by Jordan Grant
There will be school meetings and conferences with Headmistress DuMonte. That can’t happen.
It’s already bad enough being the fallen queen. I can’t be the tattletale too. I will handle it myself.
I swallow a sob that bubbles up in my throat.
My mind trips through memories, past the girls in the hall and their snickers, past the boys who point and stare, past the teachers and the classes, all the way back to him and his beautiful face.
When he spotted me in the hall talking to Waylon Bradbury about class and I worried he was about to lose it in front of the whole school.
When his eyes found mine in the cafeteria and I saw it there, that spark like a bomb igniting, right before he shuttered down and looked away, furious at me.
When he told me he’d play the game, but he’d never lose.
I can’t believe he’d do this to my car, to me. I can’t believe he’d ignore my existence and then rip right inside mine and tear it apart. He knew what it meant to me to have a car this year. He knew my parents would take it away in a heartbeat if they smelled an inkling of trouble.
I want answers.
I want payback.
And there’s only one place I’m going to get it on a pre-season Saturday afternoon: football practice.
I swallow another sob and turn away, headed back outside the way I came.
Down the three flights of stairs and across the concrete.
Over the soft lawn of the quad and toward the football stadium.
Past the gothic columns of the library and the students mingling outside, trying to be casual as they pass around a vape pen.
I go to the field first, but it’s empty, not so much as an abandoned football on the green.
I turn on my heel and head straight to the locker room. Tears still sting my eyes, but I blink them away.
I hear chatter from behind the painted metal door.
I don’t think.
I don’t second-guess myself.
I swing the door wide and storm inside.
Skin.
Too much skin.
Eli Peterson, a fellow senior, spots me first, does a double-take, and grabs onto the terry towel tied around his waist with both hands before he shouts, “Girl!”
It’s like an echo, broken only by the shutting of locker doors and the sound of running water being abruptly cut off.
“Girl?” someone asks.
“I said girl!” Eli shouts back, tugging a shirt over his head.
“Chick alert!” somebody else yells as I round the corner, still searching for Ian.
“You know this is the guys’ locker room, don’t you, hon’?” another one calls as I pass through, down the aisle and between the stained wooden benches placed every few feet.
“Harlow?” Archie says as I pass by him, his mouth hanging open in surprise.
The place smells like sweat and fresh-cut grass and the beating drum of my impending fury.
I round the corner, across the painted concrete floor, as guys part for me, hugging their lockers as I ignore their existence.
I spot his inky hair first, ducked inside his locker like he doesn’t have a care in the world and isn’t at all concerned by the commotion unfolding around him. He’s wearing a pair of black basketball shorts and nothing else.
My fists clench tighter, my teeth grit, and I hate how my entire body warms for him, which just makes me even angrier.
I zero in on him, but I feel the rest of the guys watching me, looking at me like I’m a loose cannon and wondering when I’ll explode.
He doesn’t close his locker or try to dress quickly. He just stands there, shirtless, when he looks at me and raises an eyebrow.
I am warm, hot from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes.
He purses his lips and turns to face me. The locker room is silent now, and I know they are all watching, waiting, wondering if my clenched fists will rise to clock him in the jaw.
I continue forward until we are only a few feet apart, ready to ask him who the hell he thinks he is and why he would do that to me, but I don’t get the words out fast enough.
In typical male fashion, he says, “See something you like, sweetness?” before he grabs his crotch and adds, “What? You want this?”
Snickers erupt in the locker room. I wait for them to die down.
The lie slips past my lips. “I can get that,” I make a point to look down at his crotch, “anywhere. I want a fucking apology.”
He blinks at me once, twice, as his gaze narrows on me. His jaw tics.
“Get out,” he tells the rest of the locker room. When they all stand there dumbfounded, he looks at his closest teammate and adds, “Leave.”
There’s grumbling and the clanging of lockers and the sound of the door opening wide and slamming shut, but I don’t watch them leave. I’m staring at Ian, and Ian’s staring at me, and it’s like a contest to see which one of us will break first.
Well, newsflash, it won’t be me, asshole.
When the last person leaves and the locker room clears, he takes two long steps forward until I can see the drops of water falling from his hair down to his shoulder to scatter across his hard abdomen.
He smells faintly of cardamom and the execution of my willpower.
“Weathersby,” he begins, but I interrupt him.
“Don’t even bother,” I snap. “What are you going to say? The name of a good body shop? To not leave my car unattended? To expect you to destroy my things?”
His nostrils flare and I watch as something, surprise maybe, vies with anger.
“I didn’t fuck up your car, Harlow,” he snaps back.
“I don’t believe you,” I say, though my words waver just like I do.
He takes another step forward and turns, so it’s just him in front of me and the lockers at my back. If he means to be intimidating, and he probably is trying to be, he pulls it off. My heart goes for a new record.
He is in my face, and the movement is slow, methodical even, as he flattens his palms at either side of my head, just above my shoulders.
“I was going to give you a free piece of advice,” he says, breathing the scent of warm cinnamon gum across my face.
“What’s that?” I manage.
