Tryst Six Venom

I CLIMB OFF the back of the bike and unfasten the strap under my chin. “Thanks,” I tell Iron.

I dump the helmet between my brother’s legs, but he just sucks in a drag from his cigarette, looking around me—past me, beyond me—with his lids half-hooded.

I clutch my backpack straps. “What?”

He hesitates a moment, looks down, and then shakes his head as he takes another puff. “I only approve of Macon paying for this place because I knew you wouldn’t be interested in the guys ogling the short skirts.”

The scent of the dogwoods lining the walkway up to the school wafts in the morning breeze, and although it’s only February, I can tell they’re about to bloom. The wind sweeps through the plumeria already decorating the campus, and students move across the circular driveway, while others climb out of cars dropping them off for various sports or club meetings before school.

Chills spread up my bare legs from the rare bite in the air. Rain is coming. “What about women checking me out?” I tease. “Worried about them?”

“Strangely, no.” He looks amused. “They can’t get you pregnant.”

I scoff, looking right and see a few students heading down the sidewalk toward us and the front of the school.

Clay Collins meets my eyes as she passes with her gray Fjällräven backpack, little pink octopuses drawn on the front pocket, and she tries so hard to look bored and intolerant. But the mischief playing on her lips warns me she had a lot of fun in the dress shop last night. We’re not done.

We’re never done.

Her gaze flicks to Iron, and I turn back to him, seeing his eyes lock on her, as well, as he smokes the last of his cigarette. But whereas he’s well aware of the shit she throws my way, he looks like he’s entertaining ideas of all the things he could do with her in a dark room.

Or a back seat. Idiot.

“You approve of Macon paying for this place,” I say, “so you can ogle Catholic girls in their short skirts when you drop me off every day.”

“She has to be eighteen by now, right?”

I shake my head. “Hallmark Christmas movie heroines aren’t your type.”

“Everyone is my type when they’re naked.”

Gross. I back away, flipping him the middle finger. “See you after school.”

But he shakes his head, stopping me. “Nope. Come here.” He flicks his cigarette, the butt still burning as it lays in the school drive. “This could be it.”

He holds out his arm, a warm, cocky smile on his mouth.

I sigh, half-rolling my eyes before I come back in and embrace him.

This could be it. The Jaeger family creed. The Tryst Six warning, however you want to look at it.

Our parents’ passing came at so great a shock that we make it a point to remind ourselves not to fight with each other now.

Not to waste time.

Not to leave anything unsaid.

This could be it. The last time we see each other.

“Be careful,” I murmur in his ear, dropping my eyes to the tattoo on his neck. It’s the same symbol that hangs on our wall at home in the garage and that adorns the leather bracelet all the Jaegers wear. A snake wrapped around an hourglass.

He holds me tight for another moment and then releases me. “You, too.”

A look, a smile, and then he’s off without a helmet on his head and his scab-marked elbows hanging out of his black T-shirt from the last time he rolled his motorcycle. I watch him until he pulls out of the driveway, turns right, and disappears down the street.

“Hi, Liv,” someone calls.

I glance to see Maria Hoff walking past as I fit my earbuds into my ears.

I grunt and fall in line with the few other students making their way into the school. She’s only being nice to me, because there was a suicide with a public school student a couple days ago. Allison Carpenter—Alli for short. Everyone here seems to think every gay person knows each other, so she probably thinks I lost a friend.

I knew of Alli—small town and all—but I didn’t know her. It was still awful what happened, though. And it happens too often.

But not to me. I’m almost done surviving them. Just a few more months.

I enter through the front doors, heading down the hallway. “¿Qué te gusta hacer?” I repeat with my Rosetta Stone app. “¿Qué te gusta hacer?” I push my tongue behind my teeth, trying to form the syllables with a pronunciation to match the voice on my phone. “Te…gusta…?”

Damn Aracely. The next time some ex of my brothers’ calls me shit in Spanish, I want to know what they’re saying. I guess I should be speaking it already. I’m one-fourth Cuban.

Or maybe an eighth, I’m not sure. The only thing my family prides themselves on is the other fourth—or eighth—of Seminole blood that keeps us on our land.

