Page 50 of Dirty Roulette
I find my undies and shorts, button and zip them up. “I should get going...” I say.
“Umm yeah...”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” I kiss him on the cheek before I leave the bedroom in a hurry.
***
The next morning, I rolled into the bathroom, wishing I was run over by a car. The mirror paints a canvas on my neck, displaying a perfect bruise with haunting shades of purple and pink. I scrounge around my makeup bag, lathering the spot with primer and foundation. The blender needs to be fired by the HR department because it’s offending my very soul by not covering up this hickey. Nothing I do seems to fix my current situation. Pulling my hair in front of my shoulder doesn’t even hide the evidence clear as day. A judge would even say I’m guilty.
“Hurry up! Other people need to shower!” Someone pounds on the door. I hate communal bathrooms – it’s always a fight for who goesnext. I’m out of time and energy, and wasting a bottle of foundation won’t spare me now.
I gather my things and unlock the door. When it opens, Brittni runs her fingers over her cherry lipstick like she got done sucking someone off. The bitch lives in the sorority, not the dorms, and yet she’s here at six in the morning shooting me an arsenal look. She pulls a strand of my hair aside and a chuckle comes out from her mouth.
“How cute...” She pushes her shoulder into me and shoves me out of the bathroom before slamming the door behind me.
Oh no. She saw the hickey. If she spotted it covered up with a pound of makeup, then Charlie would definitely figure out her brother is sucking on my neck. I rush back to the dorm room, and Charlie’s gone, her sheets all over the floor with her dirty clothes.
I slam open the closet, plowing through the shirts for something to cover my neck. It hits like a hurricane. She’ll rip me limb from limb and crucify me on an inverted cross.
One word, and without any doubt, she will move out of the dorm. I’m such a liar. The label makes my ears ring and bleed at the same time. She tells me all her dark secrets and the thought digs deeper into my heart and shatters it like glass.
If I sit there and lose my virginity to Ryder, nothing about him and I will ever be the same. It’ll be a miracle we stay friends, but I know guys. He’ll treat me like a dog and its bones. His teeth will rip the marrow and building blocks of who I am and bury it in the backyard where it’s gone and forgotten. Everything beautiful about Ryder makes me unstable, and he’s the death of any peace of mind remaining within me.
If it was any other guy in the world, I’d confess to her how it feels. I’d do anything to spill the tea about my first time doing naughty things with a guy. I’m sure the firing neurons rampaging up my spine washow she described an orgasm. But it washer brother. It was his hands, his lips. It was hergoddamn unholy brother. There aren’t any words to narrate it, but our friendship will go out of frame once a hole is cut through the center with the truth.
Chapter eighteen
Ryder
The good news- Payton gives the best hand jobs. The bad news- Brittni’s subtle post online calls out Payton with that childish nickname, Trash. If the boys heard us last night, it would be odd for them to mention it. They wouldn’t walk around the campus pointing out a hickey on her neck.
A hammering knock on the front door echoes through the house. I kick the sheets and sit up in bed. The pounding doesn’t stop as I open the bedroom door and scuffle down the hall. The clock on the stove blinks at 6:45. I rub the sand out of my eyes as I reach the door.
I unlock the deadbolt and slide it open, seeing Payton on the other side. “Hey cutie,” I unlatch the lock on the screen door, and it squeaks as she slips in. “You need help with algebra already?” I ask. She throws her bag to the floor and crumbles in one of the dining room chairs.
She’s in a black turtleneck crop top that shows off her navel and hourglass figure. My mouth waters and I can’t peel my eyes off the matching tight leggings and Converse.
“I have a...” She tugs the collar of her shirt and stares into the abyss.
“I know... Brittni dropped the bomb on a random post not even fifteen minutes ago.”
“Are you serious?”
“It can’t be that bad.”
She pulls down the neck of the shirt, and it stares me in the eyes. All my sins from last night bite back at me. “Oh, wow. I left a monster there...” A chuckle slips off my lips.
“It’s not funny!” Her cheeks burn in crimson fire. “I can’t cover it up! I tried all morning!”
“Calm down, give me a second.” I huff, walking over to the fridge, prying open the freezer, digging in the ice tray, gathering several ice cubes.
Opening drawers left and right, I search the kitchen until I find a lonely Ziploc bag and seal the ice. I scoot a chair in front of her and sit down with the ice freezing my fingertips off.
“Let me see.” One tug of her shirt and I place the frigid bag right on that bad-boy. “Hold it there.” She does what she’s told while I pull my cell out of my pocket and stare down at Brittni’s social media. Comments are flooding into the post. A cinder block weighs heavy on my chest, dreading to click on it, or see who’s laughed and swarmed it with angry faces like a colony of wasps.
Then it comes back and all I can think about is how wet Payton was, the sweet desperation in her innocence, and me milking it until I came all over her hands like a slob. Now Brittni can’t handle me touching someone else. In the pits of my heart, I like the thought of her suffering over it. She deserves it.
“Do you have a tube of chapstick in your bag?” I ask.
