Elle
When I strolled out of Beaulieu’s gates with Stassi and Aria after breakfast, the last thing I expected was to end up in an adult sex shop.
“I told you we should’ve gone to Mademoiselle’s,” Stassi says, eyeing a pleather pair of assless chaps. “Everything here is so gaudy.”
“Sorry I don’t have a three-figure budget for French lace,” I say, searching the stocking selection that has two pairs for five dollars. There are tons of designs, from plain to kittens, to dicks, and even…dragonflies! I hold up the pair to the girls. “See it’s fate. Libellule, dragonfly…”
They don’t seem impressed, but I throw two pairs into my basket before eyeing a bin of lace panties… maybe there’s a boy short set in emerald green. I still can’t bring myself to put on the pair Gant bought me, but what if I got a pair myself?
“But these don’t scream French Quarter, high-end gentlemen’s club. How do you expect to get hired wearing stuff like this?” Stassi asks.
“The vibe here is more like Sixth Street,” Aria agrees, eyeing a super shiny synthetic wig.
“What happens on Sixth Street?” Stassi asks.
“What doesn’t happen is a better question.”
“And how do you know that?” Stassi arches a brow.
“Simple, absentee parents and constant explorations around the city with étienne,” Aria says, donning a stocking cap before plopping the cotton candy pink wig onto her head.
“I wish Zedd was more like étienne. Open and laid back.”
From the tidbits I gathered about étienne and Aria, I think they’re more than laid back with each other. More like spread-eagle.
“He’s worse than dad and mum, depending on the week,” Stassi continues. “She keeps calling and asking me for pictures.”
Aria stops adjusting her wig to stare at her. “Why is your mum asking you for pictures?”
Seriously, I wished Stassi would just let the cat out of the bag already, but she feigns interest in some penis keychains instead. “She’s just excited to see me in my new custom dance costumes again. You know she designs most of them. It just gets overwhelming.”
“Speaking of your mother,” I whisper to Stassi sheepishly as Aria busies herself with the stripper heel selection. “Do you have any more size eight uniforms?”
She shakes her head while making sure Aria isn’t listening. “I gave you the last one last week. What happened already?”
“Most of it’s fine. It’s just the shirt that’s torn.”
“How? Don’t tell me it was Rin and her bitches again?”
“No.”
Rin had been lying low. Despite her claims of not being Beaussip, she’s still threading pretty carefully as she should. I still hadn’t confronted her about the email thread yet and I think she knows shit’s about to come her way.
Stassi lifts a brow. “Then?”
I blush. “Gant ripped it.”
“What?!”
Both girls had said it in unison and Stassi pales because Aria has supersonic hearing. Holding on to her wig for dear life, she comes clomping over in the most absurd heels I’d ever seen. She’s an inch taller than Stassi now.
“Is that a goldfish?” I ask, bending down to get a closer look at what’s floating in her eight-inch acrylic heels.
“Who cares,” Aria puffs. “Gant tore your clothes off?”
Stassi grins wickedly. “So I was wrong when I said nothing good happens in that creepy old greenhouse?”
“I already told you, nothing happened,” I say, backing away slowly from both girls and heading to the corset section. They look like vultures ready to tear me apart for every detail.
“But you wanted it too,” Aria says, her pink wig going askew. “I knew you were panting for Daddy Gant.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Gant is not daddy material.
Is he?
“In your dream, you muttered ‘good girl’,” Stassi says. “Everyone knows you only want to be a ‘good girl’ for a dom or daddy. In Gant’s case, I bet it’s both.”
“How do you figure that?” Aria asks.
Stassi shrugs. “I own a Kindle. I’ve been on a praise kink lately. Is that okay with you?”“I bet Zedd’s a daddy. Zaddy Zed.”
“Don’t ever say that again,” Stassi hisses.
“Can we please stop talking about this?” I ask, flustered. “Gant is none of the above. Not with me anyway, but you’re free to find out for yourselves. Be my guest.”
Aria and Stassi exchange wicked looks.
“Yeah, he definitely edged her,” Aria says. “Otherwise, she wouldn’t be offering him up to us.”
