by K. A. Linde
“Wait…where is Marshall? What is he doing?” Trihn asked.
“They flew him to Buffalo to meet with the team,” she answered. “Papers to sign, people to meet. That sort of thing.”
“You couldn’t go with him?” Bryna asked.
“Finals,” Stacia said.
It wasn’t a lie. She had always planned to return to finish her finals for her junior year of college. Even though she hadn’t been planning on staying for her senior year and getting her all-important general studies degree, she still wanted the credits she had earned. Marshall had gotten approved to take his finals later because of the draft.
“Oh, okay,” Trihn said. “When will you move out there with him?”
“I don’t know,” Stacia said, squirming. “I don’t have all the details.”
That was the goddamn truth.
“All right. Well, get some rest. Fill us in on more of the details when you get them. I’m excited to hear about your new amazing life,” Trihn said.
Stacia smiled. “Yeah. Me, too.”
She left them out in the living room and proceeded into her bedroom. As soon as she let the door close behind her, she turned on some music, snuggled up under the covers, and let the tears fall.
She didn’t have a career in mind. She didn’t have a degree she loved pursuing. She didn’t have a boyfriend or a job or an apartment…or anything.
She didn’t want to marry Marshall and live out her life as a Stepford wife. That much, she knew. She wanted to be as happy and passionate as her two friends were about movies and fashion. To be as in love with a guy as they were with Eric and Damon. She wanted and deserved more than what she was shortchanging herself.
Truly, she had no clue what she was going to do with her life, and for the first time, that bothered her.
STACIA STEPPED OUT of her English 102 final, the last exam of her junior year. She had always been an okay writer, so she figured she’d scrape by with a B-minus. She should have taken the class last semester, but she had been taking as few classes as possible so that she could have an active social life.
College really hadn’t been a priority. She’d been coasting on Cs for most of her other classes. Her academic advisor had been concerned that she wouldn’t have enough credits to graduate next spring, but since graduation had never been in the cards, she had just been blowing it off.
Now, fear pricked at her.
She needed to graduate. She couldn’t rely on living off her husband’s salary. And her bullshit general studies major would leave her with no options. What the hell can I do with that?
It made her head throb.
She’d made another appointment with her academic advisor for next week. She hadn’t signed up for any classes for the fall term because she’d thought she wouldn’t be there. Change of plans.
Now, she needed a full load of classes for the fall, way more than she had taken in previous years. Plus, she would have to balance that with cheerleading, which was another complication. Cheerleading tryouts for the next school year had been held two weeks ago, and she stupidly hadn’t auditioned. Now, she was stuck without classes or an extracurricular that she adored. She needed to make an appointment with the coach to see if there was something she could do about it.
Without her friends or quarterback boyfriend or cheerleading…what was her life? Did she even have an identity beyond that?
“S, over here!” Bryna trilled from her spot in front of the sports complex, jogging Stacia out of her depressing thoughts. They both had cheer parking passes but usually traded who would drive to campus. Today, they were in Bryna’s Aston Martin. “How’d it go?”
“Piece of cake,” Stacia lied.
“My film final was a bitch,” Bryna told her, sinking into the driver’s seat.
Stacia tossed her bag into the back and then plopped down into the passenger’s side. Their finals had occurred at the last scheduled time for the entire school, so they only had an hour before they were supposed to meet everyone at their favorite local club, Posse.
“So, I heard Marshall was back on campus to finish finals,” Bryna said, fishing for information. “He’s actually going to graduate.”
“He had to come back. It’s a big controversy right now. If drafted players are still full-time students, they can’t miss that much school, or they could get disqualified,” she spouted off information she’d always thought was common knowledge but found most other people didn’t know. Product of growing up with a coach as a single father. Football had been her life from an early age.
Of course, that had nothing to do with Marshall at all. And it hadn’t answered the unasked question Bryna had thrown her way.
