Chapter Four
Clover
“That is brilliant,” Alessia says with her eyes wide, looking at me in true admiration. I soak up her praise and seek more.
“And guess what, I’m going to do it in color. Reds, yellows, greens, and turquoise—turquoise, Alessia.”
“That’s my girl,” my best friend says, before we break out into a dance and high-five each other. Then we hug as we bounce around. This is me reclaiming my heart back. Screw them.
“I’m so freaking proud of you, babe. This is exactly the thing that must come out of your diabolical act. Fuck Kellan, Nolan, and Oren,” Alessia shouts.
“Triple fuck them—their gorgeous faces, their eight-pack abs, the way they smell like... like addiction. But most importantly, fuck them for having such deplorable taste when they didn’t pick me,” I shout, feeling oddly liberated.
It’s true. I’m a damn catch, and they’ll never get to have a piece of me. Okay, I’m not really, but this is what I need to tell myself for the purposes of empowerment.
“Preach. Let them have their blahs. They’ve got nothing on you, darling.”
“Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Zero,” I agree enthusiastically. “Right,” I add, opening a marker with my teeth, then talking around it. “I’ll make a lot more money if they’re signed, so all their groupies can go wild.” I clear my desk, pick up a bunch of their boxer briefs, and get to work.
“Excellent idea. And you know what, use my laptop so they can’t trace anything back to you. And my bank account. Set everything up, get all the money, book your un-unrequited vacation, and I’ll take care of mailing the goods to your customers.”
“Would you?” I ask, thankfully, with a hand on my heart.
“You didn’t think about that part, did you?”
“No. But that’s why I have you,” I say sheepishly. I didn’t even think about the huge administrative task involved in this endeavor.
“I got you, babe. Now get started. That vacation is not going to pay for itself. I’ll catch you later. I have to go and clean another house.” She air-quotes “clean.”
“Bye. Love ya.”
“Right back at ya,” Alessia says over her shoulder as she leaves.
An hour later, my hand starts to cramp. I’ve already signed a bunch of them, and I even wrote a few personal notes for each one.
Kellan never smiles; he’s no fun. How can he be when he’s a taskmaster? Why did I even become obsessed with him? Oh, right. It’s because of the shock of electricity that ignited my entire body when he accidentally touched me.
He gets “Taskmaster” added to his black boxer briefs, with a winking emoji, all in pink marker—the connotation is clear.
For Nolan—damn Nolan. He smiled at me and said my name, and my knees caved. Also, one look into his eyes exposed all my dirty secrets for his viewing pleasure. Nolan... Nolan gets “Good Girl” written on his white boxer briefs with an orange marker.
Oren. I sigh deeply. The man is a magnet. He strokes his jaw, making me want to kneel before him and let him do things to my mouth. Oh, he gets “Smooth Operator” on his charcoal-gray boxers with a red marker.
I want to give up, but I don’t. I continue signing for a little longer, then I start taking pictures of them and upload them to Alessia’s laptop.
I download a store app and assemble my photos. I add their faces to each of their boxer briefs.
I set my prices—not so high that I won’t get any sales, but high enough to pay for a luxury heart-repair vacation. And I open my virtual store.
And crickets.
Of course. I quickly open a fake social media account, find something that’s trending, and leave comments.
Oh my god, have you seen this? Do you have a crush on Kellan, Nolan, or Oren? If so, there’s a site selling their signed boxer briefs. Get there before it’s all sold out!
Then I wait. And wait. I text my dad to tell him to take his vitamins, but then my stomach growls angrily at me.
Carrying the laptop down with me to the kitchen, I eat the leftover lasagna Alessia brought me yesterday.
Maybe this isn’t going to work.
Until it does.
Oh my gosh.
I get hundreds of orders in minutes. The feature in the fashion magazine calling them the hottest, richest, and youngest billionaires ever is certainly helping me gain traction. How ironic.
I may only have $189 in my own bank account, but now there are more zeroes than I thought I would ever see in a sitting in Alessia’s. Trembling with excitement, alarm, and everything in between, I text Alessia my login details.
The instant she calls me, we spend another twenty minutes screaming into the phone at each other.
The strangest thing is I feel zero guilt, which means this is exactly what I needed. Cue all the catharsis.
It takes me the rest of the day to find the perfect holiday resort and to book my flights. The Hook is a stunning blue island in the middle of nowhere and exactly what I need.
Everything falls into place as if all my planets are aligned. Accommodation is available. Flights are available. I have days off from my rotations at the animal clinic. This couldn’t be going any better than it already is.
By the time they discover what I’ve done and by some chance find me, I’d be so over them already, I would thank them for being so hot that selling their signed boxer briefs online made me rich enough for one glorious reset vacation.
I even have time to go shopping with Alessia, and she helps me pack my bags for my trip.
Right now, I’m already dressed for the tropics, and I’m still at the airport. Yes, my eyes had to adjust to all the bright colors after a full year of wearing black, but it’s all good.
My sundress is a pretty bright yellow, with fuchsia flowers printed on it. My sandals have bows on them, and on my head is a sun hat so large I have to tilt my head up to see what’s in front of me.
It’s vacation time, baby, and I’m all smiles and happiness. This is good. This is fabulous. Oh, to not be obsessed with them anymore.
Now if only my brother would leave me alone.
Troy McAllister put the ‘over’ in ‘overprotective’ as far as big brothers go.
He’d been messaging me the whole time, asking me where I was, then telling me to stay home. He is without a doubt the overprotective type, given his time in the military. I get warnings like this from him from time to time, and nothing happens.
So I told him what he needed to hear: that I would stay home, then I turned off my location service. No one is going to spoil my vacation. My life depends on it. Kind of literally.
My phone beeps again, and it’s yet another notification from Troy, telling me yet again to stay home.
And why can’t he track me? Well, in a way, it’s his fault.
If he weren’t friends with them, I wouldn’t have known they existed.
Yep, it’s all my brother’s fault, and for that I switch off my phone and slip it deep into my purse.