Girl Crush
Stephie Walls
Cover Designer Wicked By Design
Edited by Switzer Edits
Proofreader Judy’s Proofreading
Contents
Foreword
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
For More Information
Copyright © 2017 by Stephie Walls All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and revival systems without prior written permission from the author except where permitted by law.
The characters, places, and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.
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For my daughter.
My heart.
My soul.
Prologue
“Do you want to come in?” The evening hadn’t been spectacular. He’d used a coupon to pay for dinner at an already cheap restaurant, ordered us both water, and insisted we split an entrée. Skinny jeans on a man just didn’t do it for me, and he wasn’t fooling anyone with the way he combed his hair over the thinning spot near his forehead—but overall, he’d been pleasant. Minus the horrible clothing and bad hair, he appeared to be fit. He wasn’t awful looking if I squinted in the right light—just a bit of a loser—and truth be told, my vibrator needed new batteries.
The only positive thing about my previous marriage was my ex-husband’s ability to thoroughly satisfy me seven ways to Sunday. I held on to the relationship far longer than I should have, but women peaked later in life than men, and when I had a man who filled that void, it made up for a lot—especially when he was creative. I won’t go into the depths of all I forgave, but let’s just say it led me here to a single life where the likes of Justin were preferable to the sex god I’d willingly given up.
Never in a million years would I have thought getting a date, much less sex, would be difficult. Yes, I was approaching the dreaded four-oh but I didn’t look a day over thirty, and I considered myself a catch. I was educated, had a job that paid well even if it was boring as hell, I had made out like a bandit in the divorce, and I remained easy on the eyes. Without kids to weigh me down, I was Kobe beef amongst a market full of prime choice. Over the years I’d been with my ex, I’d developed quite a sexual appetite, but now that I was hungry, there weren’t any buffets serving dinner, and dessert seemed to be a thing of the past.
“Sure, that would be gnarly,” he said, agreeing to come inside.
I rolled my eyes at Justin’s use of the rather outdated word and hoped sex with him was anything but…gnarly. There had to be a masculine bone in there somewhere—I prayed to God I could find it by the time he got naked. But if not, I’d just turn off the lights and put a gag in his mouth, the equivalent of putting a bag over his head and silencing his horrific vocabulary, and ride him until I found my release. He wouldn’t still be here in the morning, so I wouldn’t have to regret the decision later.
“Can I use your bathroom?” He jerked his head the way skaters who had long bangs used to when I was in high school. Maybe he was trying to flip his comb-over out of the way. Clearly, he hadn’t recovered from the eighties, and I wondered if his skateboard was in the trunk of his car or on his mom’s front porch.
I tilted my head, contemplating his gesture longer than necessary, dumbfounded I’d managed to resort to men like Justin to get off.
“Giselle?” His calling my name jolted me out of my high-school-memory-induced haze.
“Oh yeah, of course. It must be all that water getting to you.”
He nodded, clearly missing my stab at his cheap choice of beverages. I pointed in the direction of the powder room near the front door. As he strolled to the bathroom, I watched him cup his hand over his crotch and could only assume he was holding himself to keep from having an accident—or maybe he was trying to eliminate the camel toe his jeans formed between his legs. I hadn’t had a drop of alcohol—there was no way I was seeing things. The guy had either picked a reverse wedgie or done the pee-pee dance in my living room.
While he took care of business, I turned to the kitchen. Even I wasn’t desperate enough to get it on with Justin without some liquid courage. I didn’t go for the skater type when they were considered “in,” and it certainly wasn’t my go-to as an adult. I grabbed the bottle of sambuca from my freezer and forewent the glass. After screwing the top off as quickly as possible, I chugged at least two shots, only stopping when I heard the toilet flush. I recapped the bottle, tossed it back into the freezer, and closed the door. There was no way in hell Justin was drinking. He would be leaving, and I refused to have his safety on my conscience—no driving while intoxicated…ergo, no drinking for Justin.
I ignored the fact the water in the sink never came on—and that he hadn’t washed his hands—and offered him a seat on my couch. Dude wasn’t going to be a guest in my bedroom, and the fewer objects he touched, the less I’d have to Lysol. Maybe hand sanitizer was a good idea. Then, we could get busy, and he could leave. I needed to pee now so our stint wasn’t interrupted—the quicker the better, unless he managed to wow the hell out of me, but the way his jeans squeezed his sack, I wasn’t hopeful.
“Make yourself comfortable. I’m going to use the restroom. I’ll be right back.” I stepped out of the living room and into the powder room—the one my guest had just used—and closed the door behind me, flipping on the light switch.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.” I couldn’t believe my eyes. I huffed out an irritated laugh just before I lit Justin’s ass up. “Hell no.”
