The Goode Fight

by Seth King

  THE GOODE FIGHT

  A NOVEL

  SETH KING

  For Martin. I know you’re gonna help me with this one

  Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this book in no way endorses a belief in the occult.

  – Seth King

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Seth King is a twenty-five-year-old American author and former model. He enjoys reading, lifting weights, spending time with his nieces and nephews, playing the piano, and bondage. His family calls him Seth, but his readers are more than welcome to call him Daddy. For more shameless selfies like the one above, and to keep up with his latest work, follow him on Instagram and Twitter at @SethKingBooks.

  PROLOGUE

  When I was a little girl my mother always told me that love is giving someone the power to destroy you, and then trusting them not to. But as I stare into the eyes of the accused murderer whom I may have just given permission to kill me, it occurs to me that I might have taken that lesson a little too seriously.

  “Taylor,” he says slowly, his velvety voice giving me the same carnal reaction deep in my abdomen I experienced the first night I met him, “you understand the stakes here, right? Are you sure you want to put your life in danger to have sex with me?”

  “I trust you,” I say after a moment, even though I am not entirely sure that I do. “You’re stronger now. The Caitlin situation won’t happen again. I promise.”

  His eyes are ravenous but his body is still tense, and so I slip my bra strap off my shoulder and motion my finger at him. He takes a deep breath, slips off his silver cross necklace, and tosses it aside. Whatever is about to happen, it seems that he does not want God around to witness it.

  I guess some habits never die.

  My stomach clenches into a pulsating knot of fear and desire as he turns back and leers at me. Oh, God. This is it.

  The beginning of us, or the end of me.

  1

  Taylor Haney

  I got dumped on a windy Wednesday night in September in the form of a two-sentence WhatsApp message.

  I know, right? WhatsApp? The jerk couldn’t even have called me, or at least have sent me a Facebook message or something? I mean, I can’t say I didn’t see it coming, as technically we didn’t even live in the same hemisphere anymore, but still: come on. I guess this officially replaces the time my last boyfriend Graham broke up with me over FaceTime while sitting in a Chipotle as Taylor Haney’s Most Pathetic Breakup, Ever. And obviously, since I am two semesters away from graduating and being pushed out into the terrifying deathtrap known as the Real World and being forced to become a Responsible Adult, breakups like this can only be dealt with one way: in a calm and mature manner. And by that I mean, by crying hysterically into a box of Cheez-Its while calling my best friend Cara and begging her to feel sorry for me.

  “He just said that he doesn’t know what he wants…” I choke into the phone between my sobs, “and he needs to figure out some things and…it’s summer in Australia right now and he doesn’t want to be tied down and…I still like him, but I don’t even know what to think anymore, and…”

  “Taylor Haney,” Cara McClellan interrupts in her signature take-charge voice, “shut up right now, because we are about to go out and get wasted and forget this asshole ever existed.”

  I pause, my fantasies of spending my night drowning my sorrows in Pinot Grigio and Lana Del Rey instantly dashed. “We are?”

  “Yes. I can hear your frown through the phone and you need to turn it upside down immediately, because frowns lead to wrinkles and wrinkles lead to fugliness and fugliness leads to death. In my world, at least. And speaking of my world, have you seen my Nars foundation? I think my new cleaning lady stole it, that sneaky little woman.”

  I roll my eyes and wipe a stream of tears off my neck. How typical: I just got dumped, and Cara’s worried about her stupid makeup.

  “Cara, I got broken up with ten minutes ago,” I tell her. “Over a WhatsApp message. I am not going out.”

  “Oh, come on, you only dated Adam in person for, like, two months, and you haven’t even seen him since June or something. It’s September- it was time for this to happen. You’re mourning something that isn’t even worth mourning in the first place.”

  “Not worth mourning?” I ask in disbelief. “Cara, the guy was 6’3” and had an Australian accent! And an eight pack! An eight pack, damn it! You would be mourning an eight pack too!”

