“If it isn’t the brown-eyed beauty from the jewelry store,” I said.
She looked up at me, and her full lips spread into a tiny smile. “If it isn’t the guy who knows nothing about his girlfriend,” she said as she set her pen down.
“Girlfriend? Who says that locket was for my girlfriend? Maybe it’s for my mom or my sister or…”
“Are you seriously gonna play the no girlfriend game with me?” She lifted a cocky brow.
“I’m sorry… I’m not sure I’m familiar with that game.”
“I seriously doubt you’re single,” she said.
“And why is that?” I slipped into the chair next to her and rested my chin against my fist. This was getting pretty interesting. She was going to attempt to psychoanalyze me. Good luck, sweet girl.
“Guys like you are never single.”
“Guys like me?” I laughed. “And exactly what kind of guy am I?”
“You want me to be honest, or you want me to sugarcoat it?”
“I’ve always been a fan of honesty.” I bit my bottom lip and smiled inside when her eyes followed my action. She was thinking of what it would be like to kiss me… good. I wanted her to think things like that.
“You’re that guy—tall, dark, handsome, and totally untouchable. You’re mysterious, which drives the girls wild, and all that confidence you have wrapped around yourself is a turn on, too. You’re a challenge, and it’s like encoded in human DNA to go after a challenge. I’m willing to bet you have a hundred different walls up to keep people out, which of course makes the girls even crazier. They all want to be the first one to know the real you, and I bet you love your car… which is probably some really great classic Mustang that you’ve named Bertha or some other horrible old lady name.” She paused.
Finally, she looked me in the eye, and I felt her deep gaze inside my boxers. Holy shit! She was turning me on.
“Am I warm?” she asked with a questioning tilt to her head.
I sat there, sifting through everything she had said. She was so close to the truth that it freaked me out.
“You’re hot.” I gave her a direct gaze as I let the different meanings behind my words sink in. “Have you been watching me, naughty girl?” I attempted to shake the seriousness away.
“Are you saying that I was right?” She smiled.
She was so right it wasn’t even funny anymore.
“No, I’m just curious where all that came from.”
“I just described every man that would have nothing to do with me, so now my question to you is… why are you talking to me?” She lifted one eyebrow as if accusing me of something.
This girl was very strange. Obviously, she had self-esteem issues, but at the same time, she was the most confident, outspoken woman I’d ever met… other than my sister, Jenny.
Her honest eyes flipped my insides, and I felt a tiny bit of panic run up my spine. I was slowly losing control of the conversation, which was completely unacceptable. I internally shook myself and went in for the kill.
“You think I’m handsome?” I flirted.
“Don’t change the subject.” She blushed.
“No, I think it’s you who’s changing the subject. Then it’s settled!” I said as I playfully smacked the tabletop.
“What’s settled?”
“As long as you’re not seeing anyone and since you obviously think I’m handsome… I’m taking you out.”
“What do you mean out? Like a date, out?”
“Yes, like a date out. What do ya say?” I shrugged.
I was praying that I made some kind of impression on this girl, at least enough to get her to agree to go on a date with me. Everything was riding on this girl and making her happy for three months.
GET YOUR COPY OF ON THE PLUS SIDE TODAY!
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
TABATHA VARGO
PROLOGUE
SHANNON DANIELS
“NINE-ONE-ONE. WHAT’S YOUR EMERGENCY?” the operator asked.
She sounded broken, static creeping into the line as my cell struggled to catch the signal from the center of the cornfield where I’d been dumped.
“I ...” My voice cracked.
I swallowed the flames that lit my raw throat with the single world.
I hadn’t spoken. Not since the screaming stopped. Not since the tiny pieces of my existence came crashing down around me, little orange cinders burning me and leaving me mentally scarred.
“I need help,” I muttered, pushing my voice over the burn.
Humiliation rolled through me as memories of the night settled onto me like thick fog. Suffocating me, it sucked the oxygen out of the atmosphere, leaving nothing behind.
I’d all but asked for it—practically begged for just one date with him. My entire high school experience had been about him.
Passing him in the halls.
Seeing him in gym class.
Anything I could do or say in hopes of catching his eye, I did. Joining clubs I wanted nothing to do with because I’d heard he’d joined them. Going to football games to watch him play when I abhorred anything sports related and had no idea what was happening.
When he asked me to go to prom after four years of dreaming of him, I agreed without a second thought. Little did I know my night would end with me sitting in a cornfield covered in dirt with wet grass clinging to the ripped shreds of my expensive green dress.
My fingers moved over the glittering sequins barely hanging on to the smooth taffeta before catching on the broken pieces of my acrylic fingernails. A wilting white carnation hung limply from my wrist as the tiny sprays of baby’s breath trickled onto the fresh growth beneath me.
I’d felt beautiful for the first time in my entire life. My grammy had taken me to a salon earlier in the day to have my scarlet hair curled and styled. Now, those curls tumbled loosely from the pins that had once held them back and freshly cut grass clung to the dangling strands.
