by SM Olivier
Emery stated that she was drunk and had gone to find her flavor of the week who was in the fraternity with Trevor. They did have rooms beside each other. She said the room was too dark to realize her mistake.
I just couldn’t buy the fact that, sometime during having sex, they hadn’t realized their mistake. My sister said she was drunk, had continued to screw him, and then chose to stay in bed with him.
I had gone over there late that night, fragile and shattered in a million different fragments. Then I’d found them together. No one expected me that night. Imagine my surprise when I saw them both naked in his bed, the smell of sex still heavy in the air.
The house had erupted. Trevor begged for my forgiveness. Emery had pleaded for me to believe her, that she had thought it was her boyfriend.
I chose to walk away. I had so much going on at that time.
I had been at one of the lowest points of my life, and I couldn’t face them. They both sealed their fate when I found out a few months later that they continued dating. If they had been so “genuinely sorry,” they should have never continued what they’d started that night.
And now Trevor and Emery had the audacity to ask me to stand up with them at their wedding in a few months.
Chapter 2
It took me nearly to the next weekend before I felt somewhat…normal. The grueling week of finals was behind me and come next Friday, I would know whether or not I would receive my diploma. But even with the distractions, I knew I had aced everything.
“Are you ready?” Sylvia asked as she came into my room.
She had been acting strangely all morning, and I wondered what she was up to. When I had confronted her about it, she had denied my accusations. Usually, she was eager to visit my family but today was different. She seemed edgier and appeared too enthusiastic.
“Just about,” I informed her. I eyed her suspiciously once more, before I placed a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, a few tank tops, cut-off jean shorts, hiking boots, socks, and a few extra pairs of flip flops into my duffle bag. I hadn’t emptied it entirely, but it was the only bag I had large enough to carry all my things.
“Why are you packing your sais?” Sylvia asked, laughing as she peered down into my bag.
Sais were weapons originating from Japan. Mine were approximately twenty inches long and had a handle like a knife. Each long shaft was blunt but effective in defensive maneuvers. From the handle were two side guards that curved out and up. A sais was initially designed to trap the weapons of an opponent.
In Tae Kwon Do, I practiced with swords, bo staff, and sais. I was proficient in all three, but I was a master with the sais.
I shrugged. “I promised Mikey I would show him a few more tricks.”
I didn’t know if I had the time, but outside in my truck was a new set of sais I had just bought him. His birthday had been a couple of weeks ago, and I hadn’t made my way down there since then.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” Sylvia urged me. “BJ already texted. He’s heading to his last classes!”
Last night, BJ had asked if we didn’t mind swinging by his school and picking him up, since his jeep was acting up. It was on the way, so of course I didn’t mind. We had always gotten along, and although we had spent a lot of time apart, we had become closer. He had become one of my best friends, and I was touched when he admitted the same sentiments after Trevor and Emery had betrayed me.
“Unlikely.” I snorted. “But let me grab my toiletry bag and we can get going.”
BJ had just gotten a new girlfriend, who he wanted to bring along, but her parents wouldn’t let her travel the two hours with us, especially since they had never met us nor BJ.
I knew he wanted to stay on campus this weekend to be with her, but his loyalty to family was just as strong as mine. We took our promises seriously. He’d already promised Miller and Mikey that he was coming.
I smiled, imagining my brother. BJ was athletic, thanks to military school. He had been attending for the last eight years, but he was also brilliantly smart. He had a way with technology that I envied. He and Miller had a common interest in computers, and BJ had already started teaching our eleven-year-old stepbrother how to code.
While Sylvia and I took Mikey to his friend’s birthday party Sunday, BJ would be spending the day with Miller. The boys might not be our blood, but Dad loved them, and we had grown to love them too.
