Category: IST

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I went back inside. I don’t know what I was thinking. I think I was thinking I was on a roll.

Jade was at the bar. I sat down next to her and asked for a dance.

She leaned in to kiss my cheek, then stopped an inch from my neck and sniffed.

“Vanilla,” she said.

“Sorry?”

“You smell of vanilla and cigarettes.” She sat back and looked me up and down: the rumpled collar, the stain on my shirt I hadn’t noticed under the alley streetlight. “And that’s Scarlett’s lipstick on your ear.”

“I can explain.”

“Babe, I don’t need you to explain. I’ve worked here seven years.” She laughed, properly delighted. “You went out the fire door to go home, got a handjob off my mate in the alley, and came back in for seconds. That’s actually impressive.”

At the end of the bar, Scarlett had come back from her break. She saw the two of us together and her smile vanished.

“Oh, she’s going to kill you,” Jade said happily.

She didn’t kill me. She walked over, took my drink out of my hand, finished it and said, “I said pick me first. Not pick me, then her, then whoever’s free.” Then she walked away.

Jade gave me one song on the floor, out of pity, and told Dez the whole story, loudly. By the time I left, the bar staff were calling me Vanilla.

I didn’t go back for a month. When I did, they still were.

Ending 24 of 25: Wrong Perfume. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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Next Friday I walked into the Velvet Room, paid my cover and didn’t even sit down. Jade drifted towards me. I smiled, apologised and walked straight past her to the redhead at the end of the bar.

“I’m picking you first,” I said.

Scarlett looked up, and the grin she gave me was worth every penny I didn’t have. “Took you long enough. VIP?”

“VIP.”

In the booth she pulled the curtain and pushed me down onto the couch.

“Bryony,” she said. “That’s my real name. You’ve earned it.” Then she glanced up at the corner. “And the camera in this booth’s been broken since Tuesday.”

She stripped slowly, black lace on the floor, then knelt and unzipped me with cold, eager fingers. She sucked me deep for a full song while I gripped the velvet, then climbed into my lap and rolled a condom down me from her garter.

“No rules,” she whispered, and sank onto me.

She was hot and soaking, and she rode me hard, my hands finally on every inch of her, her freckled tits in my mouth, her nails in my shoulders. The couch thumped the wall. Somewhere down the corridor Dez coughed pointedly. She didn’t care. She came grinding on me with a sharp little cry, and I came hard right after her, holding her down.

She stayed in my lap, forehead to mine.

“Next week,” she said, “you don’t pay. You pick me up at two and take me for chips.”

“Deal.”

“And Owen? Always pick me first.”

Ending 23 of 25: First Pick. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I woke at six with a crick in my neck and the cat sitting on my chest. Priya’s bedroom door was half open. I could hear her breathing, slow and deep.

And I panicked. I don’t know why. Something about the daylight. Something about her real name and her real flat and her real cat, and the job centre, and the kettle, and the whole week landing on me at once.

I found my shoes. I left a note on the back of a takeaway menu: Thank you for last night. You were amazing. Owen. No number. I didn’t even think about the number.

The front door was double-locked. The key wasn’t in it. I stood there for a minute and a half rattling it as quietly as a door can be rattled, which is not very quietly.

“Top drawer,” said Priya, behind me.

She was in the bedroom doorway in an oversized T-shirt, arms folded, hair everywhere. She’d read the note. It was in her hand.

“I was going to…”

“Make coffee?” she said. “Wake me up? Stay?” She shook her head, opened the drawer and handed me the key. “Seven years I’ve been dancing, and the first man I bring home tries to sneak out at six in the morning.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re not a bad guy, Owen. You’re just not ready.” She opened the door for me. “Friday’s still twenty a song.”

I walked home along the canal in last night’s shirt, past joggers and dog-walkers, smelling of red wine and her perfume, feeling like the stupidest man in the city.

Ending 21 of 25: The Walk of Shame. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I found the kettle, two mismatched mugs and a jar of instant, and carried them through to her bedroom at half nine like a man carrying the crown jewels.

Priya was tangled in the duvet, hair everywhere, one bare shoulder out. She opened one eye.

“You made coffee.”

“I made coffee. You’ve got a very good kettle.”

She laughed, sat up and let the duvet fall to her waist, completely unbothered, and took the mug. “Get in, talker. It’s freezing.”

