by Lane Hart
“Is this a fucking joke?” I murmur to myself as I look at the sea of single-wide mobile homes, garbage in yards, clothes hanging on lines, for fuck’s sake, and animals and kids running loose like wild, dirty animals.
For years I insulted Maddie by saying she was trailer trash and, what do you know? I was right all along. No wonder she would always get pissed at me when I made that slur.
Now, am I really going to step foot in this white trash hellhole to let some nobody girl tell me what the fuck to do?
Yes, yes, I am, because I don’t want Blake or his father to find out I fucked his mother. Several times. Lots of times.
FML.
I park my car on the shoulder of the road, rather than chance getting any dings from the gravel. Then, I climb out, double-checking with the key fob to make sure it’s locked up tight.
I walk down the rocky and muddy hill in search of the right trailer number. Finding number three – a white one with black trim, or it used to be white and now is more of a yellowish color – I climb the three rickety and warped wooden steps that I’m not entirely sure can hold my weight and raise my knuckles to knock.
The door opens instantly and in it stands Maddie. Her red hair is still off her neck thanks to the chewed-up pencil, and she’s no longer in her modified Mercy uniform. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her in anything else, and I have to say I think the male student body has been ripped off by the school’s dress code. At the moment, she’s wearing teeny tiny cut-off denim shorts that are frayed at the hem and a green and blue polka dot string bikini top that only covers her nipples.
Jesus Christ.
It’s the kind of outfit that makes dicks hard from a hundred feet away.
Why hasn’t she ever been invited to any pool parties where the thin top can get soaking wet? Maybe she has been invited and she just refused to come.
“You actually showed,” she huffs, jutting one of her bony hips out and forcing my eyes to lift from her tits even though I’m still imagining sucking the pool water off of them. “I thought you might pussy out.”
“I’m many things but a pussy is not one of them,” I respond, my voice sounding almost as deep as James Earl Jones because it’s all clogged up with lust.
“If you say so.”
“Well? What do you want me to do?” I ask after we stare at each other silently for way too long.
“I want you to mow the grass.”
“Mow your grass?” I repeat as I glance around the yard behind me that’s ankle deep from lack of care or maintenance. “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” she agrees with a nod. “My lot and all five of my neighbor’s lots. Weed-eating too, of course.”
“Great,” I grumble. Her yard would’ve only taken me ten minutes tops to finish since it’s so small I could cover it in about five rows. The rest of the trailer park? I’ll be here at least an hour.
“You do know how to use a push mower and weed-eater, right? I mean, rich boys like you probably never see the equipment up close and personal. Don’t you hire people to ‘landscape’ your yards?”
“I think I can figure it out,” I mutter. “But it’s hot as fuck out. You got any water? Not the shitty brown stuff from the faucet but the kind in a bottle before I stroke out?”
Rolling her eyes, she strolls over to the refrigerator and pulls out two off-label bottles and brings me one.
After unscrewing the lid, I nearly down the whole thing while heading back out into the heat and looking for her fucking lawn mower so I can get this torture over with.
Maddie
I hate letting Aric Prince see my house, even if it’s just the doorway, proving that I’m everything he and his friends said I was – poor, white trash. But then again, I guess he’s still the dumb, horny jock I accused him of being since he’s sleeping with his friend’s mom.
Yuck.
And I hate that he looks so good, so strong and sexy pushing the lawnmower up and down the rows of grass. The white Mercy Academy t-shirt he showed up in is long gone, tossed aside to reveal all of his tan, sculpted flesh. His shoulders and chest are massive like the football player he is before narrowing to his waist and etched in stone abs. Then, there are his thin, black athletic shorts riding low on his hips that just have to have the mouthwatering pelvic indentions leading down the elastic waistband. Once in a while, I’m pretty sure I catch a glimpse of his lengthy shaft bouncing around inside the front of his shorts.
Damp with sweat, his curly, brown hair looks like it was made for fingers to run through it. And whenever he looks up and catches me staring at him, the usual arrogance filling his pale green eyes is gone, replaced with hatred, which is even hotter.
When his gaze goes back to the grass, I grab my phone and snap a few pictures, mostly for future blackmail but also for the little story I’ve been writing about him. It’s not fair that filthy rich assholes get to look so good on top of everything else.
Hopefully he thinks I’m watching him to make sure he does the job right and not because he’s hot as hell. I really should be inside, getting dinner ready for Matt and Mandy before I start my second three-hour online shift for the day. Now that school is back, I work four to seven with an hour break, then I’m back online from nine until midnight. During the summers, I usually squeeze in twelve to fifteen hours of work a day, so the reduction in income is going to hurt like hell. Good thing I found a little blackmail money on the side…
“Well, well, what do we have here?” Shelly, one of my neighbors, asks when she plops down in the tattered lawn chair next to mine with little Joey on her lap.
“Hey, sweet boy.” I reach over and tickle his chubby tummy through his onesie. To Shelly I gesture to Aric’s broad, flexing backside and say, “This, my friend, is a front row seat to karma.”
