Free G-Men: The Series by Andrea Smith

a turkey and dressing Lean Cuisine, eating it in front of the television, while I watched the Thanksgiving Day parade. I’d talked to Becky earlier on the phone. She’d wanted me to come to their house for Thanksgiving dinner, but the truth was, I didn’t want to pig out on turkey and make small talk with Becky’s family all afternoon. I had to work my Thursday shift at Jewels tonight. I certainly didn’t want to go there gassy.
    I hadn’t seen Slate in the club on Tuesday when I worked. Of course, none of the other bikers had been in either. I mentally kicked myself in the ass for finding myself looking for him when I was on stage. I needed to take Margo’s advice and keep clear. Janine wouldn’t tolerate it at the club and I certainly wasn’t cut out for the type of life a biker would provide. Aside from the obvious: I was married. I didn’t need to cloud the issue of dealing with that by forcing some idiotic distraction to get into the way.
    I’d purchased a new dance outfit for tonight. It was a white opaque unitard that had long sleeves and a plunging neckline. I had gold, sparkly four-inch spiked heels, and a white feather plume intertwined into the mass of brown hair piled loosely on top of my head. There was something extremely classy about my outfit tonight. Even Margo made a comment, as she put the finishing touches on my make-up and gold glitter, about how stunning I looked.
    “Looks to me like you’re trying to impress someone special tonight, chica. I don’t need three guesses to figure out who it is.” Her tone was slightly admonishing.
    “Margo, sometimes you act way older than your years. You do realize you and I are about the same age, right?”
    “I don’t give a damn. You’re still a babe in the woods, and girls look after girls. That’s just the way it is here.”
    “I’ll be fine. I just want to class it up a bit tonight. It’s a holiday. Wait until you see my Christmas costume.”
    “Diamond, you’re a rarity around here. I hope you know that.”
    “Is that a good thing?” I asked, giving her a sly grin.
    “Absolutely, chica. Hey, I think they’re calling your number, sweetie.”
    I’d selected my first number for my shift. It was “Girls, Girls, Girls” by Motley Crue. I’d worked out a perfect dance to it and had practiced all week long. I took the stage as the chords of the song started the upbeat.
    On my third twirl, as I climbed the pole to execute my first upside down decent, I saw him. He was alone at the bar. For whatever reason, the flame-haired Garnet was sitting next to him, sipping a drink.
    What the hell? Did he freaking buy her a drink?
    They seemed to be in a deep conversation. He barely noticed me as I continued my routine, eyeing them both whenever my dance allowed me to look that way. When my number was over, I flounced off the stage, ripping the feather from my upswept hairdo.
    “What’d I miss?” Margo asked, her expression clearly puzzled. “Did you slip? Land on your ass out there?”
    “No - nothing like that. Not much of an audience out there. Isn’t Garnet on the clock tonight?”
    “No, her shift was earlier. She switched with Emerald. She said she had a hot date.”
    “I see,” I said, seething.
    I wasn’t sure why the hell it bothered me. Slate and I were nothing to each other. He most likely fucked a different bitch on a daily basis. Why did it have to be Garnet, though? She was such a skanky bitch.
    I went to my locker and got another outfit out for my next dance, which wasn’t for another forty-five minutes. It was much skimpier…pure glittery trash in red. I chose red because that was one color Garnet couldn’t wear with that hair color of hers. Maybe it’d be enough to distract Slate from his attentive conversation with Garnet. I was actually counting the minutes until it was my turn to go back out on the stage. I still had another thirty.
    I was in the dressing room as Emerald was preparing to go out next. She looked so sexy