I grabbed my toiletry bag and remembered last Christmas when Sylvia had joked and said she knew we would be traveling a lot in our future and that was why she had purchased the bag. It didn’t look large, but when you opened it up, it fit a lot more than you’d think. My shampoo, conditioner, body wash, loofah, shaving cream, razors, deodorant, some makeup, and even some tampons, fit in there with ease. It had a lot of compartmentalized pockets, making it easy to keep everything organized and together.
It would come in handy when traveling with the National Team, especially now that I had officially gotten the invite Wednesday night. Next month, I’d be heading to Colorado where my training would begin. I would officially be starting a new beginning. Well, we would be. Sylvia had been accepted for her poomsaes. She wasn’t much of a fighter, but she was graceful in her forms
“I started your truck,” Sylvia stated with a smile as she poked her head back into the room. “Also, I put your bag in there.”
Sylvia had a little mini cooper, and there was no way we could all comfortably fit in there for the two-hour drive home.
My truck was my baby. I had bought it this past year with the inheritance my grandparents had left me. As if the year hadn’t already been hard enough − because, you know, bad things come in threes − I had lost the only grandparents I had ever known. It had been a freak car accident that had immediately killed them. They hadn’t even made it to the hospital.
I shook my head of my melancholy thoughts. “Let’s go.”
I really wanted to put my toiletry bag in my bag, but oh well. Ms. Impatience took the decision out of my hands. We exited the room where Lucy was on the couch with her boyfriend.
Lucy was pretty cool, as far as roommates went. She always paid her portion of the rent on time and was alright for the most part. She just had an issue with taking things that weren’t hers. She often took stuff from our closets without permission or ate the food on our shelves without replacing it.
Sylvia and I could have gotten a two-bedroom apartment, but there hadn’t been any available when we were shopping a couple of years ago. We found Lucy on the message board on campus. She was looking for a room, and we had a room to give her, plus she alleviated our expenses.
Mom’s life insurance had left me with a nice chunk of change, but I had always been cautious with my spending. Even after Dad gave me the college fund they had been putting away since my birth, I still couldn’t splurge. I liked living modestly.
“Have you seen this?” Lucy asked in shock as we headed towards the door.
“What’s that?” Sylvia asked.
I was still frowning over the fact that Lucy was wearing my sheer camisole top and short silk pajama shorts. I could see she wasn’t wearing anything under them and it perturbed me. I had no problem sharing things, but the problem was she never asked, and in this, I wasn’t cool with her wearing my intimate apparel.
“This can’t be real news.” Sylvia snorted.
“It is!” George, Lucy’s boyfriend, insisted. “Those people are cannibals.”
“With today’s technology, it’s probably all edited for a hoax. I just can’t believe a reputable network is airing it,” Sylvia said in exasperation.
Now my curiosity was piqued. I walked over to see what looked like a video someone had shot with their cellphone, shaky hand and all. It appeared like they were in a hospital waiting room. I could see several people screaming and panicking as a man in a hospital gown was… Wait. Was he eating the face of a girl lying on the ground?
The girl was screaming and trying to fight back. I watched as two men, one a security guard, a
nd the other a male nurse, tried to pull the psycho off the girl. The psycho turned and ripped a piece of the nurse's arm off. Blood projected everywhere as the nurse screamed in pain.
The screaming stopped from the girl before the psycho turned towards the person shooting the recording. I heard the recorder yell out curses and watched as the psycho advanced towards him. The closer he walked, the more I took in the details. He was of medium height, male, in his late thirties-early forties, pale. His flushed face was covered in blood, and his blue eyes were leaking… blood?
The recording was abruptly turned off, and the newscasters appeared on the camera. “When we tried to contact hospital officials, they were unwilling to comment on the incidents. All we know is that the government was called in, and the hospital hasn’t been reopened since early this morning.”
“I’m pretty sure this was just a one-off instance,” the other news reporter stated, barely concealing his scoff. “Remember the bath salts incident years ago? Drugs can do funny things to a person’s brain.”
“See?” Sylvia stated with a smug smile. “Hoax or drugs. Right, Avery?”
