Authors: Jennifer Davis
“I said he’s
screwing
Luke’s sister.” He said it like he meant for me to know there was a significant difference. “She’s married to a Senator. Douglas Fisher. He was popped last year in a hotel room with a couple of hookers—” “Oh please,” Hazel cut him off, startling me. I hadn’t realized that she and Chase were behind us. “Like you have to explain it. Everyone knows that being unfaithful is, like, a requirement for politicians, which in turn makes it necessary for their spouses to go out and have smokin’ hot revenge sex,” she said, a growl in her throat.
“Nice,” Chase laughed. “Maybe I should be a politician when I grow up.”
“We could always pretend…”
“Even better.”
Hazel smiled naughtily at Chase, as if silently telling him they’d return to that subject later, and then aimed her attention at me. “I’m sure Candy knew what she was signing up for when she married that asshole,” she added.
“Luke’s sister’s name is Candy?” I gasped.
“Makes it even more scandalous, doesn’t it?” Hazel grinned, winking at me. Kasey turned to her and Chase. “Did you need something?”
“Always,” Chase answered.
“You know, you could always buy your own,” Kasey told Chase.
“Why would I buy it when I can get it from you for free?”
“Give me a minute,” Kasey grumbled, then looked at me. “What else do you want to know?”
“How old is Candy?” She couldn’t have been that much older than
Luke.
“Twenty-eight.”
My mouth bent into a frown. “Luke’s a reconciliation child,” he explained. “His parents got back together and were careless, which is how he came to be. And just like any reconciliation any of our parents have had, it was brief. Their relationship dove straight back to hell during the first trimester. And before you ask, my father’s forty-four.”
“What does he do?”
“You mean besides have smokin’ hot revenge sex with Candy?” Hazel asked, eyebrow cocked.
“Would you stop that shit,” Kasey griped.
“What? Bein’ a dick? Nope. You were one first, I’m just returning the favor,” Hazel said leisurely. I knew her attitude had to do with Kasey inviting Asher and Emmy to come with us. “So let’s talk some more about your daddy sticking it to Candy,” she said.
“My mother—” “Your mother should have left his ass after he screwed around on her the first time,” Hazel directed.
“His dad’s the DA,” Chase said loudly, blocking Hazel and Kasey from arguing. “He made a shitload of money at a private firm before taking that job, which came about after one of his clients caught him wearing a wire. He’d planned to flip on the guy, so the guy shot him—in the chest—three times.” Chase held up three fingers to demonstrate what three bullets to the chest would look like, I guess.
“Oh my god,” I winced, looking at Kasey, who had zero concern in his expression.
“He’s fine. The bastard was wearing a vest.” He almost sounded disappointed.
My face distorted.
“A bulletproof vest?”
“Yeah, but even if he hadn’t been I think it’s impossible to kill something that evil…unless you’re God.”
“I thought there was some sort of privilege between attorneys and their clients.”
“There is. My dad had to take the DA job to keep his law license.”
“How’s that?”
“Politics are a bitch. Although he’s morally corrupt, he’s a damn good attorney. The attorney general had been on him for years to come work for him. He didn’t want to take that job, but when he got busted screwing that client, he didn’t have a choice anymore.”
“Wow.” I was still soaking that one in when Chase interrupted my thoughts. “Can I have it now?” he whined. Kasey pulled his wallet from his back pocket and held it open. Chase dug out a small, rectangular container that looked like something you’d store a thermometer in, and pulled out a joint.
“You smoke?” Kasey asked me.
“Um…no…I’ve never...”
“Seriously?”
Hazel gasped. I didn’t know why she was so surprised, since she thought of me as vanilla.
Truth was, the only time I’d ever seen a joint, before now, was in photos at school.
Chase laughed. “You’re gonna be some kind of fun for us,” he said to me, before placing the joint between his puckered lips and lighting it.
“Shut the fuck up, Chase. You sound serial,” Kasey barked.
“Sor-ry.” Chase looked at me and shrugged. “It’s completely up to you whether or not you want to be corrupted,” he said coolly, and held the joint out for me.
I thought rationally—as rationally as I could in three seconds—I wasn’t driving. I wasn’t going home, and it wasn’t
like I’d be shooting heroin, or snorting coke...
I took the joint from Chase, and Hazel instructed me how to inhale without choking myself to death since I’d never even smoked a cigarette before. I put the joint in my mouth and sucked the smoke into my lungs, holding it in as long as I could before clumsily blowing it out, leaving a mild heaviness in my chest. I was positive I’d looked completely ridiculous, but so had everyone else.