His words are a low roar, ripped unwillingly from somewhere deep inside him before they land like hail atop me.
“Don’t pick a fight with the big bad wolf and expect him to not take a bite.”
His lips slam into mine, and there’s nothing gentle or loving about it. We are two battleships colliding in the middle of a war. Our teeth knock together. A growl falls from his lips, and I inhale it deeply. He tastes like cinnamon and devastation.
He touches me only where he has to, our lips, and I burn for more. I want the contact even if it incinerates me to ash.
His tongue sweeps out and owns my mouth, and when the darkness crests the horizon of my vision and my lungs burn for breath, he releases me, drawing blood with one final hard nip of my bottom lip that sends a zap of pain straight through me.
His mouth is stained with my blood, and I know mine is too. I taste metal on my tongue.
He reaches around me, snatches a shirt from his locker, and slams it shut in one quick motion. Then he leaves me there without so much as a glance over his shoulder.
I wonder as I stand there, licking away the blood from my lips—if that’s a single bite from the big bad wolf, what happens when he swallows me whole?
9
Ian
This place smells like sweat and the promise of sex. I’m in a club on the east side that’s filled to the brim with New York City’s biggest influencers and the children of professional socialites. Everything in here is black like goth decor is a thing now. The floors are black-painted concrete. The walls are covered in thick black curtains, and the ceiling is more of the abyss. Without the ensconced lighting on the walls and the overhead stage lights that shine a clean blue, I wouldn’t be able to see shit. Half an ho
ur ago, I reached for my Coke as the colors changed, faded from white to nothing and came back to green, and I missed. My fingers are still sticky.
I am in hell, fake, bloated hell with a cover charge that could buy fifty damn flashlights. Put them in emergency boxes and break the glass when you can’t see your own two feet.
I’m here for Chase though, and I will stay for Chase. His label put this shit together, and it’s definitely gotten him some much needed press in anticipation of his record release in four weeks. LED phone screens look like homing beacons in this bitch.
Everett sits beside me on a leather sofa, and Archie is lost, nowhere to be found, certainly chasing his next conquest. Chase is on stage on the opposite side of the club, playing a cover of “Fell on Black Days” by Soundgarden. He’s killing it, paying homage to Chris Cornell but definitely not trying to sound like a parrot of him either, but I am distracted from his performance.
The girl in my lap is talking to the girl on the other side of me about how awesome Chad is and how he’ll def make it big.
“Chase,” I correct her, and she says it wrong again. She’s halfway to drunk, and her bleach-blonde friend is there for the ride too. Between the both of them, they’ve got enough lip filler to keep the moms in Manhattan sated for a week or two. The one in my lap, with hair like black silk, seemed like a warm distraction at the time she asked for a seat. Of course, I thought she meant beside me, not on me, but whatever. Getting her off me now would result in a boss battle with a drunk girl who lost her brain functioning power three shots ago.
Halfway through the song, when she realizes I haven’t been paying attention to her again, she’ll try to feel me up through my Tom Ford jeans. I’ll stop her because I’m really not in the mood, and she’ll go back to looking at me all duck-faced like if she stares long enough, I’ll give her what she wants and bend her over the couch and fuck her hard.
I reach around the blonde to my right for my drink, remember it’s not there, and settle back against the leather with a sigh. There’s a girl on the other side of Everett too, a brunette who’s been looking at him doe-eyed all night, but he hasn’t said more than a dozen words to her. At least she’s not sitting on him, blocking his view of the stage every time she gets excited talking to her friend, which happens a lot.
Fuck, I’m sick of this shit.
“Off,” I tell the girl, but she’s too busy chattering with her friend to hear me. I roll my eyes. It’s going to be one long goddamn night.
“Off,” I say again, and I know she hears me this time because she sort of twitches but still doesn’t move.
All right, that’s enough.
I push her off my lap and move to stand. Her reflexes must still be somewhat functioning because her leather-skirt-clad ass doesn’t hit the floor like a rock. She stumbles like a baby giraffe and rights herself.
“Oh, are we going somewhere?” she says with a bit of a wobble, both in her voice and the step she takes toward me.
“No,” I tell her. Then when I catch her frowning at me like she’s debating hunting my ass down like she’s a panther or some shit, I add, “I need air.”
“I need air too,” she says excitedly because her pride refuses to let her take the hint.
“Funny. I thought you were a fish as much as you’ve been drinking tonight.”
I walk past her and head into the crowd. Where’s the walk-up to the roof in this place? I want to breathe in the night air and get away from all of these fucks. I squeeze past bodies swaying to the music and breathe in the stench of pot from some asshole that’s pretending like he’s Mysterio.
I walk past the bar and the two busy bartenders behind the counter, trying their best to keep up with the orders, and find the stairwell in the back. I swing the metal door open below the neon red exit sign. I can go straight and outside and walk the city until my feet ache in my trainers, or I can go up.
I climb the stairs, and I feel gross just being in the stairwell. My shoes make a sucking sound every time I lift up my heels, and the place smells like stale piss. I hear the clack of heels following me, but I ignore it. It’s almost certainly Ms. Can’t Take a Hint, but if I turn around and tell her to scram, I’ll inhale even more stale piss, and I want outside, where I can finally breathe.
I arrive at the second story, then the third, then the fourth, and finally, I push open the door to the roof. It swings wide and a shower of light from the city washes over me. I take in a deep breath, and the girl must be having trouble because like two minutes later, she stumbles out onto the roof, smoothing her skirt and running a hand over her hair.
“Hey, you,” she says, like it’s a surprise to her that we just ran into each other.
I don’t reply. There are other couples up here, some mingling, others making out. I just want to be alone.
She walks up to me and does the pouty thing again. For a moment, I consider it. I could let her suck me off, maybe I’d even find some peace out of it. God knows, if I told her to get on her knees, she’d nearly break a leg trying to get down there fast enough.
She arrives in front of me and slides her manicured hands across my chest and around to my shoulders. I don’t stop her. She leans in and runs her tongue over my throat, and I don’t stop her. She sucks the skin on the side of my neck like she’s a vampire. And I still don’t stop her.
I stand there as moveable as a granite statue as she continues her assault, running a hand down lower across my belly button and toward my belt buckle. I almost wish I could fuck her, but I’m really not into it.
I push her away by her shoulders.
“Not tonight,” I say. Not ever.
“You are such a tease, weirdo!” she hisses, her claws coming out. I’ve hurt her pride. “What is wrong with you? You don’t have a dick or something?”
I raise an eyebrow as she flips me off.
“Asshole!” she yells as she walks away, stumbling back down to the hell from which she came.
Yeah, like it’s the first time I’ve ever been called that. People are staring, but I don’t give a fuck. I’d stay, but even on this roof, I feel like I can’t breathe, like I need air. I give her a couple of minutes and head back downstairs through the pissy stairwell.
I don’t have a plan, not really, until I am seated at the bar on a black barstool, a finger raised for the bartender.
This is a bad idea, but what’s one drink going to hurt? It’s not like I’m going to ask for a side of Oxy with my bourbon, right? Well, whatever, it’s highly doubtful anyway.
Fuck it. I deserve one goddamn night without her haunting me.
Harlow’s never coming back. It’s been weeks, and I have no desire to fuck her away, so I’ll do the only other thing I can; I’ll drink until she disappears instead, until she’s nothing but a bad, fuzzy memory I can’t quite recall.
I slide my fake ID across the counter when the bartender arrives, since I’ve seen him card two others since I sat down. He glances at it, then me, and asks, “What can I get you?”
“Bourbon,” I say, raising a finger off the counter to point up at the wall of bottles behind him. “Top shelf.”
If I’m going to do it, I’m going to mother-fucking do it right. The guy reaches and plucks a glass bottle off the shelf and starts to pour one measly drink. Like one drink is going to help me with my nightmares.
“Leave the bottle,” I tell him when he slides the glass across the bar top over to me.
He runs my card and leaves to cater to a group of girls who just arrived, each outdoing the other in the ‘how complicated can we make a damn drink’ game.
I roll the glass between my fingers, careful to not spill, and stare down at the honey-colored liquid sloshing up the sides. I bring it to my lips and swallow the entire pour whole. It burns on the way down, and I grit my teeth together as fire flares inside my belly and Chase croons behind me.
One drink down. How many to go?
I pour another out of the bottle the barkeep left and swallow it in
two gulps. I should savor it. I certainly paid enough for it, but all I care about is drowning her memory beneath golden liquid.
The barkeep raises an eyebrow as I help myself to another glass. I ignore the fucker.
I mean, come on. It’s not like I am setting a record here. I haven’t gone all fraternity initiation on my little slice of the counter. It’s mildly questionable behavior, if anything, and I’m sure the douche has seen worse.
I raise the glass to my lips and swallow. California sober, here I am.
I try to enjoy the next one, but I’ve been clean far too long, and fuck, the world is a little blurry at the edges. I don’t even hear the girl screeching beside me at the bartender for another drink, though I know she’s there because every so often, her hand waves in front of my face because when she gets drunk, she apparently attempts to signal air traffic control. My limbs are heavy, and in the shittiest cosmic joke, my head is starting to ache like it’s preparing for how I am going to feel in the morning.
I pour another, and I miss a little, some of it sloshing over the sides onto the polished black countertop.
“Ooooooppppssss,” I say, or I intend to say it, but it’s so loud, I don’t even hear it.
The glass bottom of the bottle hits the countertop with a clank.
A spot of white-blonde passes at my periphery, and I freeze, the drink inches away from my lips. It can’t be her, but I turn slowly and stare anyway. She’s got her back turned to me, and she’s wearing this ridiculously short piece of glitter that will definitely show her ass if she takes one step too long. My gaze scrolls lazily.
Up over the white stilettos that glow florescent blue beneath the club lights.
Across two long, toned legs.
Over an ass I want to sink my teeth into.
To follow the delicate curve of her spine up to the white of her hair.
She’s cut it and straightened it, but I still like it.
Fuck this…and fuck me for wanting a double-dip of heartbreak, apparently.
