Disclaimer: I don't own.

A/N: Thanks to everyone for their reviews and for being patient with me. Life is super busy right now. :) Hope you like the chapter. If you do, it's probably because Pati fixed all my mistakes for me.

Enjoy!

Chapter Twenty-Three:

I looked like a tramp.

I had raided Anni's closet after trying on everything remotely nice I'd ever owned and disregarding it. The only thing that might have been appropriate—my gray dress pants and the emerald green shirt—I'd already worn in front of him, the night of the seminar. She had a share of nice, expensive dresses, but most of them she'd purchased too small or modified herself, to make them edgier and to make her mother mad. These modifications were almost always to make the skirt shorter or the neckline lower, though there were a few in which she'd made noticeable slits up the sides.

This was not what I was going for.

I would have to go shopping and buy another dress, I just didn't know when—or where I would get the money from. Realistically, I didn't have a lot of cash to spare in a month. My paychecks paid for rent, Anni paid the utilities, and I fed myself off of tips. When I was seeing someone, generally they kept me fed and bought me lots of presents, which meant that I had a little spending money, but still not much. It seemed like extra expenses always crawled out of the woodwork any time you managed to get a little ahead. There had been one professor who'd given me a credit card and informed me that the spending limit of five grand was what I had to stick to for the semester. God, that'd been a good semester.

Dr. Grissom was not like that. To him, this wasn't about "keeping" me, and so there was no incentive to act like my sugar daddy. This was a real relationship, the likes of which I hadn't really ever known, and so it was… different.

Even so, I wanted—needed—something better to wear. He'd said he was going to take me somewhere nice, but that if I didn't have a nice dress he wouldn't want me to feel out of place—which meant that he was thinking somewhere much nicer than I'd probably ever been, except maybe with Anni's parents when they showed up in town and coerced Anni into spending a little time with them, lest they cut her off. I was always dragged along, of course, for moral support or… something. And while wearing one of Anni's little dresses on those nights was fine, because we were making a statement, tonight…

I sighed and pulled myself out of the final dress I'd tried—the tramp dress—and re-hung it in Anni's closet, before padding back through the bathroom to my own room and starting to pull on my work clothes. Usually I had a little bit of wiggle room in my paychecks that would have allowed me to shop sales, at the very least, but I'd missed work more often this semester than ever before. There was no wiggle room. As I drove to work, I thought about Anni's blue dress—it did come down rather far in the front, but she had bigger boobs than I did. If I didn't wear a bra, it might not be so bad. The girls wouldn't be up so high, at least.

Yeah, that could work.

Eddie took one look at me when I got there and pulled me into his office, frowning. "Is there something I should know about?"

I blinked at him in surprise, looking down at myself uncertainly, wondering what had set this off. "…No? What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about…" He paused, his eyes scanning my face, and sighed. "I… You've been sick a lot this semester and… and you look like shit, Sidle. You're pale and you've got dark circles under your eyes. You've always been a thin little thing, but never have I thought you looked… frail. Are you not eating? Are you doing drugs? Are you sureyou're not pregnant or… or that you don't have… I don't know, cancer or AIDS or something?"

I smiled at his concern, even as I was wondering at it. Did I really look that bad? "I'm fine. I don't know why I'm getting sick so often, but I am eating, I'm not doing drugs, I haven't had sex since my last STD test, and I don't have any unexplained symptoms or pains or… or anything. I'm okay. Really."

He gave me another long look, but apparently took me at my word and nodded, gesturing that I could resume my trek to the staff room to hang up my coat and get ready for shift. I was grateful that the room was empty when I got there. I hung up my coat and moved to the mirror hung on one side of the little cubbies he had for people's purses, etc.

I was pale, this was true, and there were circles under my eyes… but the biggest difference I noticed was how much less make up I was wearing than normal. Raccoon girl had scared me, and I'd toned the look down this morning after Dr. Grissom left, after I'd taken another shower, finally removing the stain of both lipstick and eyeliner from my face. …But Eddie probably wasn't picking up on the make up so much as he was noticing what was usually hidden beneath the layers—I was not so put-together as I liked to pretend to be.

My alternative—reapplying to recreate my usual look—was more troubling than leaving myself as I was. I smoothed down my hair, grabbed an apron, and tied it around my waist as I made my way out to the bar to clock myself in.

It was a Saturday night, so we were busy, and my group of friends was at its usual booth in back, rowdy and inebriated by ten o'clock. This was the first time I'd realized just how loud they got, and Eddie's lack of attention to it informed me that this was apparently normal for them. After half an hour of it grating on my nerves, however, I brought another round of drinks around and told them that I'd overheard a couple of my tables complaining, and that I didn't want to lose out on tips, so could they please keep it down. I had enough tables tonight that I was confident they wouldn't try to figure out who had complained and confront them, therefore revealing my lie and actually making me lose my tips. Even though they teased me, they did make an effort to be quieter.