Why else would I have asked you out?
He asked when I questioned his intentions in the back of his car.
Why else indeed?
What had I been thinking?
For four years, he barely acknowledged me. It wasn’t until he found out I was willing to do anything to get his attention that he finally showed me some. At least that was how my friend had worded it, thinking she was doing me a favor.
Shannon would do anything to date you.
That was what he wanted from me.
Anything.
Unfortunately for him, I wasn’t as willing to do anything as he’d thought. And unfortunately for me, with a bit of party punch in his system, he no longer cared if I was willing or not.
“Ma’am?” the operator questioned.
She’d been talking to me, asking me questions, but I was no longer speaking.
I couldn’t because the embarrassment was becoming tangible, pulling the air from my lungs as realization set in. I’d done this to myself. It was my fault. I’d asked for it. Every time I put myself in his path with hopes of his attention, I’d begged for it.
What would everyone say?
How would it look when everyone at school found out?
And they would.
The minute I said the words into my phone—the minute I asked for help—everyone would know, and they would laugh. They would say I wanted it, and maybe for a few seconds I had, but my mind had changed quickly.
I should have been all for it. Me, the chunky redhead who clung to his every word, and him, the jock who instigated drool from the female race as a whole, but the second he became rough and insistent, I knew I didn’t want it.
Not even a little bit.
Closing my eyes, all I could see in my mind was the tiny crescent-shaped birthmark on his right forearm. I remembered locking my eyes on it when he used his right hand to hold my arms down above my head. After I gave up the fight, the birthmark had bounced in my vision, and I focused on it so I didn’t have to think about what was happening
to me.
I couldn’t tell the operator the sick and twisted things he’d done to me.
I couldn’t go through with it.
Already, I’d been disgraced. Once the rumors moved through school like a salty wave of gossip, the humiliation would only get worse. He would tell them I wanted it, and they would believe him.
Why wouldn’t they believe him?
It made sense.
Every other girl in school wanted him.
Why wouldn’t I?
Gripping my cell tightly, I pulled it away from my ear. The screen lit up, igniting the area around me with my reality.
“Ma’am, are you there?” the operator’s voice echoed into the night.
If I told, everyone would know. And if everyone knew, I could never live it down. If everyone knew, I could never forget. It would follow me around for the rest of my life, hovering over me like gray clouds of sadness and despair.
Graduation was a little over a month away, which meant I could walk away in a few weeks and never look back. I could put it all behind me and focus on my future without the stain of prom night all over my flesh.
My thumb moved across the screen, and I pressed it against the red button to end the call. Help wasn’t what I needed or wanted. To forget was what I needed. To pretend was what I wanted to do.
My knees popped when I stood, and bits of grass and little green sequins rained onto the ground around me. My ankle screamed in discomfort when I limped toward the dirt road that bordered the field.
I wanted to go home.
And I never wanted to think about prom night ever again.
I didn’t care if I spent the rest of my life alone. I didn’t care if it was just me and my grammy for the rest of my forever. I’d stay away from men because they were evil and only wanted one thing. It didn’t matter if you were willing to give them that one thing or not. Men took what they wanted.
Period.
And as I limped home, I made a promise never to put myself in the position to be taken ever again.
ONE
SHANNON
THREE YEARS LATER
THE SOUND OF THE CLOCK TICKING in the back office sounded like a hammer against a stone. It echoed through the space around us, beating in perfect rhythm with the time, which didn’t seem to be moving. The boredom was so palpable I could reach out and pluck it from reality, smothering us and making me feel stuck inside the store.
The open sign had been switched on for three hours, and in that time, we hadn’t had a single customer. Even though I knew it would make my shift move even slower, I continuously checked the time on my phone, hoping another hour had passed.
It hadn’t.
Minutes had passed.
Not hours.
A sigh rushed from between my lips, and I rested my chin in my palm, tapping the tip of my nose with my fingers.
“Mmm,” Lilly hummed as she shoved another spoonful of cookies and cream ice-cream into her mouth.
She was stress eating—soothing something inside her soul with sugar and calories. I knew all too well what it was like to give in to the sugar addiction to take away your emotions. The carbohydrate load was good for our minds, clearing away the memory debris that loaded down our thoughts, but the sugar overdose was terrible for our bodies.
I understood, though. I had done the same thing many times in my life. Although, my sugar soothing sessions were usually brought on for different reasons than Lilly’s. She was having a minor breakdown over the fact she was falling hard for the guy she was seeing. Falling for a guy wasn’t something I would ever do.
Lilly wasn’t me, though. She was my best friend as well as my roommate and the manager of Franklin’s Jewelry store where I worked, but she wasn’t a man-hater the way I was. Needless to say, I was around her a ton, so I understood her issues.
I really did.
The differences in her since she gained her new guy friend, or whatever he was, were seriously noticeable, and I hated to see her wrapped in the wrath of depression during what should have been a joyful period in her life.
