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I gulped. This wasn't exactly the response I had expected from James. I had thought he would be excited that I had found a new job. On the contrary, he was acting the opposite of that. His expression had horror and dismay written all over it. Definitely not what I had expected from him. He looked almost angry, like he wanted to slap someone. Just in case he was thinking about taking his anger out on me, I moved as far away from him on the couch as possible. I was now getting use to James' short temper. Knowing I better say something before James got too freak out, I said in a calming voice, "Yeah, I guess it's like a strip club. But seriously, what's the big deal? It's not like I'm working as a stripper there or anything. I'm just helping the bar tender."

James calmed down a little bit at my words, but still looked nervous. He wrung his hands together and looked like he was debating something in his head. Finally, he said, "I know you're not a stripper, but it would be easy for people to get that idea. You're pretty, Olive. I don't think you realize that, but guys are really attracted to you. You'd be really easy for a guy to hit on."

For a moment, I thought James had kind of lost it. Who in the world thought I was pretty? Absolutely no one! I wasn't ugly, but I certainly wasn't pretty. Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, I said, "James, I'm not that pretty. Besides, we both know that nobody is going to think I'm a stripper unless I start stripping. And obviously, I'm not going to do that. I think you're being a little paranoid. This is a good job. Marty is nice and the pay is good."

James narrowed his eyes and looked like he wanted to say something, but at that moment, there was a loud crash from the kitchen. James and I exchanged looks and both hurried towards the kitchen. When we got there, I saw that the pot of water that James had been boiling had exploded all over. James narrowed his eyes at the spilled water and cursed under his breath, "Damn it!" Together, we cleaned up the mess with some towels. The mess didn't take long to clean up, but now it was going to take a long time to start over with dinner. I was starving from such a long day and didn't want to have to wait for it.

"What do ya wanna do for dinner?" James asked, as if he was reading my thoughts. He surveyed the empty pot on the stove and regarded it disdainfully, "I tried to make spaghetti, but I guess I got a little sidetracked." That was obvious. He had gotten sidetracked over a stupid phobia of me becoming a stripper or something.

I walked over to the refrigerator and pulled the door open. To my surprise, it was stocked with lots of food! It looked as if James had bought the whole grocery store when he had gone out shopping. Eagerly, I started sorting through the food to see what he had bought. There was bread, cheese, ham, yogurt, tomatoes, cucumbers, and oranges in the fridge. Those were perfect items to make sandwiches. Then, something else caught my attention. There were at least fifteen beer bottles stashed in the far corner of the fridge. Suspiciously, I grabbed one and looked at it closer.

James obviously wasn't suppose to be drinking beer. Neither of us were twenty-one yet. If the police or someone saw this, we could be in big trouble. Frowning, I looked from the beer bottle to James and asked, "Where did you get all these bottles from? You know you aren't suppose to be drinking, James. You're only seventeen. You could get in trouble with the law or something if someone caught you drinking. That would be big trouble for both of us."

"I'm not gonna get in trouble," James waved my fears away casually with his hand. "I look older than seventeen anyways. Besides, it's not like I'm forcing you to drink any of this." I was starting to get annoyed. James wasn't serious enough sometimes. Biting back my anger, I tried to stay calm, "Yeah, I know, but we're living in the same apartment. If you get in trouble, most likely I will too. Drinking isn't good for you anyways. It makes people...weird."

"No it doesn't!" James retorted, taking the bottle out of my hand before I could have the chance to smack him on the head with it. "It helps fuel me up for band practice and stuff." His expression softened and he took one of my hands, "Please, Olive? I swear to God that we won't get into trouble. Don't you trust me?"

I could feel my heart soften a little bit as he looked into my eyes with his beautiful hazel ones. Seeing a good opportunity to barter, I said, "Well, okay I guess. I don't approve of you drinking, but I guess you've gotta do what you've gotta do. But I don't want you getting drunk, okay? People can get crazy and do dangerous things when that happens. Also, if you get to keep your beer, then that means I get to keep my job at the club. Agreed?"

James groaned and looked from the beer bottle in his hand up to my face. I could tell he was waging a war inside his head, trying to think if the beer was worth risking me working at a strip club. Finally, he made up his mind, "If you say so. But please be careful, okay? Stay by that Marty guy the whole time you're working. As soon as you're done with work, please come straight back home. I don't want you just hanging about the club. Okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," I said, just happy that James had let me keep the job. Now that our argument was taken care of, I found myself in a much better mood. Curious to see if there was anything frozen to eat, I peeked in the freezer. There was a tin of strawberry ice cream in there as well as a frozen pizza. The pizza looked really good, especially to my ravenous eyes. Eagerly, I took the pizza box out of the freezer, put it onto the counter, and took it out of the box.

"Let's microwave this and eat it," I suggested, already putting the pizza into the microwave. James laughed at my eagerness and shrugged his shoulders, "Whatever you want." I paced back and forth in the room impatiently while the pizza cooked. Finally, a few minutes later, it was ready. I yanked it out of the microwave and dumped it onto our little kitchen table. I selected a piece and bit into warm, cheesy delight. Sighing with satisfaction, I let the cheese dissolve on the tip of my tongue.

"So what'd you think of Lars?" I asked while I was savoring the pizza. James paused before answering my question. It was like he was having a hard time coming up with something positive to say about Lars. After a sip of his beer, he shrugged and replied, "Well...I certainly think he has lots of motivation. He does need to get another drum kit though if we're going to become a really band. The thing he was playing on looked like a muppet kit or something. I think the band will be worth joining though. Lars seems nice and I'm interested in meeting the bassist tomorrow."

