Gant
I stare at the cheap imitation of her.
Her who haunts my dreams.
Her who I can’t fucking escape for one bloody hour of the day.
Her who broke my family and shattered me.
Her who I’ve never shown to Hale or anyone besides my father.
In the poor light emitting from a massive flat-screen TV that’s playing music videos, and at a distance, I can almost mistake her for my festering fixation.
Almost.
Hale gives me a knowing look. This is his present, his thank you for cosigning his bullshit.
“She’ll let you do anything,” Hale whispers.
“Anything?” Bae lifts a brow.
“Anything,” Hale reiterates. “Wrap your fingers around her throat and squeeze. Choke her. Tell her how she’s fucked everything, and now you’re going to fuck her.”
Bae looks more intrigued than I feel.
“Tell her what a little cunt she is. What a little cunt she’s been.”
The redhead smiles, spreading her legs and causing the micro skirt that she’s wearing to ride up her waist, exposing her bald cunt for emphasis.
Hale licks his lips. “Beat it the fuck up and get it all out. You’ll both enjoy it and then, maybe...”
“Maybe what?” I ask with a little too much ice. “I’ll go back to before?”
Before I was unwell.
Back when the only thing on my mind was the next party and the next fuck.
Back when my friends didn’t have to walk on eggshells, so afraid that I’d explode. So afraid they’d never be able to put me back together again.
I hate them for thinking I’m so fragile.
I love them for staying even though I’m exhausting.
Even though I’m exhausted.
Hale hesitates for a moment. “No. Maybe it’ll take the edge off. You’ve been on edge, Gant, and you’re about to free fall.”
“You’ve got to get that cunt out of your bloodstream,” Bae says lowly. “Two years and she’s still mind fucking you so hard she’s turning your brain into rot.”
“Take it out on her,” Hale says seriously. “It doesn’t take the itch away, but it scratches it.”
“You would know,” Bae snorts, eyeing Hale’s antihistamines lounging in the corner. There are three of them. “You think Zedd would stay and watch you fuck Stassi simulators?”
Hale had gone all out this time. First, it was just blondes. Then curvy blondes. Then curvy blondes with brown eyes. Then curvy blondes with big honey-coloured eyes, platinum highlights, fat asses and cherry tits.
“Maybe. Zedd isn’t as refined as he pretends to be, and we’re all a little fucked up. But don’t worry, I still have you as my audience.”
Bae isn’t a doer in his constant long sleeves and fucking turtlenecks despite the weather. He’s an observer and that extends far past his voyeurism.
“Then get to work,” Bae says coolly, heading to a free spot on the couch and lighting a cigar. “Make it good. I’m already risking scabies just sitting here.”
“Find me a better simulation next time,” I mutter to Hale before taking a seat beside Bae. Immediately the red hair crawls into my lap, her nearly translucent nipples even with my mouth.
I’d envisioned Elle’s nipples to be darker. The same colour pink as her lips.
“So yours is close at least?” Bae asks, eyeing the three girls who just sauntered in from an adjoining room at Hale’s command. They’re all petite and smiling prettily, their white teeth set in dazzling dark and bronzed skin. All contenders for Zedd, and étienne had they stayed, and of course Bae. Or so I’d think. So Hale had thought.
“If they’re not up to par, just watch. There’s always room on my team,” Hale says as a blonde slithers up to him and strips off his blazer while another crawls on her knees to unfasten his belt.
“They’ll do,” Bae says disinterestedly as he beckons a girl over. The minute she reaches for him though, he catches her wrist so hard even her tits as big as bee stings jiggle from the force. “Rule one. Don’t touch me. I’ll touch you. Understood?”
She swallows and nods.
“Get on the table and lay down. I’m thirsty.”
The redhead’s tits partially block out Bae who’s methodically pouring a glass of vodka over the woman’s body. He tosses his long hair up into a bun and drinks from the slight dip between the girl’s breasts before guiding the other girls to do the same.
But his eyes are locked on me, waiting.
And so is Red.
She bounces, settling her hot slit over my cock and fully blocking Bae out.
Her tit swipes my cheeks, but I can’t bring myself to suck on her nipple. It’s the wrong fucking colour.
“What about your rules?” she asks, her voice heavy with lust. “Am I allowed to touch you?” She wraps one arm around my neck, her fingers sinking into my nape.
She wouldn’t ask me the rules. I’d tell her what the rules were.
“Rule one. Shut the fuck up.” I say, digging my fingers into her hips. They aren’t shallow enough or wide enough as I span their width. They don’t fit me properly.
But maybe if she didn’t talk, and I didn’t have to listen to her siren’s voice as opposed to her soft one, I could just pretend. We could just pretend.
Red bites her lip and stifles a giggle.
She wouldn’t giggle. She’d swallow.
She wouldn’t let me explore her so freely as Red’s doing. She’d grab my wrists. She’d want to stop me, but ultimately, she’d let me do whatever the fuck I want because deep down she likes it.
Smooth. That’s what comes to mind as I stroke my fingers down Red’s spine. Her skin’s too smooth and hairless like she’s been waxed everywhere besides her insides.
