Bad Nymph

by Jackie Sexton

  Bad Nymph

  Bad Moon Book Three

  Jackie Sexton

  All Rights Reserved ©2013 Jackie Sexton. First Printing: 2013.

  Author’s Note: all characters in this story that engage in adult situations are 18+ years of age.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Bad Nymph

  Bad Moon Book Three

  Jackie Sexton

  Chapter One

  When we were in seventh grade Trent and I swore on our graves, our parents’ graves, and whatever other graves you’re suppose to swear on that if we ever got into a fight that lasted more than a few days, one of us would have to make silly noises at the other until they relented. It was our thirteen-year-old friendship insurance.

  Stupid, I know, but I couldn’t help but think about it as we sat in the hotel room in an awkward silence, both of us staring at the television screen without seeing anything. I had this overwhelming urge to turn to him and blow a raspberry. But I had another overwhelming urge to go dig a hole and die in it.

  Both of those urges managed to cancel each other out so that I just stared at the football match on the screen and tried to force it to compute in my brain as entertainment.

  “Touch down!” Martin yelled, jumping up off the creaky bed with his fists pumped up in the air. On one hand, I was grateful that Brandon knew what it took to cheer Martin up—or at least distract him from his anger. But on the other hand, I wasn’t sure how much longer I could pretend that this was a veritable distraction for me. Everyone knew I hardly understood the difference between a football and a basketball. I could tell by the glances I caught Brandon giving me in the corner of my eye that he knew what I was thinking about.

  Because he had walked in on us, after all.

  ‘God, how embarrassing,’ I thought, my face turning red at just the memory of it. I wasn’t the kind of girl that went around giving out blowjobs in the back of dingy, beat-up vans. Or at least, that’s what I had thought. But considering I never knew that it was an option for me before, how could I have really known?

  I dropped my eyes down to the cash still clenched between my fingers. Two-hundred dollars. It all seemed so surreal.

  “You’re a very good singer, Bailey,” Brandon said, cutting through the loud, incomprehensible noise of the TV. I met his gaze, a tender smile on his face. Well, at least he wasn’t mocking me.

  “Thanks,” I muttered. I leaned over and put the money on the nightstand next to my phone, embarrassed that I had held onto it for so long. My cell buzzed against the chipboard, and I picked it up to look at it, seeing my second missed text from Aamir.

  “Everything OK? U guys still coming?”

  I shut down my phone, a lump stuck in my throat as I thought about Aamir’s sweet face, and how easily he had played me for a fool.

  “Who’s that?” Brandon asked.

  “Uh…just Sierra. She said she’s excited to see everyone tomorrow.”

  Nick shifted in his bed, looking up from the book he was reading. “She’s meeting us in Atlanta?”

  “Where have you been?” Brandon laughed, leaning over from our bed to tug at one of Nick’s dark dreads.

  “I dunno,” he mumbled, dropping his gaze back down to the book. “No one do anything rash. I don’t feel like explaining this to another innocent.”

  “Is that what you call us?” I couldn’t help but let out a small giggle. Nick just grunted but Brandon nodded vigorously with a wide toothy grin.

  “I know, it’s totally ridiculous.”

  I had an urge to ask who made up these weird terms, but I bit my lip and stopped myself. Martin was finally in a good mood, and I didn’t need to create any more tension between myself and Trent. I settled into the pillow on the bed, and, taking a note from Nick, picked my book out of the backpack I had settled on the floor by my feet. Still, I could hardly get into it. The leading lady just got hit by a car. Great. I was a ten feet away from a demon and I just slept with my best friend who just so happens to be a werewolf.

  Really, hard to one up that.

  I heard the door slam and I looked around to see that Trent was missing from his place beside Nick.

  “Where did he—”

  “He…had to go take care of something,” Nick said quietly, his eyes trained on his book.

