Bella-Donna always looked best before opening. 

The dark red and black velvet on the walls, the VIP booths with gold feathers inside the vases and the warm, amber lights. The old microphone stood beneath the curtains, polished and waiting. In another hour, the stage would be lit and the club packed. By ten, there would be barely enough room between Bella-Donna's tables to carry two drinks without apologizing to somebody. 

I had known the place for over two years by then. My mother had brought me here first, accompanying Cynthia to her job interview. My mother had never performed here herself, although that had less to do with modesty than with the unfortunate fact that she couldn’t sing. Dancing had never been the problem.

Cynthia always opened up the night show. Cynthia always opened up the night show. That evening, she was wearing the red set I had picked for her backstage, after she spent ten minutes insisting the black one made her legs look better. It didn’t.

The red suited her copper curls and warm skin far better, especially beneath the amber stage lights. Tiny crystals followed the cups of her corset and scattered down toward the fringe at her hips, catching whenever she moved. She had already put on her lipstick.

“Turn around,” I told her.

Cynthia obeyed with a sigh, lifting her curls away from her back while I fixed her straps quickly, ready to go back to serving the first customers.

I had watched every number enough times to know them by heart. On slow nights, that left me with very little to do besides bother the girls backstage and find ways to entertain myself between orders. The customers were usually more entertaining. A good smile and a light touch on the arm after somebody made a stupid joke about my pheromones earned me sixty dollars on average. If I gave them a twirl, I could push it closer to a hundred. 

By the second number, I had stopped finding the customers entertaining. At first, I blamed the heat. Bella-Donna always grew warmer once the tables filled, especially beneath the stage lights, but that night my collar had started sticking to the back of my neck before we were even busy. I pulled it away from my skin and continued collecting glasses.

Then the smells started bothering me. Usually, I could separate them. Perfume. Liquor. Somebody’s cigarette smoke. The occasional Alpha whose blockers were beginning to wear thin. That night, everything seemed to sit on top of everything else until breathing through my nose became unpleasant. 

I checked the date on my phone between orders. Too early for my heat. But my nape burned and stung as if someone were pressing needles beneath the skin. It hadn’t bothered me this badly since November. 

I put my phone away and picked up another empty glass. By the time I reached the end of the table, somebody behind me had released enough pheromones to make me dizzy. I took the long way around him, dropped the glasses at the bar and rubbed the back of my neck with two fingers.

I needed five minutes. The next number had already started, which gave me enough time to disappear backstage before anyone needed another round. I grabbed my cigarettes from beneath the counter and pushed through the curtain.

Leyla came rushing past me halfway out of her stage costume, one heel already in her hand. 

“Cynthia, do you have $50 to give me? I need to pay the stage fee!” She shouted as she threw the heels in the middle of the room, already grabbing her purse.

“I thought you were leaving at 1 today?! What’s going on?” Cynthia looked at her with a worried look while fanning herself, holding up her curls.

“I have to pick up my son. My nanny says he has food poisoning…” Leyla explained quickly, grabbing her coat. “Come on girl! Throw me $50!”

Cynthia stood up from the vanity immediately and searched inside her purse, almost dropping all her stuff from inside the bag, rummaging inside. She pulled out numerous bills and managed to find the $50. “Take’em and leave right now!”

“Love you! See y’all on Thursday!” Leyla screamed as she ran out, her coat half open.

Maybe coming back here was also a mistake. The girls were hectic, putting on a second layer of make-up for the next number, changing shoes, throwing around wigs and corsets and spraying perfume. I should have gotten iced water to cool down; however, I did not want to turn back and walk past the bar. I took my cigarette pack and walked towards the back exit. 

“Kento, wait! Take my coat honey!” Cynthia called out, placing her stuff back into her bag. “It’s too damn cold outside. Looking at your legs makes me freeze!”

I was going to take my own jacket, but Cynthia already threw hers at me as she finished speaking. Not thinking much of what I was holding, I went outside.

The cold hit my face the moment I pushed through the back door. For the first few seconds I welcomed the December air that cooled the sweat along my nape. Whatever had been sitting heavily in my chest inside seemed to loosen.

The door clicked shut behind me. It was technically an emergency exit, although nobody had treated it like one since the alarm broke the year before. Management had promised to fix it. They hadn't. By then, it was simply the smoking door.

I stepped farther into the shared backyard and reached for my cigarettes. There wasn’t much to look at. Bella-Donna shared the space with the Italian restaurant next door, which meant several garbage bins, dirty snow pushed against the walls and whatever crates their kitchen hadn’t bothered bringing inside. On busier evenings, they kept their side door open and I could hear the kitchen staff answering somebody I never managed to hear. “Yes, Chef. Sorry, Chef. No, Chef.” were the responses I could hear. Always loud enough to reach our side of the yard. It made me laugh every time.

Tonight, their door was closed. They had probably finished hours ago.

“Fuck,” I muttered as my lighter sparked and immediately died.

I cupped both hands around it and tried again. By then, the relief of being outside had begun losing its charm. My fingers were trembling badly enough that the flame kept slipping away from the end of my cigarette.