Blood that also came in handy when I applied to Marymount four years ago. A little diversity looks good on the school’s yearly accountability reports, and even shaved a little tuition cost off for me when I won their scholarship.

I mean, I guess I didn’t win it. I was the only one who applied for it, but still.

I breeze past my locker, around the corner, and push through the door to the women’s locker room.

“¿Cual es son tu pasatiempos?” I repeat, opening my gym locker and hanging my backpack inside. I pull out my school skirt and black Polo, shaking out the wrinkles and hang them on the hook inside, feeling the girls around me turn to quickly pull on their workout gear and cover themselves.

I’d learned a long time ago, even before Clay’s mother and the rest of the school board forked over fifty grand for a complete remodel of the locker room showers to give us all private stalls “in the best interest of everyone”, that it was best to just come up with a routine that put me in these situations as little as possible. I come to school in my leggings and tank top on workout days. I change in a stall after school before practices. I go home in my dirty gear afterward and shower there.

“¿Cual es son tu pasatiempos?” I say again, trying to act oblivious to the eyes on me ready and waiting to report to Father McNealty if I ogle their bodies like some hypersexual pervert.

I slip off my jacket and slide my phone into the leggings pocket on the side of my thigh before closing my locker.

“Tu pasa…” I enunciate my vowels to myself and make my way to the weight room.

School starts in an hour, but lacrosse has workouts on Mondays and Wednesdays. The football team is done for the year, the basketball team and baseball teams have the room on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the swim team does most of their workouts in the pool.

Someone pops up to my side as I move past the showers. “Thin Mint?” she asks and shoves a silver roll of cookies into my face.

I scowl, barely looking up to see Becks next to me. “That’s not breakfast.”

Of course, I hadn’t had any yet, but I was pretty sure eating nothing was better than eating shit when I was about to work out.

“Come on. It can’t be any worse than donuts. I mean, who decided what breakfast food should be breakfast food anyway?” Becks grabs two towels from the stand and tosses me one. “I mean, maybe ham doesn’t go with eggs. Maybe eight Thin Mints is the same amount of carbs you’d find in a glass of orange juice. Maybe cereal was invented as a nighttime treat, but they cleverly decided, ‘hey, this is perfect for breakfast when people are in a hurry.’”

I cock an eyebrow. “Cereal was invented because John Harvey Kellogg believed Corn Flakes would stop Americans from sinning and masturbating.”

Her laugh quickly turns to choking as she swallows down the wrong hole and coughs to clear her throat.

“H…how do you know that?” she asks, still laughing.

I shrug. “This is a really good school.”

Her chest shakes as she laughs harder, and I slam my hand through the locker room door. “Come on,” I tell her. “We’re already late.”

And the coach isn’t the one keeping time, either. The last thing I need this morning is a super-sized cunt convo with our team captain. I had my dose last night.

Heading into the weight room, the sounds of barbells clanging and weights dropping fill the air, and I snatch one of Becks’s Thin Mints and stuff it into my mouth. She smiles and veers left, tossing the still half-full package into the trash can as I move ahead, down the center aisle, and toward the elliptical.

“¿Cual es son tu pasa…tiempos?” I mumble to myself, feeling eyes on me, but I refuse to look. “¿Tiempos?”

I jump on the machine, purposely not making eye contact with anyone, other than to check Becks and watch her pick up some baby weights in front of the mirrors, only actually completely three or four reps before she takes a selfie or starts talking to someone. She’s gotten messed with on account of me from time to time, and I like to make sure I know when that’s happening.

She would be a good friend, if we had anything in common.

For now, we enjoy a camaraderie—the types of friends who navigate toward each other when our real friends aren’t around. When there’s a party and we need someone to talk to. Or someone to eat lunch with.

We don’t call each other or text, but I’m glad I have her and a few like-minded individuals who make this place a little more bearable. Becks has money, but she doesn’t use it as a shield to fling mud like Clay Collins and her friends.

After thirty minutes of cardio and moving through three more Spanish lessons, I walk over to a weight machine, adjust the notch for forty pounds, and pull down the bar behind me, working my shoulders.

“It’s not hot yet,” I hear someone say behind me. “But it will be.”

I tap my earbuds, trying to initiate the next lesson. Did it pause? No sound comes through.

