Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
I walk back to our dorm alone, feeling nauseous. My phone buzzes in my pocket, and my heart leaps—only to find a generic promo from the campus bookstore, and a message from Simone reminding me that she left a cupcake for me in our mini-fridge.
I let myself into the room, kick off my shoes, and collapse onto my mattress. I close my eyes and picture the city, the penthouse, the way I looked in the bathroom mirror: flushed, a little wild, not quite myself and exactly myself at the same time.
My phone sits heavy in my hand. I scroll through my camera roll and pause on the video file—the proof, the evidence, the thing that could win me everything. I almost delete it. Yet Thomas’s image is there in my mind’s eye: bronzed, handsome, intense, and hung.
But am I just another hook-up to the billionaire? One woman among many?
With a punch of my finger, I lock the screen and hold the phone against my chest. I don’t know what I’m looking for. But I know I’m not ready to let go.
Not yet.
14
TAKING IT FRONT AND BACK ON MOVING DAY
Andie
It’s finally the end of the semester, and my dorm room looks like a disaster zone: cardboard boxes in erratic towers, a duffel bag zippered and slumping, one lone plastic hanger spinning on the closet rod. The walls are suddenly naked, pockmarked with thumbtack craters and faint outlines where string lights used to hang. My mattress is stripped, the institutional blue ticking exposed, already dusted with a thin haze of popcorn ceiling fallout. Each time I move a box, I discover another stray bobby pin or dust bunny, as if my life is trying to reassemble itself in fragments.
I’m in a good mood, though. I hum the chorus from a song I barely remember, peeling another length of packing tape off the roll and tearing it with my teeth. My body still throbs with a low, sweet ache—my thighs remembering the weight of Thomas pinning me to his mattress, my neck tender where his mouth found the softest places and bit. Sometimes I have to stop what I’m doing just to feel it. A little aftershock, a muscle memory, a spike of heat that moves through me and then out, leaving me grinning at nothing.
I smile, thinking back to my irrational fear from the Juicery. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that irrational. Stella herself told me her dad was a man whore, and I was petrified that I was one woman among a veritable sea of ladies dying to date billionaire Thomas Morehouse. But he came back from his business trip within a week, and immediately called me. He said he missed me, and within half an hour, I was ensconced in his arms, heady with pleasure as he claimed me again and again.
We’ve been dating in secret for a while now too. I don’t know why I haven’t told anyone, other than Simone. I guess it’s because our relationship feels precious, and private. I don’t want a ton of people to know, or at least I don’t want them to know just yet. As a result, the virginity bet is still “on” although I’ve long since had my cherry popped.
Now, I’m packing to move into an off-campus apartment with Stella, Mary Kate, and Kayleigh. My phone sits face-down on the desk. Every five minutes, I flip it over to check the blank screen, then set it back down and pretend I wasn’t hoping for something because I have nothing to worry about, not anymore. Now, when I think about my boyfriend, it’s not the billionaire, or the CEO, or the famous board member—it’s just him, Thomas the man, greedy for my company. Maybe greedy for my body, too, but not in a way that feels cheap. In a way that makes me feel chosen.
I wrap my favorite mug in a soft, shredded T-shirt, tucking it into the space between two books. I pause for a second, hand on the ceramic, and run my thumb over the tiny spiderweb crack in the handle. It’s precious to me, despite its defects
I’m taping the top of the box when Stella bursts in. She doesn’t knock—she never knocks—but this time, her arrival is less an intrusion and more a shockwave. The air in the room shifts, quick and hot.
She’s got her blonde hair up in a victory bun, sunglasses perched on top like a tiara. Her cheeks are bright, and she’s carrying a box so big it hides half her torso. “Oh my god, Andie, you will not believe what just happened,” she says, pitching the box onto my stripped bed with a heavy whump.
I freeze, tape halfway across the cardboard. “What happened?”
She slides the sunglasses down her nose and beams. “My dad’s coming to move me out. Like, actually himself. Not his assistants, not the moving crew—the man himself. He texted and said he’s bringing pizza and maybe beer, if the RA’s don’t freak out. I mean, can you believe it?”