“She doesn’t mean it anyway,” Stassi says. “I bet you’d lose your shit if you saw him with someone else.”
“Why would I care?” I ask incredulously, pausing my search through a bin of plastic corsets.
“Anyone would care if the guy who pays them attention twenty-four-seven suddenly chases some other chick,” Aria says.
“I wish someone was as obsessed with me as Gant is with you,” Stassi says, putting on a stocking cap and donning a horrid reddish-orange wig on her head.
I gape at her incredulously. “Gant humiliates me. Blackmails me. Stalks me! Everywhere I turn there he is with his shit-eating grin.”
“But it’s kind of sexy, right?” Aria says dreamily.
“What’s sexy about him torturing people? Poor Sylo…”
Aria snorts. “You clearly don’t know Sylo, because nothing about him is poor. He’s probably worse than Gant.”
Impossible.
Then again…they are related. Still, it’s not their relationship that keeps nagging at me. At first, I thought maybe Sylo reminded me of Gant but with different colouring. Maybe that’s where the distant recognition kept coming from, but no. I’m convinced Gant has nothing to do with it. They don’t look alike at all.
I could ask him if we’ve met before, but he’s a sheep now. Following Gant’s orders to pretend like I don’t exist whenever we cross paths in ballet class, I rarely see him on the massive campus without Gant’s constant supervision.
Still, I feel obligated to say something. An apology for not taking Gant seriously? Then again, Gant’s his cousin. He knows his cousin. Maybe trying to corner him alone would only make things worse. After all, he isn’t innocent either. He only agreed to help me to piss Gant off too.
So then you share a common goal.
No. Shared.
Sylo isn’t playing anymore.
“What did Gant say when he tore off your shirt?” Stassi bumps my arm, forcing me to look at her. Her amber eyes are wild and desperate like she’s trying to live vicariously through my tale.
“Nothing really,” I flush.
“Uh, I’ll fill in the blanks if you won’t,” Aria says, tapping her chin and squinting at me. “You guys hate each other, so there’s a lot of pent-up sexual tension. A lot of anger ... So he ripped your shirt, gazed at your breasts and lost it. Snapped. That’s when he grabbed your throat…. Damn, I love it when they do that.”
“He didn’t,” I murmur, but he had before…
“How would you know if you like it?” Stassi asks Aria, her eyes wide. “Who’s been grabbing your throat over the summer?”
As if we don’t already know.
“No one. I have subscriptions to streaming platforms,” Aria sneers. “Anyway, I bet you were arguing. Running your mouth when he tore it. That’s why he gripped your neck, shoved you back and slammed you up against the glass wall. He runs his eyes along your lips and tells you to just shut the fuck up already, but keep your mouth open.”
Stassi gasps, rubbing her own throat.
I even rub mine. I can almost feel Gant’s fingers against my skin. I can almost see the scenario Aria’s creating playing in my own mind because Gant had done just that on the first day we’d met. I’d been scared. But I liked it.
“You try to resist. To say something, but the moment you try, he spits right on your tongue.” Aria goes on. “Then he strokes his thumb over the hollow of your throat, coaxing you to swallow it like a good girl.”
“Who the hell would like that?” I ask, even as my mind decides that I would like that.
Stassi shushes me with a flap of her hand. “Go on Ari.”
As the two keep up their toxic banter, I start to wonder what’s wrong with them and what’s wrong with me. Because all the fucked up things Aria’s saying are things I could envision Gant doing and me enjoying.
I’d never met anyone like him before, and maybe that’s playing into my obsession. I was used to boys with salt and vinegar crisp breath trying to lean in for a hands-free kiss that made them look like fishes while giving me the ick.
I think back to my idea of finding another sexual distraction than Gant and the more I think about it, the more I don’t think anyone else will do.
The more I think, I don’t want to try with anyone else.
“I can’t be Gant,” Stassi huffs, adjusting her wig. “I’m ginger, just like Elle.”
“I can be ginger too,” Aria says, trying to rip the wig off Stassi’s head. But Stassi pushes her palm against Aria’s forehead to keep her at bay. With her free hand, she grabs a velcro moustache and sticks it above Aria’s lip.
“Gant doesn’t even have a moustache,” she protests, but Stassi is resolute in being me.
