twelve
Rumor Has It… It seems the Queen won more than a crown on prom night! Her king finally got down on one knee and put a ring on it! If you want to see it in person, you know where to find her! She might even give the lucky few a peek at the diamond ? ?
Colt Darling
I’ve heard the term, “a monkey on your back,” but that must be a pretty lie concocted to try to get people sober. Because it’s not a monkey. It’s a fucking monster, a beast, a demon from hell. It snarls in my ears, threatens, cajoles, begs. It tears at the inside of my skin with claws, like I’ve swallowed it and now it’s caged in my body, raging to break free even if it kills me.
What’s the fucking difference?
It’s already ruined my life.
I watch Dixie parading around the café, giggling and flaunting her ring for the fifth day in a row, holding out her hand and basking in the admiration as girls crowd around to ooh and ahh over it. I fucking hate them. I hate her. I hate Gloria Fucking Walton, who told me to make a commitment that apparently I later made to Dixie when I was blacked out. I don’t fucking know. I don’t know how I went from basically telling Dixie we were over, to agreeing to go to prom, to somehow deciding I was sorry for all of it and, in my fucked up state, that I wanted to give up my life to make up for it.
She always says I’m sweet when I’m on the pills, but I didn’t know they made me into a goddamn saint.
But there’s the ring on her finger to prove it.
“Dude, you’re so fucked,” Duke crows, giggling with a giddiness that’s only surpassed by Dixie’s. “I knew she was the best you could do, but I didn’t know she had your balls on a chain around her neck. You actually love the bitch!”
DeShaun and Cotton snicker.
“You’d know exactly where my balls are, wouldn’t you?” I snarl at Duke. I haven’t swallowed a pill since prom, but instead of getting easier, it’s only gotten harder, and I’ve gotten meaner with each passing day.
“Whatever, man,” he says, grinning. “You’re going to be fucking that dog for the next forty years. I’m going to marry a Victoria’s Secret model and bring her over just to rub it in your face. Loser.”
“You were just saying you’d fuck her at prom last week.”
“Yeah, it’s called beer goggles,” he says with a shrug, then starts cackling again. “Exactly how many beers did you have on the roof?”
The others are laughing aloud now. “No offense, but a ring? ” DeShaun asks, shaking his head. “At least wait a month until graduation.”
“Yeah, it’s one thing to have a preference,” Cotton says. “No judgment on that one, man. I got my own. But marry her?” He shakes his head and looks at me in this pitying way that makes me want to put his teeth through the back of his head.
I hate him. I hate DeShaun. And most of all, I hate Duke fucking Dolce.
“You should have done me that favor,” he breathes down my neck, so the others won’t hear.
“Why?” I demand, not bothering to lower my voice. “You want me to fuck you for the next forty years instead? Is that what this is about? You’re pissed that someone locked me down, because you’re so fucking in love with me you can’t see straight. Is that what you’re going to say next?”
“Whatever, gaywad,” he says, glaring at me and shoving my shoulder. “You drunk or something? You’re usually not this much of an asshole.”
“No, I’m not fucking drunk,” I snap, shoving my chair back so hard the legs scrape shrilly against the tile. “I wish I was.” I throw my chair back into the spot and stalk out. I want to punch something, someone. The whispers have turned to pleas have turned to roars in my head, my guts, my chest, and I think I’m going to fucking kill someone before the day is done.
Maybe, just one pill, to get me through the day…
I hurl the door open so hard it rebounds back, then stomp across the fresh green grass under the cheerful blue sky with the bright happy sun, all of it mocking my foul mood. I want a storm, something to reflect the doom and gloom of my present state… And my future.
I sit on the empty bleachers and light a cigarette. Closing my eyes, I try to summon the excitement of a game, the full body chill that would rise up inside when the fans started screaming and stomping these same bleachers under the lights, the announcers voice ringing out over the field as he announced the team, the uprights beckoning, the scoreboard set to zero for the game, each one a fresh start. I try to call up the smell of the fresh grass and mud under our cleats, the sweat, the detergent Mom used on my uniform. I try to feel that magic that holds together a really good team, the brotherhood, knowing your teammates have your back not just when you line up along the line of scrimmage or bust out of a pocket and race for the endzone, counting the white lines that mark each down, your whole body electric and alive and unstoppable; but also when you’re dragging yourself through two-a-days in the brutal August heat, feet pounding these bleachers with dogged, exhausted determination when someone fucked up and the whole team had to run them together.