“None of those dresses are hot,” Krisjen Conroy says. “I would’ve burned mine if it wasn’t an heirloom.”

“Heirloom or not, I’ll burn the damn thing before Gigi Collins tries to force it on my daughter someday.”

Clay. And that awful debutante gown I’d love to burn for her, but it was ever-so-amusing to see her trussed up in it last night.

“Is Callum escorting you?” Amy Chandler asks her.

“Someone has to.”

I shake my head a little, like that will drown out their voices, tapping my earbuds again. What the hell?

“Come on,” Krisjen says. “He likes you.”

“And you’re about to go off to college,” Amy pants as she runs. “Live it up.”

I tighten my fists around the bar, my arms wide as I bring it down slowly and then back up.

“I’ll live it up,” Clay says in a low voice, taunting. “With someone who makes sure the only way I can leave his bed when he’s done with me is by crawling. Someone with a chest like a brick wall, and a cock, not a weewee.”

A laugh bubbles up from my chest, but I stifle it quickly. I hate her, and I hate that I laugh at her sense of humor, but I also hate her boytoy, Callum, and the joke was at his expense, so I’m excused. My jaw relaxes.

Amy continues the fantasy. “Someone who smells like a sea god and is named…”

“Gabriel,” Clay adds.

“Gabriel.” Krisjen sighs, sounding dreamy.

“But ‘Gabriel’ wants an experienced woman,” Amy warns her.

“Gabriel doesn’t want to break me of another man’s lousy technique,” Clay fires back. “He’ll teach me everything.”

My teammates laugh at each other, and I just roll my eyes as I head for the chest press and lie back on the bench.

This Gabriel sounds like a gem. He’ll make her into a real woman and teach the fragile little damsel how to take her man with silence and a smile. God, she’s pathetic.

A picture of Clay Collins, naked and willing as she wraps her arms and legs around some beefy, sweaty, misogynistic shit-for-brains plays in my head, and I suddenly feel like I have hair on my tongue.

Without thinking, I lower my eyes from the ceiling, looking straight over at her. Her blue eyes are already on me as she runs on the treadmill.

Why is she staring? Strands of loose blonde hair bounce against her face, her skin glowing with a light layer of sweat, and for a moment, I can’t move.

For a moment, she’s beautiful.

“¿Cual es son tu pasatiempos?” a voice rings in my ears.

I startle, realizing the earbuds have kicked back on and my tutorial has continued. The pain in my arms blares, and I still have the barbell suspended above me, and I don’t know how long it’s been there.

I clear my throat, swallow, and bring the weights down and then quickly push back up as a cool sweat covers my back.

“¿…cual es son tu pasa… tiempos?” I mutter, trying to get my head back on track. “Ti-emp-os.”

“What are you doing?”

I look up, pausing only a moment when I see it’s Megan Martelle. She smiles down at me, a clipboard in one hand and her blonde ponytail more white than Clay’s golden. She assists in the P.E. department, having graduated last year; but for some reason, she remains part of the eighteen percent of Marymount graduates who don’t advance to the Ivy League.

She still has time, though. Only nineteen and lots of people take a gap year.

I continue my rep, blowing out my mouth. “Trying to learn Spanish.”

“All by yourself?”

“Yeah, why not?”

She cocks her head, studying me, and I don’t know if it’s the way her eyes linger or the smile she tries to hold back, but I drop my gaze, awareness prickling my skin.

“Yeah,” she finally says. “Why not, I guess?”

Setting her clipboard down, she moves around behind me, placing an underhanded grip on the bar for support. “Can I offer a suggestion?”

I meet her eyes, still aware of Clay’s presence ten feet away.

“Widen your grip,” she tells me, holding the bar as I push my fists out until they touch the weights. “And straighten out your wrists. You’re putting too much pressure on them.”

I do as she says, conversations going off around the room as I lower the bar again and raise it back up.

“Hurt a little more now?” she teases, looking down at me.

I nod. “Yeah.”

“Good.”

I keep going as she walks around me again, and then I feel her palm on my stomach. I warm under my skin.

“Press the small of your back into the bench, Liv,” she instructs.

Her gentle hand makes my breath hitch.

“Feel that?” she asks, pressing harder as my back hits the bench. “It’ll work your abs while you work your chest.”

