6. Victoria
6
VICTORIA
Saturday, September 7
“He better ask me to the afterparty tonight or I’m gonna be super pissed about coming to this game.”
Ellie barely stops chomping on her popcorn long enough to growl the warning. We’re sandwiched between crazed students decked out in Thronewood University gear and waving signs with abandon.
Ellie dragged me out to the football game hoping her crush-of-the-week, Billy, would pull her under the bleachers and make out after. I didn’t mind tagging along. It gave me an excuse to get out of the dorm and ignore the fact I’ve been hiding from Liam all week.
“Weren’t you wanting to jump Aaron Mathers’s body just the other day?”
Ellie waves a dismissive hand in the air. “Too entitled.”
I snort out of a laugh. “Isn’t that what we’re surrounded by twenty-four-seven?”
“Not Billy.” She continues to watch him on the field. “He doesn’t come from money. He busted his ass to earn a scholarship. And who knows what else he did to get here.”
“Sexy.”
“ Very . I love a man who works for it, you know?”
“Unlike Aaron, who’d probably ask you to fuck on gold sheets.”
Ellie jerks her head at me with wide eyes and an even bigger smile. “ Right ? Prick…”
My cell phone buzzes in my sweatshirt and I fish it out, seeing the words: the one who won’t accept no . It’s my mother’s contact label flashing above the slider to accept a call.
Dropping my phone to my lap, I ignore it. Then it goes off again.
And again.
When it rings a fourth time, I know I have no choice but to pick it up.
“Yes, Mom?”
“Victoria, where the hell are you?”
I throw my popcorn in my mouth, crunching with gusto so that she can hear how much I don’t care about whatever plans she had for me tonight. “At a football game.”
“I told you to be at the Moretti house tonight.”
I tsk. “I told you I wasn’t going, Mom. Liam and I broke up after I caught him cheating.”
“Do you think I care about a make-out session, Victoria?” she snaps back. “Get a grip and grow up.”
Um. I thought sticking up for myself and having some self-respect was grown-up.
“How about you catch a clue when I say I’m not?—”
“Finish that sentence,” she warns me through clenched teeth, “and I will rip you out of that school so fast it’ll make your head spin.”
And she would.
I know she would.
I’m not sure what the big deal is about me going to the Moretti’s stupid party, but I clearly have to go. Or else she will revoke my tuition and I’ll be forced to go home where she can more easily force me into more mind-numbing social status performances.
“Fine,” I bite out. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Wear something presentable, make sure your makeup is done and?—”
“Then it’ll be an hour.”
“Victoria…” I’m fully aware she thinks I’m pushing it, but my face is covered in black and green paint for the game.
“Mom, you don’t get both, okay? This is last minute.”
“I told you about this last week.” And I told you I wasn’t going. “And honestly, you’ve been extremely ungrateful for everything your father and I have done for you.”
We can go round and round on this merry-go-round forever, but we’ll never wind up at a different stop. She hasn’t heard anything I’ve had to say for a long time.
“See you in a bit, Mom.” And I hang up. There’s no fighting the hold my parents have over me. They control my education. All of it—their money not only pays my tuition at Thronewood, but at Graham, too. I’ve been using nearly every bit of my “living allowance” to cover my culinary classes.
I need to up my courseload. I won’t be able to count on their finances for long.
If I keep pushing back on everything my parents say, my mother will rip me out of school and push me down the aisle into the next arranged marriage she cooks up.
Anything to make her look good so she can brag to her friends about what a great job she did raising me.
I’d love to be a fly on her wall when I escape to Paris and she realizes I’m finally out of reach.