She was the only one I’d ever need.
“Yes!” Robin said, rolling her eyes. “It’s going to be fine. I’m all ready. I know exactly what I need to do.”
Our plan was fairly simple. Robin was going to meet up with Becca and pretend to be friendly with her, citing the incident where they’d recently bumped into each other as something which had made her want to reach out to Becca and rekindle their friendship. She was also going to pretend that she’d had a big falling out with Sasha, in the hope that Becca would eventually mention what she was doing to blackmail Sasha. Since Becca was clearly such an idiotic, strung-out blabbermouth, this shouldn’t prove too difficult.
Robin was going to record their conversation for evidence that could be handed over to the police if necessary, and then Becca would get to experience what it was like to be on the other side of blackmailing. Robin wasn’t going to threaten her or go over the top; she was just going to make her understand that she couldn’t keep being a bitch to Sasha and get away with it.
Hopefully, tonight would be the end of it all.
“Where are you going to put the phone? Are you going to hold it in your hand?” I asked, trying to work out just how we were going to pull this off. I didn’t want Becca to get suspicious halfway through.
“No, I wore this jacket because of the mesh-fabric pocket.” She indicated towards her chest. “If I just slip the phone in like this, it’ll film and record our conversation, and it’s quite discreet.”
I couldn’t help but be impressed by how prepared she was and how much she’d thought it through.
“Okay.” I nodded thoughtfully. “That’s good.”
Sasha started to worry all over again. “Maybe I should just tell my Mom, and she can…”
“No,” Robin cut in. “This’ll work. Besides, I want to help. I want to make up for my part in this whole shit-storm. Becca probably wouldn’t have even known you had a wealthy stepfather to extort if I hadn’t let it slip to her.”
“I don’t…” Sasha started to talk again, but I couldn’t let her continue. She was going to worry herself into a frenzy at this rate.
“It’s too late for changes. Robin already called her and arranged their girly date. It’s time to go,” I said, grabbing my car keys to reinforce my point. “Come on.”
We got in the car and drove towards the bar that Robin was meeting Becca in. It was early in the evening, which meant it would be quiet enough for Robin’s phone to pick up the entire conversation, but still busy enough so that Sasha and I could hide amongst the crowd in case we were needed at any time. We weren’t quite sure just how far Becca would go. I had no idea how truly dangerous she could be—although I doubted she was—and there was no way I was going to risk anyone getting hurt.
Once we arrived at the bar, we separated. Sasha and I went inside first to find our hiding place, because the girls were both sure that Becca wouldn’t be early. Apparently she spent her whole life being consistently ‘fashionably late’.
I quickly found a fairly discreet booth that we wouldn’t be spotted in. It also gave me a view of the bar and the door, which was a plus. I slid into the seat closest to me, and Sasha sat on the opposite side. She was still on edge, unable to bear the tension.
“Calm down,” I whispered, laying one of my hands on top of hers. “It’s going to be all right.”
“You think?” She was practically shaking with nerves.
“Robin knows exactly what she’s doing. We’ve got this.”
“But Becca—she’s obviously crazy. If she thinks we’re up to anything, she could just press ‘send’ on those pictures of me and email them to the media.”
“That’s why we’re here, to intervene if she tries anything. It’s all going to work, don’t you worry. There’s no way this can fail.” I sounded more confident than I felt, which seemed to reassure her. “Just put the menu up so she doesn’t see your face, in case she glances around.”
Sasha complied just as I spotted Robin coming in through the doors. I nodded quickly at Sasha to let her know, and she instantly sat up straighter, ready for action. Unfortunately I had no idea what Becca looked like, so I couldn’t warn her when she arrived. I just hoped that it would be soon. The quicker this was over, the better.
We sat in silence, just waiting for everything to kick off. My leg tapped up and down anxiously, and Sasha kept staring at the menu, hiding her face from everyone.
Finally I saw a trashy-looking blonde girl join Robin at the bar. “Okay, she’s here; I think that’s her. At least I assume it is.”