“Thanks.”

And sure enough, I start to feel the burn in my tummy as I continue my reps.

Taking up position behind me again, she spots me as I lower the bar and push it back up, her perfume tickling my nose, and it’s not at all unpleasant.

Footsteps still pound the treadmills, a constant thrumming in the background, and I suck in air, filling my stomach, before exhaling nice and slow. My body burns, my stomach cools with sweat, and I can feel a trickle between my breasts in my sports bra.

“I think it’s great you’re learning a new language,” she says.

I look up at her, not stopping. “My brother’s ex likes to yell at me in Spanish. I want to know what the bitch is saying.”

She smiles, breathing out a laugh, and I drop my gaze to her plump, pink lips. They look like gum.

Her arms lower with me, and she presses down, holding me there. “Keep it down.”

I hover the bar a couple inches above my chest, my elbows locked at a ninety-degree angle.

“Is that okay?” She raises her eyebrows in concern.

I nod, my muscles screaming a little. “Yeah.”

Finally, she releases me, and I continue, raising the bar again.

“So many people our age don’t have any ambition to grow,” she says in a low voice, her eyes on my movements. “To keep learning.”

She cocks her head again, meeting my eyes with a smile in hers, and there’s something too soft in the way she gazes at me and I’m pretty sure she wants my phone number.

The idea might be worth entertaining. She’s pretty, and maybe I’m attracted to her.

I study her face, taking a moment. Yeah. I’m attracted .

But I’m also graduating in a few months. The last thing I need is to form an attachment. I’ve gotten through almost four years here without finding a reason to stay, even if I am somewhat intrigued by her.

I knew her when she was a student, after all. She was popular. Kind. Quiet. We spoke rarely, but things changed this year when she took the job here. All her friends are gone to college, and she seems to be looking for new ones. Without her comfortable alliances around, she’s started to show other sides of herself. She’s nice.

But there’s something missing inside of her. I don’t know what it is.

Or maybe there’s everything right about her, and something missing inside of me. I can’t help it. I like crazy. She can be fire or ice, I don’t care, I just need her to be one of them. And even better if it’s both.

Something flies past us, splashing against the mirrors behind Megan, and water flies everywhere. I wince, drops hitting my hair, and I turn my face away, releasing the bar back to the power rack. Megan gasps. What the hell?

A water bottle falls into the tin garbage can, and I look down, seeing cool water droplets on my arm.

My heart leaps into my throat, and I turn my head, seeing Clay Collins approach.

She glares at Megan. “You’re not our age ,” Clay corrects her. Then she picks up Megan’s clipboard and tosses it at her. “We’ll let you know when it’s time to carry our shit onto the field this afternoon.”

I stay lying on the bench, not budging from my back as I watch her work, almost amused as I take in her little power play.

Megan was a senior when we were juniors. An upperclassman. She’s also one of our coaches. Does Clay take any of this into account before attacking? Not even a little.

Megan hesitates for a moment, probably gauging whether or not it’s worth it to even try to report Clay’s behavior. But in the end, she realizes, like we all do, that Clay might be a spoiled brat, but she’s good at the long game. It’s better to just hope this tantrum is the end of it, instead of enticing further retaliation.

Megan leaves, her wet ponytail dangling behind her, but she spares a glance back at me, a small, soft smile on her lips before she disappears through the doors.

Then I turn my gaze to Clay.

“What the fuck are you smiling at?” she asks me. “Your team spots you. Is that clear?”

I scoff as I sit up, grab my towel, and rise, meeting her eyes two inches from my face. “I wouldn’t let you spot me a quarter for charity.”

She may be my team captain, but the bitch has never had my back.

Becks lets a laugh escape from behind Clay, Clay’s scowl hardening like she just made a promise in her head.

But I don’t even blink as I slip around her and leave.

I know I should just lie low. Only four months left and all.

But as the home stretch shortens more every day, I care less and less.

Maybe I want to see if she has anything left up her sleeves.

I dare her.

I really do dare her.

• • •

I hurry down the aisle of the school’s theater and push through the door. I dump my backpack against the wall, my blue-and-black plaid skirt brushing against my thighs as I break into a jog.

