Page 11 of Stained
Normally, his clichéd greetings amused her – and they certainly amused any friends she invited over – but she wasn’t in the mood tonight. So she drew her feet up on the couch and threw herself down to watch the Late Night rebroadcast.
I need to find a new job. The money I made tonight won’t be enough for rent.It was no joke that she and Candice lived above their means with their two-bedroom apartment overlooking a dingy alley and constantly smelling of the urine drenching the sidewalks outside. Yet what was there to do? Alicia had been living from paycheck to paycheck ever since she graduated from college. Her parents couldn’t help even if they wanted to. The cycle of poverty was too great. Not to mention her little brother’s medical bills. Terrence had been fighting his own immunesystem since he was old enough to complain of being constantly tired. Soon, he would be old enough for college. Alicia had dreams of helping her parents out of debt – let alone paying hers off – and sending Terrence to the college of his dreams to study anthropology. Just because her life turned out to be lackluster with nothing but a “useless” English degree to show for it, didn’t mean her sick brother had to suffer from more of the same fate.
First, though, she needed to recover. Danica’s scent still lingered beneath her nose. Every time Alicia inhaled, she recalled those fingers thrusting into her, those kisses hard, hot, and hungry for more.
I’m so stupid.
Her eyes were heavy when Candice finally walked through the door. “Hey, Alicia! Hey Pete!” she called, filled with way too much energy for almost four in the morning.
“Hey, Candiiiicee!” Pete bobbed about on his favorite perch as he greeted Candice the way she had taught him. It was always flair and fun with that girl. Sometimes too much.
Candice tossed her purse onto the couch, her body following suit as she leaned over the back and socked Alicia in the arm. “How was your first night at the ridiculous sex club?” Long brown hair dangled in Alicia’s face. At least there was Candice’s spicy perfume to finally overtake Danica’s floral scent.Shit.
Alicia closed her eyes, too tired to deal with anything. Pete still sang his greeting on his perch, bobbing to a beat nobody but him heard.
“I got fired.”
The mood in the room dropped fifty degrees. Pete stopped bobbing. Candice frowned.
“What happened?”
“Don’t wanna talk about it.”
Candice didn’t ask for more details. She knew better than to do such a thing by now… this wasn’t Alicia’s first time beingfired, unfortunately. Last time she was let go from a restaurant, it was because she accidentally told a Brazilian delegate that he had nice feet for a chimpanzee.Last time I ever practiced my Portuguese on someone.
Something dinged in the microwave.I never bothered with dinner.Luckily, Candice brought out enough cardboard pizza for them. She also found an episode ofBob’s Burgersrecorded on the DVR. Great way to kill the rest of the night before Alicia dragged herself to the shower and then bed.
Halfway through their dinner of cheese pizza, Alicia turned to Candice and asked, “Do you think it’s impressive that I could take three fingers my first time having sex?”
Candice dropped her paper plate into her lap. “Uh…”
“Yeah, by the way,” Alicia continued, watching animated characters get into ridiculous shenanigans on TV. “I lost my virginity tonight.”
Chapter 4
“If you don’t hear from us, that’s good news,” the doctor said at the clinic. “You’ll only know if something turns up in your test results.”
Alicia left the clinic with free condoms, because she obviously could not be trusted with her lust-crazed vagina.Now what the fuck do I do?Spend the last of her only paycheck from Midnight at a coffee shop so she had an excuse to sit down and comb through ads?Feh. Good thing her bag of prophylactic paraphernalia could be shoved into the bottom of her purse.Still an idiot. Yup. Definitely an idiot. That’s what she thought after she grabbed her small Americano and sat in the sunniest corner of the neighborhood café. She pulled out her phone and grabbed a newspaper somebody else had left behind.I had the best job in town. She could have easily paid rent with one paycheck and debt with the other. The tips could’ve bought her food and gas. Sure, she’d still be saving money at a snail’s pace, but at least she would be calm about her finances for the first time since taking out her first credit card!
Nope. She had to go and fuck the boss. The one testing her to see if she would fraternize with guests at her club. Yeah. Yeah, she would have. ‘Cause she was stupid.
That wasn’t the only reason she was so hard on herself. There was also the fact that she decided to lose her virginity to some haughty billionaire who had no idea she wasn’t as experienced as they probably thought she was.
It hadn’t been easy to still be a virgin at twenty-eight. Not exactly something she talked about to people. Candice had known, but it wasn’t a huge point of discussion. If anything, Alicia’s roommate probably assumed she was asexual or saving herself for marriage. The truth was neither. As usual, things were complicated.
Alicia wasn’t anti-sex. Nor did she lack a sex drive – it was pretty average, really, and heavily dependent on hormones. Nope. She had no real reason to say why she was still a virgin until twenty-eight. Really? She hated the fact. High school wasn’t so bad. Alicia had no interest in the boys in her class, having seen how they treated her female friends. She was content to explore her sexuality on her own, in the comforts of her bed or the shower. The internet taught her a lot of things that school and her sexually conservative mother wouldn’t. She openly talked about sex with her friends. She just didn’t have it.
College was supposed to be different. Alicia had heard that college students were hot and ready to fuck anything that moved.I figured that when I was ready, I would easily get laid. She was good-looking. Available. Clean!
It was not easy. In fact, Alicia found it pretty impossible to get laid at all.
Oh, she had done things. Lots of heavy petting. Kissing. Touching.Both guys and gals.Alicia had known she was bisexual since freshman year, and foolishly assumed it would expand her horizons.Nope.Even when things looked like theywere going all the way, someone fell asleep. Sometimes it washer.
Senior year, she met Matt.
Matt was the perfect guy. Smart. Funny. Good family and a lot of ambition for his future career as a pediatrician. Matt was at the top of his premed game when he met Alicia at a senior social. They hit it off, going on multiple dates and spending whole half hours at a time making out in his apartment or in the back of movie theaters.I felt like a teenager at 22. After a month of dating, Alicia wondered why neither of them had brought up sex. She assumed it would be a natural thing after making out and touching so many times. Yet when she asked Matt about it?She had managed to find the perfect guy… if she was hellbent on saving herself for marriage.
Matt had his reasons. While not a virgin like she was, he had discovered at his young age that sex overly complicated his relationships with women and heavily distracted him from his studies.“I love you, Alicia. I don’t need to have sex with you to love you.”Alicia had found it terribly romantic. And frustrating. She was ready to get laid, damnit! But her love for Matt was two-sided. She desperately wanted to sleep with him, to show off her affections in such classically carnal ways, but she also loved him enough to stay with him even though sex was off the table. He promised they would discuss marriage after he started his residency.