  “Well you are about to mourn that eight pack by drinking a six pack at my place,” she snaps. “Or vodka; I found an old bottle of Smirnoff in my closet earlier and put it in the freezer.”

  “Cara, I just said I don’t want to-”

  “And I’ve got some leftover Krispy Kremes on the counter from this morning.”

  “Be right over!”

  I toss my phone onto the bed and head for the shower. All jokes about my appetite aside, Cara probably does have a point: this was bound to happen. I met Adam while studying abroad in Hungary during spring semester, and flirting in lecture halls soon turned into sharing coffees on street corner cafes which turned into getting wasted and groping each other at trashy disco clubs on the weekends. By the time the semester ended and I had to come back home to North Carolina and he had to return to Australia, we decided to take our relationship to the next level and make it Facebook official. I’d hoped he would become my first head-over-heels, true-love boyfriend, and he made a whole laundry list of promises: Christmas Break meet-ups in California, Spring Break rendezvous on exotic islands somewhere halfway between our countries, sexy FaceTime chats every single day, etcetera. But before long the Facebook messages started getting shorter and the racy Snapchats started coming less frequently, and soon I had to face the reality that he was slipping through my fingers. I tried to make it work, I really did, and I gave him all of myself, in more ways than one. But now I can see that I gave away too much of myself, as usual, and the only thing I have to show for it is this giant hole in my chest that I’ll probably spend the next two weeks trying to fill with Krispy Kreme and Doritos. Go figure.

  After my shower I go through the motions of making myself look like a semi-normal member of society, throwing on a stitch of makeup and grabbing my favorite old pair of jeans along with a long-sleeved eggplant shirt. The shirt is from freshman year and probably went out of style ages ago, but I shrug and pull it on anyway. When I get into my car at nine fifteen, though, I flinch: hanging from my rearview mirror is a cheesy key chain with a picture of Sydney Harbor on the front and Adam’s name printed in big red letters on the back. He gave it to me at the airport in Hungary while we were waiting for our flights, both heartbroken at being torn apart by the cruel mistress of fate- or so I thought. When the cold, robotic voice came over the intercom calling his flight number, I got so depressed that he took the keychain off his backpack and handed it to me, telling me to hold it whenever I missed him.

  “Jackass!” I scream as I rip the stupid keychain off the mirror and throw it out my open door. “I guess you only wanted me until it got warm enough to hunt for sluts on the beach, huh? Well guess what- I don’t miss you anymore, you stupid Australian! I never liked Aussies anyway, your kangaroos aren’t even that cute and your opera house looks like a…stupid pile of shells!”

  I hear my voice echo through the empty parking lot and promptly realize that I am acting like a complete maniac. I take a quick breath and push the Crazy Button, a technique I learned from my Aunt Susan, a therapist who specialized in anger management. Whenever I’m afraid I’ve reached my breaking point and am about to let my guard down and reveal to the world just how crazy some of my deepest thoughts can sometimes be, I picture myself hitting an imaginary red button and think, Okay, Taylor, that’s enough.
You just used up your crazy allowance for the day; it’s time to start acting sane again.

  “Okay, Tay,” I tell myself as I wrap both hands around the steering wheel and try to slow my breathing. “It’s Crazy Button time. Cara was right- this is no big deal. It was bound to happen. Adam’s done enough damage already, you can’t let him do any more. Calm down.”

  When my heart rate finally drops off and my breathing gets back to a manageable pace, I close my door and head for Cara’s. This was going clearly going to be an interesting night.

  When I arrive at Cara’s door a few minutes later I reach up to knock but then scream when she suddenly flings it open, her golden-strawberry hair wrapped in a towel and her face covered in white paste, making her look like a murderer out of some creepy slasher movie. I stumble backward, trip over a potted plant, and fall flat on my butt.