I nodded, chewing my pizza slowly. James' thoughts about Lars were pretty much the same as mine. We both like Lars, but we definitely agreed that he lacked in equipment and talent. Thinking back of how Lars had wanted a vocalist, I asked James, "So did you try out those song lyrics Lars gave you earlier? He seemed pretty convinced you were going to be a good vocalist."

Blushing slightly, James nodded. I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn't. Wanting more information on the subject, I prodded, "Well? How did it go?" Then, coming up with an even better idea, I suggested, "Hey, why don't you sing the lyrics for me? I could tell you whether or not you'd be a good vocalist."

"No!" James shook his head quickly, blushing. "Lars can tell me if I'm a good vocalist, not you. Besides, I probably suck at it." I highly doubted this, but decided not to press the subject. James obviously didn't want to talk about it. He was really shy with me sometimes. Somehow, he was going to have to learn to get over his shyness. I continued munching on the pizza until about half it was gone. By that point, I noticed that James wasn't eating. Wondering what had happened to James' appetite, I shoved the remaining pizza slices towards him and asked, "Why aren't you eating? You should eat. Aren't you starving?"

"Nah, I'm not hungry," James said, taking another swig of his beer bottle. He stood up and wandered over to the fridge. "I...uh...ate earlier." Something about the way he said the last sentence made me not believe him. James selected another beer from the fridge and set it down on the table. Frowning at the beer, I picked it up and put it right back into the fridge. James sighed and tried to give me puppy eyes, but it wasn't going to work on me this time.

"Seriously, James, one is enough for one night!" I exclaimed, slamming the refrigerator door shut. "You're not even suppose to be drinking." James rolled his eyes, but didn't protest. I put the remaining pizza into the fridge for tomorrow and turned back towards James. I questioned, "So what do you want to do now?"

Muffling a yawn, James shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, "I dunno. Whatever you want to do." Apparently the saying that yawns are contagious is true, because at that moment, I yawned as well. Before we knew it, the two of us were both letting out big yawns. I guess we were both a lot more tired that we thought we were.

Laughing, I said, "Look at us! We're both really tired. Let's just go to bed, hm?" James nodded almost with relief. He really did look worn out from the long day. He headed towards the bathroom to change. Once he was in the bathroom, I started thinking about something I hadn't thought about all day. Maybe tonight was the night to actually do it with James. Everything seemed to be going well. James was in a good mood and so was I.

Making up my mind, I grabbed my lacy lingerie from my black bag instead of my usual flannel pants before heading to the bathroom when James was done. Once I was in the bathroom, I stripped down and looked at my body in the mirror. I didn't look really beautiful, but my body wasn't hideous or anything. The only thing that was pretty damn ugly was the scar above my belly. Too bad I couldn't do anything about it. Deciding to ignore it, I pulled on the lingerie I had tucked under my arm. It was a dark red silky fabric with black lace embroidered on the edges of it. I had to admit it was really sexy, but it was already making me feel self conscious. Oh well, I could live with feeling self conscious for a few minutes.

Next, I decided I needed to do something with my hair. The ponytail wasn't really all that attractive. Yanking out my ponytail holder, I let my hair fall down and scrutinized my reflection some more in the mirror. My hair looked okay down. I grabbed a brush and yanked it through my hair until all the snarls had disappeared and it was as smooth as I could get it.

"Hey Olive, did you get lost in there or something?" James teased me from the other room. I blushed and called back, "Not exactly." James must know I was up to something. Usually, it only took me a few minutes to get changed. Tonight, I had already spent fifteen minutes primping, and I wasn't even done yet!

Deciding that my hair was good enough, I moved onto my face. Most of my makeup had absorbed from earlier, so it definitely needed to be touched up. I applied some sparkly gray eyeshadow and some blood red lipstick that matched the color of the lingerie I was wearing. After that, I stepped back to get another good look in the mirror. My appearance had changed incredibly from only thirty minutes before. I looked older and more mature. But beneath all the glamorous makeup and skimpy garb, I could see the nervousness and fear of a little girl. I was starting to chicken out. Nobody was forcing me to do anything with James, it was my own choice about whether or not I wanted to sleep with him.

Maybe I should wait and just forget the whole thing. The dream I had of Ray a few nights previous came flying back into my head. It made me shudder and immediately regret my decision. I started to peel off the lingerie, but then realized my other nightie was in the bedroom. I couldn't get in and out of the bedroom without James seeing me. He would obviously know something was up. Shit. I stood there in the bathroom for a few more minutes, trying to figure out what to do.

After pacing back and forth, I finally decided I needed to stop being so paranoid and just give things a try. James wasn't going to intentionally hurt me. Besides, maybe I would be able to discover the mystery of what sex was really like tonight. From what Ray had taught me, it was a horrible, indecent thing, but from what I had seen with Kitty and James, it was completely the opposite.

Before I headed back into the bedroom, I searched through my cosmetic bag. Don't ask me why, but for some reason, I kept all my bottles of pills there. I had taken all of my mom's pills with me to Los Angeles just in case I would need them. They were already coming in handy. I unscrewed the top of the pills that read "birth control", and swallowed two of the pills. The last thing I wanted to do was get pregnant. Now looking back, I'm starting to think it was a miracle that Ray never got me pregnant.

After taking the pills, I stood and faced the door. My hand reached out for the door handle and then paused on it. I took a deep breath. Once I started this, I could never take it back. Feeling kind of slutty in my revealing negligee, I pushed open the door slowly and stepped into the bedroom. James was already in the bed, lying on his back with his feet sticking out of the sheet. He seriously looked way too cute like that.

James had had his eyes closed, but when he heard me open the bathroom door, he opened them, "Hey Olive, what took you so-" James abruptly cut off his sentence when he saw me. His eyes widened in surprise as he took in my outfit, hair, and make-uped face. Cocking his head, he joked, "Who are you and what did you do with Olivia?"