Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
EBONY
Tugging on the sleeves of my cardigan nervously, it takes me two drinks, one shot, and all of twenty minutes to decide to adopt the crazy and fully commit to Megan’s line of ‘go big or go home.’
“When in Rome,” I say before popping the small pink pill between my lips and washing it down with a mouthful of cheap beer that leaves a grainy residue on my tongue.
“Give that ten to fifteen and any nerves you have will melt away.” Megan beams as she follows suit and knocks back a tequila shot to chase her own pill.
Pulling her bright red lipstick from her purse, she uses her reflection in the stainless-steel fridge to reapply another coat.
Smacking her lips together and sighing as she offers it to me.
“I’m good, thanks.” I smile back, wishing the buzz of whatever party-aid I’ve just taken will hurry itself along and start taking effect. Megan pours another two shots of the salt-tinged amber liquid, and I swipe it from her before she has a chance to offer it to me.
“Try to have a little fun. Mingle, be merry, and try not to hit anyone,” she croons, spotting Mateo on the other side of the house as he enters through the doorway with a crate of beer over his shoulder, Brandon following close behind with a box of spirits.
I down the shot and revel in the warmth that blooms in my chest. “Right back at you. You left your scissors at home, right?” I choke out, and she hits me with a smile and a thumbs up before she turns on her heels and bounds over to Mateo.
He has exactly five seconds to pass the box of beers to Brandon, who sways under the weight, before my roommate is jumping up into his arms. She’ll definitely need a new layer of lipstick after she’s done branding Mateo.
The chatter around me builds, the house growing warmer as more people filter in through the open bay windows that lead out to the pool area. The pang of jealously gnaws unwelcome in my gut as I peruse the crowd for a familiar face. Any face.
‘Try to have a little fun.’ Megan’s words play on repeat in my head as I see couples laughing, dancing and kissing around me. How brief it may have been, there was a time where I thought I had my life mapped out. I had escaped the torture, but I had lost them in the process.
Hints of leather, smoked wood, and bergamot fill my nose as I stumble against the kitchen island to steady myself.
Familiar scents that for a brief moment remind me of the two boys I had a long time ago thought were my forever.
The memory of them, that night and the grand fairytale ending I stupidly imagined I once deserved flitters away on a tequila-hazed breeze as a girl bends over the bin beside me and empties the contents of her stomach with gasping grunts.
My instinct is to help her by holding back her auburn curls as she coughs up a lung, but her entourage arrives quickly, flanking her and paying her no mind as she groans, her cheek resting against the black plastic lining.
The Hells Haven’s Harlots—a name they gave themselves—encircle us.
Kaitlin, their queen bitch, eyeing my simple black dress with an assessing gaze, a pinched smirk gracing her gloss-coated lips when she notices the crude stitching around the sleeve that I had fixed myself.
A dress doesn’t last you six years of wear and tear without a little upkeep.
All amusement at my expense fades when she reaches my feet.
Megan’s cowboy boots she loaned me are clearly worth a pretty penny with the ornate stitch design, engraved gold tips, and bejewelled heel guards.
Of the twenty pairs in her walk-in wardrobe, I had immediately fallen in love with these.
“Nice boots. I bet it pays to have an obscenely rich roommate. What she’s doing here with you, I’ll never know.
” She laughs cruelly. I never thought I’d be grateful for the years of physical and verbal abuse I’ve endured—the thought alone is twisted as fuck—but standing here and taking her shit doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of what I have overcome.
I square my shoulders, lean in a little closer, and grin as I run my finger under the length of the pearl choker adorning her slender neck.
“At least I don’t have to fuck someone to get myself a few treats.
It’s a shame these are fake.” I pout theatrically as her mouth gapes at my clear audacity.
I have no fucking idea if they are real or not; I grew up making jewellery out of pasta shapes and yarn, I don’t have a refined bone in my body.
But the fact that I have clearly gotten under her skin and sowed the seed of doubt is enough to brighten my day.
I don’t say another word as I turn and head off into the lounge area.
I’m sure she will think up some sadistic way to make me pay for my insolence, but I decide it’s worth it just to see her knocked off her pedestal, however fleeting the moment might be.
The tug of a small smile warms my cheeks as the thudding bass and sweaty bodies fill the space the deeper I venture into the crowded house.
I’m more determined than ever to make this night one to remember. It looks so easy for everyone else. They’re so free, their joy effortless. I want that. For once, I want to bask in the feeling of belonging somewhere.
I grab blindly for a bottle of alcohol, not caring much what I select, and with a shaky breath, with little regard for the sanitary implications, I tip back my head and swallow a mouthful of the aniseed scented liquor.
Emboldened by the mix of alcohol in my system, the pill finally seems to have taken effect.
I sway along to the music blaring from the speakers, the bangles jingling on my wrists as I reach my arms up and wind my hips along to the beat.
Letting my inner hippie loose as the judgement of everyone else’s opinions that I worry about so often floats away like dust on a warm breeze.
Eyes closed, a fresh wave of that familiar mix of scents hits me.
My belly sours at the intrusion of memories of them.
Dimpled cheek smiles, rough hands worn by hard graft in the stables, lithe bodies soaked in sweat from being out in the sun all day.
‘Drink more. Think less,’ my brain advises, and for a second, I consider it as I linger around the drinks table like I’m about ready to pull up a chair and wait out a storm.
I may not deserve all that princess shit that all the other girls seem to be obsessed with, but I do deserve to go to a uni party and get off with some random hottie just for the fun of it.
I banish the memory of their faces seared into my mind, dog-tired of lugging around all that sadness and the unanswered questions.
‘Six years is a long time to be left pining for two men who likely forgot about you the second they found someone new to sink their dicks into.’
“Get a grip, Ebs,” I mumble into my drink like a crazy person, clearly delusional if I think my brain is going to stop with its tirade.
I’m not a virgin—far from it—but the encounters I’ve had with men since Cooper and Caleb Knox were never exactly my choosing, more so a bid for self-preservation when shit got tough, and allowing them to use my body felt like the only escape.
My college boyfriend when I was seventeen was a perfect example of my ability to attract the most narcissistic of men.
Jacob wanted sex—no, wanted implies I had a choice in the matter; Jacob demanded sex.
I wasn’t sold on the idea, but after he locked me in his father’s shed and held a set of rusting pinking shears to my throat—I allowed him to hike up my school skirt, masking my sobs with mumbled exhales that I knew he would selfishly tell himself meant I was having just as much fun as he was.
Later that year, a policeman pulled me over for dangerous driving on the hard shoulder of the motorway, one of my many attempts to flee the latest horror show of a foster placement.
With my one shabby suitcase packed, Celine Dion blaring out of the speakers, and being at least five cans of white lightening over the limit—add that to the fact I didn’t have a driver’s license—my shitty foster mother had declared her vehicle stolen three hours previously; I was officially up shit creek without a paddle.
The vodka and cheap cider dulled my ability to charm the young officer who looked fresh out of the academy.
He offered me a choice that ‘a girl like me wouldn’t want to turn down.
’ He’d turn a blind eye and let me continue on my way, or he would arrest me and make sure they put me on house arrest while I awaited trial.
In return for my compliance, option A would be the more desirable outcome, so I did what I needed to and welcomed the cold press of the hood of his patrol car against my cheek.
I had hoped my blood alcohol level would help to relax me, but he was too big, and unlike Jacob, he had no forethought to stumble around my crotch to warm me up a little.
I wasn’t able to hide my cries that night, the starless darkness swallowing them up until my lungs burned with the exertion.