Chapter 3

Randi

“Wow.” I smile at the soreness in my thighs as I squat. “That’s almost sore enough to skip my run.”

Havoc barks, telling me there’s no way he’s missing out this morning just because I was fucked into oblivion last night.

“I’m going to put you in bad doggie school if I find another pair of my panties with the crotch chewed out,” I threaten conversationally as I increase my speed from a fast walk to a slow jog.

Thirty minutes later, I’m standing outside of my Range Rover while Havoc pants and drinks water from a small bowl near the tire. He sucks as a running partner, but at seven months old I shouldn’t expect him to not get distracted by every squirrel or falling leaf in the park. At least he no longer rolls over and whines when I connect the leash. He’s a free spirit. I knew it the second I saw him in the little crate in the Walmart parking lot. Best and worst three hundred dollars I ever spent, the sentiment based on the mess, or lack of, in my apartment on any given day.

“The fuck?” I hiss staring down at my phone.

I close out my bank app and pull up the SCP office contact.

“SCP.” The nasally voice on the other end of the line annoys me more today than it ever has before.

“I need to speak with Darlene.”

“May I ask who's calling?”

“Cici,” I answer knowing this bitch is just being nosey.

“Oh, Cici,” she says as if we’re friends. I’ve never seen this girl in my life. The irritation grows. “Vic told me to transfer you to him if you called.”

“I don’t need Vic,” I argue. “I need Darlene in human resources.”

Before I can get my sentence out, the call is transferred and ringing.

“Cici.” Vic grunts when the call connects.

“Vic, my money from last night isn’t in my account. We’ve talked about this.”

“You’re not getting paid.”

“The fuck I’m not. I went to the party. The hookup was complete. Joey was there to get the video. That means you fucking pay me.”

“You went to the party. The fucking was epic,” he agrees.

“So what’s the damn problem? I swear Vic if you say something about a sick relative or late mortgage payment, I’ll lose my shit.”

That was his excuse the first time I worked a party, and the money didn’t show up. The man’s not hurting for money, and I seriously think he was testing the waters to see just how much he could manipulate me. He found out real quick that he wasn’t going to get away with pulling that shit with me.

“You fucked the wrong guy.”

“Bullshit,” I counter. “I fucked the guy Joey pointed out.”

“You fucked a guy that looks like the guy he pointed out.”

“Goddammit,” I yell, not caring about the other people in the parking lot. “He didn’t fucking stop me.”

“He said the sex was way too hot to put an end to it. He looked for you after to get you to have the guy sign a waiver.”

I shake my head, my free hand traveling over the top of Havoc’s head. “What kind of damn waiver?”

“One giving us permission to use Joey’s video from last night. Don’t even get me started on the fact that a damn cell phone somehow made it in the room. The fucking video is spreading like wildfire.”

“I’m not responsible for collecting cell phones,” I mutter growing angrier at the implication.

“This whole thing is fucked.”

“It’s not. I’ll get him to sign a waiver. Just shoot it to my email, and I’ll have it to you before dark.”

“You fucking better,” he warns.

“And if he refuses?”

“You don’t get paid.”

“That sucks,” I mutter.

“And you’ll be looking for a new job,” he says before the line disconnects.

I squeeze my phone in my hand, for once wishing I was strong enough to crush the damn thing. I’d regret it of course, but it would sure as fuck feel good while it happened. The offending device pings an email notification, and I know without looking it’s the release form from Vic.

“Damn it,” I mutter as I pour out the leftover water in Havoc’s bowl and get him loaded into the backseat of the Rover. “If I could find another job that paid as well, and I didn’t have to worry about my fucking condo payments, I would’ve done it by now.”

I back out of the parking spot, finding Havoc with his head tilted as if he’s confused as to why I’m talking to myself.

“You could get a job, you lazy bum,” I mutter as I face forward again and drive off.

Things. They’re just things, I think to myself when I walk through the front door of my condo fifteen minutes later.

“I don’t need any of this shit.”

I toss the key fob in the ridiculously expensive glass bowl on the entry table. Why I spent five hundred dollars on a glittery piece of glass, I have no idea. It seemed like a good idea at the time. If I were back in South Carolina, my therapist would tell me that my excessive spending and penchant for pretty things is a coping mechanism for the love I’m not getting at home from my parents. She would tell me that the bitterness I feel toward my younger brother is another cause for wasting money on things I’ll never need.

Many of the things in my condo traveled across the country with me when I moved away from my parents’ controlling clutches a year and a half ago. I’m more frugal these days, but that didn’t stop me from making sure all the pretty things I had no use for were packed up back home and displayed around me here in Texas.