“Whatcha doin’, bitch?” Chase asked Luke, who’d just appeared, before slapping him across the chest with the back of his forearm, causing him to fold in on himself. “Ow,” Luke squealed. I thought it was funny, but didn’t laugh, mostly because no one else did.
“He smelled this.” Kasey held up the joint and Luke snatched it from him.
“I could smell this shit encased in concrete underneath a rotting corpse—no, make that three rotting corpses, fifty miles away,” Luke bragged dryly, making everyone laugh.
“How’s Emmy?” Kasey
asked, a hint of laughter in his tone.
Luke shook his head. “I had to get out of there. She’s throwing a fit. Tosh is trying to calm her down, which is fucking pointless. I don’t know why Asher puts up with her
bull
shit. It can’t be that good,” he groaned.
“I don’t know. He sure is begging her for it all the time,” Hazel mumbled.
“You’re just mad that he’s not begging you for it anymore,” Luke laughed.
“Shut up, dick,” she snapped back.
“You dated Asher?” I asked her, without thinking.
“Thank you, big mouth,” she scolded Luke, but didn’t answer me. Something I didn’t concern myself with because I suddenly felt strange, hazy. I smiled, then I started laughing for no reason at all, which made everyone else laugh, too.
“I feel...tingly,” I said, amused. The word sounded so funny. “Tingly,” I repeated, making everyone laugh again.
“Yep, she’s high,” Luke deadpanned.
“Me too,” Chase grinned stupidly. “Let’s hit the cooler.”
Walking back, it felt as if everything was moving in slow motion—including me. My senses were ultra heightened. Kasey holding my hand felt better than all the times I’d ever held hands with a boy, which honestly, wasn’t that many.
But still. Everything around me looked so beautiful. I felt like it was the first time I’d truly appreciated the colors and scents of summer or the contributions that a single tree made to my world, and I could not make myself stop smiling.
Chase giggled like a little girl while he handed out beers. He’d hold one out and try to pull it back before the person could grab it, but he was moving too slowly to pull off the trick.
Kasey opened my beer and I quickly drank it down. I was so thirsty that the taste didn’t bother me. Then I realized Emmy was crying. She was standing with Asher, his arms wound around her.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked Kasey, unintentionally gleefully, unable to help my tone.
“She’s only happy when everything’s about her. Asher will get her calmed down.”
“Eventually!”
Hazel snapped.
“Shut up!” Emmy yelled. “I want to hear the movie!”
“Rent the fucking DVD! Nobody wants you here!”
“I! Don’t!
Care!” Emmy screamed. Then we realized the people below us had heard her. We all held our breath waiting for them to do something, but they overlooked it and turned their attention back to the film.
“Maybe they’re so bombed they think they imagined it,” Chase laughed. So did
I. The word bombed just sounded so funny. It echoed in my head accompanied by the sounds of whistling explosions I’d heard in movies and television.
“Fuck!” Emmy growled, and glared at Asher. “I
hate
your stupid friends!” She slung her golden hair over her shoulder before stomping away from everyone.
“I want her here,” Asher said to Hazel.
“Bringing her was super shitty of you, but what’s new? You’re great at being super shitty,” she growled.
Asher shook his head at Hazel, a disgusted look on his face. There was more he wanted to say, but decided to chase Emmy instead.
Even in my condition, I understood what was happening, and knew better than to ask about Hazel and Asher’s relationship, so I asked about Emmy instead.
“Why is she like that?” I asked Kasey.
“She just turned sixteen for starters.” My jaw dropped. “She’s also the baby of her family.”
Obviously
, I thought. “She’s used to having everything her way.”
Frederick arrived shortly after Emmy’s tantrum; we helped him load the car before piling
inside. Hazel told him to keep going when he stopped to pick up Asher and Emmy, who were about a mile ahead of us. They sat in the front seat with Frederick and didn’t say anything to anyone when they got out at Asher’s a few minutes later.
“Sayonara bitches,”
Hazel mumbled as they walked away.
“Sorry Kasey, but I can’t deal with them together,” Tosh said. “I miss Asher sometimes, too, but…” she trailed off shaking her head.
“I should have known he’d bring her,” Kasey said. “Sorry,” he said to Hazel. She shrugged it off.
“Asher hasn’t been out with us in a while—Emmy’s why,” Kasey explained to me. Because of the carefree
state I was in, I didn’t respond.
We snuck back into Tosh’s room and Luke flipped on the TV again, making sure Vita was still sleeping. After that, Luke and Tosh went to the closet and Hazel and Chase went to the bathroom, leaving Kasey and me alone.
