Page 49 of Vile Bastards
“Where at? You can only drink it if I make it, eh?” I ask, referring to the day he came over and actually partook of the shitty coffee I made. “Bet you weren’t aware that I spit in it, huh?”
He whirls around on me, heaving mad, his pale face lit with red.
“I’ll take you out, and you can drink all the coffee you want while we chitchat. We’ll get to know each other, nice and slow. Do not expect what happened at the track to happen again anytime soon.”
“You are my fuckboy,” I tell him, a warning in my voice.
He moves over to stand on the opposite side of the table from me.
“I am Alexei Grove, and I am nobody’s fuckboy. If you want me, you’ll acknowledge that I am your suitor.”
“Not going to happen.”
“You’ll either call me your boyfriend, or you’ll have nothing.”
I laugh at that and shake my head.
“You seemed so nice at the art gallery. I should’ve known better. You’re as nuts as the rest of them.” I throw my hand out to indicate the other three boys, my eyes locked in challenge with Alexei’s. “No matter what you say, what you do, you’ll always know that my slippery pussy choked the life out of your dick.” He bristles but doesn’t move. “You’ll always know that I dirtied the seat in the Lambo with your semen.”
“I’m not going to engage with you, Miss Force.”
“If you didn’t want to engage with me, you shouldn’t have fucked me. I take that shit seriously.” I meet his gaze dead-on. “And I hocked a huge fucking loogie in your coffee.”
I didn’t actually do that—fuckin’ gross, right?—but he doesn’t need to know that.
“Get out.”
“Like I’d let some Russian oligarch bitch-boy tell me what to do?” I muse on that for a moment before rucking my leather skirt up and grabbing my panties. I shimmy out of them, snatching them off one high heel and then the other before I pull my skirt back down. I bundle the underwear in my fist and shake them at Alexei before tossing them onto his table.
His face blanches, and I can see that he’s having trouble swallowing. Is he disgusted? Excited? Lil bit o’ both?
“Undergarments … on my table. I eat there. I sit there and eat. What have you done?”
I ignore him, waving goodbye as I saunter out and settle into the Devil’s sweet embrace, turning the radio on to find BLACKPINK’s ‘DDU-DU DDU-DU’ playing. I turn the volume up as high as it can go and take off with Widow on my ass.
As usual.
“Fuckin’ fuckboys gonna run me into the ground,” I murmur, but I’m smiling as I say it.
Because I’m alive, I’m gobbling the pavement like a glutton, and I’ve got a date tomorrow with Kellin fuckin’ Bohnes.
Should be interesting, if nothing else.
Scarlett
“You’re going on a date?” Geneva (the woman who gave birth to me) says as she stands over me while I lounge on the couch, flipping through my phone as I wait for Bohnes to pick me up. He insisted, after all.
I’m pleased by the offer. Very traditionally Prescott. Gotta pick your girl up in your fly-ass car lest the Prescott population labels you a scrub or a PD-Double-S (Prescott dropout super special). That is, a total goddamn loser.
Just hope my grandma doesn’t see Bohnes, so I don’t have to explain the whole fuckboy/boyfriend situation tonight. Eventually, we’ll get there. I don’t like hiding things from Patricia, and she probably suspects something’s up anyway. I mean, she went to Prescott. It wasn’t that much different back then, was it? Cars were still a big deal; I know that. I know that my grandpa rolled up on her with his top down and asked her to take a ride.
Two years later, they were married, grandma was pregnant, and yeah … that’s the story.
What fresh hell that must’ve been.
“Yep, on a date.” I don’t look up at Geneva, and she plucks my phone from my hand like I’m some middle-class eighteen-year-old who listens to their parents. Hah. I could run circles around my mother intellectually, emotionally, on the street, in a fight. You name it.
I sit up and hold my hand out, palm up.
“You died, Scarlett.” Mom’s voice chokes up, but I don’t want to hear about it anymore. Not from her. Not from my aunt Anita. Not from Alexis. Only my grandmother has kept from harping on it, repeating that phrase over and over again.
“I’m aware; I was present.” I stand up from the couch and turn, snapping my fingers at her. “Give me the phone, Geneva.”
She gives me a trying look but says nothing in response to my use of her name in place of the word mom.
“What on earth are you wearing?” she asks, and I sigh heavily.
“Geneva, where have you been for the last three plus years?” I look down at my blue dress with the dual slits on either side, opening up the nearly floor-length dress to my hips. I’ve got on a pair of decorative leather thigh straps, black heels, and an arm dipped in ink. I am dressed to kill (hopefully not literally tonight). “This is conservative as fuck compared to what I usually wear.”