“Karma, huh?” She whistles low. “If I were you, I would go lie down in the grass over there, spread my legs and beg karma to put another baby in me.”
“And you are certifiably insane,” I tell her, even though I can’t ignore the slight twinge I feel between my legs. While I may have fooled around with several people, I’ve never had actual penis in vagina intercourse. I know that my virginity is the one thing that will help me reach my ultimate goal – to be valedictorian of the snobs. Sure, there’s birth control and condoms, but nothing prevents pregnancy one hundred percent except abstinence. Shelly is only two years older than me, struggling to take care of herself and Joey! I don’t want to end up like her. Besides, I already have two kids I’m trying to raise.
I take a sip from my bottle of water to try and cool my hormones down when Aric cuts off the mower and starts to head over. I do not watch the drips of sweat cascading over his abs or imagine licking the ones trailing into the dark patch of hair leading into the waistband of his shorts.
“All done.” He jerks the unfinished water out of my hands and pours it down his throat, making his bulging Adam’s apple bob. That part of the human body can’t be as hot on anyone else because I’ve never noticed it before.
“Can I go now?” he asks when he tosses the empty plastic container back into my lap.
“Yeah. Go. Fine.” Do I sound nonchalant? Probably not. “I’ll text you when I have more blackmail work for you.”
With a final icy glare, Aric scoops up his shirt from where he tossed it on the steps and trudges back up the hill to his Lambo.
“Oh wow,” Shelly says when the engine revs and he takes off. “He’s rich too? Scoop him up and get yourself out of this hellhole, girl.”
“I don’t date rich boys,” I tell her with an evil grin as I get up and go back inside, ready to start my next online shift. “But I’m not opposed to blackmailing them.”
Chapter 5
Aric
“How was practice today?” my dad asks when he sits down to eat dinner at the table with me and mom. I’m already halfway through what will be the first of several New York Strip steaks. “You’re home late, so I take it you stayed over to get in
a few more reps.”
“Yeah,” I lie, refusing to go into any more details, which pisses him off and annoys him because he’s trying to live vicariously through me.
“I heard some scouts are coming to the first home game next Friday.”
“Uh-huh,” I reply between bites.
“You ready?”
“Sure, I guess.”
“You guess?” he huffs. Pointing his knife at me, he says, “Aric, this is it, what you’ve been working for since you were able to walk!”
“No, you’ve made me work for this since I was able to walk,” I correct him.
“What else would you rather be doing? Watching your friends become legends from the sidelines? Without football, you don’t have a chance of getting into a decent college, not with your grades.”
“Charles,” my mom speaks up to reprimand him.
“I know that my options are limited,” I tell him. “Which is why I’m still on the team and busting my ass.”
“You better,” he says. “Or one day you’ll look back and regret it because you don’t get any second chances in life.”
“Thanks for the pep talk,” I tell him, pushing my chair back and standing up before I even eat half the shit on my plate. Fuck it. I’m not even hungry despite having probably burned a million calories between practice and lawn mowing.
Fucking Maddie Collins.
I can’t believe I ever let someone like her get one over on me. And now I’m trapped. She’s got me by the balls and there’s no way out.
Later that night, there’s a knock on the door and I know it will be my mom before I even say, “Come in.” This is what she always does after my dad and I have words.
“He just wants what’s best for you,” she says as she leans her shoulder against the door.
“I know,” I reply from where I’m stretched out on the bed with my hands propping my head up.
“I can’t believe you’re a senior. Soon you’ll be leaving and going off to college too.”
“Yep.”
“I miss Caroline, and you’re never around anymore,” she says as she takes a seat on the corner of the mattress. “My babies are all growing up, and it makes me sad.”
“Don’t be sad, mom,” I tell her with a sigh. “Caroline is only four hours away, and who knows, maybe I won’t get a scholarship and you’ll be stuck with me. I’ll be the forty-year-old guy still living at home with his parents.”
“No, you won’t,” she huffs with a swat of her hand on my foot. “Not that I would mind. I wish I had ten more kids like you and your sister.”
“You and dad aren’t too old to pop out a few more brats,” I point out.
“Your father doesn’t want any more children. At our age, he’s thinking about retirement, not babies.”
“You could always get a dog,” I lift my head to tease her with a grin.
“Yeah, maybe I will,” she says with her own smile. Getting to her feet, she starts to the door. “Goodnight, honey.”
“Night, Mom,” I reply. And then, when she starts to pull my door shut, I find myself blurting out, “Hey, Mom?”
“Yeah, sweetie?” she asks when she opens it wide again.
“I think…I think I may have royally screwed everything up.”
“I seriously doubt that. You’re gonna play great next Friday.”
“No, it’s not football.”
“Then what is it, sweetie?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest. When I don’t say another word, she says, “You know you can tell me anything.”
“I’ve been doing something stupid and it’s caught up to me,” I finally admit because I need to get it off my chest, to tell someone without really telling them. And I know my mom. She would never push me to say more than I’m willing to offer up on my own.
“Everyone makes mistakes,” she replies. “The best thing you can do is to admit you messed up and try to fix it.”
“What if there’s no way to fix this, not without people getting hurt?”