  “Oh,” I said lamely, knowing better than to push any further. A sadness rose in my heart. Was Trent so disturbed by our hook-up that he couldn’t help but turn into a raging beast? I pulled the covers over my body and shuddered, tears welling up in my eyes at the thought that it was my fault. I dropped the book onto the floor, unable to kid myself any further.

  I had to face the music. For whatever selfish reason I had compromised my friendship. I had decided to take Sierra’s advice and take what was in front of me. As the night moved on and the TV shut off, and Brandon’s gentle snoring rose in the air beside me, I watched the sliver of moonlight that filtered in between the gap in the curtains, dancing as the wind in the trees moved leaves and created shadows.

  There were so many things about Trent’s life that I didn’t understand right then, and that I realized with a sinking heart, I had never understood. Because I had never really known him. Not really. I brought a hand over my eyes and tried to block out the light, but just its presence kept me awake, wired with hot guilt. Even when Trent came back in at God knows what hour, I was awake, listening to his body as it dropped down onto the bed, his hands as they fumbled with his shoes, his irregular breathing as it turned into a steady streams of inhales and exhales.

  For the first time since the trip started, I felt inexplicably alone.

  The next morning we went to a local auto repair center, Al’s Car Repairs, to get our brakes fixed. I had called around when I woke up, and at about three-hundred and fifty dollars they were our best bet. Trent and Martin snoozed in the corner of the waiting room and Nick continued reading. I had enlisted Brandon to help me check up on all our social media and write up the next set list. I was doing everything I could to avoid thinking about the day before, with all of its mind-blowing insanity. I needed to hold it together or else everything would unravel around me.

  As I bit into my granola bar and washed it down with some complimentary coffee, I knew that I couldn’t let that happen. It just wasn’t an option.

  “Looks like we got some more facebook fans from Orlando,” Brandon said, waggling his brows at me.

  “Yeah, and we had a huge surge in hits to the website. Awesome. I’m going to write a new blog post right now. Anything you think I should include?”

  “Yeah, how about we post the lyrics to that new song Trent sang?” I turned my head slowly, grimacing at Brandon’s sly half-smile.

  “I don’t happen to have those,” I said.

  “Oh, I do. I’ll send them to you.”

  “Brandon,” I warned, shooting a glance over towards the corner to make sure Trent was still asleep. He had drool coming out of the side of his mouth and everything. I rolled my eyes, wondering what I saw in him for a minute. But I thought back to the lyrics of that song, and a thrill shot through my body. ‘I have been trapped in your chains, wrapped in a love I no longer can feign…’

  “What?” he said, bating his eyes innocently as he leaned over my arm rest and invaded my personal space. “I think they hold some significance right about now…”

  “Whatever. Send them to me, I’ll post them,” I said in a huff, turning my eyes back to my phone. I could tell it brought Brandon so much joy to tease me, and it was certa
inly better than his tight-lipped moodiness the day before.

  “Wait, what?” I heard Nick say. I was shocked to hear him taking an interest in my personal and very fucked up affairs, but when I looked over to him I realized he wasn’t responding to me. He was standing up from his chair, moving across the room to raise the volume on the TV set that was suspended from the wall.

  “…This would be the second reporting of a wolf sighting this week,” a woman’s voice said over a montage of familiar footage. A tall dorm tower, a cement fountain in front of a brick building…

  It was my school. Or, well, my alma mater. Florida University. My jaw dropped to the floor.

  “The recent reports of wolf sightings have biologists puzzled. But what is even more puzzling, experts say, is their presence in residential areas…”

  I took in a deep breath. I could see the muscles in Nick’s jaw tense. Whatever this was, it wasn’t good. I wondered for a moment how many werewolves there were out in the world. And if this new sighting had anything to do with Bad Moon…

  “If these wolves aren’t showing a fear of humans,” a woman with glasses and sandy hair pulled back in a bun said, “then we need to be concerned with public safety. It’s an unfortunate situation because we don’t want to have to put these animals down.”