Stacia swore she was going to tell Bryna and Trihn what happened, but they had only just moved out. They still had stuff at the apartment and were in the habit of riding to classes together. Once things settled down, she’d do it.
“So, is he coming to Posse tonight then?”
“I don’t know,” Stacia said truthfully.
She hadn’t heard from Marshall once since the breakup. But she doubted he’d show. Before the breakup, he’d told her that he intended to leave school as soon as he reasonably could. If he’d finished finals, then she suspected he’d be on a flight, already out of the city.
“All right then,” Bryna said, letting the subject drop. It was clear she knew that Stacia wasn’t telling her something, but thankfully, she didn’t push it.
Forty-five minutes later, the girls were done up in fresh makeup and skimpy dresses that showed off their toned legs and athletic cheer bodies.
By the time Stacia had finished with her ritual of hair and makeup, she felt more like herself—the bubbly little cheer slut. No reason for anyone to think anything was different. Nothing had changed since the draft.
The pair took a cab to Posse, and they were ushered inside by the bouncer who knew each of them on a first-name basis. The club was one giant room with a massive bar on the entire right side. Stairs on the left led up to the exclusive VIP section that overlooked the main dance floor. Additionally, double doors off the back side of the room led to a swimming pool and patio with tons of pool chairs. On Sundays during the summer, Posse would host pool parties that rivaled the Strip. It was their favorite place by campus.
Trihn was already inside when they got there, and they were unsurprised to find Maya with her. However, it was surprising that Maya wasn’t on the other side of the bar, serving up drinks, like she’d been doing for the last three years.
“Maya!” Bryna cried as she wrapped her arms around the tall African American girl’s shoulders. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Drinking!” Maya said. She raised a glass of tequila in their direction and slipped her black hair over one shoulder where it was gathered in a tight braid.
“But you’re the bartender,” Stacia said.
“Not anymore. I quit!” Maya told them.
“Isn’t it awesome?” Trihn said. “Now, she can party with us all the time.”
“Who is going to make my dirty martinis?” Bryna pouted. “Or a Peppermint Posse?”
Maya shrugged. “Not me, hooker. We’ll become Tuck’s regulars now.” She leaned over the bar and snapped her fingers at the slightly flustered bartender.
Tuck was tall enough to be on the basketball team with a shaved head and determined dark eyes. He didn’t talk much, which Stacia always found odd for a bartender.
“Tuck! Get a round for my girls.”
He grunted and started pouring drinks without asking for instructions. Either Maya had prepped him for this moment, or he was just that good because, a few minutes later, Bryna had a dirty martini with three olives and Stacia had the fruitiest, most potent drink on the menu.
Delicious.
“So, why did you quit?” Stacia asked Maya.
“It’d be pretty impossible to work and start my master’s program in creative writing in the fall. I’ll need all that time for studying and classes.
Decided I’d rather spend the summer backpacking through Europe than working behind a bar. I’ve never been, you know.”
Bryna nearly spit out her drink. “You’ve never been to Europe?”
“You know, most people haven’t, Bri,” Maya said, quirking an eyebrow. “We weren’t all rich kids.”
“Well, I’ll have to meet you somewhere then and show you how rich kids do Europe,” Bryna said.
“I heard Barcelona is nice this time of year,” Trihn said with a pointed grin.
“Bitch,” Bryna grumbled.
The summer after their freshman year, Bryna had gone to Barcelona with Hugh, the guy she had been digging at the time. Things had ended poorly, and Trihn liked to remind Bryna that she had turned down jewelry from Harry Winston. It still pained her.
“Anyway, Eric and I are planning to travel around Europe when he doesn’t have to be here for football. I thought I’d show him my world,” Bryna said with a grin.
“Damon is going on tour, but my manager wants me to open a boutique. So, I’ll be in New York for part of the summer and tour the other part,” Trihn said with a shrug. “I’m still not sure if I’m ready to have my own boutique. But she wants to go through logistics over the summer and try to increase branding. It’s really boring stuff. Just ignore me.”