Kasey sat down on the bed and patted a place in front of him. “Come lay down,” he suggested. I’m not sure what my face was doing, but my expression had to have been off because he laughed and said, “I’m not going to molest you or anything.”
“I didn’t figure you for a molester,” I snickered. “I’m sure you don’t have any problems getting girls into bed.”
Kasey smiled, amused. “Why do you say that?”
“Look at you,” I blurted.
“What does the way I look have to do with anything?”
“Everything,” I sighed. “Girls will put up with a whole lot of shit to be with a hot guy.”
Kasey grinned, a touch of laughter pushing through. “You think I’m hot?” he asked.
“Please! The whole world thinks you’re hot. I bet you’ve always known it, too.”
He shook his head. “I’m not concerned with the whole world tonight. Only you.”
“Well, I’ve got a newsflash for you, William Oliver
Kason Grayson the third. You’re super seriously smokin’ hot,” I whispered, and sat down next to him on the bed.
“Yeah well, I hope you remember how hot you think I am right now in the morning.”
“I’ll remember how hot you are for the rest of my life,” I stated firmly.
Kasey laughed.
“I had so much fun tonight,” I smiled. “Hazel said I would.” I browsed his face as he studied mine; glad I’d taken Hazel up on her invitation. My brain was way too foggy to figure out why Kasey was looking so intently at me, but I liked that he was. I liked the way it made my insides feel twisted and anxious.
“We didn’t scare you?” he finally asked, his voice, soft, serious.
“I probably should be, but scared isn’t what I would call it. Intrigued is more like it.” I’d never met people like them, and the fact that they’d allowed me a peek inside their world excited me—probably more than it should have. Kasey gazed at me, as if trying to decide if I was telling the truth or not. He placed his hand on my cheek and spoke softly. “You know I meant what I said about the demons.” I knew he’d meant it, and Chase had been right. Everyone has them. At that moment, I didn’t want to talk about demons, or problems. I’d accepted Hazel’s invitation to get away from those things.
“I love your eyes,” I murmured.
“You should lie down,” Kasey whispered, and helped me get into bed, which made me realize how sleepy I truly was. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d stayed up until 3 a.m., and felt my eyelids losing their battle to stay open.
“Check your phone in the morning,” Kasey whispered as he covered me with a blanket. That was the last thing I remembered before everything went black.
DAY TWO
When I woke up, I didn’t know where I was at first, but then I saw Hazel lying next to me and realized I was in one of Tosh’s beds. Hazel’s hair was twisted around her neck, her makeup smeared, but she still looked amazing; like a beautiful raccoon. It instantly made me concerned about how I looked, which I knew was nowhere near decent.
I smoothed my hair with my hands, wiped the crusted drool from the side of my face, and ran my fingers around my eyes to remove the sleep as memories from the night before slowly filtered through my head. I shot straight up when I remembered Kasey’s last words to me. I dug my phone out of my pocket and went directly to my contacts list where he’d entered his name,
The hot guy I met last night
.
I covered my face and groaned, remembering how I’d acted with Kasey—the things I’d said to him. I felt like such an idiot.
And holy shit, I’d gotten high, which had to have been why I’d been so bold.
I’ll remember how hot you are for the rest of my life
. I groaned again and slapped myself on the forehead. That
is
why they call it dope! I couldn’t believe I’d actually uttered those words, especially to a guy like Kasey.
My bellyaching woke Hazel, whose only word in response was, “Food.”
Hazel rolled out of bed, moving jerkily like a rag doll, quickly gathering her clothes from the floor and sticking them underneath her arm.
“T, we’re out,” Hazel called, and opened the steel wall revealing Tosh’s bedroom door, and disappeared through it, leaving me
behind. She was only wearing a tank top and panties, gray and white respectively. The straps of her black Mary Jane’s were entangled in the fingers of her left hand.
I’d been waiting for an acknowledgement from Tosh that we were leaving, but decided I wasn’t going to get one and ran after Hazel to keep from being left.
Hazel’s Audi was parked at the bottom of the front steps, which wasn’t where she’d left it the night before. I decided that I didn’t care how it had gotten there; I had bigger, more embarrassing things to worry about.
The sun reflecting off the car’s back windshield nearly
blinded me as I descended the steps. I threw an arm over my face, blocking the light. Hazel was leaned against the rear fender slipping on her shoes. A round, gold pendant tumbled from inside her tank top, swinging forward. She quickly grabbed hold and tucked it back in before I could get a good look at it. “Let’s go,” she said, bringing me back to the present. I sat down in the passenger seat and shoved my overnight bag between my legs.