It wasn't until close to midnight that Mr. Moneybags walked in. I didn't nickname all my customers, of course, but it was helpful when you were moving too fast to write orders down. Mr. Big Hair wanted a Jack Daniels and Mrs. Too Much Perfume wanted a chocolate martini—that kind of thing. Mr. Moneybags stood out for a lot of reasons. The first was his suit, which was clearly designer, the second his coat—clearly expensive—and the next was the way he spoke: clearly well-educated. What did it, though, was none of these easily noticeable signs. No—it was his sense of entitlement. It mirrored Anni's, and I could sense that shit a mile away, now. It happened like this.

"Hey, how're you doing tonight? What's your poison?"

I was clearly in a hurry, a tray full of empty glasses held up next to my head, my tone slightly more brisk than I intended. But his reaction to me was… lazy. Slow. He leaned back and eyed me carefully, from the roots of hair to the scuffs on my old black flats, before a leisurely smile slipped across his face. "Your very best scotch—a double—and a moment of your time."

I blinked in surprise. I was used to come-ons, sure, but… not like this. Not so smoothly and not… so expectant. Sure, lots of assholes didn't think there was a chance I'd turn them down, but theirs was an air of bawdy superiority, like they'd had the last several skanks tell them they had the biggest cock in the world. But this was more of a… quiet arrogance, like he had genuinely never been denied something he wanted before, and could not for the life of him fathom that it would happen this time around either. I felt myself blushing, and smiled a little. "I, uh… I'll be right back with that."

I was flustered. I didn't know how to respond to this kind of attention. If he was drunk and harmless—a mild-mannered man who just had loose lips—I'd have flirted playfully and expected a large tip. If he were less harmless, I would probably play hard to get—blowing him off with just the right amount of swing in my hips, toeing the line between getting a nice tip and having to have him escorted out. Usually, I was good with the line and got my tip instead. It didn't do me any good to have all my tables vacated. But this was… different. I had a swooping in my stomach that told me he was not harmless, and yet his manner had been very cordial and polite. I didn't know how to play this, and there was a part of me that felt guilty for wanting to play him when I had Dr. Grissom.

I never felt guilty for flirting for tips. …Did that mean that I expected this to come to more? Or was it just more of my uncertainty? I offered the man a glance as I piled up drinks on my tray, and found his gaze fixed steadily on me. He did not look impatient or demanding, he was just… waiting. I felt shivers skate up my arms and intentionally brought him his scotch first, so that I could have a reason not to stop at his table. There were more empty glasses to replace and a couple platters of greasy fries to deliver after that, and this knowledge relaxed me a little… until I served those things, and realized that two of my tables had left and everyone else seemed perfectly content with what was before them.

Except Mr. Moneybags.

He was sipping his drink, and watching me. Usually if a customer was watching me, it meant they wanted something, but I pretended I didn't notice his gaze and moved to the two empty tables, collecting their money and running it to the cash register, extracting my tips in the process, before snagging a rag from the soap and water bucket under the bar, ringing it out, and hurrying to clean them. …This only helped me for a couple minutes. And then, everyone was still fine, and he was still watching me.

My hands shook as I moved over to him. "Did you need something else, sir?" I said in my most distant tone, hiding my uncertainty in a bright smile and wishing I was wearing my heavier make up tonight.

"I did. I requested two things, and received only one." He extended a hand to his side and pulled out the chair beside him. I swallowed, glancing at the bar for help, but Eddie was over his head in orders.

"I, uh… I have other tables, sir." I asserted, but another look around told me that they were all quite content, and that Moneybags knew that. He didn't have to speak; I sank down into the seat across from him—not the one he had pulled out for me—with trepidation.

He smiled nonetheless. "Thank you. I appreciate it. It isn't often a beautiful young woman decides to join me for a drink. What's your poison?" He asked, mimicking my words from a few moments ago. I blushed and shook my head.

"Oh, no, no, I… I can't drink while I'm working."

"Commendable," he murmured, taking another sip. "What's your name?"

I would have lied, but I was wearing a nametag. "Sara."

He inhaled slowly and exhaled with a slight hum. "Sweet Sara, hmm? You are quite beautiful, Sweet Sara." He used the alliterative phrase like a title, and I felt with certainty that he had an Adorable Ashley and a Beautiful Beth and a Cute Candice. "Sweet, sexy, salacious, scrumptious, silky, slender, sleek…" I raised an eyebrow at that, amending my prediction. Acrobatic Ashley, Buxom Beth… Concupiscent Candice. He chuckled. "Suspicious too."

