Pulse (Contemporary new adult/college romance) (Club Grit Trilogy) (6 page)

And DeAndre? He was Perfect with a capital P. He wasn’t anyone’s boyfriend and as far as I knew, nobody had brought him back to the Omega House, the only place relationship sealing sex counted, so he was free game. I said we should do something that weekend, and of course, he agreed, giving me a squeeze on the ass and a kiss on the cheek. Whenever I ended up at Club Grit, it was going to be the easiest night ever.

“Take a line, babe,” he insisted, leaning down to the table.

There were so many. Some were thick, some thin. There were short lines and long lines. There were lines that had something else smashed in making them a pastel color and others that were pure snow white. I really didn’t care. I just wanted to forget about Skylar. Knowing his name just made me so mad. I wish I hadn’t, I wish I’d never seen that stupid name tag on the shirt and that I hadn’t let the image of him burn into the back of my eyeballs as if my retinas were a used CRT screen that had run the same screensaver over and over so many times that when the display was off, the image remained.

That first line was the hardest, but it always is. It’s the one that feels weird, and I know people say that cocaine gets better and easier to use and more fun, but really, it doesn’t. Every time, it’s like inhaling sand in a desert of pleasure, but that’s still sand. Every time, it burns your lungs, your nostrils, whatever it touches, and it burns away the icy paralyzing pain and helps you relax. It’s so fucking bad, I know it is, but I really just don’t even care at this point.

Because in college?

Your parents aren’t around to give you a hug when the mean professor gives you a C instead of the B+ you knew your paper deserved.

Your friends only give you hugs for group photos.

You have to play the stupid games people play, throwing around words you find offensive and don’t believe in, words that degrade you, or your friends, or your family, to see how far you can go and how edgy you can be.

You have to play the stupid games.

You have to win.

Maybe I took the coke to keep from crying or maybe I took it to become more fun or maybe I took it because without it, I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough for Skylar, and he was a fucking bouncer. A bouncer! How had I been unable to get what should have been the easiest lay of my life? What had happened to the persona I’d built up, of being the unattainable blonde chic chick that talking to was a privilege rather than a right?

Maybe she never existed

Or maybe? I just had to let her out.

And another line went down. It was so cheesy, but each time I took a line, I shook my head back and forth as if that somehow made the pain go away faster, as if I could imagine the pain being shout out of my eyes like rays and every time one of those pain bullet light rays hit something, and destroyed it, a part of me was better and cleaner and better and cleaner and that the deafening loudness of the room would overtake me so that I could just forget about my own life, abandon identity and abandon worries and self-contempt.

One thing led to another. Don’t they always?

I started to make out with DeAndre to impress the other sorority girl down there, one of Sam’s friends whose name I was too fucked up to remember.

He started to grind me into his lap as if I was a stripper.

We were told to jokingly get a room.

He seriously obliged.

As I walked upstairs with DeAndre, I saw Kim with one of the senior members of the frat, clipboard on the ground as she had him grind his pelvis into her groin with her skirt hiked up. We locked eyes and I saw she was just as fucking high as me, so out of it, but not out of it to not be able to see that I was trying to make things right again, that I was making an effort to fit in with the rest of the sorority and that Skylar wasn’t an issue anymore. She gave me a thumb up and I kept walking with DeAndre.

The rest of the night was blurry. All I remember was feeling better than I had in a long time. It felt like I took ecstasy and I very well might have, because I would never know what was in those lines. Maybe roofies, who knew and who cared? I didn’t sign up for AP Kindergarten, but for college, and this wasn’t a daycare session, this was sorority life.

Of a few things I was certain.

I did have sex with DeAndre, more than once, more than twice, and I was so glad I hadn’t forgotten to take my pills because he’d insisted he’d forgotten to bring his special condoms, so we had to go bareback. The next morning, I woke up with my pussy still filled with his cum which hadn’t soaked the sheets entirely, but had ruined my dress. I didn’t think dry cleaning would ever get out the bleachy, salty stain.

And I couldn’t get that same stain’s taste out of my mouth, so I knew that I’d given him head too.

