Chapter 16 #2
I grin, and together we hold the shelf against the wall while I drive the screws in, one by one. The drill bites deep, the wall vibrating with each thrust. I imagine what it would feel like to take her here, in this room, with all the girls gone. The thought makes me hard, and I will it away.
We finish the first shelf, and Stella whoops with delight, already arranging little potted succulents along the length of it.
“Mission accomplished,” I say, wiping sweat from my brow.
“Another one,” Kayleigh says, “over the TV.”
I glance at Andie. She’s breathing hard, her cheeks bright.
“Another one,” I agree.
We do it again, and this time our arms touch more often. When the shelf is up, I let my hand rest on her shoulder, just for a second, and she shivers under my touch.
It’s so small, so quick, that no one else sees it. But for us, it’s everything.
The rest of the night is a blur: more beer, more laughter, more shelves.
Stella makes more popcorn in the microwave and dumps it into a mixing bowl, passing it around like communion.
Kayleigh sets up the projector and starts a movie none of us really watch.
The living room gets dark, just the flicker of the screen and the glow from the kitchen light.
I’m on the couch, trying to act normal, when Andie slips in beside me. She sits so close I can feel the heat from her thigh through my jeans.
For an hour, we don’t move. We just sit there, pressed together, watching the movie but not seeing it, listening to the others giggle and snark and argue over the plot.
I want to lean over, to whisper in her ear, to tell her I adore being with her. But I can’t. Not here, not now.
So I sit, and I wait, and I hope the moment never ends.
Because in this small apartment, with these girls and these shelves and the taste of beer on my tongue, I feel more at home than I ever have in my whole life.
It’s a perfect moment.
But I know it can’t last.
We’re watching the ending credits scroll for Mean Girls, everyone in a pile around the living room. God, how long has it been? Have I really been at the apartment two hours? I’m getting ready to get up and go, when the mood changes.
I feel it first in Stella—my daughter goes still, her phone clamped tight in her hand. Kayleigh is half asleep on the floor, Simone is giggling into her popcorn, but Stella’s upright, a queen about to call for heads. It’s her tone, more than the words, that gets my attention:
“Okay, pause. I need everyone’s attention for a second.”
Andie looks up from her phone, biting her lip, wary. She knows the shape of incoming danger, but not the flavor.
Stella stands, sets her beer on the table, and claps her hands once, sharp as a gunshot. “This is important. I have something to show you all. It’s kind of like a public service announcement. You could say I’ve been waiting weeks to do this.” She grins, innocent and predatory all at once.
I see Andie flinch, her legs drawn up to her chest. She glances at me, a silent what the fuck, and I offer the smallest shrug I can muster. I want to reassure her, but I can’t do anything of the sort when allegedly, we hardly know each other.
Stella walks to the projector, flicks off the overhead light, and drops her phone onto the coffee table with a click so loud it’s as if she wants to punctuate the moment.
She cues up her laptop, connects it, and for a few seconds, the screen is just the Windows login.
The girls settle in, all of them braced for a prank or a meme war or, god forbid, old high school party photos.
Not this.
Not what’s about to happen.
Stella queues the file, labeled in plain black text on the desktop: “CC stairwell.mp4.”
The video starts. At first, there’s just the blurry stutter of a phone camera, pointed down a dorm hallway. A hand, pale and familiar, fumbles with the focus. The sound is all echo and static and the faint, giggly voice of Stella: “Oh my god, what is—wait, is that—?”
The camera pans, zooms.
And there it is: the Century College stairwell, cinderblock and ugly paint, lit by blue fluorescence. The lens shakes, finds two people on the stairs. At first, the bodies are just a tangle of skin and motion—one perched on the other, hips grinding, hair wild, the rhythm of sex unmistakable.
I see it in a heartbeat and feel my guts drop into a hole.
It’s Andie.
Naked. Wild-eyed. Riding me, her knees braced on either side of my lap, her breasts bouncing in the harsh light.
I see my own hands gripping her hips, my mouth open, my head thrown back.
The sound isn’t great, but it’s enough. I hear my own voice, low and hoarse, saying, “I claimed your ass cherry and pussy cherry. All of you belongs to me.”
Andie’s answering scream: “Yes yes yes! Ooooh, Daddy, yes, my cherries belong to you!”
Then, it gets worse. She lifts herself off of me, my cock visibly exiting her slick pussy, and turns around so that her back is to me.
“Are you ready?” I growl in her ear.
“Yes, Daddy. Put it where it belongs.”
Then, the girls gasp as Andie angles her asshole and begins to lower herself onto my huge cock. We watch as my veiny ten inch monster disappears inch by inch into her straining anus, the rim raw and reddened, as she gasps with pleasure, her breasts bare, legs spread wide.
“Mmm, you’re such a butt slut,” I growl into her ear, my hands steady on her hips. “Is my horny little slut ready to get fucked in the ass?”
“Yes,” she mewls, leaning back as her asshole swallows the length of my dick. “Fuck my asshole, Daddy. Give it to me the way I like. I’m your anal whore. Trash my hole and make me feel good.”
I’m on my feet before the sentence finishes, beer bottle slipping from my hand and hitting the coffee table with a bright, brittle crack.
My jaw is so tight I feel my teeth grind.
