Boyfriend Bargain(41)

I hear people running around me. I hear Coach and Eric and Reece.

I’m coming apart, falling down a deep hole of not being in control of my body.

It’s not working. None of that shit I did is working.

Why is my brain jacked up?

I have everything.

I have her.

Yet guilt eats at me. Dark thoughts hammer inside my head, telling me I don’t deserve happiness.

I put my hands to my face. No matter what I do to make myself better, there’s a flaw so cavernous, so deep in the recesses of my mind that nothing will ever be able to repair it.

Her body on the rocks.

My baby inside her.

My fault.

My face is wet, but I can’t stop, can’t stop, can’t stop, can’t stop.





32





Sugar





I keep checking my phone hoping to hear from Z, but he hasn’t texted or called all day. He’s at the game, I reassure myself again. He said he’d call you when it’s over.

Fine. I feel off, but Taylor’s giggle brings me back.

I’m curled up in my bed while he braids my hair and Poppy paints her fingernails at my desk. An empty box of pizza sits on top of the TV, an empty bottle of Prosecco beside it.

“Girl. You look like a Viking princess with this crown braid,” Taylor says, handing me a small mirror so I can see his handiwork. I twist and turn my head. “Just right for a big old strapping Viking warrior,” he adds with a grin.

Poppy wails. “I want a Viking warrior.”

Taylor stands up in his bright red skinny jeans and Sex Pistols T-shirt and does a pirouette. “Just tell me which hockey player you want, and I’ll put a bug in his ear, love. I’ll go to one of those games and hold up a big sign for you and pay someone to put it on the jumbotron. Call Poppy. She’s a goody two-shoes but wants some stick. She might clutch her pearls, but she’ll love every minute.” He gives her a smirk. “By the way, what happened with you and Boone?”

She turns beet red. “Nothing. We kissed and that was it.”

“Come on,” I say. “Really?”

She shrugs. “Actually the hockey guys kind of scare me. I need a nice, quiet Viking.”

Taylor points a finger at her. “No, you need someone who isn’t like you at all. You need someone to teach you the mighty ways of the sword, grasshopper, and by sword, I mean stick, and by stick, I mean dick.”

Laughing, I get up off the bed to dig around for another bottle of Prosecco in the closet. “Girls, girls, stop bickering. Obviously, we need more alcohol.”

Before long, I’m pouring us all new glasses of wine as I retell the story of Frat Boy and Pixie Girl. Taylor has started what he calls his FBPG Watch where he takes random photos of students on campus and then texts them to me, hoping he’s found them. They are nowhere.

“I wonder if he got rid of the clap,” Poppy muses, and we burst out laughing just as Julia walks in the door, still wearing her silver corset and tight bikini bottoms—with no coat. Shit. Her hair is sticking up in crazy directions, and she looks like she’s been mauled.

My eyes widen from my side of the room and I stand up. “Hey. Uh, is everything okay?”

“No.” With a tight headshake, she tries to keep her face averted from us, but I see dried tear tracks on her cheeks.

I frown. It takes a lot to get her to cry.

Taylor and Poppy have both come out of their slouched positions, and I quickly reintroduce them. Julia and I have become…well, maybe a little bit closer since she started working at BB’s.

“Gah, I look horrible,” she says breathlessly, her voice a bit shaky as she looks in the mirror and wipes at the mascara under her eyes. “I don’t even care.” Her shoulders slump.

“What happened?” I ask.

She yanks a cheap tiara off her head. “Football team came in tonight and the guy I hooked up with at the Kappa party saw me—” She shakes her head and bites her lip. “He called me a slut then got into a fight with one of the suits who was sticking money in my bikini.”

“Dude,” Taylor and Poppy say at the same time, sucked in.

“Can’t a girl just strip and not be called names for it?” Julia grits her teeth. “It’s an honest, hard job and I need the money.”

We watch Julia, who’s moved to stand inside her closet, and we hear her yanking clothes around. A sparkly corset and a pair of bottoms come flying out. Glitter goes everywhere.

“It’s the outfit that keeps on giving,” says Taylor.

She comes out dressed in a Snoopy shirt and leggings and curls up on my bed next to us.