Sasha spun around for a split-second. “Yeah, that’s her. Just watch and see if you can see anything going on. I’m gonna hide again,” she said, burying her face in the menu once more.
“I’m going to go and get a drink.” I moved to stand up, but Sasha grabbed my hand.
“Don’t leave me.” She looked utterly panicked.
“Don’t worry; I’ll only be a second. She doesn’t know who I am, so it’s fine. We need drinks anyway, or we’ll look suspicious. We look a bit weird just sitting here.”
I knew she couldn’t argue with that logic.
“Okay.” She finally slid back into her seat, and I shot her a reassuring smile before sauntering over to the bar. I didn’t stand close enough for Robin and Becca to take notice of me—I didn’t want to blow my cover—but Becca had such a loud, obnoxious voice that I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation anyway, which was exactly what I wanted.
“…oh my god, he’s so hot! I don’t even mind having to fuck him for the grade. I might even do it if I had nothing to gain. Seriously, for a professor, he’s sooo sexy. You’ve got to take his class next semester,” she said before lowering her voice to a murmur, which I could still hear from where I was. “By the way, I’ve got some coke. Wanna go to the bathroom and have a bump?”
She giggled—a noise which sounded like fingernails running down a chalkboard to me. How Sasha’s ex-boyfriend had cheated on her with this nightmare was beyond me. She was nowhere near as beautiful as Sasha…and apparently, she also had a coke problem and a predilection for sleeping with her college professors in exchange for better grades. Even if she hadn’t opened her mouth at all, I could still tell from a mile off that she was one of those crazy chicks that no one should even touch with a barge pole.
“No, thanks. So…you’re actually sleeping with your professor?” I heard Robin say in an overly-exaggerated, gossipy manner. She was only doing it to get more information out of this girl, but Becca was so self-obsessed that she didn’t even realize it was fake.
She giggled. “I know, right? I haven’t told Travis yet, but he’ll be fine with it. He’s quite used to me going the extra mile to get what I want…”
“What do you mean?” Robin asked.
I quickly glanced over to see her adjusting her position to ensure that Becca was on the screen of the phone. She was doing a good job of playing this role whilst keeping her promise to Sasha; in fact, she was totally nailing it, much better than I could have hoped for.
“Promise you won’t say anything?” Becca asked in a dramatic whisper.
The bartender picked the worst possible moment to interrupt to take my order. “Can I get you anything?”
“Two Cokes please,” I snapped back quickly.
As he walked off to get the drinks, I allowed myself to casually move a little closer, and I realized that Becca was saying exactly what we needed her to. Christ, she really was a drug-fucked idiot.
“…so obviously she’s not going to want the photos to be leaked. Especially not with her Mom’s new husband. By the way, thanks so much for telling me about him. I should really give you a cut!”
The bartender returned. “That’ll be $5.20, please.”
As I tossed the money over, I heard Robin speaking a little louder. “Oh, it’s fine. I’m so sick of Sasha anyway. She’s such an annoying bitch. Anyway, does Travis know about this plan, or is it just you?”
Becca waved her hand
dismissively. “It was actually his idea. We need the money.”
Anger coursed through my veins. That fucker…Sasha’s ex. He was actually a part of this? It was even more fucked up than I’d previously thought. I’d thought that Becca was doing it behind his back after finding the photos on his phone, and I seethed at the thought of Travis going out of his way to plan something like this. No guy should ever use something they were given out of trust in a relationship for blackmail at a later date.
I stormed back to the table where Sasha was sitting, my face like thunder.
“What’s wrong? Did you hear something?” she asked.
“Yeah. I think you should know that Travis is actually a part of it all. He fucking started it. It was his idea to blackmail you, not Becca’s. She’s just along for the ride.”
She sat in silence for a few seconds, just stewing. I knew I should say some comforting words, but I couldn’t. I was too consumed by my rage. Then I heard her chair scrape back, and she strode across the bar.
Oh, shit.