  I heard someone take a sharp inhale next to me. It was Brandon. His fingers were white and gripping into the arms of the cheap plastic chair. I reached for my foam coffee cup, trying to steady my hand and avoid spilling the milky brown liquid.

  “Well, you guys are all good to go. If one of you would just be kind enough to follow me to the register,” a bald, ruddy man appeared at the door of the waiting room, smiling out at us.

  “Sure,” I said, rising to my feet. I pulled the strap of my purse over my shoulder and carried my coffee with me, the liquid precariously quivering against the white walls of the cup. I could already tell things weren’t going to get any easier.

  I volunteered to drive us to Atlanta, desperate for something to distract me from my bubbling nerves. Brandon chattered on mindlessly for nearly the whole five hours, constantly hitting his knee caps against the dashboard. I knew it was his way of dealing with the stress, so I didn’t stop him. Nobody else seemed interested in saying anything anyway. I was mostly just glad I didn’t have to see Trent’s face as he staunchly ignored me.

  We pulled up into the parking lot of a popular hostel on the outskirts of Atlanta that thankfully looked very much like the pictures I had seen online—it was a bright, white double-gallery house with an iron fence around it and a large yard. I was kind of nervous about being there (Sierra had recently made me watch the horror movie, Hostel), but I knew the fear was irrational. Plus, it was a great way to meet new people who could potentially be fans, and it was cheap.

  Not that I really cared about either of those things in that moment. But I could try.

  Sierra was waiting for us in the repurposed living room of the hostel, sitting in an over-stuffed chair with a white, fluffy cat in her lap. I could see Brandon tense—he’s allergic to cats.

  “Bailey!” Sierra shrieked, disturbing some guy who was reading a newspaper on the couch adjacent to hers. The cat hissed as she jumped up into the air. “Hey!” I smiled, wrapping my arms around her back in a tight hug. Some of my nerves dissipated as I took in the comforting embrace I had needed for so long. This was the Sierra I knew, not the distant, disembodied voice I had interacted with the day before.

  “Oh my God, I’ve missed you so much!” she said, pulling back to take me in, a gleam in her hazel eyes. “It’s not the same without you home.”

  I laughed. “Sierra, it’s been like two days.”

  ‘So much has happened in two days,’ I thought, realizing how much longer each day had seemed.

  “I know, but it feels like its been longer. I’m so psyched to see the guys perform tonight!” she gushed.

  “Yoohoo, right here,” Brandon teased, popping up behind my shoulder. Sierra laughed and gave Brandon a hug, and he sneezed, shooting daggers at the cat on the floor, licking its paw.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ignore you. Where’s Trenton?” she said, a wicked smile coming over her face as she said his full name. She knew he hated it.

  Trent grunted and she pulled him into a hug. She was used to him being moody, so she probably didn’t think anything of the half-hearted hug he gave back.

  “So this place is hella awesome,” Sierra said as she made her way down the hug train, pausing awkwardly before Nick. Sierra was pretty comfortable hugging everyone, so I was surprised by her hesitance. She gave him a quick hug and then blabbered on.

  “They have a pool and a backyard and everything. And the people here can be pretty cool. Well, most of them anyway,” she said, darting her eyes over at the guy reading on the couch. He looked pretty irritated, and I laughed.

  “Well, let me check us in first, and then you can give us the grand tour,” I said. She nodded and continued babbling on to Brandon about the latest gossip from back home. I checked us in, and the woman at the front desk gave me a key for each one of us (four for the boys’ dorm and one for the girls’). Sierra whisked us around the premises, reliving the bored-looking girl at the desk from her duty.

  The place was as cool as she promised, with colorful murals painted on the walls of the building and a chill vibe among the young patrons. But I couldn’t help but be distracted by Trent’s proximity to me as we inspected the pool deck. I tried to test the waters by looking over at him, but he didn’t spare me a glance. His jaw tightened and his body tensed, and I knew he was completely aware of my gaze. A hard lump formed in my throat.