Eventually, Aria gives in, swapping her pink wig for a short dark one, and I ignore them both as I look through a rack of shiny satin corsets. The sage green one doesn’t look too cheap and didn’t Gant say I looked good in green? Maybe I could make it work…
“Gant!” Stassi squeals, backing herself against the brick wall. “What are you doing?”
Aria, coming around to the idea of the moustache, strokes it fondly before throwing up an arm beside Stassi’s head. “What you won’t,” she whispers. “What you dream about every time you shut those pretty green eyes and see me in another realm.”
“You think my eyes are pretty?” I gush, but both girls ignore me.
“This…this doesn’t make sense,” Stassi stutters. “We’re enemies.”
“It doesn’t mean we can’t lie together.”
“It means exactly that. Those are the rules—”
“My kingdom, my rules.”
Okay, that definitely sounds like Gant, so much so that I stop digging in the bins to watch them.
“My goal is to make you ache. Make you hurt. I can do that.”
“And you think I’d just let you?”
“We both know you’d let me do anything.”
Stassi blinks and lowers her voice. “Why? Why am I like this?”
“Like me? Obsessed? Because you fused our lives that night. Sending that video’s tied us together forever,” Aria hisses in her ear. “And I won’t let you escape. I won’t let you disentangle yourself from me because you made me like this.”
Stassi and I both let out little gasps.
That’s…that’s not true, is it? Is that where Gant’s obsession stems from? A trauma bond? A trauma loop he can’t get out of? One he won’t let me get out of either?
“You changed my life forever,” Aria says, “but one thing is going to remain a constant in it. You.”
“I think you’re right,” Stassi whispers, her eyes boring into Aria’s. “I bet that’s exactly how Gant thinks. That’s precisely why it all makes sense to him. How he justifies hating yet wanting, no, needing Elle. He needs her to cope.”
“She needs him too,” Aria says, gazing at me.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “I don’t need Gant for anything.”
“Except to stay at Beaulieu,” Stassi chimes in.
“And in the advanced ballet dance. And for swimming lessons,” Aria adds, her eyes flicking to mine.
Fuck. They knew.
They know.
“How do you know that about Gant?” I ask. “Or how did you guess it?”
“Gant may be a mysterious brooding boy to you, but I’ve known him since I was nine,” Aria says. “He’s no mystery to me.”
Once again, I’m reminded of just how close to Gant both girls are.
“Excuse me,” the androgynous store attendant says over the intercom, making all three of us jump. “We have back rooms for that, but please do not get any bodily fluids on the merchandise until you’ve purchased them. Thank you.”
Aria steps back from Stassi and rips off her moustache. Immediately both girls cackle madly as we zoom back to the reality of the tacky store and fluorescent overhead lighting. Tears of laughter well in Aria’s eyes as she scans Stassi’s horrible wig, and Stassi does the same, snorting at Aria’s toupee. Before I know it, both girls are doubling over in laughter and embracing each other for support with bear hugs.
As Stassi throws her head back on another giggle and grabs onto my shoulder for extra support, I can’t help but join in on the infectious laughter. I swear the moment of all three of us giggling in a nearby mirror freezes in my brain as a core memory. I’ve never had girlfriends to goof around with. The ladies at the deli were sweet, but all over sixty-five with names like Pearline.
It feels good to laugh. It feels so good to have my worries tossed to the wayside for just a moment.
But then my phone pings and the moment shatters, my stomach sinking into my ass as I think about another one of Beaussip’s articles. Lately, she hasn’t had any new material on me, but it didn’t stop her from uploading unflattering photos to the Eloisa Gallery on her website.
But it’s not Beaussip. It’s Mum asking if I’m free to take a call.
I slip into another aisle and dial her number immediately.
“Hey, Mum. Is everything okay?”“Elle!”
She sounds muffled by a crap ton of rowdy background noise that’s definitely not her coworkers at the deli. I glance at my phone screen to see the time before pressing my left ear closed and turning my phone’s volume up to the max, but it’s barely any use. It’s four, which means she should definitely still be at work.
“Where are you?” I ask, turning my back on Stassi and Aria, who are taking turns on a sex swing in the corner.
