Nondescript

by Rose, Ashley

  NONDESCRIPT

  by

  ASHLEY ROSE

  OTHER BOOKS

  jaided

  full court press

  brothers & Best friends

  Nondescript

  Copyright 2013 Ashley Rose

  All Rights Reserved

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and events are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, places, events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this eBook may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the author/publisher, except in the case of brief quotations for the purpose of writing critical articles or reviews.

  1

  Lorna

  Alone in the empty dance studio, Lorna Phillips pressed the play button on her little boombox, and the music started. The slow, contemporary melody had a rhythm she could dance to. She circled the gleaming pole slowly in step with the beat, getting into the right mindset. Pole dancing had a bad reputation, but really, it was a beautiful form of expression. She enjoyed the raunchy dancing herself and thought anyone had a right to take their clothes off if they wanted to. However, the notion that the dancers were only doing it for the satisfaction of their male audience and not themselves bothered her, and was also the reason why she never performed in front of anyone.

  Dancing in itself was fun, though Lorna was too shy to let anyone see her in action. Pole dancing was a different experience altogether, and she loved it. The pole was the perfect partner, letting her move freely while supporting every twist and gyration.

  She loved combining the smooth, contemporary moves with her traditional ballet training, but she also enjoyed the sensual dancing performed at strip clubs.

  Once in tune with the music, she grasped the pole with one hand and undulated her body against its hard surface.

  She practiced in one of the smaller studios in the dance portion of the physical education complex at her university. The two poles were off to the side or in the corner in most of the rooms, so as not to hinder other dance techniques. This room, however, was dedicated solely to pole dancing and had them in rows throughout. Pole dancing was slowly becoming an accepted form of exercise, though Lorna had been doing it for years.

  The dance studios were busy with classes during the day, but they were available in the early morning and late evenings. She preferred the late evenings. She always locked the doors and remembered to shut the blinds on the little windows in the doors. No one had ever seen her dance, and she planned to keep it that way.

  As she danced around the pole, she let her movements translate the music as it moved through her. Lorna’s body arched as she pointed her leg, aiming her toe directly at the ceiling in a graceful, straight-legged arabesque. She held the pose, legs parallel to the pole, for several moments before lowering her leg slowly.

  The song switched to a more mainstream hip-hop song, and she went with it. Her body moved against the pole in provocative motions, using a lot of hips and leg.

  Lorna usually spent anywhere from one to three hours in the dance studio each trip. She had a lot of homework tonight though, so after about an hour and a half, she grabbed her boombox and stuffed it into her duffle bag, then pulled a pair of sweats and a T-shirt over her tight shorts and sports bra. The fall nights in Ellensburg didn’t require a lot of clothing to keep warm.

  She stepped out into the dimly lit hallway and didn’t see the other person before they collided.

  “Hey!” A surprised male voice startled her.

  She jumped back, the duffle sliding off her shoulder. “Sorry!” Glancing up at him, she noticed he was cute, but then automatically looked down at her shoes, letting her long blond hair fall forward into her face. She wished she had half the confidence outside of the dance studio as she had in it.

  “Crap.” He touched her shoulder as if to make sure she was okay. “My fault. I didn’t see you.”

  She moved away from his touch and circled around him. “It’s all right.” She snuck another glance up, and he smiled back at her.

  “I didn’t know anyone else was here.”

  He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, which made it difficult to tell whether he was in the dance studio because he was a dancer or not. He seemed to have the build for it, though.

  “I was just leaving,” she said.

  “Were you in the pole room?” he asked curiously.

  She licked her lips nervously, desperate to get out of there.

  “Oh, sorry.” He stepped toward her. “I didn’t mean to pry, I was just curious.” He shook his head. “I didn’t even introduce myself.” He stuck his hand out. “I’m Shep.”

  She shook it after a second, deciding he didn’t seem so bad. “Lorna. And yeah, I was in the pole room.”

  “Pole dancing is so sexy,” he commented.

  She withdrew her hand slowly.

  He slapped a hand to his forehead. “God, that was so creepy. And that wasn’t a come on. I’m a choreographer, and while I appreciate the female form, I’m more inclined toward men.”

  She glanced up, as if she could tell he was gay by looking at him.

  He smiled charmingly again. “I didn’t mean to creep you out. I just go off like that sometimes when I see someone here late, because that means they aren’t like the rest of those snobby dancers. They’re still dedicated to what they do, even if it’s in private. And pole dancing is pretty awesome. I’ve been trying to find a class for it, but apparently they don’t let men in. Even though I’ve told the instructor I’m not interested in watching the women perform, she still won’t let me in because of the school’s policy. I appreciate the athleticism and talent that it takes to...God, sorry, I’m babbling and probably holding you up from something really important.”

  She nodded slowly. “It’s all right. I have to go though.”

  “All right. Bye!” he said excitedly. “Maybe you’ll show me a few moves next time!”

