Pulse (Contemporary new adult/college romance) (Club Grit Trilogy) (15 page)

He was raping her. There was no way she’d agreed to this; no way she could in that state.

And then, there was the coat check girl who must have been on break, who came back and saw what was going on. There was DeAndre getting up to explain but she was already gone, to get help.

In came Skylar and the rest of the bouncers, dragging him away, rousing the girl, who was then taken away by paramedics. Although they were comforting her, she was crying. There was no audio and of that I was glad but it was obvious she was being raped.

DeAndre turned but Skylar didn’t. Instead, he smirked as DeAndre came to the sudden realization that his secret was not only now known by Skylar, but by everyone else in the sorority too. They knew the truth, and it was out in the undeniable open. Hands were brought up to mouths

How could DeAndre, the man they’d defended and protected time and time again, turn into such a monster? To think, he’d raped on of their own and the Bigs had let it happened. It was appalling. They’d almost fallen for it to, his schoolboy innocent looks merely a facade behind which a beast hid.

Skylar cleared his throat and DeAndre turned to him. “You have two options, DeAndre. You can confess to the police about what you had did to Emma and the other girl, and you can argue for a more lenient sentence. You’re a shit bag who doesn’t deserve anything less than the worst of punishments but I’m not a judge, jury, or executioner, just a bouncer. Or, I can make you disappear.”

“Is that a threat?” asked DeAndre. He was trying to play tough but we all knew he was a coward now.

Skylar laughed sarcastically. “Ha! No. Threats are empty. What it is, is a warning. There’s information I have about you, about your past, that could incriminate you and ensure you live the rest of your life behind bars. Am I going to have to put you in prison, permanently? Or, are you going to be a man about this?”

“That doesn’t change things. She still has to stay here. She has to stay in Omega House!” insisted Kim, gripping the clipboard closer to her. In this entire thing, the only thing that hadn’t changed was that fucking clipboard.

“If she stays here? It’ll be by her choice only, not on your terms. If she stays here? Get fucking prepared to have me over, every goddamn night, beating the shit out of you if you ever come near her again, DeAndre. It’s Emma’s choice, but I’m not going to let her be blackmailed into this bullshit. I see why my boss fucking banned your sorority from Club Grit, Kim,” he snarled at the petite Asian girl whose heels didn’t make her seem as tall any more. “That’s right, I know exactly who you are, and no, not because of Emma,” he added, as he saw her eyes dart towards me and narrow into a glare. “I know you think I’m stupid or low class, but as observant as you are and as slick as you seem, you’re not, Kim. The fact I knew your name before I even met Emma, ever since last year when you started to become a regular, means that you were doing something wrong. You weren’t playing the game you should have been playing. You weren’t discreet. You can walk around with your stupid little clipboard, but that doesn’t mean that you’re worth shit. It’ll never make up for the fact that daddy never loved you.”

The room let out a collective gasp. Nobody had ever stood up to Kim Lee before.

Kim’s eyes narrowed. “What did you just say to me?”

“Nothing will ever make up for the fact that Daddy. Never. Loved you.” Skylar gave her the biggest shit eating grin possible and Kim lifted up her clip board to slap Skylar across the face. He let it happen. It wobbled on impact and left a mark as red as its trimming as Skylar’s eyes became as black as its surface.

Skylar plucked it right out of Kim’s hands. I think part of her was stunned by what she’d done, and she cringed, ready for Skylar to knock her straight to the moon.

But that’s not what he did.

By now, you know Skylar’s not that kind of guy.

He uses whatever force necessary.

But sometimes, he has to make a point.

He put a knee up on the expensive French sofas.

He took that black and red clipboard in two hands, one on the top, one on the bottom. He unclipped the papers attached but leaving them on the surface.

And he lifted the clipboard up.

He brought it back down.

It shattered.

Into a million tiny fucking plastic shards, and it ripped his jeans as it slashed them like the vase had slashed the garbage bag before, but the paper shot into the air and fluttered like a million dying doves.

He threw the clipboard into the air and when it landed on the ground, he used his black Converse and fucking ground the pieces into the carpet, the shards shredding the tufting like the mouths of an undying army of termites, each footstep ruining it more and more, leaving a stain of black plastic with the red disappearing and consuming it.

The reign of Kim Lee was over.

Of course, somebody was going to take over.

