Did he just . . . ?
The sound of his zipper being pulled up alarms me, followed by a gentle kiss on my bare shoulder. Without seeing his face, his breath lingers against my ear as he whispers, “Now you know how it feels.”
And then it clicks. As I turn around, I instinctively cover my breasts with my hands and attempt to adjust my dress.
He walks towards the motorcycle parked beside the door and climbs on. With his helmet in his hand, he blows me a kiss, then places his helmet on and jumps on the accelerator. He rides off with a rev of the engine, leaving me alone in the alley.
I watch him drive off, all the while thinking this is some fucking horrid nightmare. Did he just fuck me then leave me hanging without a happy ending?
I stomp my feet in frustration, screaming out into the air, “YOU FUCKING JERK!”
What have I just done?
I don’t have a second to think any longer, vomiting profusely onto the ground before I am rescued by a worried Vicky and taken home.
Chapter Six
I spent the weekend in hangover hell, dressed permanently in my sweatpants that had a huge hole in the crotch which I only noticed after I came home from the grocery store. To make matters worse, I happened to be wearing my big-girl panties (often referred to as Aunt Flo’s couture) because I was fresh out of clean sexy ones and had zip all energy to go do laundry. They were unflattering, had some weird cat pattern on them, and I could have sworn the old man in the cereal aisle had spotted Kitty peeking out from the hole.
Cats—it’s an omen.
When you spend most of the weekend making friends with the basin, you vow to never touch an ounce of alcohol again. This is why drinking and being single is a deadly combination. Tequila was to blame. It always is. Nothing ever good comes from doing tequila shots.
Friday night was a huge blur, but I knew one thing—I screwed the Jerk in the back of the alley.
My life is officially over.
There haven’t been many moments in my life where I prayed that a genie would appear and grant me three wishes, but right now I?
??m on my knees begging for a magical wish to erase what happened.
The details of our ‘fling’ are a little hazy, and when I say hazy I mean I don’t remember anything apart from him driving off on his motorbike, without finishing our rendezvous, and me vomiting like the exorcist with Vicky trying to salvage my hair.
When I spot the red mark on my neck, a memory of him biting my flesh like a deprived vampire flashes before me and I shrivel up in embarrassment. I have used almost a whole tube of toothpaste to keep the redness down. It takes me back to high school when I looked like a leper dating this jock, Calvin. I was forced to wear scarves during the summer and pulled it off as some new fashion trend. My mother was so gullible.
Vicky apologized a million times for having to visit her parents on Sunday, leaving me to fend for myself and come up with a solution. I figured I’d take the mature approach and ignore him. Then I realized that was not going to work and the only way to face my demons would be to confront him head-on. I’d even gone to the lengths of preparing a speech. I had a plan of attack, and after my laundry was done, the old Presley was slowing making her way back from ‘girls gone wild vacation’; I couldn’t have felt more content.
God, I was so naïve and delusional!
This, in turn, caused a sleepless night and being overtired.
The next morning, I decide I need to burn that excess energy and pent-up frustration by doing some major cardio at the gym. Trina arrives with Sarah again, and with a quick smile, I pretend to be busy on the treadmill with my headphones, hoping to avoid a conversation. If she caught wind of this, I would seriously get my kitty kicked.
With my iPod on shuffle, I purposely skip past the ballads and settle for some heavy metal. Good ole’ Alice Cooper’s Poison floods my hearing and I push myself to ridiculous speeds, almost falling off the machine. Zoning out of my surroundings, the memory of the way he entered me and the way my body reacted comes back to me and a throb between my legs grows. For a split second I close my eyes, and it’s like a movie being replayed in my head. Bits and pieces, piercings . . . wait! Piercings??
“Hey, Presley! You look lost with the fairies. Anything wrong?”
Trina is standing in front of my machine and it’s a given that I cannot avoid her.
“Just a lot on my mind, you know, work stuff,” I lie.
“I understand. So listen, about the other day. I’ve decided to speak to Haden one more time and if that’s it, well . . . you’re right, I have to let it go.”
His name alone causes my head to contract into a massive migraine.
“Are you sure, Trina? Jerks like him ain’t worth your time. Besides, you know Allan at the front desk? He asked me about you.”
Her eyes light up immediately. “Allan with the bulging arms?”