  She slipped out of the building without responding and headed back toward her dorm, a highly coveted four-bedroom suite she shared with three other girls. Rikke was kind of a bitch, but she had a boyfriend, so she wasn’t around too much. Lily was sort of weird. She was really nice, but she had worse social skills than Lorna and stayed in her room most of the time. Then there was Jaz, who didn’t have a boyfriend, but slept around all the time. She was often in and out of their dorm, especially late at night, after her escapades. They all got along enough to live together, but they were hardly friends.

  Jaz

  Jaz St. James collapsed onto the bed beside Luke. They were both breathing hard and damp with sweat.

  “God, you’re good,” he muttered.

  She smirked. She didn’t usually stay to chat after sex, but he had worked her over hard the night before, and she was tired as hell.

  “You’re pretty good yourself,” she said, patting his stomach lazily.

  Luke shared her philosophy on sex. No strings, non-exclusive—just some good, clean fun.

  “So how’s school going?” he asked conversationally.

  She laughed and propped an arm behind her head. “Are you really asking me about classes?”

  He shrugged. “I guess.”

  “Well, they’re boring.”

  He laughed and stood up, grabbing a towel out of his closet. “I’m gonna take a shower. You know your way out. And sorry about your shirt.” He waved toward the now-ruined tank top he’d ripped off her body. “Help yourself to my closet.”

  She nodded, and he looked at her for a moment as she reclined on the bed. “Am I gonna be getting regular visits from you?” he asked.

 
“Depends on how the other guys in the building measure up. I’ll let you know.”

  He nodded with an amused look. “All right, I can handle that.”

  He left his room, and she slid out of the bed a few minutes later. She pulled on her jeans and put on a T-shirt from his closet before leaving the room. A couple of his roommates were eating a late dinner in the living area, but they stopped to stare at her as she walked past. There was doubt they’d heard the bed slamming repeatedly against the wall, but she walked by without a word, daring them to say something. She’d love to throw down some insults. They remained silent though, slightly disappointing her.

  Lorna was home when Jaz got back, but she was shut up in her bedroom as usual. Jaz didn’t really care that she didn’t talk much with her roommates. It wasn’t like she was ever home.

  She pulled on a hoodie, slipped on some Ray-Bans, grabbed her sketchbook and a couple of charcoal pencils and went right back out the door. She set up on her favorite bench, next to the outdoor coffee stand near her building. Even though it was warm, she pulled up her hood and hunkered down as she flipped open her sketchbook, not wanting to be recognized. Luckily for her, other than the boys that she slept with, she wasn’t well known.

  She scanned the loitering people until her gaze fell on a boy sitting alone. As the charcoal started moving across the paper, almost of its own volition, she studied him. He looked sad, maybe even tortured. Her gaze switched between the paper and his profile as she sketched. He shifted slightly in his seat, and she froze as his gaze swept over her. This was why she wore the polarized Ray Bans. There was no way anyone could see her eyes.

  But the boy’s gaze didn’t stop on her, instead returning to what was in his hand. She craned her neck but couldn’t get a view of it over his backpack, which was sitting on the table beside him. She frowned and continued sketching his face.

  He had young features, but something told her he wasn’t any younger than her. His eyes hinted that he’d experienced more than he should have at his age. Her hand continued to move in varying strokes over the paper while she finished with the basics of his face and went on to shade in his features.

  His dark eyelashes and equally dark, short-trimmed hair translated well to paper. As he bit his lip, she waited so she could see them both properly, but changed her mind and drew him like that. She’d captured so much sadness in her sketch, but when she looked up, she knew it was accurate. When he grabbed his backpack and stood up, she hurried to finish his ears. As he turned and walked in the other direction, he put what had been in his hand into his back pocket. It was a Snickers bar.

  As he disappeared from sight, Jaz put some finishing touches on the drawing. She always gave the subject of her sketches a name. They were just random ones, but for some reason she couldn’t put a name to him. As her pencil hovered over the bottom right-hand corner, a multitude of ideas crossed through her mind, but none fit.

  So instead, she wrote the only word that did seem to fit.

  Snickers.

  Rikke

  Rikke Monroe woke up to her boyfriend’s hot breath on her neck. She hadn’t planned on staying the night. She hadn’t even planned on having sex but it was impossible to stay angry with him, and then he’d convinced her to do it anyway.

  She was uncomfortably hot with his body wrapped around her. She had never been much for cuddling—not with him—but he liked to have his hands on her while he slept, and she didn’t say anything.

  “Adam.” She tried to pry his hands off.

  He murmured something, and his arms tightened almost painfully.

  “Adam.”

  He woke with a half-snort. “What the fuck?”

  “I need to get back to my room.”

  “Why did you wake me up?” His voice dripped with annoyance.

  “Because you wouldn’t let me go in your sleep.” Rikke tried to squirm out of his arms.

  “You still got a while, baby.” He pushed his morning wood against her backside, burying his hand in her short, dark hair.

  “Adam...”

  “Shhh.” He turned her onto her stomach, settling himself on top of her.

  “Adam. Stop.” She tried to shift him off of her. “I’m not in the mood.”

  He laughed and lifted her hips. “You’re always in the mood.”

  “No—”

  But he pushed into her without warning, without any warm-up, and it hurt.