But that world feels as far away as Destiny, as unreal. There’s no excitement, not even when I try to go back. My own body feels heavy and claustrophobic, and I want to crawl out of my skin. There’s no chill, no thrill. The only smell is the cigarette smoke clinging to my mouth and hands. There’s no brotherhood, no team that has my back on the field and off. I’m alone, and I’m so goddamn sick of it.
I haven’t been allowed to attend a football game in three years, and now I’m supposed to act like I’m cool with the guys who cut me out of that life, cut me down, reduced me to this nine-fingered golem hunched over in misery, an addict itching for the only fucking thing that made me forget, that made being alone bearable for a while. I wasn’t truly alone when I had the pills at my fingertips. When I lost everything, they were there for me, as constant and comforting as a well-worn baby blanket.
Football is nothing but a memory from a different life, the life before I lost my memory. It was someone else on that field in that freshly laundered uniform, some dumb kid with hardly a care besides securing a win in a meaningless game, maybe scoring a meaningless night with a cheerleader afterwards. It couldn’t be me. It was a movie, a dream, a show I watched in the bed of a girl who chose me while I washed down pills with a bottle of Jack to stifle my anger that I didn’t get to choose for myself.
That’s my life.
I remember the way it felt when Destiny’s skull cracked while I held her hand, but I don’t remember the way her fingers fit between mine when we held hands while lying on the treehouse floor. I don’t remember the taste of her lips, the softness of her body against mine.
I only remember the taste of bitter pills melting on my tongue, the softness of my fiancée next to me in the bed, the tightness of her grip on my neck that strangles me when she clings on, refusing to let me go even when she sees that her hold is slowly suffocating me. She won’t stop until she’s choked the life out of me, and then she’ll mount me on the wall like a fucking trophy to show off to her friends when they come over the way she’s been showing off the ring all week.
How could I have asked her to marry me?
I don’t even know if I ever want to get married. But the ring on her finger is proof that I did. That somehow, in some fucked up, pill-fogged corner of my brain, I thought this would be the solution—giving in, giving her what she wanted, getting her off my back. I can see myself doing it, saying, “Fine, if that’s what you want, I’ll get your fucking ring.” Driving to a jewelry store, dropping the cash, then shoving the box at Dixie. “Happy now?”
I can’t see myself doing what she said I did. Getting on one knee and saying all that sappy shit.
But I can’t prove I didn’t.
I walk off campus and climb into my truck. It’s Friday anyway.
Maybe, just one pill, to get me through the day…
I shift roughly into drive and pull out, roaring away from Willow Heights. Fifteen minutes later, I’m sitting outside the very back wing of Cedar Crest. There’s a tasteful wooden sign swaying in the breeze, the kind you’d see at an inn, but instead of “Cozy Cottage Bed it thunders like Jack’s giant as it lumbers clumsily around, banging and breaking anything it touches; it consumes every other thought and emotion like fire racing over a handwritten suicide note left beside a bed with the empty bottles pinning it in place.
By evening, I know I won’t make it if I don’t find a distraction. And there’s one distraction that’s been tempting me as much as the drug for the past week, that can take my mind off the need for a few hours. I can’t quit them both at once. It’s too hard. I can already feel her soft skin under my palms, her silky hair against my cheek, her weight on my lap.
I pull into the parking lot and shut off the engine, anticipation buzzing through me for the first time all day. Maybe I don’t have to go back years and search an empty football field to feel alive, to find the excitement I crave. It’s here, just upstairs.
I hurry across the lot, through the diner, and up the stairs. The green door calls to me, drawing me along like a relentless current.
