Hope. A little something nice

Hope.  A little something nice.

Gold necklaces dangled from her neck, into the extra-large dent of her chest, one that made her B cupped tits look like Ds.  She swayed to the terrible music and stared at the ceiling, trying her best to ignore her ex’s stare from the corner of the bar.  

He had given her nothing over the three years they dated. Nothing but this job, which was only showing off one of her many talents.  She considered this, “Nothing. He gave me zero, but this job and a few black eyes that I’d have to spend extra on for cover-up. Nothing but a life of flashing my ass and tits at truck drivers and the occasional college boy or bachelor party.  My zero would have been so much better than the zero he gave me.”

The beat changed and she slowly shimmied down, putting her hands on the stage and spreading her knees wide enough to tease the men with her tight bedazzled g-string.  Her focus travelled across her customers’ foreheads, mostly bald or hidden behind the bill of a cap.  

“He gave me a book for my birthday.  Smacked me on the ass with it and I thought we were going to get some knowledge, perhaps read something.  It was “the joy of cooking”. He’d stolen from a library.  What he was doing in a library, I’ll never guess.”

Her hands found her knee caps and she shook her hair and swayed some more under the spinning lights.  The diamond shapes of the fishnet stockings always felt good under her fingertips.  She plucked at it on her left knee, stretching it just a bit to let her customers think that these were going to be coming off soon.  Her pointed tongue grazed her top lip and her eyelids sunk to their sleepy, sexy position.  He had given her those stockings. For christmas last year.  They weren’t wrapped except in the brown Walgreen’s bag.  “Happy Christmas, Charla.  I got you something fancy this year.”  

He would always give her hope, that’s the one other thing, just a glimmer of hope, but then pull it away or replace it with something to keep her at her zero.