For Love or Money (14 page)

“Hey,
I thought we weren’t doing the whole slut shaming.”

“Yeah,
well that’s before I knew you were over halfway to a hundred!”

She
makes me chuckle. “I played in a band in a bar in Nashville for a whole summer
before I came here and was a soccer player for my three years.”

She
points. “Everyone said you just let them suck you off. The girls all say you’re
kind of boring.”

My
eyes sparkle. “I don’t like to shit where I eat either.”

She
shoves me. “Jackass.”

“Away
games, bars, Andy’s mom, you, couple waitresses. It adds up.”

“You
keep count?”

I
start to undo my belt. “I have notches if you wanna see—”

She
shoves me again. “No. Gross.”

“I’m
kidding. I know the number because Shane and I were talking about it the other
day. We got drunk and counted. You don’t even want to know Andy’s number.”

She
rolls her eyes. “I know Andy’s number. He’s more proud of that than how many
cars he owns. We have a clinic date every couple months that we maintain and
it’s always safe sex.”

I
grin, feeling lightheaded and nauseated, but really relieved this part of the
conversation is over. “Well, why don’t we go do a clinic date together and
start fresh, clean slate?”

“And
never speak of this again?”

I
nod, holding my pinky out. She scowls at it. “Why are you bringing Danny
Anderson’s penis into this?”

I
laugh. “Pinky swears. My sister, Barb, always makes me pinky swear. I thought
it was sort of a girl thing.”

She
gives me a look like I have three heads. “I was raised by dudes, so I don’t
know what you’re talking about. But let’s just agree, clinic for the stuff no
one wants to talk about, and this picnic table will be our no-no spot. We will
never come back here again and never have this conversation again!”

I
nod, lowering my pinky. “I swear. Kill it with fire.”

She
pulls her phone out and dials. “Hi there. It’s Lana Webber. I need to make an
appointment.”

My
insides burn but I know it’ll go away. We both just need to adjust to the
feeling of wanting to be with someone for more than a couple nights.

Snugglefuck

Lana

His
sad face is killing me but my panic attack is going to be much worse if I don’t
get away from him.

“Just
stay. We don’t have to have sex again. We can snugglefuck. It’s not the same
thing at all.”

I
don’t even laugh, even though snugglefuck is the second weirdest thing I have
heard today. The first being fwerking, in a text from my friend back home who
finally decided to respond to my text from a month ago. Eventually, the English
language will be completely destroyed. I’m not even an English major and
fwerking bugs me. As do friends who take a month to answer texts. I made a note
in my phone’s calendar to respond to her text in a month—‘cause I am
still a petty whore when I want to be.

“Just
stay.” He interrupts my random thought process as he pulls his jeans and shirt off,
revealing he’s still in his soccer uniform.

Remembering
how badly I don’t want to be the same predictable girl as I always am, I back
away slowly, shaking my head. I blurt the first thing that comes to mind,
“Congratulations again on winning, and thanks for asking me to come to the
game. It was weird to see both teams just attack like that. Kind of random.
Okay then.”

Should
I thank him for the mind-blowing sex?

No,
better not.

Just
act cool.

“You’re
acting kind of weird.” He cocks an eyebrow, looking sweaty and dirty in all the
right ways. The cut above his eyebrow and swollen cheek reminds me, and my
vagina, of the boxer I casually screwed in Germany for two weeks last summer.
It’s not doing wonders for my self-control or my ability to open the door.

I
want to rub my body against his and lick the sweat off. I blush and mutter like
a moron, “What? No. I just—uh. I have some things to do. Like study
and—important stuff.”

Like
not screw you!

Yikes.

He
scratches his head gingerly. “You don’t have to be polite and sweet. Just be
you. It actually makes me uncomfortable when you’re too nice, it feels phony. I
like you better snarky. I can’t even lie. The sarcastic side of you is sexy as
hell. The sexual confidence you have is like a drug.”

Oh
fuck.

I
step back, gripping the doorknob as visions of him fucking me like an animal on
the bed behind him haunt me.

He
is a bad boy and I am just the kind of girl he needs to avoid. We are like fire
and gasoline.

He’s
the sexiest gasoline ever. EVER!