Somebody always would.

But that somebody wasn’t about to be me.

S
KYLAR WAS QUIET DURING THE ENTIRE CAR RIDE HOME, keeping his hands at ten and two but other than that, just staying silent about what had gone on at Omega House, which was basically a parallel to what had happened at Club Grit.

“Are...are you mad at me?” I’d never meant for Skylar’s life to get so fucked up because of me, for it to become such a mess. I didn’t know if he’d hate me for it or worse, leave me.

“Mad? At you? No, never, it’s just...I just wish things were easier for us. Better.”

T
HE NEXT DAY, I got out of bed without waking up Skylar. I knew that he had to get his sleep if he was going to get to work tonight. As usual, I took a cab to campus, where I just kept my head down. I knew people would be talking, after what happened at Omega House, and I wasn’t about to lie and say that I didn’t care, because I did. It sucked to hear the words “bouncer” and “clipboard” in the same sentence all day, to the point that I didn’t sit in my usual place in classes, sitting in the front so I wouldn’t have to see a forest of MacBook Pros loading up cell phone pics and Vines, the videos showing Skylar breaking the clipboard in slow-mo, or sped up to show Kim Lee’s reaction over and over on loop. I knew people were still talking, still looking at me, but at least I didn’t have to look at them.

I had received lots of texts all night, from angry sisters demanding I apologize to Kim, but I wasn’t their sister, not anymore. I had placed my phone on vibrate and as I walked through the halls, the phone had buzzed nonstop, so when I got to class, I turned the phone to silent, placing it discreetly in my purse so that if it glowed, I knew I got a text. But right now, the last thing I needed was to lose my grades too. I had to have something grounding me and I knew that it was too much to ask Skylar to be my rock.

I opened my iPhone. Skylar had sent me a text so long it should have just been an email, fuck it, snail mail would have been a more appropriate medium. I didn’t recognize the man who wrote the letter, because he sure as fuck wasn’t Skylar. He wasn’t the man I’d been staying with, sleeping with, but something else entirely.

Emma,

I can’t do this anymore.

I can’t handle this.

You have me questioning so many things about myself and I never thought that I’d have to give up, but I think I have to. I don’t think that it’s possible for me to go on fighting your battles for you, getting involved in the kind of drama I’ve distanced myself from all my life. But that’s not even the problem. People have baggage, you know I know that better than anyone, but the problem is, you won’t let me carry yours.

I thought we could make it work. I don’t think we can. I was hoping last night would remind me of why I’d been drawn to you, to help you, that somehow, intimacy could fix it, but it’s just made things more complicated. I don’t know if it’s me, or it’s you, or it’s just some fucked up situation we’ve both ended up.

You’ve pushed me away so many times, and I’ve tried to be there for you. I don’t know how many times I’m going to have to ask. Do I have to grovel and beg for you to take my help? Because right now, that’s what it feels like. I’m not asking to be your knight in shining armor. I’m just trying to help you because I don’t know what words to say, but I want to make things better for you.

At least, I did.

I can’t do this anymore. I can’t wait for you to realize that I can help, and that you can take help and that I care and won’t judge but just want to help you make things better.

I’m not going to watch you destroy yourself.

- Skylar

I had to reread the note over and over, through class, as I walked off campus to the busy streets, in the cab to the apartment, and even as I walked up the stairs to the apartment.

Even though he hadn’t said I had to, I went back to the apartment to pack up my things. There was no way I could live with a man who didn’t even want to date me anymore. It’d be too weird, too awkward, too...too fucked up. I would go to a hotel. I’d get back on my feet and figure out if I could get an apartment until summer, and if I would go back home for the summer or stay in LA or just go on a cruise and forget.

I wanted to erase the text, to start pretending I’d never met Skylar. It wasn’t like I was saving the text for anyone else to read: all my “friends” had been part of Omega House and didn’t even talk to me in the halls anymore, and all the others I’d met since were closer to Skylar than to me, as nice as they were.

I was a girl alone in the world and nothing, not the designer clothes or the parties or the money, could ever change that. Loneliness couldn’t be paid to go away, not permanently. It would always be there, breathing down my neck, letting me now that somehow, I’d fuck up, that somehow, I’d be the one that

I realized I was messier than I thought so I just started to pack a duffel. I couldn’t find it so I had to go digging in the closet. I didn’t care about privacy any more, about not going through Skylar’s stuff, because it wasn’t like I’d ever see him again. Ever.