She told me not to come back, but I have to tell her, to explain. I have to show her how much she means to me, even despite the stupid decision I made when I was blacked out. It’s not safe at school, but here, I have her alone. I can say anything to her, can tell her that I didn’t mean to take her words the way I guess I did. I didn’t want to commit to Dixie. I wanted to break up with her, to choose someone else, someone who makes my chest thunder and my blood rage like a storm-tossed sea.
By the time the hour is up, the hour that’s already been reserved for someone else, I barely remember the pills. My knee is bouncing a million miles an hour, and my new addiction has taken hold of my mind. I practically rush the guys coming out of the room, finding my place at the edge of the stage and pouring a drink with shaking hands. The bouncers leave us, though I know they’ll be standing outside, waiting for a word from her—a word that will never come.
She’s all mine.
I glory in the fact as I sip my drink, watching her. She stays on the pole for an entire set, like she’s punishing me by driving me out of my fucking mind. I’d order her to come to me, but the truth is, I like the tease. I like the illusion of not being able to have her. This is a craving I want, one as satisfying as the fulfillment of it.
When she finally walks down the steps, her soft curves illuminated by the ambient, warm lighting in the denlike room, I reach for her greedily, pulling her into my lap.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, an expression on her face that I don’t want to read.
“Envying that pole, at the moment,” I say, running my hands up her thighs hungrily. I drop my head back and swallow a moan of relief. She’s in my hands again, and I want to jealously lay claim to every inch of her body with my palms, my fingers. To bury them in her hair, her mouth, her cunt. Make her quake and quiver and come undone the way she does me. It’s so much more than just lust, though. I’m not even hard, but I might as well have just had the world’s best orgasm for all the relief I feel at being with her again after a week of staying away.
I know I shouldn’t have come back now, that I’m putting her in danger. Dixie threatened to call in Royal, and though Gloria seemed to think that would put me in danger, I know better. After what he did when I punched Duke, I know I’m on solid ground with the Dolces. I can’t say the same for Lo. Being here, being anywhere near her, puts her in danger. But I couldn’t hold back any longer. I had to see her.
“You’re engaged,” she says flatly, drawing me back to reality. “You’re going to be fucking married, Colt.”
“Do you ask all the men who come in here if they’re married? Or just me?”
“I can’t do this,” she says, swallowing and looking up at a corner of the room, like she can’t even stand to look at me. I don’t blame her. She basically spelled it out for me, told me to win her over, and instead, I fucking asked another girl to marry me.
“Well, you’re just going to have to,” I say, my voice hardening, deepening my self-loathing. “I rented the room for the rest of the night, so you’re mine until you get off.”
Her eyes snap to mine, and she blinks at me without comprehension. “All night?”
“I told you I didn’t like other men having you like this. Now they can’t.”
“You had no right,” she grits out. “Not when you’re fucking engaged to someone else.”
“Take it up with the club,” I say. “It’s their rule. The room was open. I booked it. There wasn’t a time limit, as long as I was good for it, and you know I am.”
“What are you going to do, buy out the club every night so no other guy can see me take off my clothes?” she asks, rolling her eyes.
“Not the club,” I say. “Just this room.”
“You’re unbelievable,” she mutters. “Other men aren’t allowed to even look at me, but you can go home and fuck your fiancée every night?”
“I didn’t think it was your job to judge your clients,” I taunt.
“You’re right,” she says, lifting my hands from her hips and placing them on the chair beside me. “It’s my job to make them want what they can’t have.”
“But I can have you,” I challenge. “Can’t I?”
“For the next three hours, you can have my body and my time,” she agrees, rolling her hips in a sensuous rhythm that makes my cock stiffen. “Because you bought it. Thanks for reminding me what this is. I’m a sex worker, and you’re a client. And that’s all.”
“Keep pretending if that makes it easier, Butterfly,” I say with a smirk. “We both know that’s not all this is.”
She smirks back at me, draping an arm over the back of the chair so she can rise, letting her hair tumble down my chest and her tits come to within inches of my face. “You think I’m going to keep giving you my heart after you gave someone else your ring?”
“I didn’t ask for your heart.”
“Good,” she says. “Then like I said, you’re just another client. You pay for an experience you can’t get at home, and I give it to you, no questions asked.”
