Darkness in the Neon Lights (H2OVanoss)

Chapter 45

A few weeks have gone by since I started training for the manager position at the club, and things have been getting so much better. I'm starting to get happy to go to work again, I'm starting to take care of myself again, and I've finally stopped thinking about Jon... Well, not fully.

Every once in a while, he'll pop up again. I would like to say that when this happens it didn't bother me, however, that would be a lie. The truth would be that every time I think about him, I miss him more and more. It honestly feels like my heart is getting crushed every single time he comes up. Ze said the pain would stop... I wish I knew when.

Letting out a sigh, I step out of my car and walk towards the club with a smile on my face. The second I walk in, I don't even change my clothes; I just run to Panda's office. Once I walk into the room, he smiles at me and pushes over the clipboard with everyone's name on it. At the moment, I somewhat feel like his assistant, however, I happily do everything he asks, knowing that I'll have to do everything myself someday soon.

Taking the clipboard, I walk over to the window and mark down everyone who's here today. Afterward, I start ordering who I think would be better to go on stage and when, and since I've watched everyone go on several times before, and I know their styles when they take the pole, I order it from the lowest energy to the highest energy, putting up a high energy pair to be our closing performance.

Once I have the list completed, I walk over to Panda's desk and hand him the clipboard. "You know your list are all starting to look the same, right," Panda asks with a raised eyebrow. I nod and bite my cheek.

"I thought it would be a good idea to have everything end with a high engery routine."

"That isn't a bad idea on paper, but you need to think about the dancers and the customers. These dancers that will always be opening, they are going to be getting fewer tips than the closing dancers. If that keeps up long enough, they will start to complain and they will want to leave to go somewhere that could offer them more time on the pole. And with the closing hours, you need to remember the state everyone will be in. The customers will be drunk off their asses. If they constantly get high engery, it could make them hyper. This will risk them doing something stupid that could hurt themselves or people around them, or get them arrested for stupid ass shit.
I get what you're trying to do, but remember that you have to add alcohol and tips into this list. So as weird as it will look going from someone like Brock to Lui, it's better to make that little mix up to keep people happy."

I nod as he talks and take notes of everything that he tells me. Once he's done, I take the clipboard back and start rearranging the names. After a minute, I look over the list and hand it back to Panda, who looks it over and nods in approval. "That's more like it. You're picking up on everything fast, Evan. I'm proud of you," he then says as he pats me on the back.

I smile and thank him and ask him if there was anything else he wanted me to do, but before he could answer, we hear the door to his office open. We look towards the door and see one of our dancers, who we call Bunni, take a few steps in and stop, staring at me with giant eyes.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know you were busy!  I'll come back later!"

He turns away and starts closing the door, but soon stops when Panda says, "No need. Come back. Vanoss is going to be in here all night, so if you need something, you're better off telling me what you need now."

Bunni turns back and looks over to me before he walks over to the desk, his head hanging low. When he is right in front of the desk, he then starts to stretch his arm, nervously. "I... I'm out... And... I'm not going to get in trouble for asking in front of Vanoss, am I?"

Panda sighs and shakes his head. "No; I told you to come and tell me what you needed after all." He then reaches over to the right side of his desk and messes with a lock that I never really noticed he had on his desk before. Then again, I never came back here before, and whenever he needed to pull something out from his desk, he had always pulled it out from the left. It was a small peice of detail that I never noticed before.