All three girls turned to Stacia, as if waiting for her to chime in with her big summer plans. She opened her mouth and then closed it. She had no plans this summer. None.
But she couldn’t say that. Fuck.
She needed to defuse the situation. She went straight for the usual distraction. She tilted her head, widened her baby-blue eyes, and tossed her hair. “I’ll probably be sucking cock.”
Her friends vacillated between exasperation and laughter.
“Typical,” Maya mumbled.
Stacia’s cheeks heated, and she glanced away, sucking down her drink as if it were a cock. It was easier to let everyone think she had a one-track mind and was a total airhead than to speak the truth. Easier to be the cheer slut than to be held accountable for the last three years.
“Well, at that, I’m going to go find Damon,” Trihn said. “He’s probably in the DJ booth even though he can’t play here anymore.”
With Damon’s exclusive DJ contract on the Strip, he couldn’t play other Vegas clubs, including Posse. But he was a regular at the bar, so he knew all the rotating DJs and would frequently hang out upstairs. Stacia felt he did it so that he could have a bird’s-eye view and keep tabs on Trihn, even from afar.
Trihn vanished into the crowd just as Eric showed up with Drayton, Maya’s hottie wide-receiver boyfriend. Eric wrapped a possessive arm around Bryna’s shoulders.
He was tall, tan, and built. He’d taken LV State to a national championship when he was a star defensive end, but a career-ending knee injury had taken him out of the game and sent him into coaching.
“Come here, you,” Maya said, pulling Drayton into a kiss.
For how tall she was, Drayton towered over her. He made Stacia feel like a dwarf. But Stacia had always been more interested in Dray’s stats than the exact color of his brown skin or his gorgeous full lips or the size of his dick, which were all things Maya would rave about.
Stacia finished off her drink and flagged down Tuck for another. Getting shitfaced wasted seemed like a great idea right now. Being around all her friends and their impossibly happy love lives was making her drink.
Not to mention, she really, really needed to tell her friends about Marshall. Tonight. Yep, tonight would probably be best. She couldn’t keep this up. Even she was tired of the charade, and she had been living one for years, pretending to be the sexy, hot chick and not the mousy small girl who had been bullied her entire life.
Being a cheerleader hadn’t stopped the mean girls in middle school from picking on the geeky girl with braces and glasses. Things had only gotten worse when she grew out of those things. Suddenly becoming the hot girl hadn’t helped anything, especially when those girls’ boyfriends had started hitting on her. Her overprotective father forbidding her to date hadn’t been good for her social life either.
Stacia sighed and pulled out her cell phone. She was scrolling through everyone’s epic Snapchat highlight reel when she felt a presence at her shoulder. She recognized his cologne before she even looked up. It smelled like desire and late-night sex marathons.
Pace.
“What do you want?” Stacia asked, not looking up.
“Just coming to check on you,” Pace said in a sexy low tone that sent a shot of need straight between her legs.
Damn him for being able to do that to me!
She jerked her head up. “Why?”
“Because you look miserable, even from across the room.”
“I do not!”
He raised an eyebrow, and she had to keep from sighing. That face. God, if he wasn’t such an asshole…
“The hair flip earlier, Pink? Really? Sure sign of distress. You practically called me over here.”
“Don’t call me that,” she said through gritted teeth.
He smirked at her response.
“And I didn’t call you over here. I don’t even want to see you.”
“You can talk to me, you know.” He leaned his hip against the bar. He was almost touching her but not quite. She could feel the heat of his skin. “Come on, let’s go outside. Away from all this noise.”
“If you think for one second that I’m going to go anywhere with you, you’re insane,” she said, straightening.
He brushed her hair off one shoulder and just barely skimmed his finger across her exposed collarbone. She stiffened. Her entire body throbbed. No one else elicited these primal emotions from her. Not even the guy she’d given her virginity to. The guy no one knew about.
“I promise I won’t touch you,” he growled out. “Unless you beg me to.”
Stacia smacked him in the chest and stormed away. What an arrogant jackass! How dare he say those things to her! For all he knew, she was still dating Marshall. Pace was so testy over the fact that he thought she’d slept with Marshall when they were together, yet here he was, seducing her, while he still believed she was with Marshall. Ass!
Pace chuckled behind her. “Come on, Stacia. I’m just messing with you.”
He followed her across the crowded room until she reached the restroom. Then, he did exactly what he’d said he wouldn’t. He grabbed her arm and kept her from entering a place he wouldn’t follow.
“Seriously, what’s up?” he asked.
“Do you really want to know?” Fury and also desperation coated her features. She really wanted to tell someone. She wanted it off her chest.
“Yeah. Though this fire is pretty hot.” He raised an eyebrow.
“God, is everything just a joke to you?” she asked.
His eyes shot straight through her. “Not everything.”
“Feels like it. I feel like a joke to you.”
“Most things, Pink,” he said, stepping closer, “but not you. Never you.”
Stacia tensed as she forgot the world around her. Pace had a way of doing that—making her lose herself. But all she did by losing herself was open herself up for him to hurt her. Time and time again.
“Pace,” she said through a shuddering breath.
“I know you’re with him, S,” he growled low. “I won’t take what isn’t mine.”
“G-good.”
“I just still consider you mine.”
She swallowed hard, trying to figure out what the hell to say to that. Then, she heard something, as if from far away. A distant chorus that seemed to break through the sea of people and over the music blasting through the speakers.
“Marshall!”
“Oh no,” Stacia breathed.
As reality descended on them, Pace staggered back a step.
Stacia didn’t stop to hear what Pace had to say. She needed to salvage whatever was about to happen. As she rounded the corner of the restroom and out onto the dance
floor with Pace on her heels, the sight before her made her stomach hit the floor.
Marshall stood in a pocket of space with a vacant brunette attached to his hip, his arm slung casually over her bare shoulders.
Bryna was up in his face, and even from a distance, Stacia could hear the words “cheater” and “douche bag” flying from her mouth.
“Fuck.”
PACE BURST OUT LAUGHING at her shoulder. “Oh, this is good.”
“Shut up, you!” Stacia cried.
She smacked him again, harder than she had before. Not that it kept him from laughing at her predicament. She didn’t even want to know what he was thinking. She was sure that he saw what everyone else saw; Marshall had been drafted and replaced Stacia for an upgrade.
Fuck.
Fuck.
FUCK!
She didn’t waste any time. She rushed into the middle of the confrontation and grabbed Bryna. “Bri, no!”
“Stacia, let me at him! No wonder you’ve been walking in a daze for the past week. And then he has the audacity to show up here with another girl!” Bryna cried. Her blue eyes were on fire, and if looks could kill, Marshall would be laid out on the floor already.
All eyes had turned to Stacia, and she felt utterly humiliated. Her cheeks burned, and she was sure they were cherry red. Her stomach roiled. This was not how she wanted everyone to find out about her and Marshall.
“The audacity?” Marshall asked in confusion. He met Stacia’s gaze in shock. “You didn’t tell them?”
She saw the hurt in his eyes. Clearly, the reason he’d shown up with the brunette chick was to make a statement. He was over her. She couldn’t hurt him. She couldn’t touch him. He had a million-dollar contract. What did one girl matter? But that look showed it for the fallacy it was.
“No, I didn’t tell them,” she whispered, painfully aware of the hot gazes on her.
“Maybe you should do that and call your bitch off me,” he spat.
“Watch who you’re calling a bitch,” Bryna snarled. Then, she whirled on Stacia just as Trihn appeared breathlessly at Stacia’s shoulder. “What do you need to tell me?”