I came bursting through the door like a bat out of hell, and Justin looked like he’d just seen the devil incarnate. Noticeably stunned, and not as stupid as he appeared, he wisely didn’t speak, but instead, watched me move past him and to the laundry room. I gathered a roll of paper towels and spray cleanser, and on my way back by the couch, pulled Justin up by the shoulder of his slim-fitting hairband T-shirt that went out with the nineties.
This guy was a hodgepodge of decades gone wrong.
“Giselle, what’s wrong?” He trailed after me, stumbling on his own feet.
I flung the bathroom door back open just as Justin righted himself. We both stared at his artwork on my walls, my toilet, my floor, my rug, and the pedestal of my sink that was a solid three feet away from the bowl of the commode. My hands pushed the cleaning supplies into his chest, and as he awkwardly accepted them, I folded my arms across my breasts.
“I’ll be damned if I’m going to clean up after a grown man. Clean up your own piss, and then get the hell out of my house.”
Justin stared at me like I’d sprouted a second head, but when I cocked my hip and pursed my lips, he got to spraying.
“What the hell were you doing? Drawing our initials on the wall? I don’t even want to know how you got urine on the sink.”
Apparently, Justin wasn’t used to being talked to in such a direct manner, but it also explained why he still lived at home…with his mothe
r. A tidbit I’d learned at dinner that was not mentioned in his dating profile. This was all the confirmation I needed—it was Tinder from here on out. When he finished, he tried to hand me the soiled paper towels.
“You’re kidding me, right?” I pointed toward the wastebasket. “You can put them in the trash yourself.” I snatched the cleaning supplies from him, and the moment he chucked the mess, I escorted him from my home. I might have growled when I closed the door behind him.
Sexually frustrated, with no viable option other than self-gratification, I retrieved my dead vibrator and made use of it as a dildo sitting on top of the washing machine on spin cycle.
1
I was done.
Done with men.
Women say it all the time; they get fed up, throw their hands in the air, and vow a life of celibacy—until the next chiseled chest comes into view, and then they’re foaming at the mouth and wiping the drool from their chin. But this was different, I really meant it.
I’d been manhandled by the last pig that would ever bring his sausage near me. After one of the nastiest divorces in history, followed by some of the crudest and raunchiest dates, I’d decided to bat for the other team.
Ronnie roared with laughter as I made my proclamation. Just before her features cleared, she realized my mind was set. “Giselle, you don’t just decide to become a lesbian. You either are, or you aren’t, and based on the fact you’ve been sucking stick instead of going down to Taco Town since puberty, it’s unlikely you just missed the signs.”
My best friend, Veronica, would know. She was the girl every guy wanted, every girl wanted to be, and in the end, she preferred fish to hot dogs. At least if I made the switch late in the game, I had someone to show me the ropes, teach me the Jedi ways.
“What happened this time?” Ronnie knew all the gory details from every failed attempt at a relationship or date since I’d gotten my first kiss.
Sitting in the darkened bar, I swung my feet under the high stool and twirled my drink in the pretentious glass it had been served in. Bars had moved up a notch since the last time I’d dated—thank God someone finally outlawed smoking in these tiny places. Not only could you see the person you came with, but you could also breathe long enough to enjoy a drink.
Justin. That’s what had happened this time. Justin happened.
“He peed on my walls, Ronnie. And then he seemed surprised I was offended by it.”
She raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. Nodding her head, she confirmed she knew how savage the male species could be. “Men are gross, Gizzy. But you can’t just decide you’re going to be a switch-hitter. You’ve been practicing the wrong game for too many years.” She was humored by the entire conversation, but I wasn’t kidding.
“Are you going to help me or not?” I was on the verge of pouting and wasn’t above doing it if it would help me get my way.
“Help you what? Pretend to be a lesbian?”
“I’m not pretending. I want out. People switch careers, why can’t they change sexuality?”
“Please refer to my previous comment: you don’t just decide to eat pussy, Giselle.”
“I’m assuming it’s like beer…an acquired taste.”
She spat her Cosmopolitan across the table and quickly grabbed a napkin to pat her lips dry.
“What? I didn’t like dick the first time I tasted that shit, either. Be real. No bodily fluid tastes good. It’s the feeling you impart that makes you love the taste you’re chasing.” I wanted to smack her—Veronica was making this entirely too complicated. “Look, I just need you to show me the ropes. Give me some dating pointers. The how-to guide to wooing the hoo hoo.”
She sat back against the chair and crossed her mile-long legs. Her perfect breasts sat on display while her ample cleavage peeked over the top of her blouse. Veronica was sex on a stick and knew everyone in town.
“I think that might be against the rules.”
“Don’t be coy with me, you whore. I know where the bodies are buried. Spill it.”
Her laugh echoed through the empty bar. When I didn’t budge, and my facial expression remained stoic, she leaned in with her elbows on the table. “You’re not expecting me to show you, right?”
“Eww. Gross. No.”
“Then lay it out for me. What specifically do you want to know?”
