Read Objectify Me: A Fireworks Novella (The Fireworks Novellas) for Free Online Page A

probably have to do it. Lucky for me, Jack prefers boys. “Take your tips and dance bills for tonight. It’s been busy. Don’t worry about my cut this time. I’ll see you next Friday.”
    I ball up the smudgy tissue and throw it on his desk. “Fine.” And my mind screams ‘fuck you, you degenerate exploitative bottom feeder’. But all I actually say is, “Friday.”
    I practically run through the club back to the bar to get my money and my kimono. Claire and Louise try to talk to me as I rush past them, but I just plow through the blue curtain and down the hall to the dressing room. I don’t even bother changing. I pull my jeans over the frilly garter skirt and a tank top and black cardigan on top of that. Then I cram my money into my tote bag and let myself out the back door into the crap-covered alley behind the club. Stopping there in the dark, I indulge in a little self-pity. I figure I’ve earned it.
    I was having a good night. Not just with tips but with actually having a conversation with someone for once. Someone who wasn’t a creepy customer or my addled old dad. I know it’s pretty sad that a few minutes talking with a nice guy altered my mood so much, but I guess that’s my life. I wish I had finished Levi off now. He certainly needed it. And God knows I love to be needed. I just kind of wish I’d gotten his phone number or something. Or maybe asked to connect with him on Instagram like a normal person. Maybe he was my chance to be a normal person, yet he walked out the door without even looking at me. I touch my lips where the scratchiness of his beard left a little sting.
    My phone clock reads just before ten PM. And my mind tells me in all sincerity that the quickest and safest way to walk from here to my house is go through the crowded French Quarter along Bourbon Street.
    As if that won’t take me right past the LaFleur Guesthouse.

Chapter Five – Levi
     
    I make it back to the guesthouse by focusing on the space two feet in front of me and pretty much ignoring everything else. I have to dodge the tail end of a small parade and somehow end up with about ten strings of beads around my neck, but apart from that, I arrive unscathed. Unscathed, sobering up, and as horny as ever. Problem is, the space two feet in front of me contained drunk girls’ bare tits on at least three occasions. I was also shown a tattooed ass that I think belonged to a guy, and a moose knuckle in gold lame shorts that I know did. And a bunch of guys propositioned me. It was just the bare tits that made me horny, though. That and thinking about that girl at Objections. Is it weird that she smelled like my sister, and somehow that was hot? Is it weird I’m obsessing about putting my tongue in her belly button?
    “Good evening, Mr. Borovski,” the doorman says, looking up from his little desk under the stairs. “I wasn’t expecting to see you until later. Just come back to freshen up?”
    Freshen up. If that’s what they’re calling jerking off in the shower these days. “I think I’m going to turn in, actually. My friends will be back late, though.”
    “Very good, sir,” he says as I trudge up the ornate stairs. He must think I’m the biggest party-pooper in America.
    When I get to the room, the first thing I do is brush my teeth until my gums ache. I contemplate having a shower, but in the end, I just sit on the bed, kicking off my shoes and falling backwards to stare at the ceiling. The strings of beads pool around my neck. I know what’s happening to me. It’s a long- dormant volcano beginning to rumble and steam. I switched off the part of me that put tongues in belly buttons when I started chasing after Rachel Blum. And somehow tonight, that got switched back on, possibly when Charlotte shook her tits in my face. I guess it’s about time.
    I had pretty wild sex with my ex. I fucked her over the table in the dark kitchen of a youth hostel in Hungary for god’s sake. Hungary! How many people can say