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They could be so hot and cold. Not because they didn’t love each other, but because they loved so hard. So hard it was fucking disgusting, and Melrose would holler at them from the corner of the dressing room to go back upstairs and stop “making all us straight girls feel bad for ourselves,” and they’d both shoot her the finger, wishing for a moment they could have the stage to themselves.
The pole was kinda like that, in a way; just as it was the first night at the club in LA, when Arthie was there Yolanda only had eyes for her as she swung, biting her lip as she was hanging upside down wondering how Arthie would act that night in their room, when they could finally put their hands on each other, touch like they wanted to fucking touch, where no one could see them. Sometimes Arthie would be jealous, pining, teasing, asking who she looked at in the crowd when she wasn’t there, asking if she ever watched the other dancers like Arthie watched her. On nights like those, Yolanda would show her how much she meant, slowly and softly, make Arthie fall to pieces beneath her. They would do their unspoken dance, Arthie’s jealousy - real or fake - fading as her girlfriend made her love clear.
And there were some nights when the elevator up to their room was too fucking slow, and Arthie was tugging at her shapewear, tearing at the seems and begging to feel the woman beneath it, throwing Yolanda against the bed and letting her see the playful fire in her eyes, their hearts beating, blasting, threatening to burst at each other’s touch, and it still wasn’t enough. She could spend millennia searching for a passion that matched how she felt those nights, Arthie’s touch like fucking flames on her skin, making her feel needed, sexy, loved. It was everything.
They burned so hot and yet so cold, because it’s not easy being two girls on the Strip in Vegas. Yolanda was working pretty much every night, because when they weren’t doing shows at the Fan-Tan she was dancing, trying to save money so they could find an apartment, maybe a house, somewhere to go together outside the hotel. They needed more space, more space to be apart together and be together apart from the world. But sometimes she’d come home from dancing and Arthie just wanted to watch a movie together but Yolanda was so tired, and fucking gross and sweaty, covered in creepy stares from dirty guys, and all she needed was to shower and go to sleep. So Arthie would offer to join her, to wash her hair and scrub the day off her but Yolanda just needed to deal with the shit herself, be alone for one fucking second in this goddamn town which made her seem ungrateful, but she didn’t mean it like that, of course…
It was just so fucking hard to be yourself in a town where everyone is always on, where the status quo is lights, camera, action and everyone in the hotel bar and the casino think the showgirls are theirs to peek at and touch, like some sort of car they were inspecting before purchasing. It made Yolanda feel gross and sometimes Arthie couldn’t understand it the same way, so of course, they ran hot and cold, but not too often, and never for too long. It was just that they burned hotter than the sun.
It was a predictable script with an unpredictable ending, though; Yolanda would leave to take a walk and cool off, because she hated yelling at Arthie’s beautiful puppy face, no matter how angry she was. She’d throw on one of Arthie’s overcoats because she wasn’t in the mood for any more looks from strangers and it smelled comforting, then head down to the casino and gamble some of her tips from that night. If she was winning early - and she was always winning - she’d leave when she’d made a clean hundred, cash out and head to the gift shop inside the hotel. They always had flowers for sale in bouquets, ugly assortments of some bullshit, like some fucking green succulents with sunflowers, something gross and incompatible of that sort. Instead she’d build her own bouquet of stuff Arthie actually liked, lavender and white rose, Alstroemeria and daisies, something unique for her. It was way cheaper to buy one of the premade bundles but it was never really about the price.
The first time she’d come upstairs with flowers, Arthie was crying, wondering what she’d done wrong, if she’d lost her forever. She was always so timid like that, and it broke Yolanda’s heart to see her so lost. But the flowers were placed in a vase and nursed to health by them together until the time came for the petals to fall, but their love was still blooming.
So it would happen again, of course, because the hotel room is too small to pace in and they need a fucking space of their own. The second time she left to gamble and get flowers, she returned to Arthie sleeping on her side, facing towards the window that overlooked the Strip, and a smile crept across her face. The vase was filled with water, the flowers cradled inside, the curtains drawn shut, and Yolanda crawled into the bed beside her girl, brushing beside the curls that masked a perfect cheek for her to kiss.
They would be sweet one night and sour the next but it was always from a place of love, love so fucking deep and dripping sickly sweet that they never wanted to see the other hurt, always wanted to do whatever they could to help each other heal even when time was the only treatment. Arthie learned what Yolanda needed when she came back huffing - she needed her space, a nice long shower, and a night of eight hours sleep - and the flowers stopped coming, because Yolanda stopped leaving. And in some way, that was a declaration of love, of newfound understanding, just in their own backwards way.
“Baby,” Arthie murmured, turning to face Yolanda as her eyes blended with the darkness, the silence. “I wanna leave Vegas.”
Yolanda hummed, let her eyelids fall closed as Arthie ran fingers through her hair slowly. “Okay, hun, we’ll go out to Red Rock Canyon this weekend, just you and me.”
“No, I mean-” she sighed, tugging at the elastic band on Yoyo’s lacy underwear, “I wanna move out of this hotel and start a real life, with you.”
“Oh yeah?” She was teasing now, opening one eye to peer at Arthie. Even now, three years into their dance Arthie was still timid about speaking her mind, saying what she was thinking, feeling. She had gotten better, sure, but Yolanda was always trying to encourage her when she would admit something, whether it seemed big or small. “I think I would like that very much, baby.”
“Yeah?” and she was sparkling when she said it, lighting a fire deep within Yolanda, this carnal need to just fucking protect this woman, and she felt like shaking and crumbling in this very bed, breaking apart from the way her heart grew in her presence. And that was all there was.
She leaned forward and met her lips, kissing her hard, just trying to show Arthie how she felt, how much she felt, how she felt all the time when she was on the pole and caught her girlfriend’s sly glances from the corner booth, or when she was tossing her over the pink ropes during their show and they would lock eyes and remember their first kiss, or how Arthie would stifle her laughter when they would get Mexican food and Yolanda would ruthlessly complain about the fakeness of the food, or when she was sitting there doing nothing, but just being endlessly beautiful, graceful, wonderfully gorgeous in their bed biting her lip and asking for more.
And imagining, their house in the desert, in the nowheres between here and there, planting flowers in the evening and listening to Patsy Cline on the stereo, maybe with a white picket fence because why the fuck not, because why the fuck not, it would be perfect in a field of daisies and roses with her, wherever.
“Yeah, I would.”