Nothing But Wild (Malibu University 2)

Fuck. Brenda is…how do I explain my mother?

When I was nine I asked her not to go away for Christmas with her then current boyfriend. She’s got as many as she’s got shoes––in other words, too many to count. I point blank told her that I got lonely when she went away. Her answer to this was to double up on my therapy appointments. There you have it––my mother in a nutshell.

Mommy Dearest: She’s got every celebrity clamoring for an appointment but I got you one!!! Isn’t that awesome!! Call me!!! Three black heart emojis.

Sensing Brock’s attention on me, I glance over to find his face set in stone. That means more unwanted advice is coming my way soon.

“Everything okay?”

Nothing’s okay, dude.

But I don’t say that. I shrug and grin. Because that’s what I do. “Fanfuckingtastic.”

Dora

I. Am. Ruined.

Ruined by a bad man and a great kiss. A kiss I can’t stop thinking about. All because of a freaking costume. Have I been guilty of indulging in indecent thoughts of Dallas in the past? Sure. But it was only a fantasy before, a product of my very fertile imagination. Actually knowing what it feels like to kiss him is so much worse. I can see my grave stone already.

Here rests Dora Ramos, beloved daughter of Jay and Evan Ramos, dead by freaking unrequited longing for a guy who doesn’t know she exists outside of his drug-addled hallucinations. Fin.

“I hate it when we fight, Sugar Bear.” Dallas’s voice rises above the chatter in the quad that overlooks Santa Monica Bay.

My gaze slides away from my laptop to low-key creep on him. Three tables down from where I’m seated, he’s having lunch with some of his teammates.

“Let’s kiss and make up.” Dallas attempts to throw his arms around Brock Peterman and the latter pushes him off. Dallas laughs at something one of the other guys said and his head falls forward. The wild tangle of blond hair, still wet from practice, falls over his electric blue eyes.

Let’s do it again…

The last words he said to me on Monday night. Then his gaze sharpened, the fog of lust I was drifting in lifted, and all the groovy feelings were swiftly replaced by a deep-seated fear that told me he was seconds from pulling off my mask and revealing me as the dirty imposter that I was. Needless to say, I bolted out of that bathroom faster than I dive on a doughnut on my cheat day and I didn’t stop running until I reached the corner convenience store to await my Uber ride back to my Malibu University dorm.

Little did I know what life had in store for me when I walked into the novelty shop on Melrose Avenue with Sasha. Like I said, I rarely go to parties. We’ve already established that I have a hard time talking to people, and being focused on academics most of my life is not conducive to having many friends. But she happened to call the day after I had finally screwed up the courage to email my birthmother. Twenty-four hours later and still no response, I was worked me up into a pretty good lather so I uncharacteristically agreed. Basically you could call it an intersectionality of terrible events.

“You got a boyfriend, sweetie?” said the RuPaul lookalike who worked there.

“N-no, of c-course not,” was my automatic reply as I hid behind the changing room curtain trying and failing to cram my ass in the Winnie the Pooh suit.

“Do you want one?” she continued, sounding genuinely interested.

Did I want a boyfriend? That was like asking me if I wanted a Twinkie the month I decided to try the Paleo Diet. Yes. Yes, a thousand times yes.

I glanced over at my cousin and found her busy taking inappropriate selfies with a sex toy of sorts. Did I say a novelty shop? Yeah, I meant novelty slash sex shop. Sasha’s idea.

“Umm, yes,” I muttered under embarrassed breath, and a frown appeared on RuPaul’s flawlessly made-up face. A moment later, a lazy smile replaced it.

“Try this,” she purred, handing me a hanger with a scrap of shiny dark material attached. “This should do it.”

Let me be clear––I hadn’t put on a bathing suit since the seventh grade so the suspicion ran deep as I stared at the scrap of material she suggested was going to change my relationship status. That was asking a lot of a Halloween costume but whatever, I went along with it because what did I have to lose. My mind, it turns out.

“You know what they say, honey. Bone is for dog and meat is for man.”

I had serious doubts about this wisdom. I’d lived in Southern California all my life and I was almost one-hundred-percent certain that this breed of man preferred bone because in all my soon-to-be twenty-one years I had yet to find a single one who loved my meat. Despite all this (in addition to the voice screaming in my head to make a run for it) I put the suit and mask on, and promptly lost my freaking mind.