  ‘Well, what do you expect?’ I told myself. But I knew somewhere deep inside, I expected, or at least really hoped, that he would drop Lola and be mine forever. It was stupid, but it was there, a dim hope like a dying ember buried deep inside of me.

  When we had a chance to settle down and put down our stuff, I finally had my first moment alone with Sierra since the trip started. Well, sort of alone. There was a girl hanging out in a bunk listening to something on her headphones and another girl reading, but they didn’t pay us much mind beside an obligatory, “hey.”

  “So, what’s been going on?” she gushed.

  “Well,” I took a deep breath, tossing my suitcase and backpack on top of the bunk beneath Sierra’s, and then sat down on hers. “I took your advice.”

  “My advice?” she sat down next to me, and I could tell from the look on her face that she didn’t know what I was talking about.

  “From the phone call? Remember?”

  “Oh…” her face screwed up as the memory came back to her. “Oh…oh my God…you didn’t…”

  “ I did,” I said, taking a deep breath in and exhaling slowly. “We hooked up.”

  “No,” she said, her eyes wide with shock. “Holy shit.”

  “How can you be surprised? You were the one who told me to go for it!” I felt my heart pound with a wild frenzy as I realized how obviously stupid my decision had been.

  “I didn’t think you’d actually do it…I’m sorry, you called me and I wasn’t in a good place, I kind of just said whatever I was thinking, which was stupid of me…”

  “Well, it was a totally dumb, impulsive thing I did anyway,” I moaned, throwing myself down on the bed and burying my face into the pillow.

  “Well, that doesn’t mean it was a bad thing! I mean, I’m really excited, how was it?” she gushed, pushing my shoulder to see my face.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I sighed. “He doesn’t even want to look at me now.”

  I saw her face drop. “Well, maybe he’s just freaked out. It’s kind of a big deal, you have, you know, not hooked up for like, eleven years.”

  “Twelve,” I said, bringing a hand to my temple. It felt like my brain was about to burst out of my skull.

  “Exactly. Since forever. Can you really blame him for freaking out? You’re totally freaking out yourself.” �
�Yeah, true…” I started. “But he has a fiancée,” I murmured. ‘And a number of other problems…’ I thought.

  “Yeah, but she sucks. Everyone knows that.” “She’s hot,” I pointed out.

  “You’re hot! Besides, didn’t you tell me he kissed you first?” “Yeah,” I said, a shiver shooting down my spine as I recalled the incredible kiss in the rain. “But he’s such a lady-killer. It was only a matter of time before he messed things up with Lola, and I was the girl that he was going to see everyday of the tour so…I dunno, I just feel like he got confused.”

  “Okay, no,” Sierra said, pulling my arms up and forcing me to sit up. “You need to stop being you for like, five seconds and realize that you guys are perfect for each other. You’re meant to be. It’s just not going to be easy.” I looked into her eyes, filled with compassion and understanding. I threw my arms around her, burying my head into her soft shoulder. I sighed into her, grateful for the comfort. She was always so supportive, even when I decided to cut my own bangs in sixth grade.

  “Just don’t give up,” she murmured.

  “Why are you like, our biggest fangirl?” I laughed.

  “I think I’m your only fangirl,” she giggled back, affectionately ruffling my hair.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but at least I know I have you.”

  She bit her lip, and I saw something strange flit across her face. “Aw. Bailey, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about—”

  There was a loud knock at the door. “Come on manager! We need to get to soundcheck!” It was Brandon’s voice, muffled behind the wood door. I gave Sierra an apologetic look.

  “Can we raincheck the talk?”

  “Sure,” She nodded, taking my hand as we stood up together.

  “Bailey!” Brandon hollered. “I’m coming, hold on!” I shouted back, picking up my purse and making sure all of my valuables were in it before we left the room. We arrived at the venue on time for once, which was relief. It was a smaller venue, so not quite the size of the one in Orlando, but still sizable. The headliner wasn’t huge, but they were big enough to fill up the place.