“It’s too much of a coincidence,” Lucy maintained. “Six people in six different states with the same bizarre behavior?”
“Good thing it wasn’t our state,” Sylvia said flippantly. “We’ll see you Sunday night, George and Lucy. Remember, no screwing in our beds,” she teased.
Yes, the screwing in our beds had actually happened. I had been so infuriated when I had found out that they’d had sex on my bed one weekend. Without changing the sheets.
“Let’s go, Ave,” Sylvia pulled on my arm. “You agree with me, right? It’s just a hysteria tactic.”
I went to agree with her, but a shiver of unease prevented me from doing so. Usually, these feelings were accompanied by a phone call or text from Emery, but this time it was… different. I could be a very skeptical and analytical person, but something didn’t feel right about this whole situation. No hospital was ever shut down over one instance. At the worse, they’d lock down for quarantine. No hospital administration could or would shut down a whole hospital without just cause.
“Avery?” Sylvia asked me with a raised brow.
“Right.” I cleared my throat, though I didn’t sound convincing. “No screwing in my bed,” I added. “And Lucy, you can keep my pajamas now.”
“Thanks!” she said brightly, oblivious to my ire.
֍
“Hello, boys,” Sylvia flirted as she rolled down her window, giving the group of men smiles and waves as we passed. The men were running in formation, dressed in their physical fitness gear of black t-shirts and dove-gray shorts. They even wore matching black shoes and socks.
I loved the discipline and uniformity they represented. Even when a few of them turned their heads to smile and nod at Sylvia. I didn’t blame them. She was a head-turner.
Sylvia was a beautiful Latina girl. Her mother had been Puerto Rican and her father, Mexican. Her skin had that dark olive color that rarely blemished. She had beautiful, long, curly, black hair, and had dark brown eyes to go with her gorgeous dark looks.
On top of having a pretty face, she had a cute, petite body. She was several inches shorter than my five-foot-eight, coming in at a whole whopping five-foot, two inches. I was considered athletically slim, whereas she was curvy. The only reason we could wear the same shorts and skirts was because she had what she called ‘birthing hips’ and my butt was… high and tight.
Besides Tae Kwon Do, I ran and lifted weights, too. Sylvia didn’t like either and was content with aiming for gold in her poomsaes. Coach’s requirements for me were a lot more demanding than her regimen. In order to get gold in sparring, I needed to be at the top of my game. Four years ago, I learned that the hard way. My endurance hadn’t been where it should have been, and I missed my chance at Team USA by one match. One!
“Boys is right. They’re probably babies,” I jokingly teased her as we pulled into the parking lot of my brother's school.
The military academy my brother attended was one of the best schools in the country. It spanned over several hundred acres of land conducive for training “tomorrow’s fighting force.” They not only pushed education on their students but excellent physical fitness as well.
His school was adjacent to the college. More than likely, my brother would be attending there next year. I knew he was still on the fence whether he wanted to join the military as an officer or as an enlisted man.
“One time!” Sylvia whined loudly. “That was just one time. How was I supposed to know the guys that tried to pick me up were in high school and not college?”
I laughed. “You should have noted that they had the white stripe on their sleeve.”
“You never told me!” she protested once more.
I laughed some more as I turned off my engine. Truthfully, I had forgotten to tell her the difference between their PT uniforms when we visited BJ. The high school and college students wore identical clothing, except for a few barely-noticeable variations.
“How could you not tell?” I insisted for the hundredth time. “They had baby faces.”
We had gotten out of class early, way earlier than BJ expected us. He was in his last course for the day. I figured by the time I signed him out for the weekend, he’d be done.
Most of the office staff recognized me by name and face since I’d been cleared to pick him up since I was able to drive. That and the fact that my father was a Lieutenant Colonel and well respected by over half the people here. For those who had never served with him, he was well known in this circle of professionals, and his reputation preceded him.