“I’m just out with a few friends.”
Pearline and Estelle didn’t go to places that set off their hearing aids, and Mum never did have friends her own age. The older I get, the more I realise it’s because she doesn’t want friends who will eventually dig into her personal life, offer her advice, or even chastise her for her poor decisions. The older women at the deli are sweet and call you baby and don’t pry, only accepting whatever information you give them. And Mum never did give any.
“Where?” I press, but I know the second I hear that damn jukebox. “You’re at a bar?”
Not just any bar. The one on the fringes of town that borders our old city where I am now, èze, and Mum’s new town. The bar that’s one of Jarett’s old favourites. The Hammered Shark.
It takes Mum a minute to answer and when she does, the background noise diminishes like she’s just walked into the bathroom.
“Yes, I’m celebrating.”
Now that there’s less noise, I can hear her voice better and it’s slurred.
“Are you drunk?” I whisper, shifting a few aisles over again from the girls’ giggles.
Mum never drank. Not even on special occasions. I’d asked her about it once and she said that Jarett drank enough for the both of them.
“I’m just having a little fun, Ellie,” she says on a hiccup. “Don’t I deserve a little celebration every once in a while?”
I shift uncomfortably. Drinking was Jarett’s thing.
“What are you celebrating?” I ask, finally staring back at a mannequin head with purple gems in the eye sockets.
“That’s why I’m calling you so early. I couldn’t wait to share the news.” She’s bubbling with so much excitement that it makes my heart automatically speed up with her rushed words. “I won!”
“Won what?”
“The Big Scratch!”
What the hell is that? But then it sinks in. Scratch. Scratch cards. Scratchers. She’d been playing Jarett’s scratchers again.
“I thought you said that was a one-time thing?”
“It was…then it became a sometimes thing.”
“Mum—”
“I won ten grand Elle! Ten freaking grand.”
I should be jumping for joy. I should feel an immense sense of relief that Mum wouldn’t struggle as badly for at least six months so long as she played her cards right. She’d have heat and full cupboards, and she wouldn’t have to worry about rent for a while.
But I don’t feel happy. I feel fear starting to creep through my veins like a slow-moving poison.
“How much did you spend to get it?”
“Oh, Ellie—”
Ellie. The precursor to her bullshit.“Don’t,” I snap. “Don’t try to baby me like I’m stupid. How much did you spend on the scratchers? Have you been buying them weekly? Daily?”
“Elle, I only pick one up when I go in to buy fuel—”
“That’s no less than twice a week!”
She lets out a long sigh, and the line goes quiet, save for the jukebox’s muffled tone.
“Can’t you just be happy for me? For us? Just for today, and we can discuss the rest later.”
Stassi’s squeal as Aria pushes her harder on the swing draws my attention to both girls. Damn, what I wouldn’t give to be that carefree with them.
“Look, I’m glad you won, but no more scratchers. Okay? They’re addictive and you’re going to waste far more than you ever earn. You just got lucky this time.”
“So let me enjoy my luck.”
“Just promise me first.”“No more scratchers.”
I sigh. “Congratulations on the win. Have you thought about how you’ll spend it? You should definitely sign up for those ceramic classes.” I finger the tarnished ballet slipper around my throat now.
“You’re such a good kid, Elle. That’s the first thing you ask, how will I spend it? On you, of course. I was calling to ask what all you needed and you’re already giving me suggestions of how I should spend it on myself?”
I soften at that. At least she’s thinking of me.
“Therapy is important,” I say. “But…if you want to get me something, some new leotards and shampoo would be nice. The good kind that doesn’t make your hair feel like straw afterwards.”
“Anything for my Elle Bell,” she laughs.
It sounds so pretty. So carefree, just like I imagined it to be whenever I saw photos of her as a teen dressed in band tees with shorts so short, it was always a toss-up if she was actually wearing any at all. But that was before and during the first few weeks of her knowing Jarett. After that, the photos grew more modest, as did her smile, which seemed non-existent by the time I came along.
“I’ll ship them to the school. Promise.”
“Thanks,” I say weakly. “Have fun celebrating. Don’t stay out too late and don’t spend too much. You should go see the landlord and clear a few months of rent in advance.”