“Wait!” I called out to her.
There was no point in telling her that this wasn’t part of the plan—she knew that, and she’d still stormed off. Instead, I got up and followed her. Everything had gone out of the window, so there was no point in trying to stick to the plan now, and if things were going down, I needed to be a part of it.
“…you’re totally pathetic,” I heard Sasha saying. She was right up in Becca’s face now, giving her the hell that she deserved.
As I watched Sasha shout, I finally got a good look at Becca. She had a smug, defiant expression on her face as she listened to Sasha’s tirade, and she even looked somewhat bored, as if she simply knew for a fact that she was going to get away with her bullshit plan. Bitch.
“Are you really this stupid? Do you really think that you’re going to get away with this?” Sasha asked.
“Yeah,” Becca replied with a roll of her heavily-mascaraed eyes. “I don’t see that you have any option. You’re going to have to pay up, or I’m sending those photos to the media.”
“Robin, show her the video,” I said as I arrived by Sasha’s side.
Becca’s eyes widened.
“What video? Who the fuck are you?”
“Logan Ryder. Sasha’s stepbrother.”
Becca muttered something under her breath about not knowing that Sasha had a stepbrother, and Robin tugged the phone out of her pocket and quickly hit play. I watched Becca silently looking at herself on the screen, discussing her inventive ways to get good grades and money, and her skin paled and eventually went a little green.
“See?” Sasha said as Robin finally turned her phone off and put it down on the bar. “That’s how freaking stupid you are. And you actually thought you’d get away with this crap. So what’s it going to be? Are you going to keep up the blackmailing bullshit, or are we going to have to visit the college Dean to show them this video? I’m sure he’d love to hear how you exchange sex for grades.”
“I’m sure the police would also love to see this video and hear about your blackmailing attempts, not to mention your love for nose candy,” I interjected. “And by the way, Robin’s phone is synced to the cloud, so the video has already been uploaded to her computer at home. There’s no way you can make it disappear.”
“I…” Becca’s rat-like eyes were flickering everywhere, desperate for an escape. “Okay, okay. I get it. I’ll leave her alone. It was just a joke, anyway.”
“Bullshit. This was no fucking joke. If you ever contact Sasha again, or if we even hear an inkling that you’re shopping around those pictures of her, we’ll go straight to the police. We won’t even think twice about it. You’re fucking lucky we aren’t going to them right now.”
We could go to them right now, but I knew that would bring negative attention to my father if the media caught wind of exactly why we’d gone to the cops. As much as I knew he didn’t like having me around, he’d still taken care of me all these years, so I had to respect his job and try to help keep negative stuff away from his reputation. Judging by what had just happened, Becca and Travis were most likely going to drop this whole thing anyway, so we didn’t need the cops involved.
“Fine, whatever. Fuck you guys. I don’t need any of this shit. But you better watch your backs. You never know what could happen,” Becca said, grabbing her bag and stomping away.
“Sure. We’re terrified,” I called after her, my voice dripping with sarcasm.
Robin began to laugh, and soon we were all in fits of hysterics.
“She’s fucking insane,” Sasha managed to get out through peals of laughter. “I can’t believe how dumb she is. And that ‘watch your back’ crap…are we meant to be scared?”
“No shit,” I said with a grin. “Come on, let’s grab some dinner. I’m buying.”
***
Our night—which had started out as such a horrible, nerve-wracking event—had quickly become fun as hell. Now that Becca was gone and we’d grabbed some food, we were eating, laughing and enjoying ourselves, and I was warming to Robin in a way that I hadn’t allowed myself to before. Any suspicions I’d been harboring about her before now had completely vanished.
We both cared deeply about the same girl, and we would always have that in common. We could actually build a friendship around that, which was weird for me. I’d never really been friends with a girl before, at least not in a purely platonic way.
I guess I was really changing.
“I’m just going to the bathroom,” Sasha said before getting up and stepping away from the table. I was glad to see how much happier she was now that the blackmailing debacle was behind us, and I smiled as I watched her walk away.