Cynthia had some nerve telling me I would freeze before throwing this at me. I pulled her denim jacket tighter around myself. It barely reached my stomach. Denim. In December. Apparently the woman who complained about looking at my bare legs had decided this constituted winter protection.

My outfit wasn’t helping. Thin velvet and lace covered most of my legs in theory, while the loose white shirt did fuck-all against the wind. I had more material hanging around my neck in accessories than I did keeping the rest of me warm.

My teeth knocked together. At this rate, my snake bite was going to lose the fight. I sparked the lighter again, when I heard a crunch in the snow for afar. My thumb stopped on the wheel. Somebody was walking through the snow.

As I looked up, I couldn’t tell whether he belonged to the restaurant or had wandered around from the front of the club. I had seen most of the neighboring staff at least once, but I didn’t recognize him.

He was difficult to miss, though. A scarf wrapped twice around his neck and covered almost everything below his nose. His beanie had pushed dark hair down over his eyebrows, leaving the streetlight behind him to only cast shadows where I should have been able to see the rest of his face.

Something red hung over one shoulder, reaching almost to his hip. He noticed me looking, then one gloved hand lifted in a small wave.

“Hey,” a deep voice carried across the yard. “Are you not cold out here?”

I looked down at myself. Cynthia’s jacket had fallen open again. There were easier ways to start a conversation, although I had heard considerably worse ones inside. I took another useless strike at the lighter and looked back at him. I chuckled, still shaking from the cold, my shoulders moving up and down.

“A bit,” I responded. “I wanted to smoke one quick, but my lighter is being difficult.”

“Oh, you have a metal rotator one? I hate those,” he nodded, as if approving my complaint. “May I come closer to you?”

My fingers gripped the lighter tighter as he finished asking. That was a new one. What an interesting guy. Usually, a man who caught me alone in one of my work outfits had already decided I wanted his attention before I had the chance to disagree. And, looking down at the lace, I could already imagine where this one’s thoughts might have wandered.

A small rush of adrenaline climbed into my chest. There was nobody else in the yard, and whatever his winter coat concealed, it certainly wasn’t a small man. The restaurant door remained shut behind him. Bella-Donna’s was several steps behind me. 

But he hadn’t taken another step. My grip on the lighter loosened. Maybe I wanted to see what he wanted.

“Yes, you may,” I managed to move my lips, my voice quiet.

I watched him close the distance, half expecting the usual change once he got near enough to get a proper look at what I was wearing. But the closer he got, his eyes moved over me briefly, stopping on my face. 

Up close, the winter jacket hadn’t exaggerated his size much. He really was that big.

He stopped with enough space still left between us that I didn’t have to tilt my head too far to look at him. I straightened slightly, looking at him, trying to see his face. But the strands of hair protruding from underneath his beanie dropped over his eyes, and the light was not bright enough. 

That was when I noticed the red thing hanging over his shoulder properly. I had assumed it was part of his clothes from across the yard. It wasn’t.

“I’m not going to bother you long,” he said. “I just saw you while locking up the place out here, and I knew you must be cold. Here.”

He took the red object hanging around his shoulder and put his arm out towards me. It was a blanket. As his hand got closer, the smell of garlic and butter appeared and disappeared depending on how strong the wind was. The blanket smelled like detergent, so it must have been his hands that smelled of garlic. 

“Thank you,” I said, pulling the blanket tighter around my shoulders.

That seemed to be it. I waited for whatever usually came next. A compliment. A question about the club. My name, maybe. Instead, he stood there with his hands tucked back into his jacket.

I looked at him again. There still wasn’t enough light to make much of his face. His scarf hid the lower half, while the hair escaping from beneath his beanie cast the rest in uneven shadows. Only his eyes caught anything from the weak light reflecting from the now, dark and glossy whenever he moved his head.

So I looked there. He held my gaze for a moment before blinking hard. His eyes dropped somewhere beside my shoulder, and he adjusted the scarf higher over his face. He took a step back and looked away. 

“Oh, and here…” He said suddenly, rummaging inside his jacket. “Take this. Have a good one!”

He gave me an electronic lighter, then turned around and walked away. The garlic and butter smell dissipated, before he got too far away, I got a pleasant whiff of eucalyptus and oregano. I watched the space between the buildings for another few seconds after he disappeared.

The cigarette was still hanging unlit between my fingers. I looked down at the lighter he had left in my hand. Plain, electronic, and considerably easier to use than mine. The blanket had begun slipping from one shoulder, so I caught it with my elbow and pressed the button.

The cigarette lit on the first try.

“Of course,” I muttered as I took the first drag.

For someone who had apparently only wanted to keep me from freezing, he had left me holding an awful lot of his things.

I took another drag. The cigarette tasted worse than I had expected after wanting one so badly. I barely got halfway through it. Somewhere during the strange little exchange and the cold air, the burning at my nape had dulled enough that I could ignore it again. I touched the spot with two fingers. 

I looked down at the red blanket wrapped around me. The irony made me snort. I finished what little I wanted of the cigarette and went back inside.