“I’ll go to the leasing office first thing tomorrow morning. I have a plan.”
I hope so.Ten minutes later at checkout, Stassi insists on keeping the orange wig on, allowing the cashier to scan her head. Aria grabs a blonde one and slaps a curly black one, reminiscent of her hair on my head. I look more like Captain Hook than anything, but c’est la vie because it’s Aria’s money that purchases them.
“You know my hair looks nothing like that?” I ask Stassi ten minutes later, adjusting my black wig as we step out of the store, looking like bootleg versions of each other. We’re getting strange looks from passersby, especially Aria in her fish hooker heels. She has impeccable grace though, and I wonder if it comes from balancing on ice skates all the time. Either way, it must be nice to buy random crap for shits and giggles.
“I know it’s more conditioned,” Stassi says, fluffing the synthetic fibres for volume, not that it’s needed
“I’m hungry,” Aria says suddenly. “Let’s stop into Deveraux’s for a snack before the liquor store.
I eye the beautiful cafe across the street with its dark green and gold awnings and know immediately that I can’t afford a glass of water, much less a snack.
Stassi immediately looks worried too, but for very different reasons. She doesn’t want to eat in front of Aria.
“I actually need to run to the chemist first,” she says, eyeing the small store on the corner. “Here, Elle. Can you get me a croissant with ham and cheese to go?”
I look down at the bills she shoves into my hand, but before I can protest at the absurd amount, she’s already crossing the street.
“Get whatever you want,” she says over her shoulder.
Like the croissant that I know she won’t eat? Because I’d feel too guilty to spend anything else.
It didn’t matter if it was Gant, Aria or Stassi. I don’t like people spending money on me.
I’m about to take the dark curly wig off when Aria grabs my hand and pulls me in the opposite direction towards Deveraux’s. Before I can ask if we should take off our ridiculous wigs, she pulls me inside and manoeuvres us right up to the counter.
“The wait’s always a little long,” she says, jutting her chin towards an empty table in the corner. “Why don’t you sit? I’ll get Stassi’s order. I know the kind of cheese and ham she likes.”
There’s more than one option?
I try to hand Aria the bills, but she brushes me off, turning her attention toward a handsome barista.
No one pays me attention as I slink off to the corner. As informal as the cafe seems, it’s obviously anything but with the amount of designer purses I see hooked onto the backs of every woman’s chair. They’re not the trendy, gaudy kind either. They’re from brands I didn’t know existed before attending Beaulieu. The kind only old money wore that looked plain with impeccable quality and genuine materials. The difference between new money and old money.
I’m clearly no money as I self-consciously try to hide the tacky logo of the sex store on my shopping bag from view. Maybe it is best to keep the wig on in case I run into another student from the academy. The last thing I need is another Beaussip article speculating about what’s in my bag.
The thought barely leaves me when a familiar voice, cold, clear, and feminine, the epitome of an Ice Queen reaches my ears.
Rin.
She’s one table over. Her back’s to me but I have a clear view of the older Korean man sitting across from her.
“You’re eighteen now,” he says, studying her, but the tilt of her head tells me that she probably isn’t looking back at him.
“I’m glad you remembered.”
Does her father regularly forget her birthdays? I know Jarett probably didn’t remember my birth month, much less the year.
“Are those my gifts?”
“How could I forget? You sent over a very specific list.”
Rin’s laugh is as fake and cold as ice as she accepts the identical bags and peers inside, seemingly satisfied. “Isn’t that what courtship is all about? Clear and open communication?”
Courtship???
I peer into the bags and catch a peek between the tissue papers. They’re two mini purses, designer of course, and identical except for the colours. One’s a minty green, the other a pretty periwinkle.
“I’m glad you reconsidered. With the season coming up next year, I wanted to make sure I got your attention first.”
Season? What the…
Wait, this old man isn’t Rin’s father or uncle. He’s courting her! Before her season!
The world, this blue-blooded world, their world blurs before my eyes.
Why on earth would an eighteen-year-old need to worry about getting married in this day and age? And why the hell would she consider it with a man who can’t be shy of forty-five?
