Chapter Six
Naomi
Fuck Econ. Fuck Poli-Sci. Fuck this school. I am so beyond over college and what it has to offer. Let’s be totally for fucking real, I only attend because my dad is making me.
You are my daughter and you will be a successful, upstanding member of society, or whatever bullshit he spouts at me every time I threaten to drop out. It’s up to roughly three time a month, depending on the semester, the professors, the idiotic amount of coursework.
Walking into my apartment, I throw my bag onto the couch and immediately make a beeline for the kitchen. I’m flicking the top off a cheap bottle of wine when Clara and Nelly walk through the front door.
“Oooh, are we pregaming?” Clara asks, reaching for the bottle. I hold it high out of her tiny reach.
“You’re not.”
Stomping her foot, she glares up at me. It’s adorable how she thinks she’s at all intimidating. “I am not the DD tonight, Naomi!”
“You absolutely are,” Nelly smirks, managing to reach the bottle. She takes a sip, handing it back to me on her way toward her bedroom. “Next time don’t leave me alone with a horny stranger.”
“Yeah, he was the horny one.” She rolls her eyes, following Nelly down the hall.
I drink straight from the bottle, taking out my phone when it rings. “Hello?”
“Mimi!” My brother’s voice bursts down the line. “How’s my delightfully beautiful sister on this fine Friday afternoon—”
“What do you want, Nathan?” I take another drink from the bottle, as I enter my room.
“Why would I need something?” He asks, wind rushing behind his voice. He must be in the car. “Is a brother not allowed to call his fabulous sister at the start of a weekend?”
“Of course they are. You, however, are the kind who only ever calls for one of three reasons.” I kick my shoes off next to the door and begin sifting through my cocktail dresses, phone pressed between my cheek and my shoulder.
“Because you need something, to complain about Dad, or because you want to commiserate about shitty men.”
“Men truly are shitty,” he sighs helplessly. “And yet we keep running back to them? Why is that?”
“Deeply rooted and undiagnosed maternal trauma?” I suggest, taking out a purple silk number. I hold it to my body in front of the floor mirror, turning this way and that.
Nathan snorts. “Yours might be deep, but I wear that shit on the surface, honey. It’s what keeps my skin so soft and supple.”
Both Nathan and I were adopted as infants- first him from South Korea and then me from Senegal five years later. He was planned, I was a surprise while my family was on a diplomatic mission. Whatever that means.
The story we were told as kids was that our mother wasn’t able to have babies of her own, so our parents decided to help children in need.
Nathan’s birth parents had died in a car accident not long after he was born and I was- for all intents and purposes- abandoned.
I don’t know what happened to either of my parents and I’ve never bothered to find out.
Why would I when I’ve been given everything I could ever ask for by parents who want me?
Well, the parent who wants me.
We got the real story when our mom decided family life was no longer for her.
Apparently, she’d never wanted kids in the first place.
She’d just wanted the money and power that came with being married to a highly influential lawyer, then mayor on the fast track to becoming governor.
I was nine when she left and all I really remember is how many photos of my family were being spread around the school.
It was an election year, and Dad won his seat as Governor of Florida on the pity vote for the newly single dad working so hard for his state and his family.
The last either of us heard, Georgiana Larson née Mychal, is living her best life in Majorca contracting gonorrhea and the like from seamen and it’s homonym. We don’t talk. I think Nathan follows her on social media, but that’s as far as either of us are willing to go.
“So did you call to bitch or…?” I pick up the wine bottle, taking a swig and holding it to my chest as I wait for him to answer.
There is silence on the other end for much too long. “Do you think- and feel free to say no—”
“Okay, no.”
“Well, let me ask first.” I groan and he goes on, “Would you please go check in on The Pink Flamingo for me tonight?”
I roll my eyes to the Heavens because of course my brother would buy an erotic private club and not feel the need to come check in on business himself.
Of course, he would ask his baby sister to do it because he has no boundaries.
Of course, I was going to end up there tonight anyway, but I’m absolutely still going to make him sweat a little bit.
“Nope.”
“Why the fuck not?!”
“Because, dear brother,” I take out another dress, this one royal blue and do the same little dance in the front of my mirror before tossing it on my bed. “It’s Friday, you're calling out of the fucking blue, and I already have plans with the girls.”
“Take them—”
“Absolutely not.”
