I mean, we all knew Ian was Smithie’s right-hand man.
But Smithie had never taken a backseat.
Dorian did a scan as he approached, probably to see if everyone was there.
He then stopped in front of us, crossed his arms on his chest, which made his pecs bulge under his midnight-blue dress shirt (and I took that opportunity to appreciate it), the roll of paper in his hand peeking over his left shoulder.