Chapter 25
(Four days later)
Luke
She’d been gone a week now, and I was still messed up. The girl had hijacked my brain, and not in a good way.
Before this morning, I’d jerked off in the shower to the memory of sex with Debbie over the table for six mornings in a row. But who was fucking counting?
Instead, today I’d concentrated on the memory of Trina kneeling in front of me in an effort to get myself off. When that didn’t do it for me, I went back to Maya and then Rosie before I was finally able to get off against the wall. At this rate, I was going to rub my dick into a raw, useless mess. How embarrassing would that be—to be out of action because I’d rubbed all the skin off my dick?
I needed to banish Debbie from my memory. And a bottle of olive oil in the shower was going to be essential if fantasizing about any other girl was going to take so long. What the hell was wrong with me?
Why did I always have to fall for the ones destined to leave? Better question, how many days would it take for Debbie’s curse to wear off and my life to be back to normal? Maybe I needed a visit to Madam Fayette in that little shack south of town for a tarot reading and a counter-curse. Even voodoo was worth a try.
When I entered the kitchen, my eyes drifted to where the note had been on the counter. Her note. The one I’d trashed two days after she left, as if eliminating the note would cleanse my memory. Turned out, I’d let it corrode my psyche for two days too long. Letting a girl get to me like that wasn’t my style. It was completely counterproductive.
Counterproductive. There was a Duke word—a big fucking college word for a total fucking waste of time. But the year at Duke was in my past, and along with it the vocabulary.
Everything about hanging out with the rich kids was in my past. Fuck the entitled assholes, with their Beemers, Jags, and Benzes, and their fucking loafers. I couldn’t stand the fucking loafers. And to them, a bike was something you pedaled—self-righteous morons.
I started my coffee in the machine and pulled down the chocolate powder.
Debbie was just another Kaycee—a girl on her way out of town—and I should have known better than to let her get to me. I slammed my hand down on the counter, and the can of chocolate bounced. I was cursed to relearn this lesson, because I was a dumbfuck.
In high school, I’d let Kaycee control the situation instead of the other way around. She decided to leave, and it broke me because I’d given myself to her. We were supposed to go to Duke together, be together, stay together, yada, yada, yada. It was a promise we’d made the night of the junior prom, and I’d been stupid enough to believe it, to believe her.
The day she returned from a senior-year trip with her parents to New England, Kaycee had decided against that future for us without a shred of remorse. She’d changed her mind, she said, as if it was as easy as changing her shoes.
She hadn’t even told me she’d applied to Brown, not until that day. New England was more sophisticated than North Carolina, she’d said, and with her daddy’s money, she could go anywhere that would have her.
I’d had a lacrosse scholarship to Duke, and without that scholarship, I couldn’t have afforded any four-year school.
With a beep, the coffee finished, pulling me back to the present.
Brooklyn’s evil cat sauntered to the doorway and stopped, casting its yellow-eyed gaze in my direction.
Meow.
That meow could mean any number of things, but this time of the morning it had to be why the hell haven’t you fixed my breakfast yet, you lazy human?
“What did she ever see in you?” I asked. Somehow Debbie and the cat had bonded instantly.
Meow.
The cat swished its tail back and forth, which somebody had told me was the opposite of a dog wagging. It was pissed at me, and I hadn’t even done anything to it yet today.
“I don’t know why you think you deserve breakfast.”
Meow.
“Okay, already,” I told it. There was one last can of the wet food Debbie had snagged from Brooklyn’s apartment on the counter. The stuff smelled worse than fish guts as I opened it and scooped the horrid mess into the cat’s dish. “You know, the fact that you eat this shit only shows how dumb you are.”
Meow.
I set the bowl down in the far corner and walked back to my side of the kitchen.
Meow.
In the last week, the demon and I had worked out a routine, an understanding. If the cat stayed in its corner and I stayed on my side of the kitchen, we could coexist without it attacking me, and I wouldn’t chase it under the couch.
The evil thing swished its tail one more time before strolling over to the food dish and sniffing the rotten mess before starting to lick the mound of smelly crap.
I turned away and added the brown miracle powder from the Hershey’s can to my coffee and stirred. The first sip was as delectable as ever. This was what true goodness smelled and tasted like, not that shit in the cat’s bowl.
My gaze landed on the counter again. Debbie’s comments about her stepfather showed she was as judgmental as any of them. She hadn’t had to deal with the unfairness of the system the way I had, so she couldn’t comprehend it. She was just another of life’s lessons to be filed away in the do-not-forget pile.
Give me a girl who only wanted a good time, one who only cared that the drinks I bought her were cold and my dick was hard. That’s what I needed.
I turned on my phone after another sip of coffee and was greeted by the same text as every other morning.
BROOKLYN: How is Racer today?
Instead of my standard text reply, I took a picture of it eating its slop and sent the photo to her with a caption.
Alive
I scrolled through the contacts on my phone.
Debbie had been gone a week, and I was done with having her fuck up my mood.
Today was the first day of the rest of my life, as the saying went, and that meant going back to a world before her.
I found the one I was looking for, the one who’d finally let me rub one out this morning. I sent Rosie an invitation I could look forward to all day.
ME: Want to come over tonight?
Rosie could suck a golf ball through a garden hose, and should guarantee a good enough time to get me past my Debbie hang-up. Kaycee had taught me a valuable lesson: don’t get hung up on a particular girl. The heartache wasn’t worth it.
My phone rang with Rosie’s name on the screen before I made it out the door on my way to breakfast at the Hilltop Diner.
She started out angry. “You don’t call me for four weeks, and now you want to meet up? What gives, Lukie?” Her tone leaned toward a no, but the use of that nickname meant it could be a yes.
I waited a second to be sure she’d finished venting. “Sorry. I meant to, but I’ve been busy.”
“Yeah, me too,” she lamented.
“So? Tonight?”
“It depends on what my sister has going. Put me down as a maybe. I’ll call if I can make it.” Maybe had always turned into yes with her before.
“Sounds good. See ya.”
“Bye, Lukie.”
I locked up the house and climbed into my van for the drive to breakfast. Maybe tonight would become a jerk-off-worthy memory.