His
dark-blond hair is tussled everywhere, coated in a bit of dirt and sweat. I
think I even see some blood in it, all of which I find alarmingly attractive.
His jersey is soaked and his shorts are actually torn. I want to do bad things
to him, make him scream—a lot. I bite my lip, imagining it’s his meaty
bicep in my teeth.

He
gives me a sexy grin and pulls his jersey off, sending the scent of his sweat
and deodorant across the small space. I think I actually moan aloud. One of us
does and when he chuckles and shakes his head, I have to assume it was me.

His
body isn’t something I’ve really gotten to appreciate yet. I think I had a
little PTSD in the shower after we had sex—obviously any girl would have.
It was intense and erotic and really filthy. I smile thinking about it, his hot
and seedy words in my ear as he double penetrated me.

Oh
God.

I’m
getting wet thinking about it, clenching my thighs together and pretending I
don’t feel the pulsating between my legs.

A
blush of sweat bursts across my upper lip, and I want desperately to leave the
room but my eyes can’t tear from his torso. He has odd tats everywhere, random
ones. There’s a scripture-like word along his side and something under his arm
that looks like Sanskrit. He has a symbol on his left pec that looks Japanese
and a giant spider on his left shoulder. Its legs are the part you can see
creeping out the top of his neckline if he’s in a tee shirt. I’ve often
wondered what it was. His stomach has a small eight ball that says yes on it,
like it’s telling him his fortune, and there’s another word in a language I
don’t recognize dipping into his shorts. There are seven tats altogether.

He’s
so clean-cut and sculpted, it’s almost weird to see the tattoos, but when I
think about the fact he was a gigolo and he works a stage and audience like
Lochlan Barlow, it makes sense. He knows he’s beautiful, but he’s the worst
kind of badass. He’s the unsuspecting kind. He doesn’t talk, he just does.

Damn,
that’s hot.

He
smiles, lowering his gaze to where my eyes are stuck on the word going in his
shorts.

I
turn the knob and run from the room like the spider on his neck has come to
life.

I
run until I’m ready to puke. I need a better fitness level. No one my age is
this out of shape. I saw a chubby girl running when I was going to art history
the other day. She had to be two hundred pounds and was running like she was
chasing the ice cream truck.

Bitch
could have outrun me easily.

I
don’t look back, positive he’s running after me. I hear my name but make my
legs keep moving.

“Lana!”
he catches me easily, regardless of having just played a hard-ass game of
soccer. “What are you doing?” he spins me around.

His
hands squeeze my arms, making me uncomfortable. The whole thing is making me
miserable. I don’t have an answer beyond the truth. I’m too horny and
tripped-out by him to lie so I just say what I’m thinking, “I don’t want to be
like this.”

“Like
what? Mopey and sad? ‘Cause I have a cure for what ails you.”

A
halfhearted smile pushes its way across my lips. “No.” I force myself to look
into his eyes. “I told myself I wasn’t going to do this—jump right in
your bed and be the forgone conclusion I always am.” He opens his mouth, but I
put my hand across it, trying not to notice how soft and delectable his lips
are. “You know, even my friends think I overreacted last month with that guy in
my room, fucking my foot. They think I deserved it ‘cause I’m known for being
easy and freaky. Everyone here knows about me and Andy, and I’m certain he’s embellished
a little. You know how many guys I have heard apparently fucked me? Dozens,
which isn’t even close to possible. And they all think that I had it coming.”

He
swallows hard and I see guilt in his eyes.

I
step back, lowering my hand. “See. You thought it too. The worst part of that
is, I don’t even blame you. You know what has taken me a month to say aloud?”

He
shakes his head, looking scared of the melt down I’m about to have. I sigh, not
wanting to be this girl. I am not this girl.

He
reaches for my hand, pulling it up to his lips and pressing a soft kiss into my
skin. “What has it taken you a month to say?”

“That
I didn’t deserve it. That it didn’t matter that I’m casual about sex—he
had no right. And because of the whole sneaking in my room and touching me when
I was sleeping, I lost something. I don’t know if I want that thing back. Maybe
losing it was good, because I just don’t see it as all the same anymore. Casual
sex is fun, and I don’t regret the way I’ve been, I just don’t want to be that
girl anymore. I don’t want something horrible to happen to me and have to
suffer through it and then have the whole world laugh and say I deserved it.
The papers might not see it, but I’m a human being, and I have feelings, and I
don’t want to be a joke anymore.” I pull my hand from his and walk away.

