Fling Club (Serendipity Book 1)

by Tara Brown

In the dark we stood, alone and uncomfortable. I parted my lips to tell her I needed to go, but she opened a laptop that was on the bed.

  “Exhibit A.” She clicked a link and brought up a picture of me from the MIT robot wars. “Ashley Jardine, the son of two scholars who work at Brown.” She glanced back at me. “The jig is up.”

  My stomach tightened.

  “You aren’t some rich European. Your parents are poor teachers. The way I see it, either you’re Andy’s idea of a funny joke, or you’re weaseling your way into the Kennedy family. Which means, if that’s the case, I need to go see the Kennedys and tell them there’s an imposter in their midst.”

  “What makes you think they don’t know who I am?”

  “There is no way Mrs. Kennedy knows who you are and lets you roam the grounds of her estate.” She pulled out a lipstick. “But if she does, there’s also exhibit B.” The case glinted in the dim lights coming in the window. She pulled the cap off and plugged it into the computer; it was a USB drive. “Right now, this is private; no one can see it. It’s just a stored file of mine.”

  She clicked a link, and a video started to play.

  It was like amateur porn, except in the dim lighting I could see the red hair and pained expression of a much younger Cherry. I closed my eyes, desperate to get that image out of my mind.

  When the noises stopped I opened my eyes, seeing the frozen image of Cherry and some drunk kid.

  “Not a very flattering video of her, I’m afraid.” She smiled like she was brilliant, even if she was missing a huge part of the plan. Thank God. ’Cause what she had on Cherry was enough to destroy her. Cherry would be crushed if anyone saw this.

  “You’re a sick bitch,” I replied quietly.

  “You have no idea. And if you don’t leave, tomorrow, and never come back, I will publish this on YouTube and every porn site in the world. And then I will go visit the Kennedys and make sure they know exactly who you are. And maybe I’ll even speak to my father’s friend, the dean at Brown, and ensure your parents never find work at a reputable university again.”

  “Why are you doing this to her?”

  “I know she likes you. She’s trying to hide it, but I’ve had a lot of experience with Cherry. She’s not great at keeping things from me. And I would like nothing more than for you to break that little heart of hers. You see, one of the employees at the Weinbergs’ mentioned you two were hot for each other. Quite hot. So, you leave town tomorrow. Go and tell her goodbye. And then if I ever catch you two together again, even just saying hello, I will publish this video. Don’t force me to do it.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Oh, believe me, that’s what she thinks is happening in here. And you will let her think that. You will not tell her we didn’t fuck. You will not break things off with her with some romantic speech. You’ll just go and act like you don’t want to be with her and leave.” She had a knack, I had to give her that.

  “Make your way through the back gate and go home and pack, lover.” She lifted a hand to my hair and stroked it. I jerked away, but she just cackled, evil and sick and twisted-like.

  The sound of it would haunt my dreams forever as I turned and left, crunching along the path to the backyard and leaving through the gate.

  I had one job in all of this. Protect Cherry and my parents.

  I would leave. I would let Cait think she was winning. And then when Andy took Cait down, I would come back and help ruin her for good.

  Until then I needed to make Cherry think I wasn’t interested in her anymore.

  But how could I do that?

  How could I break things off with her?

  How could I do to her what all these people did—betray her and make her think she was the one in the wrong?

  How could I stay?

  That video alone would humiliate Cherry and crush her image. Her parents would be devastated. She was already so fragile. Not to mention my parents’ jobs and reputations.

  No, I had one choice.

  I walked faster, conflicted and desperately upset.

  When I got to the Weinbergs’ I wanted to find the employee who spoke to Cait and beat the piss out of her, but she wasn’t there. It was night. And I didn’t hit girls.

  I paced like a tiger, spending my time the way I had when I first arrived. I told myself all the things I needed to hear.

  Reasons why it was better to cut Cherry off now.

  She was too rich.

  She was too pretty.

  She was going to have to marry someone better than me.

  I was never going to match her mother’s expectations.

