Chapter 7
Dandy
The night they came back from the hockey game was the last time I heard anything about Nick. I’d been in the shared bathroom at the end of the hall when I stepped out to see him banging on my dorm room door. What all the commotion was about was a mystery since he walked away right around the time I appeared.
Natalia was alone in our room when I entered. She seemed fine though. From the way he’d been trying to get her to talk to him, I would have imagined that she would have been in there crying or at least upset, but she wasn’t. She smiled at me and gave me her usual hug and quick peck on the cheek before running out of the room.
Later that night, she returned, and went to sleep. Anya did too.
About a week later, after it seemed they’d actually called it quits, I decided to finally confront her about Nick. I needed to know why she had done what she’d done. Keeping a nice, college girl persona had been hard for me since where I came from, if a woman steals your man, you simply stomp her ass into the mud.
As my daddy would say, he didn’t raise no hell raiser, but he damn sure didn’t raise no yellow fool either.
As soon as Anya stepped out to use the bathroom, I decided it was the perfect moment.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
She was busy applying makeup at our vanity mirror and barely paid me any attention. Looking back, I think she may have known what I was going to bring up. After a brief moment of silence, she finally acknowledged my question.
“Sure,” she said. “What is it?”
“Why are you dating my ex-boyfriend?”
The silence that followed scared me. I’d seen Natalia and her cousin flip out easily. They both had a mean temper and flew off the handle regularly. Especially when it came to men. I once saw Natalia post a picture of a man masturbating, a video meant only for her, to social media for all of her friends to see. Why? Because he showed up late for a date. Anya was even worse. She once fucked the drunk boyfriend of one of our neighbors, in the neighbor’s room, and took pictures of herself riding him. Then she developed the pictures and left one on the neighbor’s floor for her to find later. Why? Because she’d made a pass at the boyfriend once while he was sober and he said his girlfriend was prettier than her.
I never knew exactly what Anya had said to the girl, but she seemed to avoid my roommates and me as if she were afraid of us. The boyfriend must have been quite ashamed because he never came around again.
“Do you really want to know the answer to that question?” Natalia asked.
“I do, Natalia,” I said. “I want to know why you’re dating the guy who broke my heart. The guy you used to console me about. You know how much he meant to me and how badly he hurt me.”
“That’s why I did it,” she said. “To show you how much of a scumbag he is. And it’s over now. We’re not together anymore.”
“So you fucked my ex to teach me a lesson?”
The audacity of this woman.
She finished applying her lipstick, then puckered her lips once for the mirror before turning around to face me.
“Exactly,” she said. “You’re mad about it, right?”
“Yes, I’m fucking mad about it,” I said, fighting back the tears forming in my eyes.
“Good,” she said. “If you’re mad then you won’t be depressed about it. You can get even instead. Come with me. Let’s go find two of his frat brothers and fuck them instead.”
“I…I’m not…”
I’m not a fucking slut.
That’s what I wanted to yell out, but I couldn’t. I was afraid of her. Something wasn’t right about this woman. She’d been one of my best friends, at least that’s what I thought until I saw her with Nick. The way she’d carried on, having a full-on relationship with him, that wasn’t normal. It wasn’t to teach me a lesson. She was seriously into him. I wasn’t sure why, but I was concerned for Nick’s safety.
Things that had never seemed like a big deal came flooding back to me. Like the time I’d rummaged through her end of our closet, only because I couldn’t find one of my shoes. I’d accidentally knocked the lid off a shoe box. In that shoe box were newspaper clippings. Weird things. All about deaths. Brutal murders at hotels and violent deaths that involved torture. I’d never been able to ask her about it but figured maybe it had something to do with one of her classes.
One other time I walked into our room and caught her in bed with Anya. They were both naked and giggling beneath the covers. When they noticed I’d entered, Anya screamed at me to get out of the room. Later, when I returned, Natalia explained that they were actually third cousins and had only had too much to drink that night. It was sick. It was disgusting. Yet, for some reason I’d found it oddly erotic.
“You’re not what?” Natalia asked, bringing me back to reality.
“I’m not…I’m not in the mood to go looking for a new man,” I said.
And you shouldn’t be either. Not when Nick loved you like he did, you lucky bitch.
“Maybe you would be if you knew what he said about you,” Natalia said.
“What…what did he say about me?” I asked.
Depression built up inside me even before I heard what she had to say. No good news was on its way. He hadn’t told her that he had made a huge mistake and wanted to be with me again. No, she was about to tell me something horrible.
“He said you were a lousy lay and he should have been fucking me the entire time,” Natalia said.
Mentally, I reached out and knocked her head off her neck, but in reality, I froze. Only someone truly wicked could say something like that to another human being. Part of me wanted to grab the pair of scissors lying on the vanity counter and stick it in her fucking eye, but that was only a small part of me. The larger part of me was too afraid to move. She was the kind of person who might actually use those scissors.
The natural brawler in me wanted to take her down, but she wasn’t a small-town bully. She was something much more sinister.
Instead of replying, I stood up and left the room. I needed to see Nick. He had some fucking explaining to do.
“Nick’s not with Natalia?” Paydirt said as he mashed buttons on his video game controller sending a monster truck leaping off a dirt ramp and over a line of cars.
He barely paid me any attention at all.
“Hoooooly shiiit!” he yelled. “You see that?!”
“Nick’s not with Natalia,” I said, ignoring his childlike excitement. “That’s what I’ve been explaining to you.”
“I thought they done gone to Myrtle Beach or something,” he said.
Myrtle Beach had been my vacation spot with him.
“She’s in my dorm room,” I said.
“Why’s she in there?” he asked, finally putting down his controller and turning around to face me.
It took me a second to understand his question. Apparently, she’d never mentioned me to anyone, except Nick, who thought she was better in bed than I was.
“Because she’s my fucking roommate, Paydirt. That’s why.”
“Oh, damn,” he said. “That’s cold.”
He looked down into his own lap and then back at me.
“That’s really fucking cold,” he added. “She’s fuckin’ Lucky right after you? Lucky went after your roommate?”
“Pretty much,” I said.
“Well…I ain’t seen him in like…hell…since we went to that hockey game,” he said.
“That was like…over a fucking week ago,” I replied. “That was the night they broke up.”
Suddenly I was very afraid for Nick. My heart pounded in my chest and I felt nauseous. Something was horribly wrong. She’d hurt him. I knew it. I knew it deep down in my bones.
“I don’t think he’s okay,” I blurted out. “I think maybe something bad has happened to him.”
“Dandy,” Paydirt said. “I know it hurts. I know Lucky can be kind of a dipshit sometimes, but he’s alright. Trust me. He’s out there doing something stupid. It’s what guys do. We do stupid shit. In my opinion, he should have stayed with you. That Natalia girl is a bitch.”
He wasn’t going to listen to me. My only option was to find Nick myself. So that’s what I set off to do, and I didn’t have to wait long. When I drove back to my dorm room, I watched as Natalia stepped out of our building and walked around the corner where a black car waited for her. With tinted windows, I couldn’t see the driver, but someone had picked her up, and I had a feeling following them would lead me to Nick.