“Oh, come on, Nel would love it there—”
“Nelly has a boyfriend, Nathan. A very strict one at that—”
“Loser—”
“And Clara would shit herself if I took her spontaneously to her place of employment- which she has never told me about if you’ll recall. Your anonymity holds up amongst your employees by the way.”
“Good to know,” he snorts. “Come on, Naomi. I just need you to pop in, scare Gavin a little bit—”
“Bro, he dumped you like a year ago. Fire him or drop it, either way stop harassing him—"
“Hey,” he interjects. “Maybe mind your own business.”
“Mind your own business,” I snap back. “Weren’t you supposed to be coming into town this weekend anyway?”
I can practically hear him shrug in his expensive Armani suit. “Plans change. I’m going to Cabo.” I scoff, starting in on my shoes for the night. “Please, Mimi?! I’ll bring you back a souvenir! You want a pool boy? I’ll bring you a pool boy—”
“Please, keep your pool boys to yourself,” I huff, grabbing my strappy gold heels. “I was going to head over there at some point anyway.”
“You’re a doll, Mimi! Tell Gavin to kiss my dick.”
I smirk, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I’ll give him your love and affection.”
“Love you!” He blows very loud kisses into the phone before hanging up.
I toss my phone on the charger, pick up the wine bottle from the floor and head into my bathroom for a quick shower. If I’m going to end up at The Pink Flamingo, then I guess I need to choose a different dress. Or, at the very least, a different color.
???
"You cannot be fucking serious?” Nelly whines as we approach the outrageous line outside of El Rincón. “How- and why the fuck- was this your first option?”
Her eyes scream murder and to be fair it would be valid.
I saw the way she danced with the Island King, and I’ve seen the flush in her cheeks every time he’s been mentioned since.
My girl has it bad for that piece of man meat, but I refuse to let her inability to keep her pussy dry keep us from having a good time.
“This happens to be the hottest spot in town,” I remind her, flipping my braids over my shoulder. “Therefore, where else should the hottest bitches in town be on a Friday night?”
I mean, there is of course one other place I would rather be. But The Pink Flamingo can wait a few more hours if it means I get to spend some much-needed R&R with my girls. “Anyway,” I glance toward the front of the line. “You won’t have to worry—”
“Why would she be worried?” Clara frowns, standing on her toes to try to get a view of the delicious bouncer who felt her up last time.
I raise a brow. “Because the owner wants to fuck her. And she really wants him to—”
“I don’t want to fuck anybody!” Nelly protests. Meekly she adds, “I have a boyfriend—”
“A boyfriend who is where tonight?”
I look around, crossing my arms, my point clearly made. The point being that Cristian sucks and is a pussy ass bitch who thinks Nelly belongs under his thumb.
I’ve never really liked him, not from the moment we met in middle school, and I sized him up to be the whiny momma’s boy he’s proven himself to be.
Then he made the ungodly decision to cheat on my best friend our sophomore year at Lightning Cove Prep and that was it.
I’d say he could suck my metaphorical dick but even that is too kind.
“He has dinner with his grandfather, and you know he wouldn’t be here anyway.” Nelly rolls her eyes. “He hates this kind of thing.”
“Yes, we know.” Because he’s a pussy ass bitch.
“You two make such a cute couple literally never doing anything together except tasting expensive wine, watching soccer games, and reminding us how thin the walls are.” Clara snorts, covering a giggle with her hand when Nelly glares down at her. “Why are you still with him again?”
Sucking at her teeth, Nelly growls, “Because I love him and he’s my best friend. Better than either of you bitches, who- if you will recall- left me with aforementioned owner—”
“Don’t use your fancy writer’s words on us—”
“Who was a complete stranger to all of us! So, if I ended up fucked by him it would not have been by choice—”
I scoff. “Lies—”
“Because I was drunk off my ass, and it would have been all your faults! So, fuck you both. Let’s go to a different club. We’re never going to get in here anyway, this line is fucking ridiculous—”
“Three of you ladies?”
Our knight in a tight black t-shirt arrives, hazel eyes searing into Clara who is drooling like he’s a chocolate chip cookie. Nelly elbows her before it can get too embarrassing and is obviously about to tell him no when I cut her off.
“Yes, there are three of us.” Her eyes are like daggers in the back of my head, and I give her the finger behind my back. “Do you have room inside for just three little girls such as ourselves?”
He assesses my height with a bored blink. “Not really, but I’ve been told to let you in anyway.”