  Her parents would hate me when they met the real me.

  This was never going to be more than a summer fling, if I was really honest with myself.

  And my parents needed me and their futures intact.

  By the time I was done, I’d convinced myself the water was tea and the sky was purple.

  I knew there was just one thing left to do.

  I just didn’t think I could do it.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  HE’S OUT

  Cherry

  The knock at my door came the same moment my cell phone rang. The call was my brother. I answered as I got off the bed. “Hello?” I wondered why Andy was calling me so early.

  “You alone?”

  “No, I’ll call you back. Someone’s at the door.” I hung up the phone and opened the door, flinching when I saw Ashley standing there. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” He furrowed his brow. He looked different. Or maybe I saw him differently, and it wasn’t altogether Cait’s fault this time. I’d tainted this one myself.

  “I just came to say I’m out. I can’t do this. I didn’t sleep last night.” He sounded weird, cold and angry. I didn’t blame him.

  “Come in.” I grabbed his hand to pull him in, but he pulled back. “I didn’t sleep either. I was racking my brain, imagining what Cait made you do. You didn’t answer my texts or calls, and I wasn’t sure what happened.” That was a lie. I was sure, and I was sickened by it. But how did I blame him when I made him do this? I fell for him and let him fall for me and still rented him out.

  “No, I’m leaving now. Right now. I just wanted to say bye.” His voice cracked ever so slightly.

  “Bye?” My heart crumbled, not even close to ever-so-slightly. “Like ‘see you in the city’ bye?”

  “No.” He swallowed hard, his eyes not meeting mine. “I can’t do this. Any of it. I have to go.” He stepped back. “I have to go.” He repeated it, but quieter. He turned and left, walking down the stairs quickly, pretty much running to get away from me as fast as he could.

  I slumped in the doorway, gripping the frame and trying to rationalize what was happening.

  He was leaving.

  He was leaving me.

  Why?

  The answers came flooding in.

  I hadn’t even thought about what it was like being him here. What it was like for someone outside of this world to step in and see the horrors under the rugs.

  I tried to tell myself it wasn’t me, it was this world. He’d gotten creeped out. He was disgusted and disenchanted and needed out.

  But no matter how much I tried to tell myself it wasn’t me, I knew it was.

  I’d done this.

  I’d driven him off.

  I’d loaned him out.

  I went back to bed, unsure of what to do or where I went from here. He was the piece of the puzzle that fit, the one part of my life I liked.

  Sleep evaded me. I lay there, awake and upset.

  Cait had won again. Only this time I’d helped her win. I’d helped her crush my heart myself.

  The rest of the morning was filled with lonely hours of contemplation and despair and regret. I knew I should have done what Ella said. I should have left. I should have taken the second chance that Ashley had become for me and ran with it.

  I should have escaped this batshit-crazy world and walked away, blissfully happy an
d unaware of what scandalous things Cait was up to next.

  I couldn’t hate myself for staying completely.

  Even if I’d wrapped myself up in the scandal and drowned in it.

  And I’d drowned Ashley too.

  And he left, choosing sanity over this.

  He’d played a good game; he’d acted like he didn’t care that I was making him do this.

  Up until that moment when he was pushed too far and had to take Cait to the dark corners of the party.

  I hadn’t wanted him to have to do it; maybe that was why I didn’t go after him today.

  I let him leave; I let him walk, because it was easier than facing the truth of what I’d done to him, what he’d done to himself, and what we were doing to each other.

  This game was ruining everyone.

  “Ashley’s gone.” Andy poked his head in my door. “Did you know?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded slowly, not sure if my brother was really there or not. Or if I was hallucinating.

  “This whole thing was a mistake. Us trying to trick other people into doing what we wanted. We were always playing with fire.” He strolled in, sitting on my sofa by the window with the blinds closed, even though it was midday. “I’m so sorry, Cherry. Ashley—” He sighed. “You were right. This was stupid. We sank to Cait’s level and toyed with people.”