The video keeps playing. On the screen, I fuck Andie harder, her moans climbing the echoing stairwell.
The girls’ faces are frozen—Kayleigh, eyes round as plates, hand over her mouth; Simone, a blush rising from neck to cheeks; Mary Kate, mouth open, blinking as if the images are a trick of the light.
Andie doesn’t move. She’s gone pale as paper, her hands knotted so tight in her lap I can see the tips of her knuckles through her skin.
The video keeps going. The bodies on screen are frantic, obscene, lost to everything but the feel of each other. There’s a final crescendo, Andie’s voice breaking as she comes, and my own, ragged “That’s my good girl—take it, take it, all of it—” and then, finally, the camera goes black.
Stella flicks the lights back on.
No one breathes for a long, impossible moment.
Then, with the casual, almost bored confidence of someone who’s been waiting to drop the bomb for weeks, Stella says, “You know, I always wondered who the secret guy was. Andie, you could have just told us it was my dad. You didn’t have to lie.”
I want to speak, to say anything, but the words won’t come.
Kayleigh is the first to break the spell. She lets out a wild, whiplash laugh, then snaps, “That is so fucking hot. I mean—” She shakes her head, speechless. “I knew you were an anal aficionado, girlfriend, but wow. Just wow.”
Mary Kate just gapes at the two of us, as if she’s never seen either of us before.
Stella looks at me, rolling her eyes with the weary amusement of someone who’s seen worse. “Honestly, Dad, I’m more surprised that you let yourself get caught like that. You know those stairwells are crawling with cameras, right? It was moving day too.”
I snap back to life. My voice is a whip crack, sharper than I intend. “Where did you get that video?”
Stella sits, calm, a queen in control of her court.
“I shot it, obviously. I was grabbing the last of my stuff from the dorm, and I decided to use the stairs because the elevator was taking forever. I thought, ‘Oh my god, are people doing drugs in there?’” She shrugs.
“But it was you two, fucking your brains out.”
Kayleigh shrieks with laughter, again. “Best. Story. Ever.”
But I’m not even hearing her anymore. I’m staring at Andie, at the ruin in her face, the way her body is shaking. I want to pull her out of here, to wrap her in a blanket and never let her see daylight again. But she doesn’t look at me—she just stares at the carpet, lips pressed white.
Simone is more cautious. “Are you okay, Andie?”
The beautiful blonde doesn’t reply, merely shaking in place as tears fill her eyes.
But my daughter isn’t done yet. Stella, ever the dramatic show-woman, leans forward. “But, and here’s the fun part, Andie, I think we owe you a grand, minimum. Because you are definitely the winner of our little contest. Hell, you got double-popped, girl. That’s like bonus points.”
Simone gasps, “Wait. The bet was real?”
Kayleigh claps her hands, delighted. “Yeah, she got anally taken too! That’s got to be worth more money. I’m happy to contribute more to the pot.”
I turn to Andie. “What bet?” My voice is soft, not even mine. “What are they talking about?”
She shakes her head, mouth open, but no words come out.
Stella answers for her. “Oh, Daddy, you really didn’t know?
The whole reason Andie started fucking you was because we made a bet: a thousand bucks to the first girl to lose her virginity, but she had to have proof.
Now, we have proof and Andie won, hands down. That video is basically a work of art.”
For a long, sick moment, I don’t move. I just let the words detonate inside my skull.
Then, slowly, I look at Andie. “Is this true? You used me to win a contest?”
She shakes her head furiously. Tears are streaming down her face now, quiet and slow. She tries to speak, but only a squeak comes out. “No, it’s not what it looks like…”
That’s when the rest of me shuts off because with that phrase, I know it’s exactly what it looks like. I go very cold, very quiet.
I look at the faces in the room, all those bright, greedy eyes, hungry for gossip, for drama, for the spectacle of it. I look at my daughter, so sure of herself, so proud to be the one who broke the news.
And then I say, in a voice I barely recognize, “You’re all sick little bitches. Immature fucks, every one of you.”
A silence falls, this time total.
I grab the toolbox off the floor, the metal handle biting into my palm, and I stalk out without looking at any of them. Not at Stella. Not at Andie, who is shaking so hard she might shatter.
The door slams behind me, hard enough that the walls rattle. I take the stairs two at a time, then three. My hands are shaking, and my jaw feels like it’s going to split in two. I make it outside, into the cold blue air, before the first wave of nausea hits.
I lean against my truck, breathing hard, trying to force it all down: she used me. All along, there was a bet in place. The first girl to lose her virginity would win a monetary prize, and Andie used me to get her hands on the money.
What the hell was I thinking? Of course, she used me. That’s why she was taking photos the entire time, and I knew that. I even let her snap my face, goddamn the little bitch.
The humiliation, the betrayal, the sick twist of wanting to go back up there, to take Andie in my arms, to forgive her for everything, make me nauseous.
But I can’t.
Not now.
Not ever.
The last thing I remember, before the world tilts on its axis, is Andie’s face on the screen: beautiful, wild, hungry for me, and gone forever.
The toolbox hits the truck bed with a bang. I slam the door, turn the key, and drive away, praying that I never have to see any of them again.
But I know it won’t work.
Nothing ever does.