Jeremy Boxer and Adam Sorretti carry armfuls of wood and fabric, and a couple gallons of paint dangle from their fingers as I push past them and make for the cast list that I already see hanging on the bulletin board.

My heart races. Come on. The last eight hours of school, practice, and waiting were torture, but I’ll be high as a kite for the rest of my life if one thing goes my way in the next two seconds.

I press my palm to the board to stop myself as I move my index finger down the list, not looking for my name first.

I stop, seeing Mercutio , and slide right, hoping but already knowing before I even see it.

Callum Ames.

I drop my arm, fighting the urge to cry as I stare at the roster and exhale hard. I trace the line from Mercutio to Callum three more times with just my eyes to make sure before it even occurs to me to scan the sheet for my name to see if I was cast in anything at all, despite losing the role I wanted.

And there I am. Nurse……………….Olivia Jaeger.

I shake my head and turn away, holding back only a moment. Fuck you. I shoot off, my disappointment morphing into anger that I know won’t do me any good, but I’m not letting her off the hook this time. I throw open Ms. Lambert’s office door, finding it empty, and then stalk farther down the hall, stepping backstage and see her leaning over a drafting table, sifting through designs.

I move around the table, standing opposite her. “Four years,” I bite out, picking up at exactly where we left off the last time the theater director and I had this conversation.

She looks up at me, her short brown hair tucked behind her ears.

I continue. “Nearly four years of set designs and sewing costumes and completing whatever other menial task you asked of me,” I tell her. “I’ve spent more time here than I have with my family.”

“You got a part.”

“The nurse?” I practically spit out.

“You didn’t want Juliet.”

“Romeo wouldn’t have wanted Juliet if he’d spent more than one dance with her before marrying her!”

I’m yelling at a teacher, but I’m around her more than anyone, so I know she’ll let me off the hook like a mom who still loves you even when you fuck up.

I grip the drafting table on both sides, drilling into her eyes with mine. “Mercutio is the most dynamic character in the play. To be able to reimagine him, I mean…”

And I trail off, not seeing the point in saying what I’ve said before. The opportunity to reinvent him would be a dream come true. What the hell could Callum Ames do other than look good in a codpiece? And even that’s debatable.

She rolls her blueprints. “The administration won’t allow a female to play a male’s role.”

“Why not? They spent hundreds of years playing ours.”

She gives me a look like I’m not helping, and then heads over to another work table.

I follow. “He’s a skeptic, he’s crude, he’s hot-headed… He’s the only one with potential for growth.”

She laughs to herself. “A skeptic…”

Yes, a skeptic. I realize that’s not fashionable in a Catholic school, but I think she’s caught on to the fact that if it’s “in” then I’m “out.”

“Please,” I ask, a vulnerability to my tone that I hate hearing from myself.

“No,” she replies.

“I deserve this.”

“No.”

I stand there, watching her as she closes her laptop and gathers her travel mug and bags.

I can’t play the nurse. I don’t care if my part is small. It’s not that.

But I know what I can do, and I’d put in my time. I know what I’m worth.

“Did you even ask them?” I charge.

Does the administration even know the opportunity I’d like?

She stops and looks up, straightening. The soft look in her eyes tells me she wants to make me happy, but…

She won’t fight for me.

“No reimagined sets,” she reiterates. “No reimagined costumes. No Mercutio.”

She leaves, and I stand there, not frozen—just too tired to move. I wish she was telling the truth. I wish the administration really didn’t have money for a Romeo and Juliet makeover, and really did hate the idea of a female Mercutio.

But I know what I know. The problem isn’t my ideas. It’s me. I’ve been the grunt backstage my entire high school career—paying my dues and showing them that no matter how dissenting the piercings on my ears, or how many times my family name is in the Police Beat section of the newspaper—

I want to be here. I will be here every day for as long as she needs me.

I love the theater. I want to be a part of that world on-stage. I’ve put in my time—sewing costumes, building sets, being her right-hand during auditions and rehearsals, and literally being the axis around which everything else spins on performance nights.

You need something pinned? Come here.

You forgot a line? Okay, which part do you play? I know them all.

Dorothy’s almost up and she’s missing? I saw her making out with the Tin Man in the wings. I’ll go grab her.

