“Yes ma’am.” I coo, then unlock the freaking door that leads right up to my closet. It’s so cleverly hidden that anyone within my room or the closet itself would miss it unless you absolutely knew it was there.
Sneaky and questionable. Very questionable.
“We plan to get shitfaced tonight so bye Noah.” Kim announces then follows after me, shuts the door and locks it after us.
“Everything alright?” I question her as we go up the narrow stairway, lit by a low soft glowing light. It’s not creepy but it is strange.
“Raea, what part of tonight has been alright?” She questions.
“Uh.” I pretend to think about it, all the while doing my best to ignore the twisting in my chest and Denise’s evil laugh that still rings in my ears. “The part where we scored those free hotdogs during the game?” I question, throwing my head back as I take another swig of the Jack.
“Those were pretty good hotdogs for a football game. But then again, nothing but the best for Westbrook Blues.”
Nothing but the best indeed. The best estates. The best secrets. The best lies. The best betrayal. Westbrook wins them all.
“Hey, pass that along.” Kim chides. I pass the bottle over my shoulder then push the damn door that’s in front of me and alas, my closet lights up as soon as the motion detectors do their thing.
If only those damn things were there four years ago, I would have known NOT to go into a house where someone was lurking in the shadows. Waiting for me.
Fuck, don’t think about it. You are perfectly safe.
I need my fucking pills, this anxiety is eating at me full time. Kim passes me the bottle then, as if sensing the direction of my thoughts. I guess alcohol will have to do for now.
I drop down to the carpeted floor of my closet, and just spread my legs, feeling so damn. . .spent.
“Are you sure you should be drinking?” She questions me softly, as she lowers herself to the ground, beside me.
“No, but then again, when you find out that the man you thought was your father really isn’t and your mother is a whore who never wanted you in the first place, what can you do?”
I take another swig, not expecting a response. So, we sit there, passing the damn bottle until it’s almost half way finished and I’m feeling the effects coming. The lights in my closet become brighter, my senses getting sharper and dull at the same time with each swallow.
“I know what you mean.” Kim starts softly, after a while. “The whole not having a father, being abandoned and all. Then there is your mother, who is nothing but a piece of shit whore. I know all about that.”
I pass her the bottle and remain silent. With Kim, I’m learning a few things. One of them being to just shut up and let her be. Silence is the best listener for her and being who and what she wants you to be in that moment helps too.
Case and point being, she wants me to listen.
“I was born to a whore. Like, an actual pay her two dollars and a pack of cigarettes kind of whore. She didn’t do it for the drugs, no that’s not Luci.” Kim chuckles, but it’s hard and dry.
“She did it for the thrill of it. The high of sex and the rush she got by being at the mercy of some loser. That is until she met a ‘strong, intelligent and sophisticated man.’ Her words not mine.” She explains, taking a long draw from the bottle, as if to draw some courage to continue, then passes it on to me.
“He was just so damn handsome, clothed in the finest threads and had the whole mysterious vibe about him that she just couldn’t resist his allure.”
She takes out a joint from her back pocket and I pass her a lighter that I stole from Ace’s car, which has a crown, a star and a flame engraved on the silver body of it. Some fancy shit, but I like it a lot. It’s so him and me at the same time, I just had to take it. If he noticed, he didn’t say a word, with the ticking of his jaw and his possessive grip on my knee during the entire drive back.
I watch her silently as she lights up the joint and then we pass that too, back and forth for a while, stewing in our own messed up shit until Kim is ready to talk again.
“She took him back to her house the day they met, thinking that he would be a gentleman. A fucking gentleman with loaded pockets, manners and of course, husband material. Like that’s some fucking cloth material one can get in a fabric store!”
My heart is pounding so much so that I think I know where this story is going. Please, let it not be so. . .
“He raped her.” She whispers and I sit up straight as if I’ve been electrocuted.
She doesn’t look at me, doesn’t move or twitch, she just stares straight ahead at the mirrored closet doors, with a blank, hard look in her eyes.