I started

But that’s when I found it.

He’d kept the heroin and the supplies.

But why?

I guess they wouldn’t flush down the toilet or were the kind of thing he didn’t know how to properly throw away.

I guess I didn’t care.

Most of the stuff was smashed but I managed to find a good syringe and scrape together enough of the white powder to get a good high, if not extra. I went to the bathroom with one of the bras I had been packing and wrapped it around my upper arm tightly. The veins didn’t come up the way I wanted, not fast enough, not hard enough, so I took off my jeans, and, sitting just in panties, a shirt, and with a bra wrapped around my thigh, I waited and finally, a vein came out. I waited a bit longer for it to get easier to inject into before getting impatient and just shooting the powdered gold straight up, into my system.

My heart, which had been beating so much slower since I’d received Skylar’s text, since I’d been basically walking in a dream-like state, just going through the motions, started to beat harder. I didn’t know if it was the drugs which were acting faster than usual after being sober for a while, or if it had been the dosage, or maybe the pain of the needle in my arm, a needle I’d jabbed in instead of letting in gently. Either way, for now, I felt alive again. I was Emma again.

As the blood, as freshly powdered as my grandma’s nose before church, reached my brain, I felt my eyes widen and my pulse quicken. I felt more alive again, more normal. Who needed Skylar, right? Who needed some overprotective guy who didn’t understand what it was like for me, back at Omega Mu Gamma, who didn’t get that I’d had to do things, things I was ashamed of but hadn’t told anyone outside the house about, to pass the pledge period in the first place? Who needed some guy that assumed because I was a poor little rich girl, I should have my shit together? Not me. Oh no, not Miss Emma Nelson.

Maybe I should go back to Omega Mu Gamma. Maybe they’d been right about the whole thing.

Maybe they were right about DeAndre. I should have known better. Why had I worn those clothes if I hadn’t wanted to turn him on? Plus, it was my reputation at stake. I didn’t want to be known as a cock tease. No, I didn’t want to be that girl that led guys on and that whenever they got horny, denied them the best gift I could offer! This was California. This was LA. This was UC fucking Beverly Hills, and sex was chic and cheap. Virginity was a novelty at best and for pussies and losers and cowards and neckbeards and nerds at worst. What was I going to be, huh? One of those practically virgin girls who hadn’t had more than a few dicks in them a few times, or someone that was meant to be someone? Someone that was meant to live? #YOLO, right? That’s the motto, right? I wondered what he’d put out since that album. Fuck, was there new music on the Top 100? I had to know but not right now. No, right now I had to pack, get to a hotel, get room service, watch some
Real Housewives
, maybe
Kardash
if nothing else was on, no, I had to get the FUCK out of here, why was I still in here?

Oh wait the heroin FUCK.

Fuck, fuckity fucking fuckrivolous fucking fuckly fuckibbity fuckoobity fuckillity fuckizzle.

Fuck fuck fuck, fuck fuck fuck, fuck. Fuck fuck? Fuck, fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

FUCK.

I’d run out of the “good stuff”.

Even though I’d kept my finger on the syringe to inject it slowly, I’d forgotten that at any speed, if I didn’t take the finger off, I’d end up injecting all of it. There’d been enough heroin to make me and at least two other girls get a good buzz, but al

I’d forgotten that maybe it wasn’t a good idea to take so much at once, that maybe I should slow down and make it last because until I figured out what I was going to do, I didn’t know how I’d get my fix. I could go clubbing but that wasn’t as reliable, no, not as reliable as Omega Mu Gamma. Omega Mega Mu Mu, we’re better than you, you! Ha-ha, I still remembered that cheer. I remember learning that during pledge week and how the girls that’d become our Bigs said it was a joke, that they didn’t really say that, no, they reeeaaallllllyyy didn’t say that, it was just a rumor that someone said! And that how, in the weeks to come, they swore, no, definitely, no, for sure, that was
ironic
, that they wouldn’t say it if they
really
believed in it. That they didn’t
really
mean it, the way we didn’t
really
mean it when we heard them call Samantha a nouveau riche slut, or Becca a gold digging whore trophy wife wannabe, or Kim a Machiavellian down right evil scheming bitch.