Chapter 26 Glitter Pen
Chapter twenty-six
Glitter Pen
Marigold Belmore
Jasmine blinks at me over the rim of her coffee cup.
“I’m sorry, did you just say you went to an underground fight club last night?” she asks, then looks at Saylor who’s staring at me wide-eyed from her favorite floor spot. “Did you hear her say that, or am I hallucinating?”
“There’s such a thing as collective hallucination,” Saylor supplies.
Jasmine’s mouth drops open. I press my lips together to keep from laughing. She shakes her head.
“I’m not going to ask why you know that, because I’m afraid it’s going to have nothing to do with being premed,” Jasmine says, and Saylor smiles in a way that reveals Jasmine’s theory is correct.
Aurora walks out of her bedroom, squinting at the light coming through the living room window.
Her pale-pink sleep shirt is at least three sizes too big, as are her sweatpants.
I learned when we first moved in together that she prefers to wear baggy clothes while relaxing, since she’s in form-fitting leotards and tights so often for dance.
“Marigold snuck out to an underground fight club without telling anyone,” Jasmine informs her.
Aurora rubs her eyes. “Okay?”
“No, not okay.” Jasmine gives me the kind of look I’d expect a mother to give a misbehaving child. “You should have told us. What if something would have gone wrong?”
“I didn’t go alone,” I say in defense, though I know I’ll regret doing so once she asks who came with me.
“Who went with you?” Saylor asks. There’s a gleam in her eye that I don’t like.
“Jameson,” I mumble.
Jasmine sucks in a breath. Saylor giggles. Aurora is thankfully without reaction, though that could be because she’s mixing up her iced coffee in the kitchen.
“When I told Paisley, she said I needed to bring a bodyguard and basically forced us to go together,” I say, though judging by the looks on my friends’ faces, my words are of no use anymore. They’re jumping to conclusions like a game of hopscotch.
“Did someone try to hurt you and then Jameson knocked them out like how Shepherd did for Jasmine last year?” Saylor asks excitedly.
I shake my head. “No, but we did get kicked out. And banned.” I pout when I recall the last part.
“How do you get banned from an illegal fighting ring?” Jasmine asks, incredulous.
“You weren’t allowed to bring in your phone, but I snuck mine in to get proof of everything. The founder of the place caught me with it.” I huff. “He stole my phone right out of my hand and deleted all the photos. He even thought to erase my recently deleted folder.”
“Who’s the founder? Do we know him?” Saylor asks, resting her arms on the coffee table and her chin on top of her arms.
“His name is Hayes Rosewood,” I say, and Aurora lets out a half scoff, half laugh as she brings her coffee into the living room. “You know him?” I ask her.
She sits down to my left, putting her back against the arm of the couch so she can face me.
“He’s in one of my classes. Spends all of his time flirting instead of taking notes.” Aurora rolls her eyes.
“Wait, he’s flirted with you?” I ask.
Thinking of a guy as dangerous as Hayes setting his sights on Aurora makes me uneasy. It’s not like he hurt me or Jameson, but there was this aura around him. He had a look in his eye that said he thought he was untouchable.
“All the time. It’s some kind of game to him.” She takes a sip of her iced coffee before continuing. “The other girls in class fall all over him because he’s rich, but no amount of money can cover up his narcissism.”
Him being rich would explain why the basement looked more like a speakeasy than a frat house last night.
“Well, it’s probably for the best to stay away from him,” I say to her. “He wasn’t evil or anything, but I don’t trust him.”
“You’re just mad he sabotaged your story,” Jasmine says, bumping my shoulder. “Though I have to agree that someone running a fight club doesn’t sound like a good fit for Aurora.”
“I appreciate the concern,” Aurora says dryly. “But as I said, I don’t like him. He asks me out, and I turn him down every time and will continue to as long as he acts the way he does.”
“What if he turned into a nice, genuine guy?” Saylor asks. “What would you do then?”
Aurora smirks. “Then I guess I’d learn what it’s like to date a billionaire.”
I gape at her. “Aurora!”
“What? He’s attractive. If he wasn’t an absolute idiot, I’d consider him.”
Jasmine laughs. “Fair enough.”
“Even though he runs a secret fight club?” I ask her.
She shrugs. “As long as everyone is there of their own will, I don’t see why it’s a big deal. My little brother is super into boxing, and so is my dad.”
I rub my temples. “Is no one going to hate him on my behalf? Does he really get an excuse because he’s pretty?”
Jasmine throws an arm around me.
“We’re on your side, Marigold. Aurora isn’t going to date Hayes because it doesn’t sound like he’s changing his ways any time soon.”
“So we can add him to the list of enemies we’d like to throw rocks at?” I ask with a smile.
“We don’t have a list like that!” Jasmine laughs.
“Give me a few minutes and I can make one,” Saylor says, and starts to riffle through a pen pouch. “What color should I use? Red seems too basic. What about silver, to represent the rocks?”
“Sure,” I say at the same time Jasmine says, “We do not need a list of enemies.”
“I disagree. I think it’s a healthy coping mechanism.”
Saylor holds up a pen. “It has glitter.”
I point at her. “Glitter. We’ve got to use it.”
Jasmine shakes her head, but then a mischievous look comes over her.
“Fine, we can make the list. But only if you answer this: is Jameson on it?”
I glare at her, but she’s unfazed. Figures.
Jasmine has been secretly team reconciliation.
I know when it comes down to it, she’ll be on my side, but she thinks I should talk things through with Jameson.
I’m not ready to do that. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be.
Even though it’s months later, everything feels as raw as the day I found out about the internship.
Last night comes to mind. He’d said he cared about me, even though I knew I’d upset him.
That sort of notion is hard for me to digest. Growing up, my parents would argue; then they’d spend the next few days, sometimes weeks, being passive-aggressive toward one another, sometimes dragging me into things or taking out their pent-up frustration on me in the form of loud lectures about expectations I wasn’t meeting.
The expectations were usually ones I was unaware existed, but that didn’t matter to them.
“I guess I don’t want to throw rocks at him,” I admit. “But if we had a list of friends, I wouldn’t put him on it yet either.”
Jasmine raises her brows. “Should I point out that you said yet?”
I scowl down at my now-lukewarm coffee mug.
“No.”
“I’m writing down the nurse I met yesterday during my volunteer hours. She was heinous,” Saylor says, switching the subject back to the list. I give her a grateful smile. “Mean girls should not go into the medical field.”
“Can you put down my Business Ethics professor?” Aurora asks. “I think if a rock hit him, it might help him teach better.”
We start listing out people and airing our grievances. Eventually, we end up just laughing and sharing stories from our week, the sparkly list of names forgotten. It lifts my mood, which is exactly what I need to ease the sting of last night’s failure.
If only being around my friends could help me forget about Jameson. Each time we share a story, I keep thinking of how he would react. It emphasizes the growing hollow ache that I’ve felt since last summer.
I’ve heard it said that time heals all wounds. But how long will it take before I stop feeling like I’m bleeding out every time I take a breath?