I had had enough of this. Who did he think he was, anyway, a fucking thesaurus? I cleared my throat. "I need to get back to my tables. It was nice meeting you." I stood, but he shook his head.

"No, I gather that you did not find it to be a "nice" experience at all. I'm sorry for that, Sara. I think, however, that that will change in the future." He pulled out a wallet—a high quality leather wallet, lined with silk—and opened it intentionally wide enough for me to see the stack of hundreds he had tucked inside. He removed one, smoothly, and laid it on the table. It was crisp and undamaged, like it had gone from the treasury into a ten thousand dollar brick and directly from there into his wallet. I felt frozen in place, watching his movements as he downed the rest of his drink and pulled a pen from the inside breast pocket of his expensive coat. He scrawled a name and number on the napkin that had been beneath his glass moments before, laid it on top of the hundred, and slid both in my direction.

"I would have asked for your number, my Sara, instead, but I doubt very much you would have given it to me. That's good—you're cautious; smart." He quirked his lips. "Smart Sara does fit you better than 'sweet', doesn't it?" He hummed as he exhaled again, and nodded. "I will be more upfront with you then. I'm looking for a… certain kind of arrangement… something mutually beneficial." He smiled again and stood, turning to leave, and then paused and turned back. "Ah. That's right. You're smarter than most." And with that, he removed a second hundred and set it on the table, sandwiching the napkin holding his information in green. Finally, he left.

I watched him go a little dizzily, licking my dry lips, before it occurred to me that I hadn't looked around at my tables in a while. No one seemed to be complaining or trying to get my attention, but their drinks were getting low. I blinked several times, retrieving the money and napkin he'd given me and shoving them into the front of my apron before snatching up his empty glass and making my rounds again, taking orders for refills. After rattling them off to Eddie, I moved behind the bar and paid for his double scotch out of my other tip money, mostly to avoid Eddie's questions about it should he see the large bill. I wasn't sure if I was going to take it yet, but if I did, well… I liked the idea of not breaking them. Was that agreeing to his deal? Maybe I should keep it so that, if he showed up again, I could hand it right back to him and tell him where he should shove his "mutually beneficial" arrangement.

…Maybe I'd just discovered how to buy myself a dress, for my night out with Dr. Grissom.

I mulled over my indecision all night, catching only an hour of sleep or so, and got up at five to try on Anni's blue dress again. It was better than her trampy one, it just… wasn't what I wanted, for this date that Dr. Grissom had built up so much. Maybe if I showed him I was a lady, maybe if I didn't screw tonight up, he'd finally think I was… I don't know, worth fucking? …Worth loving, maybe, but not in those words.

Nothing opened before I had to be at work, but I managed to convince one of the night girls to come in a half hour early, so I could take an hour and a half break. The Lantern was close to a little dress boutique that was expensive, but exactly what I was thinking, and I figured it would have to do. I ran over in my Lantern T-shirt and jeans, rolling my eyes at the looks the women behind the counter gave me. People in stores like this were much more accommodating when Anni's mom came in with us. If I'd had the time to ignore them and look myself, I would have, but I didn't. I walked up to the counter.

"Listen. I need a dress by tonight and I've got an hour right now to get it. I'm roughly a size two and I'm tall."

The two women blinked at me in surprise, and then one nodded succinctly. "Absolutely. There's a dressing room in back. I'll start bringing back things for you to try."

"Thank you."

I hurried back, locked the door, and stripped down, and within moments was being passed dress after dress. I slipped in and out of at least twenty, ruling out any that were over two hundred without trying them on; no use falling in love with something I couldn't have, after all. I finally settled on a gorgeous yellow dress which clung to me all the way down to above my knees and made me look like I had an amazing figure. It had spaghetti straps, but still didn't show much cleavage, and the price tag said $149.99.

A glance at my watch told me I was out of time. I passed the dress to the woman through a crack in the door and asked her to ring it up and bag it—I'd be out in a moment. By the time I was dressed, she was smiling at me from behind the counter, the dress slung over it in a white plastic garment bag. I moved up, passed her my two crisp hundreds, and watched her smile while the other woman—the one who had not jumped in to help me—frowned. Apparently she hadn't thought I would have the money. Well, fuck her. I hoped fervently that they worked off commission, and that she was kicking herself for it now. Stupid bitch.

I barely made it back to work on time, but I smiled the entire rest of my shift, feeling on top of the world. Dr. Grissom was going to lose his mind when he saw me, and no matter where he took me, I would feel like I was good enough to be there, on his arm, as his date. Things were looking up, and I didn't trouble myself again with thoughts of Mr. Moneybags.