  “God, you are such a spaz,” Cara sighs as I dust my clothes off and get up. “I saw your headlights through the window in the bathroom and thought I’d beat you to the door to judge your outfit.” Her hazel eyes shine with disgust as she takes in my clothing choices. “Um, jeans and a boring shirt? Really? Aren’t you going to change into a skirt or something? Throw on some mascara? Anything?”

  “I’ll probably just cry off all my makeup once I get drunk anyway, so there’s no point,” I answer as I follow her inside. She disappears into her bathroom as I turn into the kitchen to search for the donuts.

  “Whatever, you’re so hopeless,” Cara calls from the bathroom as I stuff my face. “I’ll never be able to introduce you to a new guy tonight if you look like a mess. Oh, and that reminds me: don’t let me take any pictures after I start drinking. My dad’s henchman have been watching me like a hawk ever since that Facebook album from that disastrous weekend at the lake with those Texas boys ended up on FoxNews.com, and I don’t feel like dealing with any more bitchy emails from his press office in the near future.”

  I roll my eyes as I lick excess chocolate crème off my fingers. Normally, photos of a twenty-two-year-old girl doing keg stands in a bikini are pretty much par for the course, but when your father is a senator and his best friend is the governor, you are expected to live by a different set of rules- not that Cara ever follows them, anyway.

  “The album that was uploaded against my advice, may I remind you,” I respond. “And may I also remind you that the lake incident is hardly the reason your dad has his people watching you, and we both know it.”

  Oops, I cringe as I realize I’d just broken the unwritten law about bringing up the events of last December. That whole debacle is supposed to be buried forever, and I’ve been warned that any mention of it could bring it back to life in an instant. Since I know from past experience that Cara is going to repay me for my mistake by sprinkling a barrage of passive-aggressive insults throughout our conversation over the course of the night, I frown and take a sip of freezing vodka straight out of the bottle to prepare myself for her wrath. Once she finishes her beauty routine and comes into the kitchen I pour two shots and then make a dumb face to remind her of what a bad influence she is.

  “Ugh, you are so headstrong,” she groans as she picks up her glass. “You’re totally gonna thank me later when you finally chill out and have some fun. Cheers, honey.”

  I clink my glass with hers. “Cheers to being young, broke, unemployed, and dumped on a free messaging app thirty minutes ago. Yay!”

  Cara laughs and then tries to squeeze into her favorite old skintight sweater, but gives up after discovering it won’t even fit over her shoulders anymore. As she storms back to her closet to find something else I can’t help but note how much the discarded sweater has in common with our friendship. My relationship with her still has occasional moments when it feels comfortable and familiar, a cherished old relic from my childhood, especially now that adulthood is knocking on our doors louder and louder every day. But we don’t have a thing in common anymore and haven’t for years, and more often than not I feel our friendship tugging and chafing at all the places we’ve grown apart, making me question how long it could be until the fabric finally rips apart altogether.

  And sometimes – just sometimes – I wonder if the only thread keeping us together is made of the secrets we hold between us.

  Once Cara finally settles on a slinky blue top we stumble into her shiny new Infiniti SUV and head to her favorite bar, Moderation. (Even if you go out and get wasted like a hot mess you can still tell people that you drank “in Moderation,” and technically you’re not lying. No wonder she likes it so much.) It’s a little hipster-y for my tastes, with “ironic” graffiti all over the brick walls and patrons who do not shave or bathe nearly as often as I would prefer them to, but as the old saying goes, people who just got broken up with via iPhone apps cannot be choosers. We order a vodka tonic for Cara and a Blue Moon for me and then set ourselves up near a small group of skinny tattooed guys dancing to Amy Winehouse.

  “Are you sure you want to stay here?” I ask as some dumb hipster walks by wearing a Native American headdress. “These kids don’t look cool and ironic, they just look like idiots. And you already look bored.”

  “Oh no,” she tells me, “I’m not bored, I’m just silently judging people. And looking for hot dudes.”

