“Hello sweetie, Archie showed you a good time last night?” Kim chimed as I headed to the kitchen, ready to eat. “He was charming last night.” I smiled as I thought about Ron and the triplets. It took me a while, but the reason why I was into all of them became apparent to me. I even got up a little later than usual this morning, I was tired, not from sex. But just from thinking about the night that I had with Archie and the words that Ron said to me yesterday. “I don’t feel pressured to be some kind of girl who knows everything, that has to put out every time that we’re together and I don’t feel guilty about having seven men I feel…”“Shit! Fucking shit!” Cheryl blurted out as she sat at the breakfast table. “That’s rude. I was talking…”I was going to say what was on my mind until I saw what she was cursing about. She handed me her phone. It was him. Carter. Ron thought that he heard someone in the classroom, and I wished that I’d paid attention to him. I wished that I'd looked
I couldn’t believe that Carter posted that shit about Tessa. It made me so fucking mad, to see that he had made her out to be some kind of whore. That he made out that we were idiots. He knew nothing about us, and I hated the way that he talked about her. I had to stop Archie from going down to his dorm and beating the shit out of him. “No one talks about my woman that way!” he roared like a fucking lion as he scrolled through all the posts that Carter had posted on every piece of social media that he could, and most of it was pathetic. Cheap shots from someone who had nothing going on in their life, and you could feel the jealously in every single one of them. Pathetic!I reminded him that Tessa would be pissed about Archie punching the lights out of Carter, not because she was crazy about the guy, but she’d always made it clear that she believed that violence solved nothing, and she hated all acts of it. We loved and respected Tessa, and as much as it would be great for Archie t
Tessa Everything happened for a reason, and Carter’s exposure of my relationships made me feel sleazy for all of five seconds. Pete made me feel like the woman that I’d desired to be from the start. There wasn’t anything that could bring down the rain, and as Pete asked, for the guys to be interviewed. It made the paper even more popular as guys wanted to know what was in it for them, but we didn’t publish their names. What fun would that be? We made it into a little game, and it made the articles even more popular. There were girls who came to college, who, like me, were virgins, and they didn’t think that they were worthy. They saw the pictures of me before my men, and after, they saw that there was a difference in me: one that had resulted, all due to them. Sometimes, we had dinners at Rich’s penthouse. All seven of us, there was no more jealously, or attitude as the guys all accepted that they were all equally important in my life. If anything, there was a mutual respect that ha
I walked to the mailbox outside of the little campsite that had grown over the last couple of decades. This is where my family lived, where I’d grown up. And in that mailbox, there should be a letter. A letter that would bring us all hope. Hope that we would one day get out of this dry little patch of the Iowa countryside and into something better.I glanced back at the collection of small trailers, all older than most of the inhabitants inside of them. This is what my family had been reduced to.It was all because of my dad. If that letter held the news I hoped for, I could help to make it all right again, for all of us.Not that it was really my dad’s fault, what happened. He’d been the unlucky child to inherit the gene for Huntington’s Disease that his dad passed to him. Out of two sisters and three brothers, my dad was the only one to lose the game of Russian Roulette his parents had unwittingly played.He and my granddad became ill at the same time. That’s when the family found o
It was my last night in the trailer that I’d called home for far too long. I didn’t celebrate, not the way most kids my age would. There were no parties, no tearful goodbyes planned. Just me, on my own, the same as always. Nothing new really.I spent most nights at home like this. I fantasized about all the boys I’d meet when I finally made it to New York. During the day, I studied and worked my ass off, but at night, alone in my room, I let my fantasies run wild.I’d dream about sitting on a bench, the air cool and damp, the threat of snow just enough to make you want to curl up with your crush and cuddle as leaves fell around you. All the magic of autumn would combine as I made out with the all-star football hunk or even the all-star geek if there was such a thing. He’d snuggle up to me and whisper to me about how very much he wanted me.He wouldn’t want the hot cheerleader who managed to fuck the whole football team just to get a piece of the star player. He wouldn’t want the hot s
“Celia!” I heard someone whisper my name loudly but thought it must be a dream because I was still asleep.I was exhausted, I thought. Go back to sleep, girl.“Celia!” This time, it was louder and accompanied by the thunk of a pillow over my head.I scrambled up, my arm out to defend my head. “Mom, stop! I’m trying to sleep!”Even as I said it, thoughts started to filter into my head. She only used the pillow when I absolutely had to wake up. Otherwise, she’d have just left me to sleep in my own version of zombie land.“Celia, it’s late, you have to get up!” She stood over me, hands on her hips, arms akimbo as I gaped up at her.“The bus!” I screamed out as I realized that if I didn’t get on the bus that would take me to the Big Apple, then I’d be stuck in Iowa missing the first week of my new life. My mom could only afford to get one bus ticket, and if I missed this bus then I’d be stuck here. I had worked all summer to get extra money, but that was supposed to keep me going while I
I’d been on the bus for way too long, and I was exhausted. The trip had taken almost 30 hours because of storms in several states, and I’d had to change buses in Chicago. That had been an adventure all on its own. I climbed down off the local bus I’d picked up at the bus station around lunchtime and forgot all about how exhausted I was.I wandered around like Alice in Wonderland for so long that by the time I did get to the dorm, I was barely able to make my feet move. I wanted nothing more than to make my bed, order a pizza, and pass out. But that would mean I’d continued my old habit of comfort eating.I hated it. It was never about eating out of hunger, but more to make me feel good, or to quench that sudden urge. It never really made me feel good though, because not only would I regret it every time I put on my pants and found out they were a little bit tighter, but the guilt of eating so much garbage would always weigh heavily on my mind.“Shit!” I yelped as I tried to open the d
We unpacked and shared our secrets. It started with Rachel when she turned to me with a shy smile.“I didn’t look like this at high school. I shed fifty pounds to make sure that no one called me fatty when I got here.”My eyes went wide and smiled. “Wow, that’s really great! I’m impressed!”She had a lot of willpower, then. I didn’t and for a split second, I wished that I had.“It was a lot of work, but I did it.” She twirled a little and smiled happily. She waited for something, I wasn’t sure what and then it hit me.She’d shared a secret, now it was my turn.“I’ve never kissed a guy,” I smiled, knowing that she would figure out that this meant that if I hadn’t kissed one, there was no way that I’d been down and dirty with any of them.We were talking like a couple of women that’d had a little too much to drink and were in their apartment sharing secrets. Maybe it wasn’t really that odd, I thought. We were freshmen at NYU with not a friend in sight, and maybe that was the reason that