Iron Rods: 1 (Strip Club) Read Online Free PDF Page A

prevent had finally hit. The awkward young girl who had seen the
beautiful and tall Darci Kistler dancing in The Nutcracker on television
and dreamed of performing onstage in gorgeous costumes just like her hero now
had to come to terms with reality. A sad reality she hadn’t counted on.
    We regret to inform you…
    With more pressure than she intended, Tatum bit her lip to
keep the betraying flesh from quivering. The pain, sharp and lasting, was
welcome though. It reminded her that she would not cry. No, not this time.
Crying was for quitters, and her parents hadn’t raised their children to be
quitters. They had taught her and her brother to look for the bright side of
things. Find the silver lining. Believe deep in their hearts that when a door
closed, a window opened somewhere.
    But she’d had so many doors slam in her face, the
possibility of finding even a peephole with light shining through seemed
impossible. Her life and career, it seemed, resided in a windowless,
pitch-black cave, the likes of which would eat away at her soul if she let it.
    Tatum watched while the rejection letter slipped from her
fingers onto the linoleum tabletop. Her once brilliant future, at least the
brilliant future her dance instructors had forecasted, slipped from her fingers
too.
    Closing her eyes, she looked into the depths of her heavy
heart. What she saw there wasn’t pretty. Disappointment, anger, loss,
embarrassment and grief all churned together like raw hamburger meat. She also
noticed a complete lack of surprise lurking in the dark shadows.
    Hadn’t she known this day was coming? After years of being
turned away despite doing her best and working hard at her craft, she couldn’t
ignore the writing on the wall any longer. She was too tall and not whisper
thin enough to be a dancer. As much as she loved dancing, the dream of dressing
up in beautiful costumes and traveling the country to perform in front of
millions of people wasn’t going to happen.
    She sucked in a lungful of air and thought about her
parents. Eventually she’d call them and break the bad news. They’d tell her
that getting the rejection letter wasn’t a sign of failure, it was only life’s
way of pointing her in the direction she truly needed to be traveling.
    “Think of Abraham Lincoln,” her father would say. “How many
times did he fail before becoming President of the United States? And didn’t he
turn out to be one of the best presidents in history?”
    Then they’d remind her she was a Reynolds, and Reynolds were
made of tough stuff. This setback, albeit a hellacious setback as far as
setbacks went, wouldn’t destroy her. Not if she didn’t allow it.
    Would she?
    Would she let this latest rejection ruin her life? Doom her
to a miserable existence until she died all curled up in the fetal position in
some corner on skid row?
    Tatum opened her eyes and glanced up at Heather. “We still
have any of that blue agave tequila in the freezer?”
    Heather nodded. Concern filled her lovely hazel eyes.
“Enough for a few shots.”
    “Good.” Though her disappointment was enough to swallow her
whole, Tatum squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “After we’ve finished
that, we’re putting on our party dresses. We’re going out.”
     
    Finding a bar in Austin, Tatum had come to know, was a lot
like looking for hot sauce in a Mexican restaurant. Everywhere a person turned
they’d be sure to bump into at least one, if not many, all of which had their
own flavor. The trick to a really good night out involved choosing the
appropriate bar to match the occasion. Much like pairing up the right hot sauce
with the food being served.
    Tonight’s occasion centered around failure. Her miserable,
gut-twisting failure.
    She needed a place where she could get thoroughly drunk
while simultaneously forgetting that she’d been turned down by every hiring
dance company in the United States, she would probably never dance
professionally and she had enough cash