“What if I want to roll in the mud until I’m so fucking filthy that I’ll never be clean again? Does that make me bad? Nasty? A whore? Does it mean I’ll never find love? A life? A man who respects me?”
She lets go of her skirt and her expression hardens. “And what about that man? How dirty is he? Does anyone even care if he’s caked with mud? Does anyone even notice?”
A strand of long, dark hair springs free when she gives her head an angry shake and cascades down the side of her face, partially covering one eye. “The answer, my friends, is no. He can be filthy and somehow that makes him hotter. It makes all us dirty girls want to get even dirtier with him.”
She’s heaves a few deep breaths, as if calming herself from the rant she was working herself into. When she continues, there’s a rasp of despair in her voice.
“If I like to fuck, and he likes to fuck, how does that make us different? Why do his friends talk about me like a piece of meat when mine talk about him as if he hung the moon? Why do my guys never call again, but his women sext him the second they leave his bed?”
One more deep breath. “When they say it’s a man’s world, they must be talking about the bedroom. Glass ceilings are shattering. We’ll have a female president someday. But only if she’s never slept around. Because a male president can get head in the Oval Office, but no goddamn dirty whore is ever going to be good enough to run our country.”
She drops her head and steps back from the mic.
There’s a second of stunned silence, but a woot from the audience breaks it just before the entire place breaks into thundering applause. Blaire bows with a flourish, then skips off the stage with a smile and wave.
I’m still reeling as I turn to the room and watch the first score go up—the guy in the back who’s been tough on everyone tonight. A ten. One 9.9 pops up before two more tens and a 9.6.
I watch her wend her way back to me and my gut reaction is to bolt as the fight or flight reflex takes control. If I understood what she just said, she’s down with getting dirty. Filthy. And I want to fucking roll her in the mud so hard I can taste it. But I can’t.
Not yet.
She slips back into the seat next to me and pulls off her scarf, hooking an elbow behind the backrest.
And, Christ, this girl is going to be the fucking death of me.
Her shirt is damp with stage sweat and there is definitely no bra. The thin cotton fabric hugs tight nipples at the tips of breasts that aren’t big enough to be fake, but are firm and round and a perfect handful.
“What did you think?” she asks a little breathily.
“It was…” I swallow. “Just fucking…wow.”
“Not exactly Blake or Byron,” she says, trying and failing to hide a cocky smirk. “I don’t think Professor Duncan really understood what I was talking about when I said I write poetry.”
A smile blooms over my face with the image of Blaire reciting that poem in Dr. Duncan’s class. “Poetry’s not really about iambic pentameter and rhyming anymore, is it?”
“It is and it isn’t.” She slips my scotch glass from my fingers and takes a slow sip. I memorize the curve of her neck and the way her throat moves as she swallows. She lowers the glass to the table and watches her index finger trace the rim. I memorize the shape of her hands and her slender fingers tipped in midnight blue polish. “I think that’s how we all started and I still enjoy writing that kind of poetry. Traditional poetry is important for teaching us how to craft language. But slam poetry is more about rhythm and execution than actual rhyming and structure.” She brushes the errant strand of hair behind her ear. As she lifts her eyes to mine, they sink three layers deeper into me than anyone else’s ever have and moor themselves to my soul. “Nothing about slam poetry is timid or restrained. It doesn’t speak; it screams.”
I close my hand over hers on my glass. “It was incredible. You were incredible.”
I’m losing myself in her eyes. She’s got the power to do that to me—make everything else just fade out until the only thing in my world is her.
“Hey, Blaire!”
The voice rips me out of Blaire and I look up at the MC, standing on her other side.
“You were seriously killing it up here tonight!” he says with a grin. But I don’t miss how his eyes slip to me and narrow slightly.
“Thanks,” she says.
His eyes move between us. “This your uncle or something?”
My throat constricts.
“Caiden, this is Craig,” she says, flipping a hand at him, “the owner’s son. Craig, this is my friend, Caiden.”