When I arrived at Gold Spike in downtown Vegas, I scanned the dimly lit room. I’d never heard of Gold Spike before and when I entered, I immediately couldn’t wait to return with Gabe. They had pool, cornhole, shuffleboard, and lounge areas to sit and chat. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard about this place before. Granted, I hadn’t been in Vegas for very long, but damn, this was right up my alley. Drinks plus competitive gaming? Sold!
The instructions for my date were that Nancy wanted me to notice her from across the room. She was going to be with a group of her friends for drinks. She told Mark (my boss) that it was because she was the heaviest one of her friends and usually the guys always bought drinks for them and not her. She always felt like the ugly one.
What most guys didn’t realize was that a smile was the most beautiful thing on a woman’s body. If they made a woman smile, her eyes would light up and then everything would start to glow.
I spotted Nancy instantly. I hadn’t seen a picture, but her lack of confidence wasn’t hard to spot. She wasn’t smiling as wide as the others, and she wasn’t laughing as loud either. She sat at the far end of the room, sipping her drink, and her leg bouncing up and down under the table.
As I made my way to the bar, I briefly made eye contact with her. Her eyes grew big as her gaze met mine and then she quickly looked down at the table. I chuckled and continued to the bar. It was normal for these types of dates to be nervous. My regulars, on the other hand, knew what they wanted.
I sat on a stool, ordered a beer, and frequently made eye contact with Nancy through the mirror that ran along a side wall. A few times I caught her gaze and the more it happened, the longer she kept hers on mine. For this to work, I needed her to be comfortable. I knew this was out of the ordinary for her, but when I walked up to her after she accepted my drink from the bartender, I needed her to actually talk to me. After motioning for the bartender, I instructed him to send her whatever she was drinking. He nodded and turned.
Then, I waited.
This was the moment Nancy was waiting for and one of the reasons I loved my job. I was dying to see the look on her friend’s faces when she was the one who got the drink. All eyes would be on me in … three … two … one …
Women were conspicuous even when they thought they weren’t. I heard a few “Oh my God.” “Who?” “Where?” “Him?” “Holy shit!” “Fuck me!” “He’s hot” and then “Shhh, you’re being too loud!”
I laughed around a pull of my beer as I looked into the reflection of the mirror at Nancy. She wasn’t looking back, but she did look like maybe she was trying to explain to her friends how someone like me could want someone like her. She needs better friends.
I finished my beer in two gulps, set it down and stood. Time was ticking on the two hours she’d paid for and her friends needed to be out of the picture. As I walked the good fifteen feet to where they were sitting at a long, counter-high table, I heard hushed whispers and then silence as I stopped by Nancy’s side.
She was sitting on the far end and looked up at me through the curtain of her light brown bangs, her hand playing with the straw of her drink nervously. I could feel all five sets of eyes on me, waiting for me to speak. If I were any Joe Schmo, I’d probably be nervous walking into the lion’s den, but instead I smiled and nodded hello.
“Ladies,” I greeted.
“Hi,” they said in unison.
I turned my attention to Nancy. “I’ve had a pretty shitty day, but I saw you from across the bar and the way you were smiling and laughing caught my eye. I was wondering if you’d like to finish your drink with me?”
Nancy’s eyes became huge again. I wasn’t sure why. She knew this was coming. Her face was a little flush too. Maybe she’d thought that Saddles & Racks was too good to be true. You’d get what you paid for; especially when it came to me.
“Don’t leave the man hanging, Nance,” one of the friends remarked.
“I’d … I’d love to,” she finally agreed and began to stand, but I reached out my hand and helped her up. She reached down and took her glass while she smiled at her friends. It was the first real smile I’d seen from her since I’d been at Gold Spike. After I’d stopped at the bar to order myself another beer, I led her to a corner table on the opposite side of the bar where I was before so we could have privacy to talk.
“That was perfect,” she breathed, her smile still as wide as it was when we’d left her friends.
“Those are three words I don’t get tired of hearing,” I joked. She let out a loud laugh and I looked toward the table where her friends were sitting. Sure enough, they were all looking at us. “Do you ever get the feeling you’re being watched?”
She stopped laughing. “Not usually.”
I reached up and grabbed the end of her shoulder-length, curly brown hair. “Why do you think your friends get more attention?”
“Just look at them.” She waved a hand in their direction.
“Are you referring to their looks?”
“Well … yeah.”
“Sugar, I’ve known some beautiful women with shitty personalities that make them the ugliest bitches around. It’s not what’s on the outside that matters.”
“But you wouldn’t have bought me this drink if I wasn’t paying you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have been here tonight to buy you the drink, so that’s true. But when I walked in here looking for you, I knew who you were because you lacked what the others had. You need to have that spark. You’re beautiful. Who cares if you’re not a size zero. Really, my dick would break you if you were a size zero.”
Her eyes widened and I chuckled. It had been awhile since I’d had a date who was this shy. Usually, my dates wanted a good, hard fucking—if it got to that stage. It had to be natural as if we really felt the attraction between the two of us.
She swallowed hard, then took a sip of her drink. “So … um, how did you become an escort anyway?”
Well, we had another hour to spare. I could kill it by telling her the story. “I’d just gotten out of the Army and moved back to Malibu. I had no idea what I wanted to do, and the last time I’d been home was when I graduated high school.”
“Wow, you’ve been an escort for a long time then.”
I smiled. “Not that long. When we had leave, I never went home because there was someone I never wanted to see and I always thought I’d run into her.”
“Oh, an ex-girlfriend.”
“Right.” I nodded.
“But the Los Angeles area is huge.”
“L.A. is huge, but Malibu is small and so was the group of people we hung out with.”
“So she stuck around after high school.”
“Exactly. She thought she was going to get discovered by some top modeling agency and make it big, but she never did.”
“Is she still there?”
“Actually, no. She moved to New York to try her luck out there.” I took a pull of my beer. “After my last deployment I moved back home for good. The night I heard she moved to New York was the night I knew we were officially never going to get back together. I was at a bar drowning my sorrows and I met a lady …”
“Hey, handsome.”
I turned at the sound of the female’s voice and watched as she ran her fake red acrylic nails along my forearm. I knew what it looked like. I was in a bar, drowning my sorrows with shots of tequila, but I wasn’t looking to get laid tonight. Even though it had been almost nine years since I’d seen Vanessa, I couldn’t be in this town and not think of her. I only wanted to spend my last few bucks on as much alcohol as I could.
When Cochran died, Gabe had to fight his own demons, but Vanessa was living. She didn’t want me, yet I was the idiot who couldn’t stop wanting her. So in front of Gabe—in front of everyone, I pretended I didn’t want anyone, that I was sowing my oats. Maybe I was, but being back home was a reminder of what I’d once had. The bottle of Patrón would be my friend for the night, not this chick.