“They had muscles on top of muscles. You know very few guys looked like them at our school back then,” she groaned. “If I would have known about all this fresh meat here in high school, I would have been coming with you all the time.”
Before BJ had gotten his license, Trevor and I had been the ones to pick BJ up. It gave us some much-needed alone time. Sylvia had understood that we needed that time together, so she never asked to come with us.
“Why do you think we never told you?” I barely hid my wince over the “we” pronoun. I was no longer a “we.” Now I was just a “me.” I inwardly sighed. Just like that, my mind was back to dwelling over my heartache once again.
“Hello, hottie.” Sylvia whistled as we neared the entrance, her attention on another male. She seriously had an overabundance of hormones when it came to men.
A tall man that was easily six and a half feet was heading towards the entrance as well. He appeared to be in his late twenties to early thirties, with bronzed skin that hinted at a non-Caucasian ethnic group. He was solidly built and reminded me of Channing Tatum in Magic Mike but much, much taller and darker. His black t-shirt was tight across his broad chest, and he walked with the grace of a dancer. His khaki cargo pants did nothing to hide his high, taut, biteable butt.
Whoa! Where had that come from? I really couldn’t remember the last time I had lusted after a man.
“Hey, I know you!” Sylvia suddenly shouted. “Tacka!”
The man stopped, although I knew he had heard her the first time.
He turned, and holy hotness. He was beautiful. I never would have thought a man would be considered beautiful until that moment. He wasn’t pretty in the pretty boy sense but more like a …a beautiful piece of art. I wasn’t crazy about men with long hair, but his jet black, almost blue hair that fell almost to his shoulders was shiny and didn’t detract from his sharp, honed features. His cheekbones were high, his nose sharp and narrow, but his lips…his lips were luscious, kissable.
Gah! Did Sylvia dose me with her extra hormones?
I could see his dark eyes, framed by outrageously long eyelashes, quickly assess Sylvia before he looked over at me. I couldn’t help but squirm as I felt his eyes roam over my body. I felt horribly self-conscious. I looked like a bum compared to Sylvia.
Sylvia was wearing a pretty tube-top dress.
The red fabric looked great against her skin. The cute red heels she paired with it drew attention to her shapely legs, and her hair cascaded down her back in large curls.
Me? I had opted to wear comfy clothes. I had on a pair of black biker shorts, with a form-fitting long sleeve white and black shirt. The only thing semi-cute about my outfit was the back, but he couldn’t even see it. It was cut low, nearly down to the small of my back, revealing almost the entirety of my back and the black sports bra I wore.
I had a minimum amount of makeup on, and my hair was snatched up in a simple ponytail, with a thin headband completing the casually bummy look.
“I’m Corbin’s friend!” Sylvia seemed oblivious to the fact that I felt like I was being dissected beneath a microscope.
I tensed at the mention of Corbin. I briefly closed my eyes and looked off into the distance. I could see the group of cadets nearing. I needed a distraction. A, I hoped Corbin was nowhere near, though I had no clue why he would even be here. B, I couldn’t remember the last time I reacted to a man in this way. No, scratch that. I had never responded to a man in this way. Not even Trevor.
My gaze on him again, I saw a flash of recognition enter his eyes before they shuttered over.
“A friend?” he asked, his voice deep and gravely.
“Yes,” she gushed. “OMG Ave, he’s on Corbin’s team. Welcome back!”
Now I knew why she had been edgy. She was hoping to run into them.
Corbin’s teammate was silent, but that didn’t stop her from continuing. “I sent you beef jerky, baby wipes, mac and cheese cups, and I made you the cake-in-the-jars. Well, technically Ave did−I can’t bake for crap−but I sent it all.”
I barely stopped myself from glaring at her. I should have known she didn’t want twelve cakes-in-a-jar for her business statistics class. She knew how I had refused to send care packages this past year. I knew it was wrong of me, but again, I was irrationally angry at Corbin.
“Thanks,” he said concisely.
“Is he around?” she asked hopefully.