Robin took this moment as an opportunity to jump on me with a very awkward question. “So, Logan…?”
“Yes?” I replied. I knew that tone of voice, and it usually wasn’t followed by something I wanted to hear.
She leaned her head on her hands and looked at me with an eagle-eyed gaze. “Do you love Sasha?”
“Uhh…” I could feel my cheeks heating up as I contemplated her question, and I came to a stark realization.
Jesus, of course I loved her. In fact, part of me had been in love with her from the minute I met her.
“Oh my god,” Robin gasped. “You do.”
“Erm…”
I knew I did, but I hadn’t even told Sasha yet. I didn’t want the first time I admitted it to be to her friend.
“Oh, is that my phone vibrating?” Robin asked, glancing down.
As she rifled through her bag, I thought about what she’d said some more. I considered the possibility of a future with Sasha and the implications of my feelings for her—the fight that we would have to have with our parents if and when I told them I loved her, the shit that people might say about us if they found out, and the struggles we would likely cause for my father’s political reputation.
I didn’t want any of that, but fuck…I needed Sasha, and I wasn’t going to leave her for anyone or anything.
“Hmm, it’s not in my bag. That’s weird.” Robin was patting her pockets now, desperately looking for her phone.
“Is it in the car?” I asked. We’d driven from the bar to the restaurant we were at now, so it was very possible that she’d left it there.
“Yeah, maybe—” she started to reply, but then Sasha rejoined us at the table and everything else completely slipped from my mind. All I could think about was her. I had to let her know sooner rather than later. I had to tell her I loved her.
All I needed was the perfect moment.
Chapter 17
Sasha
The days following the ‘Becca takedown’ were nothing short of amazing. I no longer felt the same fear and trepidation every time my phone bleeped with a message, because I knew it wasn’t going to be her—I had no doubt that deep down she was nothing more than a stupid coward—and on top of that, I could feel myself growing ever closer to Logan.
Two day
s had gone by now, and the whole debacle was already starting to feel like a bad dream. I kept the blackmail messages from Becca on my phone as evidence, just in case it ever came down to that, but I no longer looked at them.
As I was walking home from class—slightly later than usual, because I’d stayed behind to check out a book from the library—my phone pinged with a text message from Robin.
‘Hey, I finally found my phone! Can you meet me at the old Miller dairy farm on Ashby Road at four o’clock? You know the place—we had a picnic there once. Logan and I have a special surprise for you :) Xoxo’
“What?” I muttered to myself before replying. Four o’clock was pretty damn soon, so she wasn’t giving me much notice.
‘A surprise? All the way out there?’
‘Trust me…it’s gorgeous!’ she replied. ‘I don’t wanna spoil it too much, but let’s just say it involves your favorite foods and a movie played on a white sheet against the barn wall. Logan got this projector thing and everything! There’s more to the surprise, but you’ll just have to see when you get here…’
‘Okay. Sounds really sweet. See you both in a while, then.’
It seemed weird for the two of them to have plotted some sort of surprise behind my back, but I was excited all the same. Logan surprised me in different ways all the time, and he and Robin had probably organized this to cheer me up, seeing as the last few days had been stressful for me. I was glad that they were becoming friends, because it meant that we could all hang out together.
Once I arrived at home, I asked Mom if I could borrow her new car seeing as mine had finally given up the ghost, and then I took off, driving as quickly as I could along the route that led to Ashby Road. It was on the outskirts of the city, where a few old ranches still stood. The old Miller property had once been a small dairy farm, and I’d gone on several picnics there over the years with friends. A small river ran through it, so that and the historical buildings made it a cool little spot to hang out for an afternoon.
Part of me wished I’d had more time to prepare for the surprise movie and picnic, but I brushed the thought aside. I was sweaty, underdressed and had just finished back-to-back college lectures, but that wouldn’t keep me away from anything with Logan. I knew he liked me no matter what—he’d seen me at my worst, after all.
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