Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with my wife in our car.
Click.
Boom.
I’d like to say thank you to my incredible editor Hollie Westring. Your work ethic is outstanding. Your ability to lift me up, the same. Thank you for your constant support. Plus, you’re like Martha Stewart meets Grace Kelly meets Uma Thurman. That’s pretty impressive. p.s. I cannot WAIT for your first book!!!
I’d like to thank my formatter, E.M. Tippetts. You were kind enough to take me in at the last minute, endure my unorganized chaos, and still, you pulled it off with grace. Thank you.
M. Leighton and Courtney Cole, what would I do without you guys? I’ve seen the both of you sky rocket to the top and where many would have left me behind, you didn’t. You have both been so supportive, so generous, so compassionate. You’re beautiful and generous on top of that. Thank you for being so incredible.
To my little ones, I don’t do anything if it’s not for you. Ever. I would die for you. I would declare war for you. When all is said and done, when all is over and nothing is remembered, all I can hope for, all I can pray for, is that I was the best mother to you.
Other half, we have had nothing but the harshest things happen to us this past year. Death after death, worry after worry, shock after shock...and yet, here we are, strong in our alliance, our friendship, our devotion. We’re happy in our beautiful life. Yes, it feels bittersweet at times with the suffering and the trials but there was never, for one moment, that I felt alone. Ours is a forever kind. Ours is the enduring sort. I love you very much if you couldn’t already tell. Very much.
Six weeks after graduation and Jerrick had been dead for three of them. You’d’ve thought it would’ve been enough for us all to take a breather from our habits but it wasn’t.
I bent to snort the line of coke in front of me.
“Brent looks very tempting tonight, doesn’t he?” I asked Savannah, or Sav as I called her for short, when I lifted my head and wiped my nose.
Savannah turned glassy eyes away from her Special K laced o.j., her head wavering from side to side. “Yeah,” she lazily slurred out, “he looks hot tonight.” Her glazed eyes perked up a bit but barely. “Why?”
“I’m thinking about saying hello to him.” I smiled wickedly at my pseudo-best friend and she smiled deviously back.
“You’re such a bitch,” she teased, prodding my tanned leg with her perfectly manicured nail. “Ali will never forgive you for it.”
“Yes, she will,” I said, standing and smoothing out my pencil skirt.
I could’ve been considered a dichotomy of dressers. I never showed much in the way of skin because, well, my father would have killed me but that didn’t stop me from choosing pieces that kept the boys’ tongues wagging. For instance, everything I owned was skin tight because I had the body for it and because it always got me what I wanted. I loved the way the boys stared. I loved the way they wanted me. It felt powerful.
“How do you know?” Sav asked, her head heavily lolling back and forth on the back of the leather settee in her father’s office.
No one was allowed in that room, party or no but we didn’t care. Sav’s parents went to Italy on a whim, leaving her house as the inevitable destination for that weekend’s ‘Hole’, as we called them. The Hole was code for wherever we decided to ‘hole up’ for the weekend. My group of friends were, at the risk of sounding garish, wealthy. That’s an understatement. We were filthy, as we liked to tease one another, double meaning and all. Someone’s house was always open some random weekend because all our parents traveled frequently, mine especially. In fact, almost every other weekend, the party was at my home. This isn’t why I ruled the roost, so to speak. It wasn’t even because I was the wealthiest. My dad was only number four on that list. No, I ruled because I was the hottest.
You see, I’m one of the beautiful people. That truly sounds so odd to have to explain but it’s the truth, nonetheless. I’m beautiful and it’s not because I have a healthy dose of self esteem, though I have plenty of that. It’s obvious in the way I look in the mirror, yes, but even more obvious in the way everyone treats me. I rule this roost because I’m the most wanted by all the guys and all the girls want to be my friend because of it.
“How do you know?” She asked again, agitated I hadn’t yet answered.
This made my blood boil. “Stuff it, Sav,” I ordered. She’d forgotten who I was and I needed to remind her.
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly, shrinking slightly into herself.