It was the first time I’d ever seen him out of control.
“Not in this lifetime, Spencer.” I cleared my throat, trying to pick up the slippery needle from the bathtub with shaking fingers. I snapped the thread. I was done stitching him. “I’m going to clean the wound up now. Hold still.”
“Shut me down next time.” He took the whiskey bottle and gulped the rest of its contents in one go. His lips were puffy and bruised, and I realized we’d been kissing for a few minutes. I wondered if I looked like I’d been kissed, too.
“No. You make sure there won’t be a next time,” I whispered hotly, licking my lips. “Not sure you’ve noticed, but it’s the twenty-first century. Men are responsible for their own actions. Or are you one of the so-why-did-she-wear-this chauvinist brigade?”
“Turning me off with your clothes seems like a lifelong goal of yours, so no trouble in that department.” He scoffed, taking a fractured breath as I dug the needle deep into his skin again in retaliation. I was done mending him.
He captured my wrist in his hand, squeezing lightly to make me look at him. I did.
“I don’t want to like you, Lenora. I want to ruin you.”
“Then do it already!” I broke free from his hold and threw my hands in the air, exasperated. “Why don’t you put me out of my misery and just finish the fucking job if you’re so high and mighty?”
He had plenty of opportunity, power, and the means to get Poppy and me kicked out of school. Yet he never did. He never went the extra mile, always skating on the outskirts of making my life uncomfortable, though not unbearable.
“The former interferes with the latter.” His mouth twisted in revulsion as he turned to look at the wall.
My jaw almost dropped to the floor. Was he saying he liked me?
He turned his head back to me, a slow smile spreading across his lips.
“Oh, shit. Look at you. You bought it.” He shook his head, laughing. “Wrap it up, GG. I have somewhere to be.”
I went downstairs, got a bottle of water, and came back up, handing it to him.
“Next time someone busts you open, do yourself a favor and go straight to the hospital. Now drink this, and then clean up your mess. All of it. Every drop of blood,” I said as coldly as I possibly could. “Friendly reminder: I may be your assistant one day, Vaughn, but I will never be your bloody servant.”
I came to school every day for the rest of that week.
And on the last day of school, I really fucked it up with Len Lenora. (She is not your fucking girlfriend, ass face.) The air was swollen with mischief and ninety-five degrees. Humidity level: two fucking thousand.
That was SoCal for you. Palm-tree-lined hell.
Everyone was wearing bikinis and swim shorts under their miserable excuses for clothes. Guys skidded on the damp floors, shooting water guns and chasing each other in the hallways, making it difficult to believe they were the sperm that won. Someone had sprayed black paint over the mirrors in the girls’ bathrooms, resulting in hysterical teenyboppers who couldn’t get ready for the traditional school’s-out selfie. And someone else had too much free time, because helium balloons sailed idly across the ceiling, nasty rumors written on them in Sharpie.
Alice Hamlin sucked Vaughn Spencer off in front of her boyfriend.
Hunter Fitzpatrick gave the Lemke twins crabs.
Knight Cole is a virgin.
Lenora Astalis is a creeper.
Re. The. Fuck. Wind.
Even though I hadn’t spoken to her since I chivalrously bled all over her bathroom and hoovered her face into my mouth, I wasn’t down with the idea that some asshole who wasn’t me was going to ruin her last day of school. I still remembered how she tasted—like the black roses in Carlisle’s courtyard would. Delicious, sweet, and fresh, like raindrops on petals.
Like raindrops on petals? Get the fuck out, and take the vagina you grew with you.
I plucked my Swiss knife out of my boot and hurled it at the balloon. It burst noisily, the sound making people in the hallway yelp and jump. The rubber fell at my feet. I picked it up and walked the length of the hall, tucking my knife back into the side of my boot and fingering the material.
“Who’s responsible for this piece of fine art?” I wondered conversationally, looking around as people glued their backs to the lockers.
Some students aimed their phones at my face, recording my unexpected outburst, but no one spoke.
I stopped in the middle of the hallway, sneering. “Well, then, if no one speaks up, I guess it’s time to rate each blow job I’ve been given from freshman year till now. Ya know, for old times’ sake. Fair warning: some of you have failed.”
I took a black Sharpie from my back pocket, uncapping it with my teeth. I put the pen to a locker and started writing Stacee’s name over it when a voice behind me shrieked.
“Bruh! It was just a fucking joke. Chillax.”
Soren Kayden.
If the dictionary had pictures—which, for people like Soren, maybe it should—his blond-bearded, stoner-surfer face would be featured under the word douchebag, complete with his dumb, what-day-is-it-today? expression (Thursday, assclown).
He dealt Oxy and Vicodin so he could feed his gambling addiction and was shadier than a three-dollar bill. He’d once tried to fondle my selective-mute friend, Luna, hoping she wouldn’t tell anyone. Spoiler alert: she did. A week later, he had two implants for teeth because Knight had knocked them out, and I decorated the rest of him with shiners and a forehead scar in the shape of a dick.
I spun, shoving him against the opposite wall of lockers and snapping the torn rubber in his face. He flinched, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing at the red spot on his cheek.
“Ouch! What the fuck!”
“The fuck is you’re a piece of rotten shit.” I stepped on his toes, shifting all my weight onto them, so angry I could kill him.
I shouldn’t have come. Cutting a bitch was already on the menu because I was on edge about the move to England. Soren was just an easy excuse. I wasn’t Lenora’s savior. I wasn’t even her fucking friend. I cared about her ass a little less than I cared about Uncle Dean’s ingrown toenail. If anything, she was corrupted by soft living. Getting pushed around a little was just what the doctor ordered.
By me.
Not anyone else.
Only. Ever. Fucking. Me.
“Throw down at three o’clock!” someone hollered, cupping his mouth.
Knight and Hunter showed up behind me. Soren’s surfer friends rushed in, too, but they stood on the sidelines, too pussy to come at me or my crowd.
“It was a joke!” Soren cried, throwing his arms up defensively.
Arabella hurried to his rescue, blazing toward us in her nine-inch heels and planting a hand on his shoulder. The entire school gathered around us in a circle, glaring.
“Oh, come on, Spence. Since when do you get butthurt over harmless fun? All the rumors on the balloons are true, anyway.”
They weren’t.
Alice never sucked me off in front of her ex-boyfriend, Jason.
The Lemke twins gave Hunter crabs, not vice versa (file under shit I really need to throw into the recycling bin of my brain).
And Lenora Astalis was a lot of things. She was not a creeper, though.
Speaking of, Good Girl peeked out in the sea of faces staring back at us. She wore her hair up in a ponytail, her eyeliner extra thick today. Combat boots like mine, and black skinny jeans with a Stone Roses T-shirt. She looked only mildly interested in the scene, yanking her huge earbuds out of her ears and tucking her Discman into the waistband of her jeans.