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“Got anything stronger?” I croak, nodding to the joint in his hand.
He gives me a guarded look. “Like what?”
“Like those pills you’re always taking.”
“Stalk much?” he asks, a little smirk on his lips.
“Seriously,” I say. “Where do you get those?”
“From my doctor,” he says. “They’re pain pills.”
“You don’t think I could use some of that right now?”
He sighs and leans back, dipping his fingers into a pocket in his pants. I try not to eye-fuck him, but the way he’s sitting makes it impossible not to imagine sliding onto his lap, straddling those sexy-as-sin hips, and riding him bareback until he was forced to remember everything that’s come and gone between us.
He sets a little white oblong pill on the table. “These are really strong,” he warns. “You probably only need half.”
“Why so stingy?” I ask. “If you can get more from your doctor, hook me up. I know you have more than that on you.”
He sighs and digs in his pocket again, and I’m not sure if I wanted the pills more, or to see him working his fingers into his pocket while he sits back in the wooden chair. He produces two more pills and sets them on the table with the first one. “That’s all I carry on me,” he says. “Half a pill a day should last you almost a week. Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take it,” I say, picking them up and slipping them into the pocket of my white shirt. “Thank you.”
He raises a brow and picks up his Bic again. “Sure, Butterfly.”
I thumb on my phone, opening Dixie’s blog post again. There are dozens of comments already. My head swims and her words blur. I wish I could erase them from my mind. Everyone knows I’m a whore. Everyone knows I’m a fake. That I’m poor.
But exposing me wasn’t enough. She’s on student council and is supposed to get to speak in front of the school board after she posted some video that made a publicity scandal for Willow Heights. She knows she has power now, that she has to cash in on her fifteen minutes. This was divine timing for her. The admin might actually listen to her, take me off the cheer squad or even expel me. Will she come for my sisters next, make sure no one stands in her way of the throne?
My sisters.
I lurch to my feet, my stomach churning so hard I think I’ll be sick. “I have to go.”
The panic I’ve been holding back all day is going to surface any moment.
“What the fuck, Lo,” Colt calls, but I’m already stumbling away.
My world is spinning out of control. My heart is swimming drunkenly in my chest. I can’t breathe.
“Gloria. Stop.” His voice is so commanding that even in my reeling state, it cuts through. My feet have stopped before I even know I’m going to.
“Look at me.”
I turn slowly, my heels grinding into the wooden planks. I don’t know who’s moving my body. It’s like one of those ballerinas in the jewelry boxes we had as kids, back in Savannah. Wind me up, and the music plays, and I twirl.
Never stop dancing.
A laugh threatens to bubble up inside me.
“Come here,” Colt orders, tapping the knee of his navy slacks. I move robotically, on autopilot, until I’m standing in front of him.
He shifts his knees together. “Sit.”
I sit.
“Atta girl,” he says, stroking a strand of hair back from my cheek. “Keep looking at me. Now breathe. In through your nose. Out through your mouth.”
I breathe, as if in a trance, hypnotized by the quiet, firm command in his words. Like a fucking robot with faulty programming, I can’t even breathe without instruction. If I stop focusing on it, I’ll stop breathing, stop living.