“I won’t be right until I eat something,” Hazel said, starting the car. “Until then, I might be kind of a bitch if you try to talk to me.” I figured that was a hint to keep my mouth shut until after she’d eaten.
We went through a drive through for food—we had to since Hazel wasn’t wearing pants—at a place that served their whole menu all day. Hazel ordered egg rolls, tacos, and coffee. I ordered a cheeseburger and a gallon size Dr. Pepper. I was very thirsty—an unfortunate side effect of doping.
Hazel pulled into a space and parked the Audi. She
scarfed down her food, making growling noises, and mumbling about how good everything tastes when you think you’re starving, even if you know that normally it tastes like shit. I didn’t try to make a conversation out of anything she was saying, I just let her ramble. When she finished eating, she crumpled up her trash and got out of the car.
“Where are you going?” I asked, slightly panicked. I mean, she was almost naked. Of course, she didn’t answer me, so I turned around and watched her walk between cars in the drive through
line in her tank top, panties, and Mary Jane’s to a trash can. She was honked at, hollered at, and whistled at—all of which she casually ignored.
When Hazel returned to the car, she sat down hard in the driver’s seat, angled the rear view mirror down, and watched herself scrub her pointer finger over her top front teeth. She blindly forced the mirror back into place, then picked up her coffee, finished the contents in four swallows, tossed the empty cup out the window, burped like a man, and let out what sounded like a sigh of relief.
“Now,” Hazel said, turning to look at me. I figured she was going to tell me that I was too boring and embarrassing for her and her friends to hang out with, and that she was going to take me home and never talk to me again. But she didn’t say anything close to that.
“I’m only telling you this because I know you won’t blab it.” She reached across me to open the glove box, taking a cigarette from the pack inside. “So, the thing with me and Asher,” she began nonchalantly.
Shocked, I instantly stopped chewing and sat perfectly still. I didn’t want anything to impede my hearing. I hadn’t expected Hazel to tell me anything about her relationship with Asher, but for some reason, I really wanted to know what had happened between them.
“He was my first,” she continued, before lighting her cigarette and peeling out of the parking lot. “It happened a few
weeks after my sixteenth birthday. It was sort of a weird time—nobody was really around. Tosh’s dad was home, so she was on lockdown. Luke was away with his family and Kasey—” she stopped and shook her head. “Kasey and I weren’t that close yet, and Chase didn’t enter the picture until later. Anyway, Asher and I had been together, like, all week, and that night we’d stolen a bottle of my mother’s vodka and made screwdrivers. They were ultimate screwdrivers, too. You know, with the orange peel in them. You ever had one?” she asked, her eyes cut at me, blowing smoke out the window.
I told her I didn’t think so, instead of just saying no.
“You would have remembered if you had,” she said. “Anyway, once Asher and I were good and blurry we decided we should be each other’s first, so we could practice for the real thing.”
She glanced at me, I guess to make sure I was keeping up. I was following her, but I thought a person was supposed to wait for the real thing before doing it the first time. But then again, I thought I’d had the real thing with Derrick.
“We were friends, and I trusted him, so we did it. The next time we were together, we did it again, and so on. We got really good at it, too,” she growled, smiled, and then went silent.
“So…what happened?” I asked mildly, hoping to nudge her into telling me the rest.
“I fell in love. He didn’t.”
“Oh,” I breathed, unsure of what to say. Especially since
that wasn’t what I expected her to say. She was so angry with him that I thought something more dramatic had happened. Like Asher had cheated on her with Emmy or something.
“I didn’t tell him—and he can never know.” Hazel looked me in the eyes to make sure I understood that. “And I don’t want any of this repeated later,” she added.
“I won’t say anything, but why didn’t you tell him how you felt?”
“I didn’t want to risk killing our friendship, and it totally would have. We weren’t supposed to get all serious about it, so just blurting out,
I love you
,
Asher,
” she said in a sickened tone, “like a pining creeper would have royally fucked up everything.”
“Maybe not—” “It would have. I mean, you know, girls have that intuition thing that keeps us from making idiots of ourselves—when we listen to it, that is. I’m glad I listened to mine. I would have made myself look even more desperate than I felt.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t have ruined anything. Maybe he loved you, too, and was afraid to say so—like you were.”
“He was talking to me about a girl he liked at school. He yakked about her so much that it got too hard for me to deal with, so I ended it. I told him I met somebody else, which was a total lie, but whatever,” she sighed. “We don’t see him much anymore, so it’s not a big deal or anything. He’s been chasing Emmy around for the last eight months and as you learned last night we can only handle that bitch in small doses.”