I’ve pushed a wheelbarrow around in the background of Fiddler on the Roof and almost had actual lines as an understudy for North Winston when she played Miss Scarlet in Clue, but I’m kind of glad that never panned out. I wanted Mrs. White anyway.

Romeo and Juliet is my last chance— was my last chance—to prove what I can do before I’m inevitably rejected by the theater department at Dartmouth.

I hear the heavy stage door slam shut, the last few members of the crew clearing out, the only sound in the entire theater being the ever-present movement of the air conditioning in the ducts above.

My phone is in my bag. I should call Iron to pick me up, but I’m not ready to go home yet.

Heading offstage, I wander down the hall, not really knowing where I’m going until I see the racks of costumes pulled from storage that sit outside the dressing rooms. Repairs need to be made, as well as some altered for the actors wearing them this year, but I can’t help sifting through the clothes, pushing each hanger to the left as I take in the same tired, old shit. It isn’t like my ideas are all that new, either. Romeo and Juliet has been re-adapted several times in West Side Story, China Girl …

Would Leonardo DiCaprio’s version have been number one at the box office opening weekend if he’d been in tights?

Okay, perhaps, but the genius of that film was that it was revamped for a changing audience. Firefights, car chases, rock music, forbidden love… I’m not suggesting much that hasn’t already been done.

I spot a long black coat—Victorian, with a fitted torso and calf-length skirt—mixed in with the Renaissance costumes, and I stop, studying it.

Pulling it off the rack, I hold it up, pause only a moment, and then grab the ruffle on the left shoulder, ripping it off. I do the same to the right side and slide the coat off the hanger, slipping my arms into it. I button it up, the bodice fitting perfectly, and then slip the rubber band off my wrist and pull my hair back into a high ponytail, teasing my hair. I dive into a dressing room and dab on some more eyeliner and dark shadow around my eyes, seeing the scene in my head. New York. A cold night. White snow falling against a black sky.

Prince Paris is in his penthouse somewhere in the city and horns honk in the distance, beyond the park, as Romeo’s hair whips in the wind next to me.

My friend. I walk out to the stage, stand in the middle, and close my eyes.

My best friend. The true other half of his soul.

I swirl around the stage, Mercutio’s famous monologue rolling off my tongue, because I’ve had it memorized for years. Mercutio is large—a one-person party—and she dominates every scene she’s in, the coat spinning with me, my head tipped back, and my eyes still closed as the character slowly swells in my stomach.

“This is the hag,” I go on, feeling my eyes grow wild with fire as I gaze at my friend, “when maids lie on their backs,

That presses them and learns them first to bear,

Making them women of good carriage.”

I sweat, inhaling and exhaling hard. “This is she.” I shout. “This is she!”

“You’re good,” someone calls out.

I freeze, my breath stopping, and then I whip around, seeing Callum Ames standing behind me. He wears fitted black pants and a dark blue Polo, all of his dusty blond hair flopped to one side.

I narrow my eyes. “Better than you.”

He grins, sliding his hands in his pockets. “I’m white, rich, and male. I’ll succeed no matter what.”

“You’re male,” I say. “You’ll succeed no matter what.”

He has zero interest in this play and not an ounce of talent. Why else did she give him this role?

He cocks his head, studying me. “Do you really think that’s what stood in your way?” He steps toward me slowly. “Don’t you think Lambert would’ve given that role to say…Clay, if she’d asked?”

I unbutton the coat but keep my eyes on him as he continues to move closer. Callum and Clay deserve each other. Both rotten human beings who won’t realize the snake in the other as long as they distract themselves with how beautiful they are together.

Callum continues, “I have no doubt you’ll pull yourself up out of the swamps and truly live a life that makes you happy, Liv, because you deserve it,” he says, stopping a few feet before me. “You do. You’re better than us, and don’t think I don’t know that.”

I’m glad.

“But it won’t be here,” he tells me. “And it won’t be soon.”

I remain quiet, letting my eyes flit left and right to make sure he’s alone. He always seems to travel with backup, and while he’s never tried anything, he will.

“Why do you think Clay hates you so much?” he presses but doesn’t wait for an answer. “Because she knows this is the last time that she’ll ever be more than what you are.”

“She was never more or better.”

“She would’ve gotten Mercutio,” he retorts.