“You can’t control how people feel. If you hurt them, then it’s too late to take it back. All you can do at that point is apologize and hope they forgive you.”
Nodding, I say, “Thanks, Mom” and she leaves, shutting my door behind her.
Should I just tell Blake what I’ve done and hope he forgives me, or continue to let a girl I hate manipulate me in order to keep it a secret?
Either way, I’m going to hurt my best friend, but I’m pretty sure he’ll be angrier about his mom than me spending time with the girl he’s obsessed with.
Chapter 6
Maddie
“Hurry up, I don’t have all night!” I bitch at Aric after he climbs out of his fancy car at the top of our hill a few minutes after seven on Wednesday night.
Dinner was a quick oven pizza tonight, and now Matt and Mandy are over at Shelly’s taking turns reading little Joey bedtime stories while I deal with the two loads of the dirty clothes hanging in mesh bags over my shoulder. Since we don’t have a washer or dryer in the trailer, during my break between online shifts we’ll have to hoof it to the closest laundromat, which is three blocks away.
“What fun and exciting bullshit do I have to do for you tonight?” Aric bites out when he meets me on the sidewalk.
“Here. Carry these bags,” I say, handing over the laundry.
“Ugh, are these dirty?” he asks while holding each one out in front of his body.
“No, genius. I’m wasting my time and yours to go wash all of our clean clothes.”
“This is just…gross,” he says as I lead the way to the laundromat. “I may have to draw the line at touching your underwear.”
“You didn’t seem to mind touching Blake’s mom’s dirty panties,” I point out with a grin. “What’s with that anyway?” I can’t help but ask. “Is she blackmailing you or something too?”
“Not that I owe you any explanation, but Collette Sullivan is hot as fuck and knows how to do all sorts of things that teenage girls don’t have a clue about,” he replies.
“Oh yeah? Like what? How to rob cradles? Sign up for AARP? Cover the gray in her hair with platinum?”
“Make your jokes all you want, but at least she doesn’t have any ulterior motives.”
“No, she’s just your regular, everyday child molester.”
“I’m not a child and she didn’t molest me,” Aric grits out.
“She’s the same age as your mom!” I exclaim as I pull open the glass door at Suds and Duds and gesture for the jerk to go inside. “How would you feel if Blake was banging your mother?”
“Please just shut the fuck up,” he says, tossing the clothes bags on an empty section of counter space and glancing around the place. “So, this is where you have to come whenever you want to do laundry?”
“No, if I only have a few pieces, I sometimes wash them in the kitchen sink and hang them out on the line to dry,” I reply honestly.
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Now, I’m going to start the loads because I’m guessing you know fuck all about washing clothes, but then you’re going to put them in the dryers and fold them when they get done. That way they will be clean before you have to put your delicate, rich boy hands on them.”
“How long does all that take?”
“About an hour or so.”
“What do we do until then?” he asks.
“We sit and wait,” I say, nodding over to the plastic chairs while pulling out the laundry detergent from the bag so I can dump the contents into a machine.
Aric
If Blake knew I was currently touching all of Maddie’s bras and panties, he would lose his shit and probably ask me to steal a pair for him.
When I get to one particularly sexy black lace thong, I hold it up in front of me and lift my eyebrow at Maddie.
“What?” she asks.
“Are these what you wear to school underneath your skirt?”
“Maybe.” She lifts one shoulder and lets it fa
ll. “On days that I want to feel a little sexy. Why?”
“No reason,” I mutter as I attempt to fold the tiny piece of lace and put it on the rest of the pile I’ve made on the counter.
I hear the click of a camera; and when I glance up, I see Maddie holding her cell phone out in front of her face.
“Did you just take my picture?” I ask her.
“Of course. Aric Prince is folding my panties! I can’t let an opportunity slip by without photo evidence.”
“Great, more blackmail.”
“I also have pictures of you mowing my grass,” she says. “Maybe I’ll start a scrapbook.”
“You really are a bitch, you know that?” I tell her as I fold the last pieces of laundry. “There. I’m done.”
“Cool,” she says when she waltzes up the counter in those same cutoff shorts as yesterday and a thin white tank top. Then, she laughs like a crazed hyena as she lifts the folded pile, shoves it into the two bags and then, for good measure, shakes them around.
“So, you made me waste all that time folding for nothing,” I huff.
“Oh, it was for something – my amusement. You’re dismissed now. Can you find your way back to your car, or will you be too scared walking the streets of downtown all alone?”
“I would love for someone to try and rob me,” I tell her since I’m bigger than about ninety-nine percent of the population.
“Here’s a newsflash, hot shot,” Maddie starts, lowering her voice to a whisper as if she’s imparting some incredible wisdom to me. “The thugs who rob people in this neighborhood? Yeah, they don’t care how big and strong you are because they have guns.”
Okay, so I hadn’t really thought about that since guns and violence aren’t an issue over in the suburbs where I live.
“If that’s true, then why aren’t you freaking the fuck out about getting robbed or raped around here?” I ask incredulously. “Is that why you asked me to come to the laundromat with you?”