“I’m the product of that rape.”
Oh God.
What is wrong with this world?
I look at Kim but she doesn’t cry, her eyes are hard as steel, but that rage. . . it burns behind those gorgeous orbs. Almost as if she lives with it, breathes it and grows with it.
“Kim. . .” I start but she cuts me off.
“When he found out that she was pregnant, and I have no idea how he did or if she told him but he came back for her and demanded that she keep me. That he wanted children but Luci, my ‘dearest’ mother, was never to tell anyone that I was his because he had another baby on the way at the same time with his ‘legitimate’ wife.”
Even the air quotes are hard, tense and just out of character. Nothing about this is theatrical or dramatic. It’s so damn real
“I have seen that man a few times in my life. Each time is horror after horror. I recently saw him, before we moved here, and he insisted, violently, that I never tell anyone that he is my father. As if I would like to be associated with him. Fuck, I don’t even know his name!” She starts laughing.
“Luci doesn’t know his name either. She just refers to him as the devil.”
Silence looms and grows in the closet, the sound of distant music pounding from the estate at the top, our only source of sound besides our heavy breathing.
“But you know what grates at me, more than anything?” She questions, but I’m wise enough, despite the alcohol in my system, to know that she doesn’t need my invaluable two cents kind of response.
“Even after he raped her, molested her and just cast her away like a worn out, reusable condom, my fucking mother still opens her arms for him. She still allows him to be near us, moving us when he says so. Doing everything that he says because he fucking pays for our bills.”
I remain deathly still, passing on the bottle when she gestures for it.
“I have never seen such a violent, well put man in my life. Like, when you see him, you would never suspect that he likes violating women, beating up his child and then marches out of the house with so much rage, but his mask? Oh, that will be firmly put together.”
God. Kim’s father beat her up. . .
“I know the devil Raea. I know the devil well.” There is a look of absolute hate and rage in Kim’s eyes that makes me start shivering. There are horrors in this girl’s life. Horrors that you can’t even begin to comprehend.
“I never say things like this but fuck it. Tonight, I saw your world crumble and you are still standing. So to hell with all of this assholery and the fucking lie that is parenthood!” Kim says, raising the bottle up and then takes a swig.
We remain silent for a while, just staring at the beautiful garments that fill my closet but my mind? My mind is buzzing with chaos and havoc. When she speaks again, getting up from the floor, I look up at her as if I’m drugged up.
“Well, let’s get dressed for this fucking party and show them whose boss.” She says but I don’t move an inch, watching her.
I don’t know what happens in that moment. I don’t know if it’s because of the alcohol that has loosened all my limbs and my tongue. Or maybe it’s because I’ve reached my boiling point of bullshit and I can’t take it any longer but as soon as I open my mouth, the words just flow out.
“I kn
ow you heard everything that was spoken tonight.” I start, looking up in her stormy gaze.
“Raea, you don’t have to. . .”
I raise my hand to stop her. I need to do this.
“I was raped.”
She sharply turns to look at me, almost dropping the bottle of Jack.
“This carpet needs color.” I blurt out of nowhere, staring at the white, soft carpet of my closet.
“Raea.” Kim breathes, watching me.
I puff the joint, then let the smoke cloud the closet. Then, taking a deep breath, I open my mouth.
Once the words start coming out, the flow of horrors doesn’t stop coming out of my mouth as I tell her, in less graphic detail, how much my life has been the seventh circle of hell since that night four years ago.
It looks like my pathetic life has been some kind of prey to all sorts of issues and problems, mayhem and chaos. Treated inhumanely by the people who were supposed to give me unconditional love.
The anal rape.
Being sent away from home.
Being denied my brother, my boys.
The mental institution.
The breaking. . .
But the suicide attempt, I keep that to myself. Some weaknesses are best left in the dark and not shining some light on them.