“Why
are you punishing us if we are good together?”

I
look back. “I’m not. I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at me.” I trek back to my dorm
and slump onto the bed, looking up at the ceiling. It’s moments exactly like
this one that I wish my mom were alive. She would probably stroke my hair and
tell me that it doesn’t matter, and in a year it will matter even less. She
would tell me that the world would find someone else to talk about, if I didn’t
keep making there be something to talk about.

It’s
what my dad said the last time, when I got deported with my hands zip tied
behind my back like a criminal.

My
phone vibrates, drawing my eyes to see a text from Andy asking me to meet him.

I
turn my phone off and pull my pillow over my face.

I’m
nearly asleep when I wake to a knock.

Andy!

He’s
such a creeper sometimes.

I
get up and answer the door, frowning when I see James. He’s clean and holding a
bouquet of lilies and the Visa I gave him. “I got these for you and I want to
give this back to you.”

I
take the Visa and run my fingers across the gold letters that say Webber
Records. “Did you buy the flowers with it?”

He
chuckles. “No. Jesus. I have more tact than that. I figured even if we aren’t
going to do this, we are still partners. And if me and you still have a deal, I
don’t need to worry about the tuition for next year. I have some savings that
was for next year, I can live off that for the summer.” He pushes the flowers
closer to me. “But I brought you these because I want you to know that I did
think you were a forgone conclusion, but that’s not why I had sex with you.”

I
look up as a guy walks by, snickering at James. I roll my eyes and drag him
inside and close the door as he keeps nattering on, “I can have sex with any
girl at this school.”

I
cock an eyebrow. “You think so?”

He
nods. He’s being sincere. “Yeah. I do. Guys with tats who sing and win soccer
games get laid. That’s also a forgone conclusion. But I don’t want to get laid.
I want to be with you.”

I
laugh.

He
winces. “I mean—shit—this is getting messed up in my head and my
mouth.” He steps closer, looking down on me, lifting my chin. “I knew we would
have sex. We both like sex and seem to have a comfort level with our bodies
that’s not uncommon in people who have a lot of sex. I like to fuck, and what
happens during, I don’t want to talk about it later. I don’t like it. If that’s
not good for you, we can try if you want to. Shit—I’m nattering. See even
talking about it now is making me uncomfortable.” He shakes his head. “You’re
making me crazy. You always have. I’ve had that violin for four years, and in
my head I imagined a thousand different ways I would give it back to you. I
never imagined it the way it happened, but that’s because I don’t have the
imagination to come up with something so amazing. So far I love the story of
us. It suits us. It’s crazy and sad and unbelievable, and uplifting in the
weirdest ways. It makes me feel more alive.”

I
take the flowers from his hands and lift them to my face, smelling them but
staring up at him.

He
stops looking stressed and sighs. “You are right. You didn’t deserve what
happened to you, and if I ever find out who did it, I will kill them. I might
take you up on the thugs so I don’t have to go to prison—I don’t want
street cred. But no matter how it goes down, that shit rat is going to pay for
what he did to you. And no matter what changes between us, I will always hate
the thoughts I had when I heard what occurred. I hate that I didn’t think it
was real and that it happened to you.”

“Even
if it changed me for the better?”

He
shakes his head. “It didn’t change you. You changed because of it, but it was
your choice. You can’t control the world and the people in it. You can control your
reaction. I like your reaction. I like that you see your worth now, because
someone took away the smug bitch you always were.” He lifts my hand, kissing
the back of it. “You’re worth so much to me.”

I
am falling in love with this boy and that is scarier than anything else.

He
does the thing I don’t want him to. He kisses my head and leaves my dorm,
giving me the space I wanted. He leaves me standing in the middle of the room
with the flowers in my hand and tears in my eyes.

I
want to run after him but not as badly as I want to talk to someone. It is the
sort of conversation that needs a girl and some chocolate. After I put the
flowers in water, I call Rachel. I haven’t had any daughterly advice in a long
time, and I don’t think I’ll get it from her, but she always seems pretty smart
compared to her friends—for a trophy wife.