  Here we go, I think as I sip my beer. By now I know our little routine by heart: I hang out with Cara until she gets drunk enough to start acting slutty without feeling guilty about it, at which point she ditches me and makes out with some random dude while I stand in the background making small talk with strangers until she’s ready to be driven home with her guy. (That’s why I usually go out with my other, less crazy friend, Eve.) To pass the time until she reaches her slutty point I do an awkward little dance to the music and look around. There’s a massively creepy dude with a goatee staring at me from a few feet down the bar, so I quickly turn in the other direction and survey the crowd, a mix of fellow college kids and former college kids who stayed behind after graduation to extend their partying years as long as possible since there weren’t many jobs to look for out there anyway. As I take it all in, I decide it’s a pretty typical mix for a place like this on a Wednesday night…until I spot someone who is the furthest thing from typical I have ever seen.

  He’s alone, standing still as a statue by the fireplace. I can’t tell if he’s pissed off about something or just a naturally serious person, but whatever the case, the scowl suits him well. He’s a good height, maybe six foot one, and the perfect size, muscular but in a sort of lean way. His sharp jawline is covered in three or four days’ worth of scratchy golden stubble, and his dark eyes are deep-set and very dangerous looking. His short, dark-blonde hair is messy in a just-fell-out-of-bed-and-don’t-really-give-a-fuck way, and his beaten-up leather boots go well with his worn-in black jeans, frayed white Henley, and weathered black leather jacket that looks decades old but probably cost a fortune at Calvin Klein or something. Anyone else in that outfit would look totally ridiculous, I decided, but somehow this guy came off like he just threw something on in three seconds before casually striding out the door and going about his business. Looking at nothing in particular, he’s just staring ahead like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world than this bar – a desire I could completely identify with, actually. He’s sort of scary and intimidating, sure, but he also has an allure unlike anything I’ve ever encountered before, and I am drawn to it like butter on movie theater popcorn.

  Mmm, popcorn.

  “Hey, what’s the deal with the dude over by the fireplace?” I ask Cara as casually as I can, careful not to let my voice betray my budding obsession with this stranger. “Is there a Ryan Gosling lookalike contest going on in town this weekend that I didn’t hear about or something?”

  Once Cara spots the guy in question she looks over at me and rolls her eyes in a way that says Oh, him.

  “That’s Stellan Goode,” she says. “I know; he’s totally gorgeous.” She puts a hand up to her ear. “Hey, did you hear that?”
/>   “Hear what?”

  “The sound of me getting knocked up. I’m pregnant just by looking at him.”

  “I know what you mean,” I giggle. “But why haven’t I seen him before?”

  “Oh, he’s kind of new here, and he doesn’t usually go out. And you’d might as well stop looking at him now, by the way, ‘cause it’s a total waste of time.”

  “Why?”

  She turns and smirks at me. “You mean you really haven’t heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  She looks back at him and puts on a mischievous smile. “He’s celibate.”

  For one long moment I stare at her blankly, unable to comprehend this news. “He’s what?”

  “Celibate,” she repeats. “Like, his penis does not enter vaginas.”

  “I know what the word means, I just can’t…it doesn’t…”

  “I know it doesn’t make any sense,” she breaks in. “He’s weirdly religious and doesn’t even go on dates or anything, but he looks like someone who could bang the hell out of you, which is why every girl I know is obsessed with him. He’s like a freak of nature- the forbidden fruit of Durham. I know of a ton of girls who have tried to pick him up, but they can’t even get past the small talk stage before he turns them down and walks away like an asshole. But he’s drop-dead gorgeous, so they keep trying.” Her face becomes dreamy and admiring. “And if you think he’s hot now, you should see him work out at the Y every day, all sweaty and riled up in his wife beater and stuff. Whenever I’m there with my mom we play this game where we pretend to do the ellipticals, but we’re only on them because they face the weightlifting area and we’re really just creeping on him and staring at his muscles.”

  “Okay, Cara, stalking guys with your mother who are your own age is not normal,” I tell her. “I would not be telling anyone that.”