I clench my teeth, and I know he sees it, because his smile grows.

He’s right. They wouldn’t have said no to her, or probably anyone else at this school.

And I can lie to myself all I want and say that I need this part to get some experience under me before I apply as a Theater major in college, but the truth is, I’m hungry. I want to be seen before I leave this fucking place.

By my brothers. By this school. I can’t leave Marymount or St. Carmen a nobody.

Someday, I’m going to be a voice to others and relay how I barely had any friends. How Clay Collins made it so I never belonged here. How her mother renovated the fucking locker room showers three years ago so I didn’t ogle their naked daughters.

“Do you want the role?” he asks.

I lift my eyes to his.

He tips his chin. “It’s yours.”

“If I consider your offer,” I add the unsaid, because I know exactly where he’s going with this. We’ve had this conversation.

But he just laughs quietly, dropping his gaze and inching closer. “Oh, you’ve had time to consider it,” he taunts. “Now, I need an answer.”

I gave you my answer.

“She’s pretty,” he whispers suddenly.

I pause.

“Soft, blonde, young… Lips that taste like a milkshake, and that’s not even half as good as the taste of her tongue.”

My stomach coils and knots, wanting my boot in his face. Picturing that entitled smile covered in blood.

“And she’ll want everything you do to her,” he says.

I toss the coat on a nearby chair and start to move around him, but he steps in front of me and pulls a slip of paper out of his pocket, holding it up to me.

“You do this,” he says, clarifying. “And I will get you this part.”

He hands me the paper, and I hesitate, not for a second indulging his offer, but my curiosity has the better of me.

Unfolding the paper, I see it’s a check. From Garrett Ames.

To the school.

In the note, it reads For the theater department.

I stare at the twenty-five-thousand-dollar donation which, I assume, is Callum’s angle here. Lambert gets some play money for next school year if she lets me have the role I want. And Callum will take care of it, if I give him what he wants.

So this is how the world works, is it? I put on a sex show with some chick I don’t know for a group of slobbering frat boys, and I’ll live happily ever after?

Or will all my hard work and time and good intentions really just come down to how well I forever perform on the casting couch?

I feel Callum move around me as I study the check longer than I like. It’s real. It’s signed.

It’s easy money to the Ames’. They wouldn’t even notice it missing.

The stage hardens under my shoes, and I feel the heat of the spotlight that isn’t even shining and the eyes of every seat filled.

I can picture it, it’s opening night. The snow falls over my head, and I’m going to die one of the most powerful deaths ever written for stage.

God, I want it. I want a lot of things.

But you know what I want most of all? I really want Clay and Callum and everyone else to start paying their fucking bills.

“No one else from our school will be there?” I ask, playing along.

But he doesn’t answer. I hear him exhale behind me, suddenly excited that I’m actually agreeing.

Idiot.

“Olivia…” he breathes out, and I think he’s about to come.

“And it’s just her?” I turn, questioning him. “Not you or anyone else, right?”

He nods, thrill lighting up behind his eyes.

All of a sudden, he holds up a copper key in my face, always ready. “Fox Hill,” he tells me. “Don’t lose it and be ready. I’ll get you as my understudy, then the role, and then you pay up. Got it?”

Fox Hill is their country club, but it apparently also has a secret, after-hours clubhouse where Callum Ames wants to use me to put on a show and impress his college buddies.

“I can’t wait to see you go to work on her.” He gives me that smile he gives all the girls. Like the one he gives Clay. “Make it hard. And hot. But if you don’t show,” he says, his tone suddenly stern. “It’s open season on you, Jaeger, and your whole family.”

“How do I know I can trust you to keep your end of the deal?” I ask.

He backs away. “When you have nothing, you really have nothing to lose, right?”

He smiles that fucking smug, I-own-the-world-and-you-know-it grin before pivoting and heads down the stairs and off the stage.

I hold up the key, wondering if he’s just stupid or too clever for me. Maybe I want the part bad enough. Maybe I do. My insides churn, not wanting to admit to myself that I’m not entirely sure how low I might sink in life if tempted. If you want something for so long, what price is too great?

But now I have the part.

And a key to his clubhouse.

I lift my chin, the wheels in my head starting to turn. And all without yet paying the toll.