by Naomi West
And her attention was locked square onto me, her bright blue eyes lit up as if she’d just seen her oldest friend.
“Hazel!” she said again before letting out a scream of excitement, running over to me, and throwing her arms around my body.
“Bonnie!” I said right back, trying to match her excitement.
“Oh my God,” she said, stepping back and taking in the sight of me, baggy, cheap clothes and all. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you!”
“Yep,” I said. “Not since we graduated.”
This was the exact sort of attention that I didn’t want. I’d almost have preferred if Bonnie would’ve regarded me with a dismissive look from one of the expensive antique couches in the house before turning her attention back to her phone.
“And now you’re in my house! I can’t believe it!”
I glanced back over my shoulder and saw that the attention of the crew was on us. Bonnie didn’t seem to care in the slightest that she’d just stepped right into a work crew meeting. She wanted to talk to me, so that was what she did.
Her eyes flickered around the crew for just long enough to figure out what was going on.
“And … you’re here to clean!”
“She’s here to clean,” said Mom. “So if you wouldn’t mind letting us get started …”
Bonnie didn’t pay much heed to Mom, instead turning her full attention back to me.
“Oh my God,” she said. “We have to catch up.”
“She needs to get to work,” said Mom.
A brief expression of frustration flashed on Bonnie’s face. I could tell that she wasn’t used to not getting her way, or having anyone talk to her like Mom was.
“Oh!” said Bonnie, her eyes going wide again. “How about this—my room’s a total mess. Why don’t you come up and start there?”
“It’s not really up to me,” I said.
Bonnie looked over my shoulder at Mom, having sized her up as the boss.
“Is it okay?” she asked. “I’ll make sure she stays, you know, on task.”
I could tell Mom was skeptical about the whole thing. Truth be told, I wouldn’t have minded one bit if she were to say no—I could only imagine what Bonnie wanted to talk my ear off about.
“Fine,” said Mom. “But I’m going to be checking in on you. I see that you’ve been hanging out instead of talking and I’m going to pull you right out and onto toilet duties.”
“Gross!” shot out Bonnie.
I glanced down at her soft, perfectly manicured hands and wondered if she’d ever done a minute of physical work in her life, let alone scrubbing toilets.
“But yeah!” said Bonnie, getting back on subject. “I’ll make sure she works. Don’t you worry about that, Miss, um.”
“Wiley,” said Mom. “Miss Wiley.”
Bonnie’s eyes narrowed briefly as she put two and two together.
“Oh my God!” she said, realizing what was going on. “You’re her mom! And you work together cleaning houses! How … cute!”
“Yeah, cute,” said Mom. “Speaking of cleaning …”
“Oh yeah!” said Bonnie, taking my hand into hers and yanking me up the stairs. “Let’s go!”
I was gone before I even had a chance to say another word to Mom. Bonnie led me up the gorgeous staircase and then down a long hall lined with expensive-looking modern art and strange sculptures. Soon we arrived at a set of double doors which she quickly pulled open.
I gasped as I laid eyes on her room.
It was huge—that was the first thing I noticed. It was a massive space with a huge bed against the side wall that looked like something suitable for a princess. French windows looked out over the huge sweep of the backyard and the garden beyond. Posters for romantic comedies and snapshots of Bonnie and her friends posing in faraway, exotic locations were tacked on the walls. Cheery pop music played from a top-of-the-line sound system.
“Nice room,” I said, looking around.
That was putting it mildly. But despite how nice it was, the space was a mess. Expensive designer clothes lay in heaps and a giant pile of clean clothes was dumped on her unmade bed. There were empty cans of diet soda littered all around the place, and it looked like it hadn’t been dusted in months.
“It’s okay,” said Bonnie, shutting the door and plopping onto the bed.
“Well … where do you want me to start?” I asked.
I hated this. Not only was I in Bonnie Vivant’s home; I was cleaning her room, taking orders from her as though I was her own personal lackey. And now I had to pretend that we were old chums or something.
It was totally humiliating. But at the same time, I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t excited to be in the bedroom of one of the, if not the most popular girls from high school.
“Wherever,” she said. “I don’t really care—most of these clothes are going into storage anyway.”
I picked up one of the shirts near my feet and held it up. Right away I noticed the brand and realized that this shirt was easily worth near what Mom paid for monthly rent on our tiny home.
“Um, even this?”
Bonnie gave it the quickest of glances.
“Yeah, sure,” she said. “I only wore that one once anyway.”
“It’s so pretty,” I said, my eyes still locked onto it.
“You want it?” asked Bonnie. “It’s last season.”
Part of me wanted to strip off my stupid oversized T-shirt and put on the gorgeous top. But I came to my senses and decided that wouldn’t be the best look. Instead, I tossed it onto the hamper with the rest of the dirty clothes.
“But I didn’t bring you here to clean,” said Bonnie, her eyes lighting up. “I want to know about what you’ve been up to!”
“Not much to say,” I told her. “Just going to school at the city college, still living at home with my mom.”
“Oh,” she said. “And you have to work during the summer? Bummer.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Mom says she doesn’t want me graduating with tons of student debt. What about you?”
“I don’t know,” she said, looking away at her phone. “My dad takes care of all that stuff.”
I should’ve figured.
“Do you stay in touch with anyone from high school?” I asked.
“Oh my God,” she said. “Totally. I’m going to Langford, and pretty much everyone I was friends with is going there too. It’s so great.”
“Sounds nice,” I said as I continued to pick up dirty clothes and socks and underwear.
Langford was the private college in downtown Angel City. It was elite and expensive and almost guaranteed its graduates a high-paying job as soon as they had their diploma in their hands. In short, the type of place a girl like me could never end up.
“All my friends except for you, that is,” she said, as if the notion was strange to her.
It wasn’t—she and I were never friends in high school. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was purposefully fudging the truth or if she really thought that I had been one of the faces in her little coterie of popular rich girls.
Either way, I didn’t want to correct her.
She went on, delivering a flurry of names of the girls with her at Langford, filling me in on all the gossip that I was missing out on. None of it seemed to involve studies, of course—it was all about who was dating who and who was cheating on who, and who had just landed an internship at some glamorous job in New York or LA or San Francisco or even here in Angel City.
And as she talked, I did my best to hurry and get her pigsty of a room cleaned up. It seemed like the layer of clothes on the floor was never-ending. As soon as I picked one armful up, there was another right underneath. I tried not to think about how each individual piece of forgotten clothing cost while I was still wearing the same jeans I’d owned in high school.
“And what about you, babe?” she asked, setting down her phone. “You have to be dating some insanely hot upperclassman at college, right?”
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I couldn’t help but laugh.
“What’s so funny?” asked Bonnie.
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m so busy with class and work that the idea of having time to date is just crazy to me.”
“Are you serious?” asked Bonnie, sitting up. “You’re at freaking college and you’re not getting all the D you can?”
“Nope,” I said. “No D for me.”
I smiled at the rhyme. But as the smile faded, I hoped that Bonnie wasn’t going to press the issue further. The last thing I wanted to tell her was that I was still a virgin. A freaking twenty-one-year-old virgin.
“That’s so lame!” said Bonnie, grabbing her phone and rolling off her bed. “Let me show you the guy I’m hooking up with now.”
She came over to me and once at my side, began flipping through the pictures in her phone.
“This is him,” she said, shoving the phone in front of my face. “Isn’t he so fucking hot?”
I glanced down at the phone. On the screen was Bonnie, her lips planted on the cheek of some hard-jawed, rough-looking guy with a shaved head and an intricate pattern of tattoos crawling up his neck. His mouth was twisted into a cocky sneer, and his black, sleeveless shirt showed off his thick, ropy muscles. From the look of the neon lights and pool tables in the background, the picture looked to have been taken in some dive bar.
I wasn’t going to lie—the guy was pretty hot in a rugged, wrong-side-of-the-tracks kind of way. But he was the exact opposite of the kind of guy that I imagined Bonnie’s parents wanted her to be seeing.
“I’m sure your parents are happy about him.”
Bonnie’s dad was some insanely wealthy executive with a steel company, and her mom was a well-known psychiatrist working at one of the bigger hospitals downtown. They were upper-crust types through and through, and I could only imagine the heart attack that her parents would have at the idea of their daughter getting banged by some lowlife. An extremely attractive lowlife, but a lowlife nonetheless.
“Oh whatever,” she said, turning off her phone and waving her hand through the air. “They’re both working so much that I could bring home one of my mom’s lunatic patients and they probably wouldn’t even notice.”
I chuckled at the idea.
“So where are you finding these guys?” I asked. “I can’t imagine you’re bumping into them in your anthropology classes at Langford.”
Bonnie let out a bright laugh.
“No way,” she said. “All the guys there are total dorks who act like they’re scared of girls or something. You want a real man, you go out to towns like Sherman and Oak Bluff.”
I raised my eyebrows at those names. The part of town where I had grown up wasn’t exactly high-class, but those towns were dangerous to say the least.
“Are you serious?” I asked. “You go to Oak Bluff to find guys?”
“That’s what I just said, isn’t it?” she asked. “And yeah, you want a guy who actually knows how to treat a girl, that’s what you gotta do.”
A scheming expression formed on her face.
“You know what?” she asked. “I bet that’s just the thing your dateless ass needs.”
I was totally taken aback.
“Are you serious?” I asked. “You want me to come out there with you?”
“Yeah!” she said, as though she’d just suggested I go grab some Starbucks with her. “It’s Friday, isn’t it? I was going to go out with Jake—that’s the guy’s name—and go get some drinks in Sherman. You should totally come.”
“I don’t know,” I said, not sure of the idea. “Seems dangerous.”
“Oh, come on,” she said. “Don’t be such a baby. Jake and his friends are kind of scary-looking, but they look out for their girls. You won’t get into any trouble with them around.”
“I’m one of their girls now?” I asked.
“You play your cards right and maybe you will be,” said Bonnie with a mischievous glimmer in her eye.
Then she glanced down at some of the clothes I was in the process of picking up.
“And if you come, I’ll let you wear whatever you want,” she said.
That did sweeten the deal.
“Only catch is you have to let me pick everything out for you.”
“Wait, are you serious?” I asked.
“Sure!” she said. “Trust me, you want to get the attention of these guys, you don’t want to show up in …”
She glanced up and down my outfit.
“… Whatever that is that you’re wearing.”
“I wouldn’t be going in my work clothes,” I said.
“Whatever,” she said back. “But I’ll get you looking hot.”
I shifted my weight from one foot to the other.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Just sounds like a bad idea.”
“You know what’s a really bad idea?” asked Bonnie. “Going the rest of your college years without dating anyone. How many years do you even have left?”
“Senior year starts after this summer,” I said.
Her eyes went wide.
“Then there’s no way I’m going to stand around and let you waste the last freaking summer before your last year at school. You’re coming out with me tonight, and that’s the last I’m going to hear about it.”
I was torn. Part of me knew how bad of an idea this was. Another part, however, knew Bonnie was right. My love life wasn’t even a disaster—I’d have to actually have one to begin with for it to be considered that. And on top of that, a friend like Bonnie wouldn’t be the worst to have. My social life wasn’t any better than my dating life, and being friends with someone like her, someone whose life had been on an upward ascent from the day she was born, could only help.
Not to mention the fact that I just wanted some damn friends.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
Bonnie clasped her hands together and let out a squeal.
“Perfect!” she said. “What time are you done with all of this?”
She gestured to the mess still around us.
“Hard to say, but it’ll be around six.”
“Then after six, you get that sexy booty of yours over here. I’ll get you looking hot.”
A knocking sounded at the bedroom door.
“Hazel!” called Mom. “You about done in there? I could use some help in the kitchen!”
Before I had a chance to speak, Bonnie piped in.
“Almost!” she said. “I’ll send her down when she’s done.”
“Okay,” came Mom’s voice, her tone skeptical.
“Come on,” said Bonnie. “I’ll help you clean this crap up. And let me tell you about the night you’re going to have tonight …”
3
Hazel
Truth be told, when I finally got back to the house after spending the entire day wearing rubber gloves and mopping, the last thing I wanted to do was go out. Getting into my pajamas, cozying up on the couch, and watching TV with Mom actually sounded pretty darn good.
But a text from Bonnie at six on the dot made it clear I wasn’t getting out of my plans that easily. And who knew—what if she was right that I needed to go out and be social? What if I did actually meet a guy? Seemed like a long shot, but who could say?
“I was thinking pizza for dinner tonight,” said Mom. “Sound good to you?”
“I, um, was actually planning on going out tonight,” I said.
“That right?” asked Mom as she undid her ponytail and let her long, gorgeous hair fall like water down onto her shoulders.
“Yeah,” I said. “With Bonnie.”
“The girl from the house today?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “She wanted to take me out for the night.”
“That’s … good,” said Mom. “I’ve been wondering why you’ve been spending so many nights since you got back watching movies and studying. What’ve you guys got planned?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But she said she was thinking of t
aking me to a party in Sherman.”
Shit. I didn’t mean for the name of the town to slip out.
The look on Mom’s face made it clear that she knew exactly what to expect from a party in a town like Sherman.
“Are you serious?” she asked. “You want to go to Sherman?”
“Yeah,” I said. “What’s wrong with that?”
I knew exactly what was wrong with that. But I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I’d screwed up by even mentioning it, and I internally kicked myself for not having a ready excuse about going shopping or something.
Mom put her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side.
“You really think it’s a good idea to go out on a Friday night to a place like Sherman?” she asked. “Do you have any idea what kind of men are going to be out tonight?”
That was kind of the idea. But she didn’t need to know that.
“We’re not going out looking for guys,” I said. “Bonnie just wants to take me out for a couple of drinks at this bar she likes. And what was I supposed to say? ‘Hey, I know I barely have a social life, but I can’t really go out with a girl being nice enough to invite me out to get to know me better. Sorry!’”
“You could go downtown,” said Mom. “Or stay at her house. Or do anything that doesn’t involve you going out where there are men like—”
“Like Dad?” I asked, beating her to it.
Her shoulders sank, and I could tell that I’d pinned her down on a slip of the tongue of her own. But she quickly regained her confidence and narrowed her eyes at me.
“Yes,” she said. “Like your father. You know how much it scares me to think that you might end up pregnant with the baby of some man who breaks the law for a living? A man in and out of jail so often that he misses out on just about every important part of his own child’s life?”
“Okay,” I said. “Hold up. I’m just going to hang out with a friend tonight. I’m not looking for a baby daddy or something.”
Mom shook her head.
“That’s how it works with these kinds of guys,” she said. “They just sort of swoop in out of nowhere and all you’re thinking about are their tattoos and their motorcycles. Before you know it, they’ve charmed the pants off you. Literally.”