“That’s not what I want,” I growl in frustration, but when I reach for her, she catches my hands and places them back on the chair.
“What exactly do you want?”
Everything. I want every fucking thing from her, even the things I didn’t ask for. I want her body, her soul, her heart, her mind. I want her trembling submission, her bitter tears, her shining triumphs, the wild laughter that lives in my memories as they return like sun-dappled daydreams, with her head thrown back and her hair spilling in wild tangles down her back. I want her lips on my chin as she stretches up for a kiss, her fingers in my hair. But I have no right to ask for any of that when I asked for someone else’s hand last weekend.
“You,” I say hoarsely, unable to stop myself from saying something, even if I can’t put into words everything I want without having her laugh in my face.
“And you have me,” she says with a coy smile. “For three hours.”
“This is all I’ll ever get from you?”
“While you’re engaged to someone else?” she asks. “Yeah, Colt, that’s all it can ever be. Purely physical, purely professional.”
“That’s enough for you?”
She shrugs. “We all take what we can get.”
“This is all I can get?” I ask bitterly. “A tease? And maybe, if the price is right, an emotionless fuck? What happened to the girl who soaked my lap, who fucked me in the freezing rain, who screamed she loved me like a curse?”
“Come on, Colt,” she says. “You can’t think any of that was real. A strip club isn’t a place you come looking for love. It’s a place you come to indulge your fantasies.”
“Fine,” I say, placing my palms on her thighs and pressing firmly, backing her off my lap. “Then go back to the stage.”
Her gaze is wary, but she doesn’t call for her bodyguards. Instead, she turns and walks away slowly, her round ass bare around her G-string, bouncing with each step.
My mouth goes dry, and my head is absolutely scrambled by the time she reaches the steps.
“Stop,” I order.
She hesitates, then slowly turns back to face me, her sapphire eyes steady with a strength I can’t wait to conquer.
“That’s a good girl,” I say. “Now get on your knees and crawl to me.”
*
I sit in my truck in the parking lot, the constant nagging now an incessant scream inside me. I can’t do it. I can’t fucking do it.
Maybe I could have if she’d let me drown myself in her instead. If she hadn’t climbed off my lap the moment my time was up, if she’d said yes when I asked her to continue the night elsewhere.
But she didn’t.
I open the console, my fingers trembling like a starving man searching for morsels with the last vestiges of his strength. The dim overhead light shows me nothing out of the ordinary though, nothing but car wipes and tissues, a crushed cigarette pack, a couple lighters, a baggie or two with crumbs of weed left in the corners, and a handful of orange bottles, each as empty as the ones beside Mom’s bed when I found her.
“Fuck,” I mutter, pawing everything out and tossing it onto the other seat, as if I’ll find something that doesn’t exist if I just get everything out of the way, get rid of the shadows the trash casts over my life. When the console is empty and bare, I slam my palm against the steering wheel and my head back against the seat. “Fuck!”
I roar the word this time, knowing I’m spiraling but unable to stop, unable to help myself. The need has taken over, the beast on my back no longer content to hang onto me and sink its claws into my ribs, its teeth into my spinal cord. It’s finally brought me to my knees the way I did Lo tonight, pinned me flat on the pavement, crushed the last of my willpower, snuffed out the fight in me. I swing open the door and hop down from my truck, already halfway across the street to the tattoo parlor in my mind, the relief so close I can taste it spreading over my tongue.
And like an apparition, Maverick is there, alone under the glow of a streetlight.
I raise a hand and call to him, but a car pulls out of the lot and onto the street that separates us, the engine drowning my voice.
I move in slow-motion, as if I’m in a dream, a nightmare where I need to run but every step is like wading through quicksand.
The car swerves, glides to a stop at the curb in front of him. I hear the window slide down, or maybe I imagine it.
And then he’s opening the door, and I move faster, and I call to him again, but he’s already slipping inside.
The car pulls away from the curb, shooting forward, taking with it both of my fixes, leaving me standing on the side of the road emptyhanded and empty.
The taillights fade, the sleek, forest green ‘69 Mustang disappearing from view.