“Focus,” I whisper to myself as I walk toward my bedroom. While thinking, I head into my closet and try to pick something to wear that is sexy, but not slutty, casual but not frumpy. Sighing with irritation, I grab a pair of cutoff jean shorts and a tank top. It’s August in Texas. People better be glad I’m not walking around naked. I mean, I don’t think people at the frat house will have a problem, but getting arrested for indecent exposure on the way there won’t get me paid.

I hit the shower, refusing to leave my place until I’m clean. I didn’t run as hard today as I normally do due to the soreness in my legs, but sweat began to cover my skin the second I stepped outside this morning.

Wash, shave, rinse, and repeat. The routine is so common, I don’t even have to focus on the task. He asked me to come up to his room last night. I should’ve known then he wasn’t the right guy.

“Idiot,” I chastise myself as I slap the water off. My eyes widen when I realize he’s not a porn star. “Oh, God.”

I’m trembling by the time I reach out of the shower and my hand meets my towel. Its normal fluffiness abrades my skin when I remember that I had him rip the condom off. I swallowed his cum like a thirsty bitch.

“He’s not a porn star.”

I shake my head, trying to ward off the horrible thoughts. Not being a porn star means he’s not, or at least he hasn’t been officially tested by SCP.

“He seemed very clean,” I tell Havoc who watches me from the doorway. “He smelled amazing.”

The dog yips.

“But he’s covered in tattoos.”

Looking down at the ink on my own arm, I frown as I wipe the steam away from the bathroom mirror. “That’s your mother speaking.”

“Don’t look at them when you walk by,” she warned me even as a child when I saw my first homeless person in New York.

“You can’t be friends with her, Randi. Her mother has her eyebrow pierced.”

“That boy has tattoos. You can’t trust anyone who marks their skin up like that. Your body is a temple, and you have to cherish it.”

My whole life was filled with warnings and snide comments about the people she considered beneath our family as if having money made us any better.

She and my father grounded me once for helping a friend deliver jackets to the homeless. After my mother died, my father only got worse. At nearly twenty, I was tired of his shit, so I left and never looked back.

After blow drying my hair, I walk past Havoc into my bedroom. I already know something is wrong when he doesn’t bound in front of me with playful expectancy in his eyes.

“Havoc,” I hiss when I see the tattered black lace tucked just under the corner of the bed’s dust ruffle.

I pick up the destroyed panties and wring the fabric to keep from wringing his neck.

“I’ve had enough of this.” I shake the ruined panties in his face. At first, he has the wherewithal to look chastened, but then excitement takes over, and he’s drooling to get the material from my hands.

“Bad doggie school,” I warn again and toss the now crotch-less panties into the trash and get dressed.

Mascara, lip gloss, and hair in a messy bun are all I can manage even though I’m going to a fucking frat house to barter with a man I fucked by mistake. I walk Havoc, an attempt to keep him from peeing in the kennel while I’m gone. I have to leave the condo quickly. I know he’ll only be in there for thirty minutes, an hour tops, but he howls at my back like he’s been imprisoned and sentenced to die. It breaks my damn heart, but I had to replace my couch the last time I left him alone. It’s too fucking hot to leave him outside, so the kennel is a necessary evil.

Surprisingly, my fuck boy’s lawn is neat and tidy. There’s no evidence of the chaos that ensued on this property last night. I bet the quick clean up was aided by the semester’s new pledges and helps keep the dean off of their backs.

“Party doesn’t start for a few hours, baby, but I got ten inches that’ll keep you busy until it does.” I don’t even look at the asshole who thinks saying such a thing, in broad daylight no less, is appropriate. I do, however, clutch my purse tighter. This is Texas after all, and leaving home without a handgun on or near my person is almost unheard of. My concealed handgun license was something I got almost immediately after turning twenty-one.

“You nasty-mouthed bitch,” a guy says making me smile.

I look over to where the voice came from, and my smile grows even wider. Sandy blond hair, long on one side and shaved on the other, seems out of place. Right along with his eyeliner and shorts shorter than mine.

“Ms. Cici,” he purrs. “What is your gorgeous ass doing on the front lawn of the Lambda Phi Gamma during the daytime? You’re ruining my fantasy of being one of those sexy as fuck vampires from True Blood.”

“Sorry to disappoint.” I crinkle my nose and hate that I won’t have the opportunity to get to know him better. Jas and Ellis would die seeing how this man can wing eyeliner like a professional. I do costume makeup and even I’m impressed.

“I’m here to see—”

He raises a perfectly manicured eyebrow.

“Fuck,” I mutter, looking toward the front door, hoping that thinking of that gorgeous man from last night will conjure him from the air.

“Jake,” he says nodding his head as if he’s trying to convince me to agree with him.

“Yes.” My head bobs, matching his. “I’m here to see Jake.”

I must smile too wide because my new friend’s face falls and his happy-go-lucky smile turns into a sneer.

“He’s not here, and after the shit you stirred up last night, I suggest you get your too-skinny ass gone before he comes home.”