  “Hate made us blind.” I offered us a pathetic excuse.

  “We made ourselves blind.” He wasn’t going to excuse us anytime soon. I didn’t blame him.

  “So now what?”

  “I was thinking, Cherry—” He pressed his lips together for a second, leaning forward. “What if you girls went to her place tonight and found and destroyed the evidence, and we ended it here? No more games or rules or blackmail—or even Cait. We just walk? Heads held high and self-respect intact, and then forget this ever happened?”

  “You don’t need any more revenge?”

  “I’m way too old for this. It’s not fun like I always imagined it would be. I had plans for getting her back, smearing egg all over her face, but those are lingering fantasies from when I was seventeen. And the reality is that it’s been nothing but stress and bullshit, and I can feel it consuming me. And it’s real now, ya know? We’re not kids. It’s real feelings and real people and real everything. I don’t want to play anymore.”

  “Me either,” I confessed.

  “You and Ella go over, find the USB or hard drive we know she has, destroy it, and we end it here.” He stood up and walked to the door. “Oh, and Ashley took the money before he left. He thought you should know.” He didn’t look back at me as he left the room.

  I sat on my bed, clutching my stuffed bear, as my throat and eyes burned, but nothing would come out.

  Numbness clung to me. My heart ached in a way I didn’t know it could.

  I resigned myself to the pain I was in. I lay back in the bed and closed my eyes, praying for sleep or tears or some equally satisfying release.

  Instead I got my sister loudly walking into my room with a knock. “Andy says we should go to Cait’s house now; he just checked down there. Her family’s still having that clambake on the beach, the catered dinner. No one will be in the house for a while.”

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “So you want her to have all those recordings of everyone having sex?” She paused. “You want her to release those videos to embarrass you?”

  “No.” I groaned and got up, staggering after her.

  “What’s your problem?”

  “Nothing.” I pushed her away emotionally and followed her from the room.

  “Are you going to get dressed first?” She stopped at the top of the stairs. “Or just going over in your jammies?”

  I glanced down, realizing I was still in pajamas.

  “I’ll wait in the car. Be fast.” She sighed and left me there.

  I didn’t hurry. I also didn’t try to look cute. I dragged on shorts, a T-shirt, sandals, and sunglasses and pulled my long red hair up into a ponytail.

  I didn’t give a shit if we saw anyone.

  Ella wrinkled her nose as I got into the car. “You look like you smell bad.”

  “I do.” I nodded.

  “Wanna talk about it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good.” She didn’t sound relieved; she sounded like she didn’t give a shit. Not even half.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  A COLOR FOR EVERY SEASON

  Cherry

  Cait’s bedroom was too big to search every tiny nook and cranny with just the two of us in the limited time we would have while Cait’s family ate on the water, so we brought reinforcements. Sarah, Rachel, and Erica joined us in taking sections.

  Rachel took the shoe and bag closet, the one she’d found the burn box in. She was also on the lookout for maids or other staff.

  I took the bed and dressers and the drawers near the bed, searching and trying not to think about Ashley or the aching in my chest.

  Ella took the clothes closet with Erica.

  Sarah took the bathroom.

  We searched high and low, but to no avail.

  “How much makeup does one human need?” Sarah muttered. “She has to have seventy-five shades of lipstick, and they don’t even match all the nail polish. And, like, whoever does their own nails anyway?” She strolled into the bedroom and slumped on the bed.

  “Oh, you know Cait: if it’s the best, she has to have it, even if she won’t use it.”

  “Including all my boyfriends,” I mumbled bitterly.

  “True that,” Sarah groaned.

  I finished looking under the bed and touching every part of the frame, as if Cait were a spy and a part of the bed would come apart to reveal a secret stash of information. Some on us, some obviously about her time spent spying on the Russians.

  I inserted an eye roll into my own thoughts about how larger-than-life I’d made her.

  “Did you say she has tons of lipstick?” Rachel asked as she came out of the closet wearing a funny look.