My hands ball into fists at my sides. She’s going to fucking pay for that. All the rage that’s been simmering inside me for years rises like a tide now, billowing inside me until I know I’m going to blow into shrapnel if I don’t find an outlet real fucking fast.
Usually I can fuck it out, but when the girl I fuck is the one pissing me off, it complicates things. I storm back to my truck and jump in, gun the engine, and peel out of the parking lot. I know where Maverick lives, but I also know he doesn’t take hookups home. Maverick lives by his own set of rules. People think he’s a dog, that there’s nowhere and no one he won’t fuck because he fucks in cars, gyms, classrooms, bathrooms, friends’ couches and floors… Anywhere there’s a surface he can lay someone down on or push them up against or bend them over.
But he won’t fuck where he eats, not even when his parents and his little sisters aren’t home.
Which means they went to Gloria’s.
She doesn’t live with her sisters anymore, and I’m not going to call Maverick and ask for directions. There’s only one other person she talks to, one person who might have been to her place.
I dial while I drive, roaring after the Mustang that disappeared too soon, without giving me a chance to follow. The streets aren’t completely deserted, but traffic is light enough this time of night that I can’t expect her to be hung up at a light.
“Dynamo,” comes the answer after a couple rings. “Did someone drop out on you at the last minute, or why you calling me so late on a Friday night?”
“Where does Gloria live?” I demand.
Silence.
“You owe me one, Teeny.”
“Can’t I just give you the bag at my next fight?”
“I don’t need your money,” I snap. “Show up for the graduation fight if you want to get your knuckles bloody, but you can keep what you win. Now give me Lo’s address.”
She sighs on the other end of the line. “Why do you want to know?”
“Maverick’s over there, and I need something. It can’t wait.”
“So call him.”
“He’s not answering,” I lie. “And you’re the only one who knows we’re more than friends. I can’t ask anyone else without it being suspicious, and I don’t want it to come back on her.”
“You’re not going to fuck with her?” she asks.
“Come on, why you gotta ask me that? That hurts. You know I wouldn’t.”
“Okay, but I’m texting her to tell her you know.”
“Fine,” I say, not even caring. She’s probably too busy sucking Maverick’s dick to answer anyway.
I toss the phone down as soon as she gives me the address, swing onto the highway, and floor it. I’m familiar with the area where she lives, a little way outside of Faulkner, not far from Preston’s old loft. There’s nothing there but a few apartment complexes that sprang up in the middle of nowhere, the next exit up from Faulkner. I swing off the highway and race that way, circling the complex twice, cursing Harper for only giving me an address and not directing me to the correct building. I finally find it, pull in next to Lo, and throw the truck in park. I grab the bag in the back and jump down. The Mustang’s engine is still ticking as it cools, which gives me hope. I’m only a few minutes behind.
My footsteps bang like gunshots on the metal stairs, the echo reverberating down the corridor between apartments on each floor, the entire staircase vibrating with my fury. When I reach the fourth floor, I stomp to her number and pound my fists on the door, my pulse pounding in my head at the same beat. I lost track of when this stopped being about getting my fix and started being about getting Gloria.
I don’t wait for an answer, just grab the knob to rattle it. It turns easily in my hand, and I grab my stuff and walk in. The apartment is small and sparsely furnished, with only a couch, a couple lamps, and TV in the living room. It’s minimal enough to look bare, with no decorations on the wall, like someone’s just crashing here for a week. I hear voices from behind a door and throw it open without stopping to think about whether I want to see what’s inside.
And then it’s too late, too late to know that I don’t want to know, to realize I can’t unsee what’s behind that door.
“You didn’t lock the door?” Gloria shrieks at Maverick, who’s under her on the bed. She yanks the sheet up around her, but I’ve seen enough.
More than enough.
I stride across the room and dump the entire contents of the trash bag onto them. “To think I went to all this trouble for you, and you couldn’t wait until five minutes after I left to climb on someone else’s dick,” I snarl, tossing the empty bag at her back. “I’m glad I’m going to marry someone else if it means I’ll be free of your venomous evil.”
I turn and walk away.