I don’t like it.
I like the goosebumps.
I like the fine downy of white-blond hairs that trail down the back of Elle’s nape into her leotard.
Time ticks by and she grinds her hips, keeping my rule of keeping silent, but no matter how much she shifts her hips, my cock isn’t getting hard.
I can’t focus on her mysteriously wet slit because nothing is arousing.
All I can focus on is how the red of her hair is too artificial, like a crayon.
All I can hear are her fake-ass breathy moans, and the slurping from the coffee table behind her and Hale and his harem behind them.
“Call me Haley,” Hale moans from the cradle of one blonde’s thighs, while the other two work his cock with jerky head movements.
“Haley’s a girl’s name,” the blonde giggles.
Hale doesn’t lift his head, but he glares up at her. “Did I ask?”
She giggles again, nervously this time, and goes back to running her hands through his hair, the way Stassi always does.
“Ok…Haley.”
“No. Sing-song it.”
“Hayyy-lee?”
The key is off, but it’s soon drowned out by gagging as Hale takes out his frustration by fisting his hands in another blonde’s hair while holding himself deep in her throat.
I wrap a hand around Red’s throat and squeeze, but her eyes bulge with excitement, not fear. Beneath my thumb, her pulse isn’t racing like a galloping horse. It’s only quickened a fraction.
She stares at me and I stare up into her green eyes that aren’t green enough.
Something in me snaps and I squeeze her so hard I see the life leaving those imposter’s eyes.
They roll back into her head just as my phone vibrates in my pocket. She bucks, liking the sensation.
But I don’t.
Wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong!
The word strikes my brain like a gong.
Using my grip on her neck, I toss her off of me unceremoniously and into the couch cushions. Her knee hits the remote and the music videos playing on the flat screen change to the local news station.
Hale glares at me as if the weather report is responsible for breaking his concentration and not those high-pitched, off-key moans.
Bae pulls his cigar out of a pussy, and watches as it exhales a plume of smoke, before averting his eyes to the TV. Even he finds it more interesting.
Red tosses her Ronald Mcdonald strands from her eyes and gazes at me in awe and disbelief. “Is this a part of the game or…”
“I’m not playing games.”
“He’s fucking gamed out,” Bae sing-songs in an Essex accent.
I shove the back of his head with my knee, but he only uses the momentum to lick up more vodka from the girl’s navel.
“So…you don’t want to fuck?”
I don’t want to do anything.
My phone vibrates insistently against my thigh. I ignore it.
“Your pussy isn’t some magical void that can suck out what’s wrong with me through my cum.”
Buzz. Buzz.
“That is profound,” Bae slurps.
“Okay Emo,” Red huffs, looking at Hale. “But I’m still posting a story time that we fucked. Hale promised I could.”
Hale points a warning finger at her. “No slander.”
I don’t give a fuck what she posts.
The buzzing dies, then starts up again.
I rip the phone from my pocket, ready to cut it off when I see the word father rolling across the screen. I let out a breath and shut my eyes to ward off the impending migraine before answering it.
Here we fucking go.
“You bought a fucking club?” my father’s deep voice booms from the speaker. When I was younger, it was strong enough to create a whirlwind of fear within me. It hasn’t lost any of that strength, but I’m able to compartmentalise it now.
“I didn’t touch your money.”
“I don’t care if it’s your inheritance from that cunt.”
I flinch, biting my lip so hard that my mouth fills with blood.
“I don’t even care that you spent it. I care where and how you spend it. For fuck’s sake, you invest in a club, of all things, and with that boy of all people?”
Instinctively, I hit the volume button, not wanting my father’s words to carry on the wind and assault Hale’s ears. They’re sensitive enough. My ears are already used to my father’s uncensored words. Well, except when it comes to my mother. Two years later and I’m still not used to his colourful adjectives for her, though he rarely spoke of the traitor at all.
“Why didn’t you come to me first?”
When have I ever been able to come to you?
I couldn’t come to you when I got the lead role in a play because you demeaned ballet and forced me to quit it for lacrosse.
I couldn’t come to you about Mum’s death because, according to you, she was a worthless whore who shamed the Auclair name. And I was just a worthless bystander who watched it happen.
I couldn’t come to you when I had those vivid, skin-crawling nightmares you’d induced.
I couldn’t come to you and explain why I can’t touch anyone’s flesh if it’s cold and wet.
Or why I can only travel in big, commercial vehicles.
Because you already knew.You knew all of those things, and you didn’t care.
You still don’t.
My mother was a lot of things, but she wasn’t an angel. Still, she was my saviour. Not when she was the judgemental Prima Ballerina Pelletier, nor as Mrs Bart Auclair’s bourgeois and emotionally abandoned wife, but when she was just my mother, and it was just the two of us. She was my haven, my happiness, and she took it with her when she left.
She took everything.
Outside the parlour, the club’s walls rattle with the music’s deep base and lively patrons. So much life is buzzing outside these four walls, and all around me, and yet the distance between us feels impenetrable, leaving me numb. My father’s fury should stir up something within me, but it doesn’t. It’s like I’ve dissociated entirely.