  “Yeah.” Sarah shrugged.

  “Lipstick.” It took me a second, but I caught on. “She says she doesn’t use it.” I jumped up and rushed into the bathroom with Rachel and Ella. We grabbed at the tubes, pulling them apart. Each one was actual lipstick, never used before. “Shit. Why’d she lie about throwing them away?”

  “She didn’t.” Rachel’s eyes widened as she pulled the other side off. The lipstick worked; it was just shorter than it should have been because the other side was the tiny USB port.

  “Holy balls.” Erica grabbed one and pulled the bottom off of it. “I wonder how many are authentic?”

  “Check the nail polish too. She’s way above painting her own nails.” Sarah grabbed one, pulling off the lid to find a USB stick in the handle.

  We all hurried, pulling them apart, finding thirty-five USB sticks hidden in Cait’s cosmetics. All were ironically labeled with shades such as Tight Lipped and Never Kiss and Tell. I rolled my eyes for real this time.

  We dumped them into Sarah’s handbag and put the bathroom back the way it looked before.

  Erica looked like she might kill someone.

  I felt the same way.

  But we didn’t kill anyone.

  We sneaked from the room, leaving no trace of ourselves behind.

  We hurried behind the guesthouse and left, acting like we had a million times at Cait’s house. We were supposed to be there. Guests of the clambake, no doubt.

  On the drive to pick up everyone’s laptops and then go to my place, I texted Cora to meet us there and told Ella to head for my bedroom.

  When we got there we separated, each with laptops and USB sticks, each with tingling stomachs and uneasiness.

  “Corrine,” Laura called out, and Rachel wrote the name on the whiteboard we’d brought in.

  “Haley Dawson,” I shouted as I turned off the video after a couple of seconds, then labeled the USB.

  We each shouted out names until e
very USB was identified and labeled. Griffin didn’t show up on any of them. I was surprised.

  As I loaded my last one, I cringed, seeing it featured Liz, Cait’s bestie. She walked into the guesthouse at Cait’s, looking confused or drunk. Cait’s dad came in after her, closing the door. I turned the video off when I noticed the way they made out and how they acted like this wasn’t the first time. Cait knew this and was her friend still? Jesus.

  “So, thirty-five people, all people we know well. All members of Fling Club. Whatever Cait’s problem is, this is insanity,” Ella said, contemplating.

  “But why?” Rachel joined her, tapping her finger on her lip. “Why do this?”

  “Like Mom says, that room is filled with all the future leaders,” Ella added.

  “And their wives,” I said. “So, sex or incriminating videos of them as teenagers and early twentysomethings to use as bribery for later?”

  “Jesus. She has a sickness. What do we do with them all?” Sarah asked.

  “I’m fifteen in that video. I want it destroyed,” I said flatly.

  “Me too.” Cora nodded.

  “I kinda want to keep mine, the sex tape part is meh. But the other part is kinda awesome,” Laura joked. “Makes me look kinda badass. Corrine is a complete score. She’s totally out of my league.”

  “I want mine burned too.” Erica ignored Laura.

  “Mine too.” Sarah nodded.

  Laura folded her arms. “I am so done with Cait Landry. I’m done with Fling Club. I’m done with the whole thing. I might not even tell people I went to Paulson. Fuck that.”

  “Yeah, I’m out too. I won’t be attending any other functions,” Sarah agreed.

  “Nope.” Erica followed along. “I already broke it off with my fling. He’s a douche Cait made me pick.”

  “What if there’re other copies?” Cora sounded worried.

  “Then I guess Cait’s dad gets humiliated too. He was an adult, and you were nineteen. Sleeping with your kid’s friends is gross. Cait Landry is dead to me.” I got up.

  “Let me deal with this.” Ella folded her arms, looking the part of tiny evil dictator. “You guys keep your videos; I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “Okay.” I glanced at my friends. “I love you girls. And I am so sorry for being a bullshit, fake friend for the last decade. Longer.” I sniffled, but the tears still wouldn’t drop.