I got in. The coffee lasted about four sips.

Then she was kissing me, her mouth hot and bitter, pushing my boxers down, and I was finally, properly touching her. Her full tits, the swallow tattoo, her smooth olive thighs opening for my hand. She was already wet. She pulled a condom out of the bedside drawer and rolled it onto me herself.

“Last night was the warm-up,” she whispered.

She climbed on top and sank down slowly, eyes closed, a long shuddering breath. Morning light through cheap curtains. No sequins, no menus, no buzzer. She rode me slow and deep, then pulled me over on top of her, wrapped her legs round me and dragged me in harder. She came with her head thrown back, loud enough to make the cat leave the room. I came with her, buried deep, kissing her neck.

We lay there sweaty, the coffee going cold on the side.

“Seven years I’ve been waiting for a man to bring me coffee,” Priya said.

“I’ll bring it tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” she said, smiling into my chest. “You will.”

Ending 20 of 25: Morning Coffee. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I caught her at the bar an hour later, between customers.

“Have dinner with me,” I said. “A proper date. Away from here.”

Jade’s smile flickered. “Owen.”

“I mean it. After what happened in there…”

“What happened in there,” she said quietly, “happened in there.” She glanced at Dez, then back at me, and lowered her voice. “Babe, listen. That was real. I’m not saying it wasn’t. But I don’t date customers. Not ever. Seven years, and that rule’s the only reason I’m still sane.”

“I’m not just a customer.”

“You paid me a hundred quid an hour ago.” Not unkind. Just true.

I didn’t have anything to say to that.

She touched my cheek. “You can still come Fridays. I meant that. But if you ask me out again, I have to stop dancing for you, because then it gets messy, and messy is how girls in here get hurt.”

I went back the next Friday anyway. She danced for me. It was good. It was really good, actually, her hips rolling in my lap, her breath catching. But it never quite hit that spot again, and I could see her keeping it from happening, a careful half inch of distance between us, every single time.

After a month I stopped going.

Sometimes I still think about that one song. The one where she forgot it was her job.

Ending 18 of 25: Crossing the Line. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I came back next Friday. She was waiting at the bar for me, and she didn’t even pretend she wasn’t.

“Not the booth,” Jade said. “Not tonight. Stay till close.”

I stayed till close. I watched her dance three sets with her eyes on me. At two the lights came up, Dez herded everyone out, and Jade said something in his ear. He rolled his eyes, handed her a key and went off to count the till.

She took me up onto the main stage. The empty club, chairs up on the tables, one spotlight still on. She sat me on the edge of the stage and danced for me once more under the light, this time completely naked, the gold chain the only thing she kept on.

“No camera on this bit,” she said, straddling me. “I checked.”

She unzipped me, rolled a condom down my cock and sank onto it, no jeans between us now, wet and hot, and gasped exactly like she had last week. My hands were everywhere. Her tits, her arse, her hips. She rode me slow under that spotlight, then fast, the stage creaking, chasing the same spot she’d found through the denim.

“That doesn’t happen,” she said again, shaking, as she came.

“It keeps happening.”

“I know. I’ve decided I like it.” She kissed me hard as I came, holding her tight against me.

Afterwards she lay on my chest on the stage, the spotlight warm on our skin.

“My name’s Priya,” she said. “Thought you should know who you’re dating.”

Ending 17 of 25: Lights Up. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I decided to wait a week. Don’t look desperate. Let her wonder.

I hung the shirt up with the napkin still folded in the pocket, so I wouldn’t lose it. Very sensible.

On Thursday my mum came round to help, which meant she cried about my ex for ten minutes and then did all my washing without asking. I came back from the job centre to find the shirt drying on the radiator, crisp and clean, and a little grey ball of pulp in the pocket.

I unrolled it on the kitchen table like an archaeologist. Eyeliner, it turns out, does not survive a forty-degree wash. I could make out a seven and a zero. Possibly a nine. The rest was a smudge.

So I went back to the Velvet Room on Friday to explain. Jade was on the stage. She saw me and her face did something complicated.

“Tuesday came and went, talker,” she said when she came over.

“I know. My mum washed my shirt.”

She stared at me. “That’s the worst excuse I’ve ever heard. And I once had a man tell me his wife was a hologram.”