She was fighting her feelings, which, honestly, was the wisest thing she could do when it came to the opposite sex, but I knew she wouldn’t win the fight. Women were drawn to attractive men, and while I hated to admit it, Devin Michaels, Lilly’s new friend, was super nice to gawk at.
That didn’t mean I wanted what she had.
It didn’t mean my body was suddenly working again or I could feel the urges she spoke of.
Understanding attraction to men was hard for me. I pretended, giggling with my girlfriends about the half-naked men in magazines and the sexy guys at the bars we went to, but the fact was, even looking at naked male flesh made my stomach turn inside out.
The night I dared not think of made it so.
His touch.
His voice.
The memory of his flesh sliding against mine.
Everything about it turned me away from the male gender. They were the Black Plague as far as I was concerned—rotting women from the inside out—dotting their flesh with the pocks of disdain. We were all being threatened by an army of penises ready to bring down the female race.
Needless to say, the events which unfolded over the course of the day were a shock to my misandristic system.
My eyes were shuttering closed, my mind slowly shutting down, and I kept catching myself nodding off at the front counter. Weekdays, when almost everyone else in the world was working, too, tended to be that way. Why two of us worked at the same time on a weekday, I had no idea. I only knew I needed the money, so even though I wanted to call in for the day, I pulled myself out of bed, got dressed, tamed my fiery mane, and went to work.
Tourists passed our door, basking in the comfortable fall weather outside and enjoying the historical beauty of Charleston. I hadn’t always lived in Charleston, but I had lived there long enough to know who was a tourist.
The tourist looked at everything around them as if it was some sort of beautiful creation. Their mouths hung open in love with the antiquity of the town. They pulled out their phones for pictures and walked the sidewalks slow enough to take in everything they passed.
Locals weren’t anything like that. They hustled, bustling past the magnificence of our town with their phones glued to their faces. They weren’t in awe of Charleston’s splendor. They took advantage of their circumstances because the town around them was their home and the world they saw every day.
Growing up, I lived on the outskirts of downtown Charleston, and coming from a smaller town, I had only visited the city on special occasions. My family could never afford the luxuries of downtown, but sometimes, we would drive to town and walk the ancient cobblestone streets, taking in the history that marked every surface of the city. I used to be a tourist—a slow walker—pulling out my camera and snapping pictures of the town’s rustic charm. Memorizing its handmade wrought iron fences and perfectly manicured historic gardens.
Things were different now, though. I was older, and living with my grammy wasn’t an option anymore. Bills needed to be paid, and next to no work could be found in the small town where I grew up. After months of searching, damn near starving, and having our electric turned off, I moved in with Lilly and took the job at Franklin’s Jewelry store. Soon after my move, Grammy started getting disability checks to cover her bills, but I still contributed whenever I was able.
A small boy in blue jean overalls ran up to our door and pulled on the handle like he was going to come inside. I leaned up on the counter, thrilled at the prospect of a customer, but his mother came behind him and tugged him toward the store beside ours.
False alarm.
Resting my chin on the heel of my hand, I sighed in boredom yet again. My eyes gradually closed as the sleep I had missed the night before crept over me.
That was when I saw him.
I didn’t usually notice men, but this man … he was very noticeable, to say the least.
He was tall and dark, his
bronzed skin glittering in the noon sunlight. His wide shoulders flexed as he tilted his head to the side to crack his neck, and his thighs stretched in his distressed jeans when he stepped onto the sidewalk just outside Franklin’s.
The button up cargo shirt he was wearing pulled tightly across his chest as he moved. The large watch on his wrist caught the sun when he checked the time, and a reflection dashed across my face.
Men rarely wore watches anymore, but something about it was attractive and distinguished. Wearing a watch told the people around him he didn’t allow his phone to rule his world. He was the ruler. The commander of his time and actions and no digital electronic was going to tell him when and where.
I blinked, shocked I was staring so hard—surprised I was contemplating anything about him. He was like a solar eclipse … dangerous to look at but too hard to look away from. A bad accident that made you rubberneck or an intense movie you rewound to watch over and over again.
He moved like volcanic lava, deliberate and steaming, in no rush to get where he was going, but sure to scorch everything in his path. The tourist women walking the sidewalk melted like shaved ice on hot asphalt as he passed. If I hadn’t found it hard to look away from him myself, I might have laughed at how idiotic they seemed.
But for the first time in a long while, I understood their ogling.
He was beautiful.
Gorgeous like a Greek god but tainted black like the devil himself.
He slid his mirrored sunshades from his face, the glasses catching the reflection of our front door and sign, and hooked them in the pocket of his shirt. He ran his long fingers through his midnight hair, a defiant strand dropping loose from the rest and landing in a sexy curl against his forehead, before reaching for the handle of our door.
“Put down the ice cream, Lilly. A customer’s coming in, and he’s sexy with a capital S,” I said.
It was the way I spoke about men. My way of hiding the fact that anything with a penis scared the living shit out of me. Usually, it worked, and the girls would laugh along, but this time was different.
Thick & Thin (Chubby Girl Chronicles Book 3) Page 29