The music is pounding so loud, I swear we might be attacked by bears if they hear this. Just the thought of it though has me bursting out in laughter.
“What?” Kim questions as she looks at me, her own laughter about to take over, judging by the smile on her face.
“Nothing. Just thinking that the bears can probably hear all this noise.” I say and we burst out laughing.
After an almost dampening night by all the admissions that we shared while we sat on my closet floor, passing the damn joint and the bottle of Jack—that we gulped down like water—to each other until we polished the damn thing off, we drunkenly decided to still come out for the party anyway.
I mean, what can go wrong?
We both took turns to shower, laughing the entire time. Kim dressed me up in a charcoal pair of sexy, ripped jeans, a slutty wine red top and some black neck chokers. I’m wearing black Vans and my hair is pinned on top of my head with soft tendrils falling to the sides of my temple. Like she did before for the other party a few weeks ago, she does my make-up tonight and I have to say, for a drunk girl, I look pretty hot.
As for Kim, she could wear a trash bag and she would still give all these bitches a run for their money.
As soon as we arrived, she was getting envious looks from these plastic Westbrook princesses with her sexy ankle length skirt, with a slit that shows her entire thigh and hip, a dark top and some sandles that make her legs look fucking sexy.
“Let me eat you up!” Some guy shouted with a laugh but he was decked by someone else, whispering not too quietly that Kim was spoken for. The entire time I could feel Ace’s gaze on me but I never searched for him. He knows to stay the fuck away from me right now.
I just want to have a good time, well as much of a good time a person like me can get.
“I need another can of beer.” I slur and giggle at the same time.
“Whoa, slow down cupcake. You’ll be sick tomorrow. When was the last time you had alcohol?” She questions, her voice not so slurred. Yup, I have to slow this shit down. Maybe I should drink some water.
“I have NEVER had alcohol in my life.” I tell her and she looks at me then realization sinks in. “Until tonight, that is.”
“Oh yeah. You did mention that. For an alcohol virgin, you sure know how to chug that shit!” She raises her can of beer to salute me and I look at her weirdly.
“Why are you saluting me?”
“I don’t know. I think you need a toast for that shit! Welcome to the reckless world of idiotic teenagers!”
“Oooh, I like that toast.” I say with a giggle then grab a bottle of water and raise it too. “Here, here!”
We clink and then drink, but there is nothing in the water bottle. . .uh fuck. I look to my left and spot an unopened can of beer. Oh well, at least I tried.
I reach over for it.
Kim and I, as well as a bunch of random people from school are all littered around one of the upper back decks of Ace’s house. The pool is full of people, it looks like one big orgy down there.
“These bitches have no class.” Kim says as she puffs out smoke from the joint we scored earlier when we came up here to the deck. She passes it to me like before, it seems natural by now.
By this point, we are high, drunk and having the time of our lives as if we are trying to forget something. For me, I am trying by all means to forget that my mother never wanted my brother and I. Trying to forget that I have another sibling that the mother of the boy I have been in love with for so long, got rid of.
Yes, I am trying to forget but each time I look towards my house in the distance, the voices come back.
“You surprised?” I slur. It’s a wonder that I’m even still coherent after all those drinks. Kim’s words, not mine.
“I guess not. Even rich bitches are not so smart.” She says and then we burst out laughing, catching the attention of the guys closest to us.
“Rich bitches care about themselves. The type of shoes they are wearing.” I say.
“If they have straight teeth.”
I snort. “And if their bootie is big enough.” I say and we laugh again, throwing our heads back.
“Are we rich-shaming these girls right now?” Kim questions and I stop growing serious as I think about it.
“You know, if they were half-decent human beings, we wouldn’t have to. Especially here in Westbrook so yes. We ARE rich-shaming these fools.” I say, thinking of what Denise said about my mother.
“That’s deep.” Kim says, nodding her head. We look at each other, with solemn expressions on our faces but that too doesn’t last long, we burst out laughing.