“Where do you go to meet women? How do other women know you’re interested and not searching for pole? Hell, I don’t know. Teach me like you would a teenager who’d never had their first sexual encounter.”
We spent the next two hours talking shop. It was amazing, as a woman, what I didn’t know about the vagina—or maybe the varieties that exist. It never dawned on me that they’d come in all shapes and sizes like penises do—likely because I’d never been scoping them out—but this was a new me, vag friendly.
I decided to start over with my dating profiles. None of them had worked for heterosexual relationships, so I doubted just switching the bubble to female looking for female would be beneficial. I needed to totally redesign myself and be honest about what I was after. The truth was, at this point in my life, my girlfriends were more important than dating. I valued my tried and true friendships more than money, but all I was really after was gratifying sex. I wasn’t ashamed to admit that, either. I didn’t want to whore myself out to the highest bidder, but I wasn’t opposed to having an exclusive sexual relationship with no strings attached. In fact, I’d prefer it—I just no longer wanted to do it with men.
When I got to the questions about the physical characteristics of the partners I sought, I drew a blank. I’d always found women attractive—I could admire their beauty and praise their assets—but if I were to outline my perfect woman, I had nothing. I saved my incomplete profile and started to flip through the images of those who were now on my radar. I giggled at the names people had chosen for their profiles as I swiped left and right. It didn’t take long for me to realize that my tastes in men and women didn’t differ all that much. Dark hair, blue or green eyes, tan, toned. Perfection. I’d started to settle for men just to reach the infamous O, but my standards for women were impossibly high. If I were going to dive for muff, she would have to be the crème de la crème.
I glanced at the clock and realized I’d been scoping out women for far longer than intended but had only admired a handful of ladies. And it became clear, the pictures I’d used in my profile to seek men weren’t going to work when trolling for honeys.
“Ronnie, I need you to come over.” I’d called my bestie for reinforcements. It didn’t matter that it was nearly eleven on a Monday night. My selfish streak had gotten a mile wide, and I hoped Trish understood—or at the very least, kept quiet.
“Hey, Giselle. Ronnie’s in the shower.” Trish sounded tired, but I never knew if it was me or her general attitude. She and Veronica had another spat over a pair of heels Ronnie had to have, and Ronnie had run to Holden’s house for refuge. She’d just returned home a couple days ago, and my guess was Veronica was walking a thin line to keep her girl happy. “Everything okay?”
“Oh, hi. Yeah. How are you?”
Her clipped response instantly told me she wasn’t interested in chitchatting with me. “Fine.”
“Can you have her call me when she gets out?”
“I’ll have her call you in the morning. She needs to get some sleep.”
I bit my tongue to keep from smarting off. Veronica loved Trish, even if Trish could be unreasonable at times, but this wasn’t my battle to fight. I’d let V handle her drill sergeant when I talked to her tomorrow.
“Thanks.” I didn’t wait for her to respond before disconnecting. I’d tried to be cordial with Trish, but my loyalty lay with Veronica. Girls had come and gone, but we were solid.
Without anyone to take strategically staged photos, I was stuck with what I had for the evening. I tried to find pictures of me with guy friends, images that highlighted my figure, flaunted my hair, and made me look delectable without appeari
ng too straight. Tough to do when I had in fact been heterosexual for thirty-plus years. My most sexually appealing photographs were of me with my girlfriends, but I didn’t know how that would look to other women. In hetero-land, if I posted a picture of me with a dude, it had better be my brother or my father—but I didn’t know if the same rules applied…so I opted for a couple solo shots from Christmas events I’d attended over the holidays. Red was an alluring color, and I had been rather festive.
I closed my laptop, proud of my progress. Rome wasn’t built in a day. With a mental note to talk to Ronnie, I turned off the lights and tried to sleep.
2
It didn’t take me long to become totally immersed in the online dating world of women. The conversations were easier, I related to things going on in their lives, and we all had similar interests. I chastised myself for not giving this a shot years ago instead of picking off one loser after another with a penis. Once I’d gotten rid of the duck-lipped selfies, and what I thought appealed to women, I took off on a path to an endless world of females. True, my standards were ridiculously high, but thus far, I’d had no problems attracting the Jessica Rabbits of the online community. What I had yet to do was meet any of them.
It turned out females were just as eager as males to actually get together in person and not just spend hours talking on the phone, texting, or exchanging “get to know you” emails. Foolishly, I’d assumed women would drag out the whole introductory phase instead of diving right in. But when the rubber met the road, I was the one who got gun shy. I found reasons not to embark on this new endeavor: I didn’t like their name, I couldn’t imagine hearing their voice in the bedroom, they got too fresh too quickly. You name it, and I engineered a reason for it not to work. But tonight was different. Tonight, I’d meet Rebecca. We were having drinks at a bar down the street from my house—casual, no expectations.
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