I also knew it wasn’t enough to get Skylar out of my head, though, and that I wasn’t able to just forget him that easily. Drastic times called for drastic measures and it was a new day, a Friday, and that meant I’d get another chance to do something to Skylar at Club Grit. I just had no idea whether the plan was seduction or something more sinister.

This #yolo, #swag lifestyle that people try to live, at nightclubs, dancing and drinking with strangers and getting fucked up? It's not to live. It's so they can fucking forget about living and for a while, just not have any inhibitions, so they can have some reckless dangerous fun. It's so they can have more regrets, and more things to forget, and more reasons to keep on living in a chemical fueled wonderland. And for some people, like me? That's alcohol and nicotine and random guys. And for some people, it's harder stuff, like coke and BDSM and swinging. The harder you climb, the deeper you fall, and sometimes there's no coming back up. Sometimes, the only way left is down, digging past rock bottom and coming out the other side.

That morning, Kim had walked into the room and woke me up so we could get our walk of shame done in silence discreetly. We were the silent sluts, the secret sluts, the ones they used and the ones they’d break.

The only question was how soon.

“T
HE FOLLOWING GIRLS MAY STEP FORWARD,” said Kim Lee. She called out half of the pledge class, the half I wasn’t included in. The others looked at me nervously. The fact that I wasn’t included either meant I’d royally fucked up or that this was one of Kim’s fucked up psychological fear tactics meant to keep everyone in line.

“And, you all can go to the den. Tonight, you are to watch some cartoon princess movies because you all fucking failed at the last social in terms of manners. I expected a five page report from all of you, by the time I get back from Club Grit, on the graces of a certain princess and how they’re lacking from your lives, as well as how you can improve. Size twelve, Times New Romance, with one inch margins and yes, Katie, I will be measuring,” said Kim, tapping her keyboard while glaring at the pledge. I rolled my eyes. Last week, Katie had been given a report for mouthing off to the social chair of Beta Rho Omega, our sorority’s big brother frat, and she used thicker margins than allowed. Of course, Katie had noticed, and of course, the reprimand was loud and public. Honestly, how Katie had thought that anything else was appropriate for college was beyond me.

But what wasn’t? Was Club Grit. The girls that hadn’t been called, including me, were allowed to go partying tonight with our Bigs. Even though the last person I wanted to see was Skylar, I wanted to somehow get revenge.

I texted DeAndre and asked him if he wanted to go to Club Grit with us that weekend and within seconds, got a reply. Of course he did, I was a hot, young, #dtf girl, and he was a frat boy. We went together like cookies and cream.

Kim pulled me aside. The sorority had a rule: any dates a new member went on had to be matched at a one to one ratio with a “date” with their Big, to remind them that sisterhood was important. I knew this rule but had forgotten to schedule something, but it was no matter. Samantha was going shopping with Becca that afternoon and invited me to come with. Of course, I said yes.

Samantha and Becca took me out to Rodeo to get therapy...shopping therapy. And, of course, to hear about the date with Skylar. It was a conversation I was dreading but also craving. I didn’t want to talk about Skylar, about my failure, but I did want to vent, to bitch about an asshole with some people that might actually understand.

We walked down to Rodeo, just a few blocks from campus like everything in Beverly Hills worth going to. There was nowhere else in all of the Orange County that rivaled Rodeo Drive in terms of luxury. It was an experience in and of itself and not something I would have ever expected becoming a monthly, sometimes weekly, part of my life. It was the most famous street in Cali, or at least up there with the likes of Route 66, and seen in shopping montage after montage for good reason: there were so many awesome stores that had window fronts like works of arts, workers more attentive than spa attendants and driven by commissions and repeat clientele they built relationships with, and of course, the sheer #bling factor.

First, we headed into the Bebe store. They were always so on target, so on point, and so trendy before the trends were trendy. This wasn’t the Rodeo Drive from
Pretty Woman
, but then again, we weren’t exactly Richard Gere’s prostitutes cum girlfriends. The sales ladies knew us, or at least the Omega Mu lavalieres we wore, and we received the best treatment, so obviously, they earned their commissions. We all knew our sizes (Me: six. Samantha: four, but she’d been doing a lot of yoga lately so it was loose, but she didn’t go for a two. Becky-Becks: eight, but she was stacked in the front and the back) so we found what we wanted fast.

