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Spoiled. Little. Brat. Asher’s voice taunted me inside my head. Great, he’d become a menace to my sanity now, even when he wasn’t present.
I told the maid to come in, warned her about the glass, then grabbed my phone. It was already full of messages from Selena, the only person who ever texted me.
What are you going to wear tonight?
I’m thinking something sequined, but not like…common, you know?
Can I borrow your black Valentino minidress, in case I can’t find anything I like today?
Hello? I’m trying to plan New Year’s Eve, and you’re sleeping?
Right, it was New Year’s Eve. One of the reasons why my parents usually didn’t come for my birthday. They were invited to all sorts of fancy galas to ring in the new year. Staying home in Hade Harbor for New Year’s wasn’t usually on their list of things they could do.
I should be grateful for this year, and relieved that my dad hadn’t found out about last night. Yeah, grateful you got Asher fired instead. A pang of guilt hit me, but I shoved it away. Any guilt I would have felt over his situation had dissolved under the acetone I’d had to use on my face to clean off the permanent marker. Asshole. My facialist was going to be furious. God only knew what kind of skin barrier damage that maniac had caused. Who writes on someone’s face? The same kind of person who breaks into their house to spank them and cut their hair off. And you liked it. No!
I took a deep breath and pried my shoulders from under my ears. It was over. He’d taken his revenge. We were even. Now, I could just go back to pretending that Asher Martino didn’t exist, and then everything would be right in the world again.
I got dressed and slapped an avalanche of concealer on my forehead before driving over to the Chickadee Diner. It was a crappy retro joint that the football team and the cheerleading squad had been coming to for years. There was a comforting nostalgia in following old traditions while home for the holidays. Selena had twisted my arm to come, and sure enough, as soon as I walked in the door she was at my side.
“Did you bring the dress?” she asked, rifling through my bag.
“Yes, but I left it in the car. You thought I was going to stuff it in my handbag?”
She clapped her hands together and smiled gleefully. “Thanks, bitch. Because of you, I’m going to be the belle of the ball.”
I wasn’t sure that Beckett Anderson’s cliff-top mansion New Year’s Eve bash could really be described as a ball, but Selena was prone to exaggeration. I couldn’t complain too much. She was my best and pretty much only friend. Her mother had been friends with mine since we were kids, and because of that, she’d been in my social circle before I brought my guard up. Not that I trusted her as far as I could throw her, but she was honest. She didn’t hide her intentions or pretend to be a good person. She was an unapologetic mean girl, queen bee, and that was just her. Take it or leave it.
“Everyone’s here,” Selena told me, slipping her arm through mine and steering me between the red leather booths. “Even the Ice Gods.”
“Wait, what? Why?” I’d stopped in my tracks at her words. Panic bubbled up in my chest. I couldn’t see Asher right now. Not after last night. Not when he knew what his rough, humiliating touch had done to me.
She raised an eyebrow at me. “How should I know? They felt like pie and milkshakes? I’m not a mind reader. Shall we go and ask them?” She turned around and focused on a booth near the back. “Martino is looking extra fine now that he’s back in town. Colorado did him even more favors than he was born with, which is just rude when you think of how butt-ugly some of our football players are. Marcus is hot, as always. It’s just bad manners that the others have girlfriends now.”
“I don’t want to talk to them. Let’s get something to eat, I’m starving.”
Selena sighed. “You eat, I’m on a diet for your dress. My mom and I are fasting. It’s a fun way of making not having money for groceries seem like a choice.”
We slid into an empty booth, the surrounding ones filled with other cheerleaders and football players.
“What? I thought your mom got that gig at the hospital.”
“Yeah, she did. It’s not going great, though. Cici’s got that special school to go to, and you know it’s not cheap.”
Selena’s little sister had severe learning difficulties and couldn’t go to a regular school. She’d been happy at a private school for special-needs students until their father had died of a sudden heart attack a few years before and thrown their lives into disarray. Selena’s family had been close with mine, our dads were even in Invictus H.H Group together, but that all changed when her father died. Selena, her mother, and her sister were on their own, and it wasn’t easy. A fact about Selena that she didn’t allow anyone to know, if she could help it, was that she was on a full scholarship at HHU gifted by her father’s trust. One of the last things he’d managed to provide for his family.
“I’ll talk to my dad about it. Invictus H.H Group could sponsor her…or I will,” I suggested.
She rolled her eyes at me. “Bitch, no one wants your money here. It’s no good. But Invictus… Yeah, maybe that could work. It’s a good cause, they could probably write it off or something.”
I nodded firmly. “If not, I’m sure my mom can find some program to help at one of the hundred charities she chairs.”
Selena sighed and nodded, glancing longingly at the menu.
“You want something? My treat.”
She shook her head slowly, her attention still on the shiny laminated sheet. “I’m fasting, remember.”
“Right, of course.” I then went ahead and ordered double the food I could possibly eat, knowing she might be too proud to let me pay, but she’d eat my leftovers if I said I was going to waste them.
