Heels

Prompt from They Fight Crime!
He’s a scrappy devious gangster in drag. She’s a brilliant gold-digging mercenary on the trail of a serial killer.

“Now those are some killer shoes.”

I take a moment to appreciate my footwear before looking up. Rich purple bands twine across my feet, around my ankles and calves. Mirror-bright silver heels catch the pulsing light in the room, throwing it in a million directions. If I were to stand, they’d add three and a quarter inches to my meager sixty-four.

I force myself to look away, focus on the voice that spoke to me. I expected a man, a tough guy looking to pick me up. The voice was smooth, a deep rumble that cut through the whiny high-pitched squeal in the club.

Standing in front of me is a woman. Wearing a dress identical to my own. The dress I bought because it was a perfect match for my shoes. Swirls of purple, black, and silver. Barely there straps holding up a shifty, flirty tube of fabric.

I look again. She’s not a she. The voice didn’t lie. This is a man. In drag. In my dress. Admiring my shoes.

His hand reaches out to touch the shoe on the end of my angrily bouncing leg. He missed a detail. There is hair on the back of his hand, hair on his fingers. All the way up his arm, actually. A match for the dark locks he has smoothed behind one ear.

“Don’t touch.” I carefully shift my legs, tucking the shoes under my chair where they are safely out of his reach.

He retracts his hand as if I were a dog that had just nipped at his fingers.

I guess I kind of did.

“Sorry. They’re expensive. And fragile.” I flash him a smile and look over his shoulder. I can’t tell if we are attracting attention because we are two women in a bar or because we are a spectacle in a double-dress. I’m okay with the first. Not with the second. A double-dress spectacle could make it hard for me to get what I want tonight.

I find the eyes I am looking for. They are pointed in our direction, but don’t touch my dress-double. They are locked on me, skimming over my skin. I can almost feel them.

I look away before the body holding those eyes realizes I’m watching him. I focus on the man next to him, but ignore the center of my vision, widen my eyes to catch everything I can in the periphery.

The man I am after is under-dressed by the standards of his club. But he looks good, without a doubt. Jeans worn soft cling to his thighs. A tight blue T-shirt drapes the muscles of his abs under an unbuttoned flannel. Golden-blond hair waves over his forehead, skims over brows that slash above his steel blue-grey eyes. The T-shirt is deliberate, I decide. He’s playing up the storm in those eyes.

“Where’d you get them?”

I startle a bit. I’d forgotten about my not-even-close-to-a-twin standing in front of me. He’s also not a twin to the man I am after. My not-twin is skinny. The dress that kisses my curves hangs like a bag over his lack of muscle. His eyes and hair are dark, banishing the light that the golden man throws around the room.

Without me asking, dress-boy drops into the seat next to me. Apparently he doesn’t care if we make a spectacle. Maybe because he is a spectacle all by himself.

“I made them actually,” I respond as I shift to make sure golden-man can see me around dress-boy.

“Really! They are spectacular.” This guy is freakishly obsessed with my footwear.

But they are spectacular. I guess I shouldn’t hold it against him.

Before I can stop him, he has slid one fur-trimmed hand down my calf to lift my foot into the air. He tips his hand, shifting my leg like he is holding a glass of wine up to the light. No glass of wine is this pretty, this sparkly. We are both entranced for a moment, watching the light bounce and scatter.

We aren’t the only ones who see. I feel his eyes a moment before I look up and catch the golden man staring.

I extract my leg, careful to mind the heels. It wouldn’t do to cut my not-twin and give away the surprise. “It’s time for my shoes and I to get to work,” I say as I stand and move toward my prey.