“Say, aren’t you George’s twin?” One of the guys asks as he comes closer to where Kim and I are lounging on the deck chairs.
I have no idea where Ace, Emmett or even Noah are. And fuck me if I care. Just thinking about them makes my head spin and that has nothing to do with how blitzed I am right now. Besides, I’m too livid at them so much so that I start seeing red.
And it also reminds me of what happened earlier tonight and I’m not about that life tonight. No ma’am.
“What’s it to you?” Kim questions him, getting on the defensive because I just keep staring at the guy. He looks like a football player from his build alone but I can’t really be sure. I’m drunk after all, getting close to being over-drunk. Is that a thing?
“No, it’s not a thing.” Kim answers me with a smile, shaking her head and that’s when I realized that I just spoke my thoughts out loud.
“Whoopsie, that filter is gone, isn’t it?” Kim snorts out a laugh and then looks at the guy who is watching me with a cool appraisal, like he is waiting for something from me.
“You haven’t answered me, sir.” Kim prompts and the sexy guy chuckles, his muscles and abs flexing with that delightful sound wafting in the air around us, turning heads. Damn, talk about a sex magnet.
“Well, besides the fact that she looks just like him.” He says with a smirk.
The guy is huge, his dark chocolate skin and caramel eyes twinkling with amused knowledge in the warm glowing lights around the deck. His build is just. . .wow. He looks gorgeous, with his tall, muscular build. His hair is styled in those wavy styles that only African American guys can rock with swag.
If I was someone else, not high and strung up on a certain boy that is, I would have just about died for him. He is just that gorgeous with an unmistakable hint of danger.
But, I’m not someone else. I’m me in all the misery, the baggage, the pain, the loss, the unwanted emotions. . . Oh God. But I’m also a fool for Ace. . .
“Let me guess, you knew him too?” I slur the words but my gaze on him is surprisingly still very cle
ar and focused. Huh, he’s really tall and bulky, with chiseled cheeks too. Is he a model? At least the room isn’t spinning around me if I can tell all this.
“Why, you want to be his agent for modeling contracts?” Kim questions with a loud laugh and a shake of her head as she looks at me. That's when I realize that I just thought out loud. Again. Damn this tongue loosening substance!
“Ooops.”
“Hmm, maybe I should look into modeling. I do, after all, have chiseled cheeks.” The guy says with an easy smile on his face.
“Sorry about that. That was rude of me.” I apologize and then. . .
I burp at the end. Loudly!
Not my night. Not my month. Not my year. Hell, it’s not even my life, but then again, it is.
Heads turn around to stare at me. The girls look disgusted and the boys have smirks on their faces. But I pay them no mind.
“Are you from around here?” Kim questions him.
“No. I go to the public school.” He answers, watching Kim but I’m not sure what passes between them. It’s like they know each other but nah, I’m seeing things again.
“You look like you blend in well.” Kim observes, taking his tattoos in, scanning him up and down as if she’s looking for something.
“Nah, I blend in anywhere. You know, do what I’m told to do and shit.” He says quietly, eyes still on Kim. It’s as if he’s talking to Kim but it’s not sensual or anything, it feels like a message being passed on.
Yup, I’ve reached my limit of alcohol consumption for the rest of my life.
“Oh, I know!” I start, waving my arm in the air. “You’re like a spy!” I shout but both of them suddenly grow tense, turning to look at me as if I’ve lost my mind. I’m blowing this aren’t I? I don’t even know how to act or to shut my damn mouth.
“Sorry, George and Noah liked making me watch action and horror movies when we were younger.” I whisper. But before I can feel dejected, I change the topic.
“You’re not from Westbrook Blues?” I question.
“I’m from the valley. Besides, these shindigs are way over the top and ridiculous for me.” He says with a chuckle, lightening the mood again with his charm that makes me laugh in the process. He’s honest and sexily charming. I like that. I bet Noah would too.
Vicious Hate (Westbrook Blues Book 2) Page 8