“So, you really don’t think he knew how you felt?” Boys had to have some sort of intuition, too.
“Doubt it. Boys are oblivious about girls and their feelings in general, and the whole hints and signals thing is completely lost on a sixteen-year-old.”
“You still should have said something,” I mumbled. She was so outspoken. I couldn’t imagine her keeping anything inside.
“That ship has sailed, Hallmark. It wasn’t meant to be. Now go take a shower. I’ll be over in a bit.” I’d been so involved in our conversation that I didn’t realize we were sitting in my driveway.
“You’re coming over?” I automatically asked, still somehow surprised that I wasn’t getting the proverbial boot.
“Yeah, we’re going out tonight,” she said, eyebrows high as if she couldn’t believe I didn’t already know that.
“Okay, see you later.” I started to get out of the car, and then paused. “Hey, thanks for last night.”
“Go shower,” Hazel said, playing with her phone, not looking up.
I got out of the car, smiling. I glanced back at Hazel and she looked a little sad to me, which made me wonder if she still had feelings for Asher. I’d heard before that you always remember your first love, that that experience stays with you and affects the choices you make in future relationships. I wasn’t sure about that, but I definitely hoped it wasn’t true. I didn’t want to think about Derrick for the rest of my life, and I certainly didn’t want him to have any affect whatsoever on my future relationships.
After finishing in the shower, I stared at myself in my vanity mirror trying to form a game plan. The only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to look better than I had the night before in case I got to see Kasey—if he dared come near me again.
Last night, I’d looked plain. Vanilla, if you will. I wished I’d thought to do something more to myself than change clothes before going to Tosh’s, but I’d had no idea there would be boys at her sleepover, so I wasn’t exactly prepared to meet one.
I was finishing my makeup when Hazel breezed into my room. She blew past me without a word and swung my closet doors open. She was only inside for a second before reemerging. She looked me right in the face with what resembled fear in her eyes and said, “It looks like Holly Hobby took a fat shit in there.”
Which left me speechless. “But that’s okay,” she added, holding her hands up, palms out. “Sometimes you need an excuse to go shopping and you have a
really
good one.” What better reason than having Holly Hobby’s make-believe shit all over my closet, I thought. “And since your mom’s in the mood to burn some of your dad’s cash...”
“Are we shopping for something specific?” I didn’t know if she wanted to replace everything in my closet in one trip or what.
“You need a dress—a spicy one.” Hazel flipped the fan switch on the bathroom wall, stood up on my vanity counter, lit a cigarette, and blew the smoke into the fan box.
“We’re hitting a new club tonight,” she said, and then looked as if she’d been struck by lightning. She pointed at me, eyes
wide. “You’re going to need ID.”
She hopped off the counter, flushed the cigarette, positioned me in front of the bathroom door, snapped a picture of me on her phone, and then emailed it to the guy who’d done her ID. She said I wouldn’t get in the club without a good one and that her guy was the best. She showed me hers and I didn’t think it looked
fake at all, but what did I know about fake ID’s?
When we went downstairs, my mom was on the phone. I had no idea who she was talking to, but knew that my father and Nico were always high on her list of conversation topics no matter who was on the listening end.
“Mom,” I whispered.
“Oh, hold on,
Ryen’s here,” she said into the phone then put her hand over the receiver as if what she and I were about to discuss was too delicate for the person on the other end of the line to hear. I rolled my eyes.
When I got a good look at my mother, I noticed that most of her face was red and her lips were swollen.
“What happened to your face?” I gasped.
“I had collagen injections and a mild chemical peel this morning. It looks a little red now, but Dr. Berg says that’s temporary—the results will be worth it.”
I stared at her in awe. She’d actually paid someone to make her look like she’d survived a killer bee attack. And for what?
I really didn’t want to delve deep inside her mind at that moment and knew she didn’t want that either. She’d already told
me she thought I had no right to judge her because I had no idea what she was going through. I didn’t know what being left after twenty years of marriage for an infant that my husband had only known for half an hour felt like. She was right about the husband part, but the man who’d left her was also my father. I did know how I felt about him leaving me—something she obviously didn’t think mattered as much as how she felt about him leaving her.
“What do you need, Ryen?” she asked, holding the phone out, reminding me that I was keeping her from her conversation.
“Can I have some money? Hazel invited me to go shopping.” I almost hated to ask her for money since I’d been quietly rebelling against the new lifestyle she’d forced on me.