“It’s true.”

“It’s probably true. That’s what makes it worse.” She sighed, but she was smiling a little. “I don’t give my number out twice, Owen. That’s a rule.”

She danced for me on the floor for twenty quid. She was gorgeous and kind and completely professional, and she never mentioned dinner again.

Ending 16 of 25: Through the Wash. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I lasted until Monday lunchtime. She answered on the second ring.

“It’s the honest man,” she said. “Tuesday. Seven. You’re buying me a curry, and it’s not costing more than twenty quid.”

The curry house was on the corner by the launderette, all flock wallpaper and laminated menus. Priya turned up in jeans and a huge cardigan, no makeup, hair in a clip, and she was even more beautiful than she’d been in white sequins. We split a jalfrezi and two naans and talked for three hours. It came to eighteen pounds forty.

“Under budget,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

Her flat was upstairs, warm and cluttered, fairy lights and a grumpy grey cat. She kicked the door shut and kissed me against it, and nobody said anything about rules.

We didn’t make it to the bedroom. She pulled my shirt off on the sofa, and I finally got to touch her the way I’d wanted to in that booth: her full tits in my hands, the swallow tattoo under my mouth, my fingers sliding into her until she was gasping. She pushed me back, rolled a condom on me and climbed on, sinking all the way down with a long, shaky moan.

“Seven years,” she breathed, rocking slowly. “Seven years of dancing on men and never finishing.”

She finished. Twice. Once on top, once with me behind her over the arm of the sofa, the cat watching in disgust. The second time I came with her, groaning into her neck.

“Next Tuesday,” she said, breathless. “Cheaper curry.”

Ending 15 of 25: Tuesday Curry. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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Next Friday I went straight to the VIP room and ordered the champagne. I told myself I’d budgeted. I hadn’t.

Jade did the routine. The knickers down to her knees and back up. The arch across my lap. The trickle of fizz between her tits.

“Oops,” she said.

I watched it go and realised I’d seen this exact moment twice already: once in my lap, once in the lap of a man in a pinstripe suit. The same angle. The same little gasp. I could have mouthed it along with her.

It was still extremely hot. That was the problem.

She whispered the filthy things again. Same words, I noticed. Same order. I was still hard enough to hammer nails. She still didn’t let me touch her. The buzzer went at exactly the moment the bottle ran dry, which I was beginning to suspect was not a coincidence.

“Settle up at the bar, babe.”

Four hundred and sixty this time. Prices had gone up.

The barman ran my card. It went through, just. On the way out, Dez held the door again and gave me a long look.

“Twice?” he said.

“Twice.”

“There’s a bloke who’s been coming in every Friday for three years,” Dez said. “Champagne every week. Nearly bought her a car.” He shrugged. “Don’t be that bloke, mate.”

I sat in the car park and checked my balance on my phone. Then I sat there a while longer with the engine off, doing sums and wondering what exactly I’d been buying.

Ending 14 of 25: Same Bottle Twice. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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Next Friday I went back with sixty quid in my pocket and a firm plan. No VIP room. No champagne. Just a stool at the bar.

Jade spotted me and came over, all sequins and sparkle. “My champagne man! Booth’s free.”

“I’m staying here,” I said. “I’ll buy you one vodka soda. Then I’d just like to talk.”

She blinked. “Talk.”

So we talked. About the stag do with the Monopoly money. About her cat. About my job centre appointment, which had gone badly. Somewhere around the second hour she stopped doing the voice, the purring sales voice, and just talked like a person.

“You know that bottle cost the club eleven quid,” she said eventually.

“I know.”

“And you came back anyway.”

“I came back for you. Not the fizz.”

She looked at me for a long time. Then she took my hand and led me through the curtain into an empty booth, and she didn’t pick up the menu.

“This one’s on the house,” she said. “And the rules are off.”

She stripped slowly, then pulled my jeans down and climbed onto me, guiding my hands to her full tits. She rolled a condom on me and slid down onto my cock with a long groan, wet and tight, and rode me deep while I sucked her dark nipples, her swallow tattoo right under my lips. She came grinding hard, hand over her own mouth. I came seconds after, holding her down on me.

“Priya,” she whispered. “My name. Don’t tell Dez.”

Ending 13 of 25: On the House. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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