Chapter 3: Pink Neon, Sticky Floors, First Steps

Lilly followed her parents again to Carl’s. The neon sign buzzed in the damp night air, casting a dirty pink glow across the cracked asphalt. She parked two blocks away this time, her heart hammering against her ribs. She gave them a twenty-minute head start, watching the door swing shut behind her mother’s hips and her father’s familiar slouch.

When she finally pushed the door open, a bell chimed overhead. The smell hit her first, cheap air freshener trying to mask the ghosts of sweat, stale cum, and latex. Racks of DVDs with half-naked women on the covers lined the walls. In the back, a beaded curtain twitched, leading to what she could only assume were the viewing booths.

Behind the counter, Carl looked up from his phone. He was older, maybe fifty, with a thick salt-and-pepper beard and eyes that had seen every kind of desperation walk through that door. He gave her a slow, appreciative once-over.

“ID.”

Lilly’s hand trembled as she dug into her purse and slid her sister’s ID across the counter. Blonde hair. Twenty-one. Carl barely glanced at it. He looked at her face, then at the photo, then back at her tits straining against her thin cotton top.

“Okay,” he said, sliding the ID back. “Have you ever been to an adult bookstore before?”

Lilly shook her head, her cheeks burning.

Carl leaned forward, resting his elbows on the glass counter. He spoke low, conspiratorial. “Well, sweetheart, we got everything. DVDs in the front. Magazines on the left. The back room’s got the viewing booths, you put a token in, watch a film, mind your own business. Some folks use them for ... private viewings. There’s a lounge area in the back right where people can meet, if they’re friendly. You got any questions, you come ask me.”

Lilly nodded, her mouth dry as sandpaper. She turned and forced her legs to move, her sneakers squeaking softly on the sticky linoleum floor as she wandered into the aisles. Her fingers trembled as she reached out, brushing over the plastic cases of DVDs. The covers were explicit, women bent over, mouths open, glistening cocks shoved into every available hole. Cum Swallowers #47. Anal Auditions 12. Big Titty MILFs Vol. 9. She felt a flush creep up her neck, her breath hitching as she imagined her own mother, prim and proper in her Sunday dress, standing in this very aisle, her fingers tracing the same crinkly plastic.

The moans from the hidden speaker system bled through the store, a low, thrumming soundtrack of female pleasure and male grunting. It was ambient, everywhere and nowhere, seeping into her skin. One voice was particularly loud, a woman shrieking, “Yes! Fuck me! Harder!” The sound seemed to come from the back, from behind that beaded curtain. It made Lilly’s thighs clench involuntarily, a damp heat pooling between her legs that she tried to ignore.