While he had been to strip clubs before, he had never been inside the Fine Line. It was more expensive than the clubs he and his friends had gone to back in college. The parking lot was about half-full, even late on a Thursday. No cover charge, and the half-naked girl at the front barely glanced at his ID before waving him in the door.
The music was so loud he could feel the thump of the bass in his chest. More half-naked girls walked around in front of him. They seemed to be everywhere, all at once. Most of the customers were men, sitting at tables surrounding the stage. Wes watched a woman wrap her legs around a pole and hang upside down. The men cheered.
Wes snapped out of it and scanned the room, thinking this was stupid. No way Ivy was working here. No way she would put up with men like this, the kind who could barely control themselves in front of a mostly naked woman. No. Way.
He believed that right up until he saw her.
Saw so much of her.
Ivy was wearing—or barely wearing—something that was sky blue and resembled a bikini. Her whole body was bursting out of it. The shimmery material caught the light as she stood in front of a table filled with men, making her sparkle as she served the drinks on her tray.
And she was laughing.
“Ivy,” he said. It felt like he was yelling. Maybe he was.
She looked up and saw him, a smile still on her face. “Wes.”
He looked down at the men who were salivating over his girlfriend. “You can’t work here,” he said to her.
“And yet I am.”
She walked away from him, toward the bar. He followed, heading her off before she reached it. “We’re going home,” he said.
“You go home. I have to work,” she said. “And don’t call me Ivy again. My name is Summer.”
“Summer?”
“Is there a problem here?”
The man who appeared in front of Wes was three times his size, he wore a jacket with SECURITY on the breast pocket, and he wasn’t looking at Wes. The man was talking to Ivy, who now looked angry.
“He’s my boyfriend,” she said. “I’ll take care of it.”
She put her tray down and led Wes toward the front door. Outside the club, in the parking lot, she ordered him to leave.
“I told you I was doing this,” she said. “You didn’t believe me, and that’s your problem.”
Wes tried to calm down. He really did. He took a deep breath, telling himself to keep it together. This was not the time or the place for a screaming match with Ivy. But in his mind, all he could see were those men staring at his girlfriend’s body.
One option. Truly. It was only idea he had, the only road forward he could see.
Wes grabbed Ivy around her hips, picked her up, and threw her over his shoulder.
As he walked to the car, she yelled and pounded on his back. Wes glanced back, expecting to see the club’s security guys running after him. They weren’t. Disturbances outside the club didn’t seem to interest them at all—at least not between a couple. Not even when Ivy continued to yell at him.
“Put me down!
“Put. Me. Down.
“Wes, I swear to God, you better put me down.”
He did, eventually. He opened the hatchback of the 4Runner, put her inside, then closed and locked the doors. She immediately scrambled over the seat, but not fast enough to get out of the car before he got in and started driving away. That’s when she climbed into the front passenger seat and started yelling in his ear.
“How could you do that?”
“Ivy—”
“You can’t just pick me up and drag me out like some kind of caveman—”
“Stop pulling on my arm! I’m driving. Jesus Christ—”
“Turn around!”
“Calm down.”
“Don’t you tell me to calm down!”
“Ivy, I swear to God—”
That’s when she grabbed the steering wheel.
59
The 4Runner turned to the right, into the lane next to them. No one was there, thank God, because it was so late at night. They were away from downtown, in an area where the streets were quiet. Empty.
The car headed toward a storefront. Sprinkles, a frozen yogurt shop, and Wes can still picture the sign on the building. Curly pink font, next to a giant cup piled high with yogurt and multicolored sprinkles. The shop was closed and dark inside, along with everything else in the area.
Ivy was still yelling, cursing him out. He yanked the wheel back to the left.
Too hard. He lost control of the car.
They skidded across the road, almost in a circle, before coming to a stop on the curb. Ivy stopped screaming.
“We’re okay,” she finally said. “We’re okay.”
“We’re okay,” he said.
She turned to him, the glitter around her eyes catching the light. “You’ve been drinking.”
“No, I—”
“I can smell the beer.”
“I’m not drunk,” he said. “I had a couple beers while watching the game.”
“Get out. I’m driving.”
“You grabbed the wheel.”
“You lost control of the car.”
“We aren’t going back to that strip club,” he said.
“Of course we aren’t. You humiliated me back there.”
He got out of the car. She climbed over the center console, took off her stilettos and threw them in the back. Ivy drove toward their apartment. One left turn, two right. That was it, they were less than two miles from home. It was easy right up until it wasn’t.
Ivy swerved. Hard.
They didn’t get lucky a second time. Instead of hitting the curb, the 4Runner slammed into the side of a car.
“What the hell?” he said. “Why did you do that?”
“There was something in the road!” she yelled. “An animal, a squirrel or something. I swerved so I wouldn’t hit it.”
Wes didn’t see a squirrel or a cat or anything else, but he did see the car they hit. What he remembers most is the relief. It came after he realized the car was parked.
They didn’t know anyone was in the car. It was on the street, no one was around, and no one screamed when they bashed right into it. Well, no one except Ivy.
They never called the police after the accident. Not after Ivy started having a meltdown. She was babbling about the animal in the road, going on and on about some squirrel from years ago and how upset Wes had been and how she didn’t want it to happen again. She was also naked, or close enough. Ivy wasn’t making sense, let alone in any condition to drive.
Wes did the only thing he could have. He drove away.
They switched places again, he started the car, and they went home. It was a miracle that was still possible, given the condition of the car and the weird scraping noise it was making, but they made it. He parked behind the apartment building instead of in the main lot. Only dumpsters and stray cats were in the back.
Not that anyone would mention or even notice the car. The only apartment they could afford was in a run-down building filled with people who wanted to live somewhere else. Themselves included. No one asked a lot of questions.
Wes didn’t find out someone had been in the parked car until the next day, when he was at work. During his first weeks at Siphon, his days were split between working and training. He was so busy the news alert didn’t even get his attention: