Chapter 2
2
W alking into the kitchen, I ran into my roommate, Liz. Literally. Her skull collided with mine and we knocked each other silly.
It was obvious that she’d recently done the deed with her boyfriend, David. Despite our head-butt, she reeked of lust and was grinning like she was holding a slice of watermelon underneath her lips. There was that, plus she was wearing one of his t-shirts, which she did only after sex. Today’s was a shout-out to an indie band called Sweetbread Orange.
While I had no idea who the band was, I was familiar with the sounds of Liz and David moaning through the walls as they pleasured each other in ways I could only, but had no desire to, imagine. After three years of dating, they still went at it like two rabbits on Spanish Fly—which, let me tell you, is so wonderful for a lonely single girl to hear in a not at all kind of way. But, hey, I’m no hater. I was glad at least one of us was getting some action.
An abrupt stillness would always follow Liz and David’s heated sexcapades, and then Liz would meander into the kitchen, her heart-shaped rear peeking out from the bottom hem of David’s shirt, to scavenge for juice. I assumed that’s what she was after now.
“Hate to break it to you, toots,” I said. “All we’ve got is grapefruit.”
She blinked at me dourly, probably because the stuff tasted like battery acid. A few days back, we’d gotten it after watching an infomercial for an industrial-grade juicer that could take off a person’s arm if used incorrectly. The guy hocking it was allegedly ninety-five, though he didn’t look a day over thirty; honestly, you could scrub laundry clean on his abs. While we didn’t have the “four easy payments of just $49.95” for the machine, we vowed to eat clean and consume nothing but raw fruits and vegetables for the following month. We zipped to the grocery store, where we filled our cart with items like unsweetened juices, kale, and sprouts, making it five whole hours at home on our insane health kick before driving back to buy a frozen pizza.
Despite her frown, it seemed Liz was keen to give the grapefruit juice another shot. Which was great, except that she delivered me an unadulterated view of her lady bits when she bent over inside the fridge. Good thing she wasn’t just my roommate but also my best friend, or else I might have been alarmed.
I flung a hand over my eyes, nonetheless. “God, vagina!”
She twisted around, her face a portrait of innocence. “What?”
I’d concluded long ago that if I were allowed only one term to describe the girl, it would be brazen . At twenty-eight, she was a little older than me, though seniority had nothing to do with it. With the amount of self-confidence Liz had, she’d probably emerged from the womb a vixen. As a somewhat reserved individual, I envied her confidence.
“You’re so uptight,” she sang. “It’s not like you don’t have the same parts between your legs. If you don’t, I’m thinking one of us needs to call the doctor!”
“Right,” I agreed lamely.
Liz finished pouring her juice and then set the drink aside. I couldn’t blame her for stalling, though if I was her, I’d do the smart thing and pour it all straight down the drain. “Hey, are you okay? You look like you’ve seen—”
“Your vagina?”
“No, idiot.” Her chuckle was cut short by retching as she finally took a sip. “Ugh, I forgot how nasty this is. Does it have anything to with those letters?”
I scowled at the stack of envelopes I hadn’t realized I’d been white knuckling. I set them aside on the kitchen table. “I’m a little behind on my student loan.”
Liz and I split rent, utility charges, and food fifty-fifty. Not wanting to concern her, I didn’t elaborate on my other bills and likely depleted checking account balance. She made decent money as a hairdresser and could easily cover my expenses if push came to shove, but the humiliation of her pity would kill me. I was no mooch. Blame my prideful blue-collar upbringing, but I’d live out of my car before I’d see that happen.
“Oh no.” Liz’s tone was so gloomy that the debt could have been her own. Blowing air out of her puffed cheeks, she ran her fingers through her auburn tresses. A couple weeks earlier, she’d cropped off several inches. Her long hair had been beautiful, but I thought the new bob suited her nicely. The cut was done on impulse, a totally Liz thing to do. She’d given her locks to a charity that made wigs for children going through chemotherapy, another totally Liz thing to do. It didn’t seem possible that someone so cool and stunning could also be so selfless, but there she was. “How much do you owe?”
“A hundred and eighteen thousand.”
Liz choked on the godforsaken juice she seemed determined to finish. Some of it dribbled onto her chin and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. “ Dollars ?”
I nodded, my stomach churning. “It’ll end up being more because of interest.”
“Shit.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I mean, I knew you had student loans, but I had no idea it was so much. That’s more than what some people pay for a house.”
I barked out a laugh. “Not around here.”
“Okay, in tiny, middle-of-nowhere towns, but still.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
Her auburn brows furrowed. “Wait, I thought Dewhurst gave you a scholarship?”
“They did, but it only covered about half the tuition each year. Star athletes who put asses in stadium seats are the ones who receive full rides at that place,” I said tartly. “On top of the partial tuition I paid, I also had to buy several textbooks for each class at about a hundred dollars a pop. And then there was living expenses: rent, food, utilities, and my phone bill. Four years of living in the Bay Area without employment? It adds up fast.”
Liz already knew this, so I didn’t add that I hadn’t been able to work while in school because of my full-time schedule, which had come with the disadvantage of erratic hours that no employer would have been able to accommodate; by the time I would have arrived at a job after one class I would have needed to turn right back around to attend another. Another tidbit that never made Dewhurst’s brochures was that they designed their curriculum so that courses mandatory for graduation were offered only once every twelve months. Thus, skipping any would result in being an undergrad for five or six years. For what I’d been paying, four was plenty.
Dewhurst administrators assumed their students were so rich that they didn’t need to work and wouldn’t dream of jeopardizing their degrees by prioritizing a minimum-wage job over studying and doing the elaborate homework every professor at that place was hellbent on assigning. Which, to be fair, was the case for about ninety-nine percent of the student body. Unfortunately, unlike my classmates at Dewhurst, my parents hadn’t set up a cushy trust fund in my name the instant I was conceived. Sadly, I lost them when I was four to a brutal car accident—though, even if they were alive today, I doubt they’d even know what a trust fund is, let alone have any money to put into it. Drugs and booze would see to that.
“What are you going to do?” Liz made a move to tug at what used to be the ends of her long mane, snatching only air. It was odd how she tried to play with it as like was still there like an amputee suffering from phantom limb.
“I have absolutely no idea,” I answered honestly enough. “I guess I could sell my blood.”
She snorted. “You’d have to drain yourself like a raisin to even make a dent in the interest alone.”
“Too bad I wasn’t a man,” I lamented. “Then I could sell sperm. It’s so unfair! Donating blood hurts. Men derive pleasure from masturbating. And they get to perv at nudie magazines while getting paid for their efforts.”
Liz’s snub nose crinkled. “Think they get to keep it after?”
“The magazine? Like any guy would want to use it right after another dude—” I made quotation marks with my fingers “—choked the chicken all over it.”
Liz shuddered. “The pages would be all stuck together. So nasty.”
I guffawed. Such judgment from a girl who currently had her boyfriend’s semen running down her inner thighs. She stunk of it.
Lost in her own world, she rotated the antique amethyst ring around her middle finger, a family heirloom I’d never seen her without. Abruptly, she made a whooping sound. “I got it!”
“Jesus, Liz! You just scared ten years off my life,” I said, rubbing a hand over my heart.
“Sorry, I got excited. I have THE BEST idea: wits and tits.”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. I was hoping I hadn’t. “Um, what?”
“ Wits and Tits . It’s a wet t-shirt contest they hold every Wednesday night down at Shwilly Pete’s.”
“That cheesy nightclub with the giant pirate statue out front?”
“Yep. There’s a contest tonight! This chick whose hair I cut was talking about it at work today. Her boyfriend bartends there.”
“And what does this contest have to do with me?” I scoffed, almost afraid to ask.
“There’s a cash prize.”
“You can’t be serious. How are wet t-shirt contests even still a thing—what is this, Spring Break 2000? Will the producers of Girls Gone Wild also be making an appearance?”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t make fun. I’d consider doing it myself, but the contest is only open to students, hence the wits part. Apparently, my uneducated jugs are not good enough for Pete’s discerning tastes. But with boobies like these,” she said, pawing at my chest, “you’d be a shoo-in.”
I swatted her hand away from my B-cups. Liz simply had no concept of personal boundaries. “I’m not a student anymore, remember?”
She made a sputtering sound to show how trivial she found the detail. “You’ve still got your Dewhurst ID, right?”
Her enthusiasm was alarming, since it was clear she intended to follow through with the plan. Once she got an idea in her head, it was virtually impossible to change her mind. She was like a dog with a bone in that regard. I found her tenacity admirable usually, but it was annoying when it was directed at me.
“Look, there’s no way in hell I’m going to some skanky bar to flash my rack at a bunch of screaming frat boys.” I grabbed my handbag off the kitchen table and extracted my wallet, half expecting a couple of moths fly out of it, broke as I was. I removed my Dewhurst ID card and handed it to her. “But you can have at it. No judgment here. Just make sure to hide the expiration date with your thumb.”
Examining my photo, she laughed. “Because we’re practically twins, right?”
Liz’s skin was perpetually snow-white, and she couldn’t tan no matter how much time she spent under the sun. My skin, while also on the pale side, would at least turn a light bronze in summertime, olive occasionally. My brown hair was long and wavy, classic. Her new haircut was bold and trendy. My eyes were brown, hers blue. An avid runner, I was short, petite, and athletic— compact , I guess you could say. Liz was taller, exotic, and statuesque, though she considered herself “chunky.” She was constantly trying to lose ten pounds, which made me want to slap some sense into the crazy bitch. Had she been around in the 1950s, she would have given the hottest screen sirens a run for their money. Naturally, she was always telling me that she’d give her right arm to be as thin as me, while the sight of her hourglass figure made my eyes cross with jealousy. You always want what you can’t have, I guess.
“I haven’t told you the best part about the contest,” Liz grinned. “The winner gets—”
“What? A venereal disease?”
She shot me a steely look. “No, a thousand bucks. Cash .”
I eyed her suspiciously, but Liz wasn’t one to make up stories. She once told me that she thought lying was beneath her because people who lied had something to be ashamed of. Liz, of course, had no shame.
I could come up with a million reasons why I didn’t want to partake in the sleazy event, though I couldn’t find any alternative to how I could acquire a grand in such a short amount of time. If I managed to win, that was. Still, a wet t-shirt contest? Barf.
“What if I run into someone I know?” I asked, though it was a needless question. I didn’t know too many people in the area, and this was due to circumstance opposed to antisocial behavior on my part. At Dewhurst, I’d struggled to connect with my rich classmates because we’d had very little in common. Then, when I’d gotten into a relationship with Sir Ass of Hole—oops, I mean Nick—what little spare time I’d squeezed from my schedule had been devoted to him. Now, being broke as I was, I didn’t have spare funds to go out for meals and cocktails, or even coffee, with what little acquaintances I’d managed to make.
San Francisco was a sprawling city hardly known for its friendly vibe, so creating a social life had proved to be difficult. Sure, my hometown was redneck as all get-out, but at least in Pelville people would smile as you passed them on the sidewalk instead of going out of their way to avoid human contact at all costs. It was depressing to think about. If it wasn’t for Liz, I probably would have lost my mind from isolation long ago. One didn’t need to have a degree in psychology to recognize that the way I’d been living wasn’t healthy or sustainable. I was long overdue for a change in lifestyle. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the resources to make it happen for the time being.
“They’ll have just as much reason to be embarrassed for being there, so it’s not like they’re going to blab to the whole world about it,” Liz countered. “Besides, I doubt anyone from hoity-toity Dewhurst would ever be caught dead in that place.”
“I can’t afford to go out boozing,” I whined desperately.
“It’s my treat, so you won’t pay a dime.”
“I can’t let you—”
“I insist,” she said with a mischievous grin. “It’s two-for-one drinks for ladies on wet t-shirt nights, I’ve been told, so it’ll be cheap for me, anyway. So, it looks like you’re all out of excuses.”
I regarded the thick bundle of bills sitting on the table. I sighed heavily. “I seriously cannot believe I’m going to say this . . .”
She raised her eyebrows hopefully. “You’re in?”
My answer was a string of profanities, but she caught my drift.