Tomorrow night? Rebecca will show you her donut bar for the win. She claims you’ll never enjoy a college donut the same after a pier one.
The thought made me smile, my response was instant.
Tomorrow sounds great. Time?
More footsteps sounded on their way through the corridor. My vantage point offered me enough insight to hold me firm in position. The blonde flash of hair and trademark giggle was enough to make my pulse race. My dorm mate, Pippa, was laughing with her – our – friend Emma. Call it instinct, but I knew in a flash the bitchy cackle was directed at me. Maybe sixth sense, maybe experience. Maybe paranoia.
I was right, of course. Her words weren’t even hushed in a public environment.
“I’d have never thought for one single second she’d be taking money to get her tits out. I mean, who’d have thought? She’s little miss prissy! Always seeming so… nice.”
“So boring,” Emma said. “Let’s be honest, she’s nice, sure. But nice and boring go hand in hand with girls like Paige. She’s just so…”
“Bland,” Pippa finished. “Bland and boring and too sweet to be actual company. Still can’t believe she’s a whore.”
Emma’s laugh in the affirmative made my throat tighten. “You’re sure it was really her and was really for whore shit? I mean, we don’t know for definite the cash was for slutting it up, right?”
Pippa laughed right back. “It was her. Definitely. Simone Bailey saw her from the window and swore down on it. And of course it’s for slutting it up. Where else is Miss Boring going to get that kind of cash from on a school night?” She dug in her bag for her dorm keys. “We all know what’s going down around these parts right now. I guess Rebecca Lane is just one of many. Miss Prissy Emmerson is just jumping on the slutty bandwagon.”
My heart died. Dead.
Months of being so careful with such pathetic cardboard friendships had been all for nothing. Wrecked in one sad little rumour.
The rumour in itself was lopsided at best. It was so sad, really. My so-called friends cared about nothing more than my social destruction, and that pained worse than their bitching.
Simone Bailey can’t have been looking that hard when she stared through her window. Cash and bared tits had made it onto her gossip list, sure, but what about the rest?
What about the tears? My frantic bandy legs carrying me home? The desperate breathing?
What about the horror that must have been plastered over my face as I charged back to my room?
I hitched back yet more tears as the girls headed upstairs, determined that they weren’t worth the upset. Not now, not ever.
The ping of Carolyn’s next message was a welcome buzz in my palm.
Seven p.m. at the pier?
My yes reply was easy. My ascent upstairs after my dorm mates was anything but.
I dreaded the cold silence. The loaded zing of unspoken gossip.
It was every bit as bad as I feared when I opened the main dorm block doorway and stepped inside.
Pippa and Emma were in the kitchenette, their backs to me and frozen while judgy Holly met my eyes over their shoulders and narrowed hers. Judgy didn’t come close to the disgust I felt from her. She was nothing like the friendly girl elbowing me in lectures and talking through psychology studies just a few days previous.
I’d have respected the three of them asking me outright what the hell was going on the night before, but they didn’t. Holly’s eyes led to the other girls turning, and they stared out at me like I was the most unexpected visitor on the planet, even though I lived two doorways down the hall.
“Paige!” Pippa grinned like an idiot. “How’s your day been? We just got home!”
And that’s when my cardboard facade came to an end.
I had no words, not for spiteful little gossips like them. I had no desire to spill my soul to a trio of nasty girls who’d written me off as a piece of shit before asking me a single question.
My jaw was higher than my soul felt when I walked right on past and opened my bedroom door. The natural slam as I tugged it closed behind me was seemingly more than enough to discourage them knocking.
I stayed there. Staring at the ceiling. Thinking about my sister. Thinking about Rebecca Lane and the stories she’d share over donuts on the pier.
Thinking about him. The most handsome guy under the sun, even if he was the most sadistic freak this side of forever.
Thinking about how good his fingers had felt inside me, even if the truth of my own filth made my stomach turn.
And there was more. Lurking underneath. Truth on top of truth, granted by snide rumours and ugly friendships come to light.
Relief.
There was so much relief to be found through their nasty chatter.