Unlike what the boys think, I’ve been trying to fight my illness. My affliction. My feelings about that cunt that I can’t get out of my system.
Distractions, therapies, sex, they aren’t working.
I couldn’t even get off on others’ excitement like Hale’s when I’d signed the document, and he’d gotten the keys. I thought I could be an emotional vampire. I thought I could feed off everyone else, but I’m starving. I’m ravenous and nothing eases it.
“Why didn’t you come to me, Gant?” Bart repeats impatiently as if I hadn’t heard him the first time.
Because I don’t want your advice. I don’t want anything from you unless it involves finding her.
That’s not a secret either. I know he notices it. It’s the only time we speak with equal amounts of enthusiasm. But my distance only benefits him and his forever full schedule.
Less than a second goes by before he’s already answering his own question.
“Because you knew I’d talk you out of it! What the hell were you thinking? No, scratch that you weren’t. You’re eighteen now, Gant. How can I trust you to take over our enterprise if you aren’t maturing? If all you do is dick around? That club is going to be nothing more than a money pit.”
“You don’t know that,” I say flatly, turning to see Hale charismatically talking to his phone screen while the blondes continue to bob. He’s undoubtedly on live, talking to over three million followers about the private pre-opening they’ll be grovelling to come to once the semester starts. If anyone can make a club popular, it’s Hale, or rather, our untouchable group, the five horsemen. Senior year’s enough time to turn a profit and bow out before handing the club to the next line of Beaulieu’s untouchable seniors. “Instead of berating me from the onset, why don’t you give me a chance? I might surprise you.”
On the TV, a ballet recital comes across the screen from the local news station. It’s being performed in the next town over by some public school. They’re showcasing its performing arts sector that’s being defunded. I’m immediately underwhelmed as the group of forty-six students gives a lacklustre performance of, of course, the Sugar Plum Fairy.
Fuck that sugary plum bitch.
“You want to surprise me? Find a worthy investment. Do something before graduation that’ll make the Auclairs proud.”
“Does that still include Mum?”
The silence is deadly.
On the TV, the cameraman pans left, and I do a double take. My heart pounds in my ears as a copper-haired girl flashes across the screen. I let my arm holding the phone drop as my father finally reanimates and begins screaming profanities, working himself towards an aneurysm.
I rise from the couch like a phoenix from the fucking ashes, bypass the coffee table dripping with alcohol and slick, and walk straight to the TV. My fingers feel like foreign objects glued to my body as I press the buttons on the side, cranking up the audio to drown out the club’s music.
No, it couldn’t be her.
The girl that haunted my fucking existence ever since that night when my life turned to hell.
The girl and her worthless family we’d been unable to find for almost two years.
The girl who pinned the email leak on me.
The girl who made my mother think I’d betrayed her up until her dying breath.
“We have an intermediate ballet student here,” the reporter says. “Can you tell us your name?”
“I’m Elle Ginhart,” she pants and my throat goes dry, my lungs ceasing to function.
It’s her. I’ll never forget that face, with the light spattering of freckles that formed a tiny heart on her left cheek, or those eyes that are the purest form of emerald green.
“I’ve attended L. E Whittaker High School for two years now and I’ve been a part of the ballet program ever since.”
This bitch has been one town over? Just one fucking town over this entire time and my father hadn’t found her? Impossible.
“Elle, how does it feel knowing that the funding behind Whitaker’s ballet and dance program is being taken away?”
“I think it’s a huge mistake.”
I think it’s my biggest victory.
“Dance is a massive outlet for so many students that attend the school. It keeps them busy and their minds focused on positive things, not what’s happening on the streets or even in their own homes.”
She damn near whispers the latter part and the reporter nods sympathetically.“We tried so hard to keep the program going with fundraisers. We even restored the studio ourselves. But in the end…”
Through the phone speaker, my father barks, “Try that shit again and I’ll freeze your accounts!”
I turn the volume up higher as the reporter asks another question.
“With dance classes suspended in the new school year, how will you cope?”
“They’re my only outlet. I can’t cope without them.” She shakes her head. “I’ve been searching for a new performing arts school to complete my senior year.”
I’ve just found her one.
“Gant? Are you there?” I hear my father say, but I ignore him.
“Can you give us a hint of where you may end up?”
“I wish I could. My dream is to attend Beaulieu Academy. I applied for a scholarship for a second time in April, but I haven’t heard back yet.”
But you will. A genuine smile cracks my lips for the first time in two bloody years as I step closer to the screen, so close my nose practically grazes the glass.
For once, I feel something.
A vitriolic buzz cruises through my veins with so much vigour it sends my heart racing and the blood rushing in my ears and through my cock.
“Right now, I’m seeking alternatives across the county.”
You’re not getting away from me. Ever again.
“GANT!”
I put the phone back to my ear. “Make the Auclair’s proud,” I repeat slowly. For once, I agree with him. “You’re right.”
I’m about to make this cunt’s dream come true.
She killed me that day.
And now… now she’s resuscitated me.
She’s the very air that I’ll breathe.
Every day.
Every hour.
Every second.