“And you have it. Keep bidding, so I keep it.”
Before the man who’s grinning devilishly can respond, his phone rings and he pardons himself to the small lounge area near the bathrooms. And Rin pardons herself altogether, bags in tow as she books it toward the restaurant’s exit.
I follow her clicking heels onto the street and halfway toward the curb before tapping on her shoulder.
When her terrified face whips around I almost feel…sorry for her, but then she peers into my phone’s camera that’s been recording her entire interaction in the cafe and she knows she’s fucked. Because I’ve just found out the reason why she’s been sending Beaussip so much information.
She’s broke and she’ll do anything to keep it a secret. Like helping me get my revenge on Gant.
* * *
“Elle!”
Rin barely banks the corner after our little chat before Aria is calling my name, a Deveaurex bag tucked under one arm as she waves me over to the liquor store with the other.
Now that I can see the store’s signage up close, I realize it looks familiar because I’ve been here before. With Jarett. Only a handful of times, but I’d recognize the fading signage anywhere. I stare up at the drunken animals, laughing, dancing and drinking from a fountain. Above their heads, The Watering Hole is sprawled in a big vintage script. The cartoon itself looks like it was drawn in the fifties. I remember hating that sign. Hating those smiling animals because no one inside the Watering Hole was that jolly. Well, not for long. They were, however, just as unpredictable as wild animals.
I peer through the glass and eye the short rows of liquor, but it’s the bar attached to the back I’m looking for. It’s just as I remember it, small and tucked away into a corner. Only the locals really know it exists.
I knew about it since I was six.
But the three stools lining the grimy bar are empty.
Jarett isn’t here.
He isn’t here.
“Where did you go?” Aria asks, falling into step beside me.
“Where did you go?” I quip back because I’d checked before following Rin out. “You weren’t at the counter.”
“Nevermind. The trolley’s soon coming and we still need to hide the bottles in the forest first.”
The forest stretches from Beaulieu’s back gates all the way to the fridges of town where the trolley stop is.
“Let’s get some basics. Gin, Vodka, Whiskey, and Brandy.”
“Brandy?” I ask, wrinkling my nose. “Isn’t that what granddad’s drink?”
“Well, it’s supposedly a high-end gentlemen’s club. One of those old stuffy traditional kinds and we don’t know their target audience. Middle age or pensioner level?”
Butterflies erupt in my stomach at that.
Am I really doing this? I wasn’t nervous when I picked out an outfit or thought about the money, but now…
“Damn, you’re right. It’s probably going to be full of rich fathers.”
“Or granddads,” Aria says, pulling out her phone and searching up popular mixed drink recipes. “I wonder if you’ll need to know how to mix absinthe.”
“At least I don’t have to worry about my father showing up,” I mutter. “Anything high-end is not really his scene.”
“That’s one positive,” Aria says kindly as we slip into the store and the little golden bell above the door tinkles.
The cashier gives us a bored look of acknowledgement before doing a double take. I know him. He knows me, but the wig’s throwing him off.
Good.
“Let’s get the cheapest brands we can find,” I say to Aria over the low aisles as I steer us toward the opposite end of the store. “And the smallest bottles, like a pint or two. This is just an experiment, besides we can’t have a bunch of bottles lying around in case of an inspection.”
Even I can hear the sheer terror in my voice at the last word. Seriously, what am I doing?
“Don’t worry. Ms Trix will probably just steal them and pretend it didn’t happen. Though she’s more into Sherry.”
“Cooking sherry, you mean,” I say. “Isn’t that loaded in sodium? Why doesn’t she just buy actual liquor? She munches on liquor-infused chocolates like crazy too.”
“It’s a dry campus,” Aria says, putting three miniature bottles into her basket. “It’s a strict policy, even for the teachers.”
I try not to dry heave at that.
“If we’re caught, will they expel us?”
Well, me. My parents couldn’t buy me a new uniform, much less bribe the school to put up with me until graduation.
“Why would Stassi and I risk you getting expelled?” Aria says, eyeing a bottle of clear liquor before gazing over at me. “We’re your friends.”
Friends.
My heart sings at that. Stupidly, desperately, but a happy tune nonetheless.