  “Adam!” She tried more desperately to buck him off, but he leaned his full weight on her and used one hand on the back of her neck to keep her still.

  “That hurts!” she protested.

  “You like it that way, baby. Just be quiet.”

  There was no reasoning with him, so she just clenched her teeth against the rough friction and waited until he was done. It only took a couple minutes, thankfully, and he rolled off of her.

  “God, you’re such a cold fish in the morning.”

  Rikke didn’t say a word as she got out of his bed and got dressed. “That wasn’t fair, Adam.”

  He shrugged lazily and rolled onto his stomach. “Whatever. I’m going back to sleep.”

  She wanted to say something more, but didn’t know what, so she just left and walked back to her own building.

  Rikke slammed the door to the suite, causing Jaz, who had been at the counter making breakfast, to look at her in surprise.

  “Everything all right?”

  Rikke bit back a ‘fuck you, slut’ and completely ignored her. She stalked to her bedroom and slammed that door also. Pulling off her clothes, she glanced in the mirror. Darkening bruises littered her arms from the night before. Adam got in a mood sometimes, but she just went with it. It wasn’t a big deal—this wasn’t the first time he’d left her bruised—but it was too warm out to wear a long-sleeved shirt to cover them. People tended to stare when they saw her bruises, and it was annoying as fuck. She pulled on a T-shirt to cover the higher up bruises and then slid on multiple bracelets for the ones on her wrists. Adam had left big ones there from holding her down.

  Thanks to Adam, and the lack of sleep, she wanted to crawl into bed instead of dragging herself to class but she grabbed her shoulder bag and left her bedroom, bumping into Lily.

  The smaller girl squeaked. “Sorry!”

  Rikke pushed past her. Lily was such a freak…a freak dressed in top-of-the-line designer clothes. Rikke told herself she wasn’t jealous, but she knew better.

  Outside the dorm room, she rounded the corner on the stairwell and ran straight into someone, knocking an armload of stuff to the floor.

  “Fuck,” she muttered when she saw it was Ben, an RA.

  He smiled, as always, and began picking up his things. “Hey, Rikke, how’s it going?”

  “Fine.” She reluctantly bent down and helped him.

  “Awesome. How are the roommates?”

  “One’s a slut, one’s an introvert, and one’s a freak.”

  “So they’re good then? Awesome.”

  He was cute, and for some reason he always talked to her, but she figured that was what an RA was supposed to do.

  “How’s your boyfriend? I haven’t seen him around much.” His interest seemed genuine.

  “He doesn’t have a roommate yet, so I’ve been over at his place a lot more.”

  “Ah, I see. Just a heads up, he’ll probably be getting a roommate soon. They’re shuffling a lot of people around.”

  She nodded. “All right. I’ll tell him.”

  “I’ll see you around then?”

  “Yeah,” she said quietly.

  “Bye, Rikke. Have a great day.”

  Lily

  Lily Nicholson licked her lips and watched Rikke stride off. She didn’t understand why the girl hated her so much when she’d tried her best to make friends since the beginning of the year. She had done so much to prepare for college, all kinds of therapy and simulations, and she thought she was doing pretty well. She’d had only one panic attack all year, and she’d managed to do i
t in private.

  But somehow, she still didn’t have any friends. She didn’t understand why. She’d followed all the rules she’d learned from her social science books. She knew exactly how to behave, but it wasn’t working. She never went out and got back late, like Jaz. She never went dancing, like Lorna, who tried to keep it secret. She didn’t have a boyfriend, like Rikke, though she didn’t really want a boyfriend if that was how she was going to be treated.

  She didn’t have morning class, so she ambled out into the living area and smiled at Jaz. “Morning!” This was an appropriate opening statement to use in the morning when greeting someone, though it didn’t make sense to Lily.

  Jaz gave her an odd look. “Morning.”

  “How did you sleep?” Lily asked, as she did every morning. It was another one of those common phrases.

  “Ah... good.”

  “Me too. Did you have a good time at your friend’s?”

  Jaz smiled slightly. “Yes, I did.”

  “What did you guys do?” Lily asked, assuming a casual pose by leaning against the counter. Jaz never really gave a straight answer to this question.

  “Lily...”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  Lily nodded vigorously. Showing interest was good.

  “We had sex, several times.”

  Lily blinked. Jaz did not have a boyfriend, and, according to her research, girls who slept with boys who were not their boyfriend were deemed ‘easy,’ ‘sluts,’ ‘whores,’ ‘skanks’ and several other terms.

  “Oh.”

  Jaz nodded and turned back to her breakfast. “Yep.”

  Lily tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. “Do you like him?”

  The taller girl shrugged. “Enough.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Enough to let him fuck me, I guess.”

  Lily frowned. She didn’t like to use curse words. Her brother used them a lot but said they weren’t for young ladies.

  Jaz just shook her head and left for class, leaving Lily to herself in the kitchen. Lily sighed and ate a small bowl of Cheerios. She wasn’t hungry but she needed to take her pills. When she was done, she went back to her room and opened the drawer she kept her meds in.