Taylor leans in and strokes her hair. “I know we’re not besties—yet—but you gotta tell us the backstory here.”

“How about some Prosecco? Or Patron Silver?” I ask.

“Both.”

Okay.

I’m getting her drinks and she’s talking, telling them about the quarterback she met at the Kappa house. She picks up a brush on the bed and yanks at her hair, silver and pink glitter falling from the strands. “The worst part is, I think Mara might fire me. Parker—that’s the quarterback—he was throwing tables, breaking glass, and punching shit—”

I grimace. “Julia, he’s a drunk asshole. That’s not your fault, and she won’t fire you for it.”

“I’m not sure he was trashed.” She shakes her head. “What’s ironic about the whole damn thing is there was a girl with him, and just because I dumped him and never called him back, he thinks he has the right to get angry. Men are such fucking douchebags. Football players can suck it.”

“You’re my hero,” Poppy says, her eyes wide.

“I like you,” Taylor says, eyeing Julia’s long sleek brown hair. “Would you let me French braid your hair?”

She looks at my hair. “Did I interrupt girls’ night?”

“We’re celebrating,” Taylor says, giving me a nudge. “Sugar inherited a shitload of money, but she isn’t telling anyone, nor does she want to take it. Crazy girl.”

Julia gapes at me, and I shake my head, regretting my decision to tell them about the upcoming will reading in April.

I pop him on the arm. “I haven’t even been to the reading.”

“You’re like an heiress now,” Poppy says.

No. I’m not.

I clear my throat, feeling uncomfortable. “But, I do have good news. I sent out more applications for law school today.”

“Hold on now—what about Vanderbilt? And isn’t that why you and Z are together?” Poppy asks, hands on her hips.

Taylor’s lashes flutter. “Girl, she is with him because she’s crazy about him. There’s no boyfriend bargain going on anymore. That whole thing was a joke.” He laughs at my expression.

“I can’t even argue with that,” I murmur, feeling my face burn.

Poppy frowns. “Are you really giving up on Vandy? I mean, it’s all you’ve talked about since I met you.”

I stare down at my comforter. The truth stings, but I just wasn’t what the admissions committee wanted. While my grades and LSAT score were stellar, my lack of community service and extracurricular activities may have been the reason I was waitlisted. “I’m moving on.”

Poppy is confused. “But Z is willing to go to Nashville with you and meet the dean at that thing…right?”

“At the waitlist event, yes, but perhaps it isn’t fair to everyone else if he’s on my arm.”

“But he really is your boyfriend!” she exclaims.

I take a sip of my drink and think about our written agreement, which is folded up and tucked inside my box of keepsakes in the closet. I’ll always treasure it, but over the past few weeks, the idea of influencing the dean that way has started to feel…unfair.

How would I know if I got in because of Z or on my own merit?

I keep thinking about my mama and something she told me when I was devastated in sixth grade because I wasn’t chosen to be in a stupid social club. You are worthy, and you don’t need anyone else to tell you so. Someday you’ll face other obstacles, tougher ones, but you must hold your head high and carry on. Be true to you, Sugar, and happiness will come.

The truth is, the biggest reason for going there was to shove it in my father’s family’s faces, but I have to let that go. And perhaps, deep down, part of me knew I was grasping at something I never would have been able to follow through with.

But, I did meet Z because of it, and I can’t be upset about that.

Poppy, who’s been checking the score of the game online, jumps up from her seat. “Guys! HU just posted an update.”

I dart over to her. Concord State University is part of our conference and one of the teams we need to beat.

She’s reading quickly. “Holy cow. Hawthorne lost by one goal.”

A collective sigh of disappointment ripples across the room—except for Julia.

“We were supposed to blow them out of the water.” I stand up and click the TV over to the local coverage of hockey, and the first thing I see is the score: Bears 3, Lions 2.

I adjust the volume to hear the commentators.

“It’s a disappointed Hawthorne group leaving the arena to head back home. A tough loss indeed as power center and number one draft pick Zack Morgan practiced with the team this morning but didn’t come out for the game, and we still have no word on if there was an injury.”