The girls talked me out of a white dress with lots of feathers and rhinestones, saying it’d look more appropriate on Bjork at best. They did talk me into a body-con dress that showed off the body I’d gotten from the past few weeks of nonstop dancing at Spring Break and at Club Grit, a body that was the same size but firmer and fitter, that could dance longer and whether that was from muscles or pills and alcohol and drugs, was irrelevant, but it was a body that needed to be shown off, to be admired, to be flaunted, and although I didn’t say it?

In front of Skylar.

The dress was body-con and black, obv., and it needed a new pair of heels to go with it, so we headed to the Christian Louboutin pop up boutique. Kim would be proud. Capsule stores were all the rage, as were limited edition goods. Have they ever
not
been in vogue? I ended up getting a tall pair of shiny black heels with rhinestone accents that were bound to make me stand out, with lots of straps as if they were a love baby from Madonna and a gladiator, and the shoes made my ass and tits basically pop. It was #cray. The shoes, with the dress, and my red mini Chanel 2.55 cross body, which matched the Louboutin’s red soles, would be an outfit that’d be impossible to ignore, especially with black sparkly smoky eyes and bright red lipstick. I didn’t care that it’d make me look like a streetwalker: it took a lot of money to look this cheap.

On the way back, we stopped at a macaron (think fanciest cookie sandwiches in the world) and cupcake truck. Food trucks were so in that they had tables and chairs at certain places so the food trucks were like real miniature restaurants, and they even had cronut (think croissant’s soul in a donut’s body) knockoffs. Unlike most pastry trucks, their stuff was all miniature so we could try different things without worrying too much about our waistline, which we never really worried about anyway, seeing as Club Grit was the ultimate work out.

Club Grit, and not Skylar, whose abs I wanted to feel pressing against my stomach.

Club Grit, and not Skylar, whose arms I wanted to have entwined around me on the dance floor.

Club Grit, the one place I was dreading going but knew I had to if I wanted to get closure, on my own turns.

We all ended up with an assortment of goodies. I ended up with a bunch of pastel colored macarons: light violet lavender, baby pink rosebud, sheer yellow yuzu fruit, as well as an orange syrup laden Italian soda made into a French crème soda, with whipped cream shaken in, glowing an opaque orange and tasting just like a Creamsicle Frappuccino. Samantha went for red velvet cake mini cupcakes and a pie pop: a literal pie on a lollipop stick, oozing blueberry goodness through the quilting, with a San Pellegrino grapefruit soda. Becca went for the glazed Belgian waffles and a powdered sugar doused cronut, unable to stop herself from making lewd jokes about how she adored things that were “white and sticky and sweet”, plus, an Orangina, unshaken because she hated pulp.

So much sugar, so much heart disease on the way. It was what a lot of the sorority girls jokingly called the “Sorority Brunch”, because instead of the mimosas we were too young to buy, we had orange flavored drinks, and instead of a full buffet of dishes like boiled goose and lox, we only ate sweets. This was #thegoodlife and it was #ourlife. Of course, at least a hundred pics were taken of our food, of us, of us with our food, of us making stupid faces, of our food with smilies drawn on and annotations added with Skitch. When Becca suggested making a Vine with the pastries as puppets, we knew we’d had too much sugar.

This was the part of sorority life I’d wanted: the shopping, the pastries, the laughing, the loving. I went to Club Grit as a chore to earn this, because in high school, I’d never had this. I’d never had girls I could call a family, or people that had been there for me this way. I’d never had the ability to have fun and not worry about money or living within means, or not having to worry about whether a harvest would interfere with a play date.3

“Tell me about your date with Skylar!” asked Becca. I knew that of all the girls, she’d been the only to root for us and I didn’t really know why, given her type tended to be more successful, but I had a sneaking suspicion she was a secret romantic. Something had changed in her recently and I didn’t know what it was, but she had a lilt in her voice, a hop to her step, and it was rumored she was actually getting serious with one of her suitors.