Page 35 of Brat Baby
Acid turns in my stomach and my skin prickles.
Does this mean they are really done with me? That’s all I get? Not even a proper goodbye? Just them yelling at me, in a semi-public place, humiliating me with a breakup that anyone could have heard?
Heat fills my eyes, and I stare down at my sketched attempt at Xavier’s back piece. I looked up the words after I’d found them scribbled on an earlier page.
Nulla voluptas sine dolore.
No pleasure without pain.
So, what? I got my one weekend of pleasure with them, and now I get my pain? And how is that going to be measured, exactly? Like, is it a minute-for-minute thing? Or does pleasure have a higher weight than pain, so I’ll be in pain longer than the two nights I was with them for?
Which totally tracks—it’s already been five days of pain.
I sigh and reach for my phone for the four hundredth time in the last hour and hope I’ll see a message from them, letting me know they’ll be here soon. Fuck, I’ll take a message that says they aren’t coming so that I can pop this goddamn bubble of hope.
That’s the worst part of it all. The hope.
Everything that has happened so far this week, barring the Monday morning situation, says they still care. That they still want me.
Swiping, I open the message thread and see the picture of myself that I sent several hours ago and want to scream when there is nothing in return.
Why the fuck are they playing with me like this?
Xavier ate my fucking ass, for fuck’s sake.
So why the hell aren’t they here yet?
And why—
A whimsical electronic bell sounds through the apartment, cutting off my careening thoughts.
What the fuck is that?
I swivel my head to look toward the kitchen, the source of the noise clearly coming from that direction. Clenching my phone in my hand, I get up and pad over toward the counter, eyes scanning all the cabinetry for whatever is making that noise.
It’s definitely not the fire alarm. I have a feeling I wouldn’t even be able to think with how loud that would be.
All my senses are on high alert, and my skin feels ready to snap off my bones with how tense I am. The last time there was a suspicious noise while I was alone in the apartment, I ended up on the sharp end of a blade, strapped to a cross, and had a knife slicing through my skin, all while I was strapped to a vibrator.
A shiver runs down the length of my spine, heat pooling in my core at the memory. But the trill of the bell sounds once again, re-centering my thoughts. When I’m closer to the kitchen, I spy a panel in the wall that has a blue light that flickers in time with the bell.
I stare at all the buttons for a moment; the fancy screen is all lit up with a bunch of options and a message across the screen.
Incoming Call: Reception.
Why the hell is reception calling me? Oh shit, did the guys call and tell him to kick me out?
My breath locks in my chest. Nope. No. Not going to catastrophize until I know for sure.
Slowly, not one hundred percent sure that I do want to answer this call, I touch the greenanswerbutton on the screen.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Miss Nicholas?”
“Yeah, I mean, yes? That’s me.” I resist the urge to face-palm myself. Of course, he fucking knows it’s me.Hecalledme.
“It’s Aiden from the front desk. Your food delivery has arrived.”
