Always & Forever Vive (The Undergrad Years #4) (7 page)

Her eyebrows shot up in surprise so high, they nearly disappeared underneath her sharp black bangs.

“Listen to me, Poppy. Your parents had the donkey balls to tell my Aunt Birgitta, who told my Mama, who then called and mentioned it to me yesterday, that you’re writing a tell-all book about me and my Manhattanites.”

Large brown eyes narrowing, she nodded.

“How much do I have to pay you to kill that book? Ten thousand?”

She shook her head.

“I want you to get the flip outta my life and stay away from my friends.” I removed my hand to let her speak.

“Vive. Sorry you had to hear about it like this. I was gonna to tell you. I was.”

“Let me see the manuscript.” I crossed my arms.

“It’s not done yet. I have a few more pages to go. I was just going to interview Jay Austin and Seneca to get some last-minute details on your fabulous life.”

Something about the way she said ‘fabulous’ came out of her mouth sounding rather ironic, very Vanity Fair-ish, and I knew that whatever this woman was up to was nothing but a mockery of everything I’d strived for.

“I oughta cunt-punt you.”

“Viveca! Don’t overreact.” My boyfriend scolded me.

My thumb and pointer finger played with the locket around my neck for a minute as I tried to collect my thoughts. Hard as it may have been for me to remain calm, I wanted to beat her up. However, that would surely get my gorgeous ass suspended, so I stepped back and sneered, “They don’t know anything about what went on at Avon Porter. You’d just be wasting your time.”

She fixed the collar on her shirt, which had gotten fussed up when I’d near body-slammed her against the wall, and hissed, “My book isn’t just about your boarding school days.”

Not liking the sound of that, I sized her up and down. “What’s it about then?”

“The book is titled
Karma: The Curse of the Spoiled Rich
.” Pushing her long black hair out of her face, she rounded her shoulders and tried to act as if she wasn’t afraid of me.

Which was total bullshit, because even
I
was scared of myself right about then.
Hello!

“Karma?” I repeated.

“Yes. It’s on the curse that you, Lex, Taddy and Blake seem to be under.”

I laughed sarcastically, putting my hands on my hips as I tilted my jaw up a bit for her to continue.

“My theory goes back to what the book of Luke says in the Bible. Basically, ‘blessed are the poor, cursed are the rich’.”

“The Bible does
not
say that!”

“You read the Bible?” Jay Austin asked as if finally getting into the conversation.

I shot him a glare to zip it.

“Listen, Viveca. The book isn’t just on you, but also on how people like you—with lots of money—are just naturally cursed. I’ve got the Johnson & Johnson dynasty and the Kennedys in the manuscript, too.”

Rolling my eyes, I realized we’d been dammed ever since the death of my beloved Sanderloo.

“My parents and I would like to see the manuscript when it’s ready.” Acting as if it was all just beneath me, I collected myself, perhaps a bit embarrassed I’d lost my shit. I was certainly pissed I’d forfeited my orgasm. That was for sure.

“Sure. I’ll have it done in a few days.” The harsh glow on Poppy’s face seemed to settle.

I walked back into Jay Austin’s office and grabbed my purse and books.

When I came back out into the hall, Poppy was talking to Jay Austin about what karma was and Dr. Henry had come out of his office, joining in the conversation.

Great, now everyone is going to know.

“Listen, don’t you go speaking to anyone on campus about me. If you want to do this sneaky-snaky-skanky type of journalism, you do it off-campus.”

“Vive!” Jay Austin tried to put his arm around me, possibly to smooth out the situation, but I sidestepped, dodging the embrace. I was too livid to act as the happy couple.

“I mean it. You want my blessing on this book? Don’t talk to my boyfriends on campus.” I forced a smile to Dr. Henry and gave him a nod. The last thing I needed was to have to change my major out of the journalism program.

His focus remained on Poppy. Of course it did. The woman was a people magnet.

She shook her head. “I can talk to whomever I please, Vive. It’s a free country. But if you want me to take Jay Austin away from here, perhaps back to his place, so we can talk, that’s your call.”

That’s it.
Totally losing my cool, I stepped up to her so fast I thought she’d pee herself. “Funny how the title and theme of your book are all about karma and yet you’re not working with me here.”

“So…what.” Poppy shrugged.

Just as the hallway filled with an odd silence, Taddy came in from another class and asked, “What’s going on?”

Thankful to see a true friend, I grabbed her arm. Feeling some strength inside me, I muttered in my frenemy’s direction, “I’d hate to see something bad happen to you, Poppy, is all. It would just break my heart.”

“Are you threatening me?” she asked, getting all huffy.

“No, honey. Come to think of it, you may write whatever the frick pleases you. Just don’t expect me to have your back.”

“Stop threatening me!”

I laughed. “Go ahead, talk to Jay here, too. Other than the fact that I have the tightest, sweetest ‘lil pussy his fat cock has ever fucked, he won’t tell you much.”

Suddenly, Dr. Henry burst out into the oddest high-pitched laugh I’d ever heard.

Jay Austin’s cute adorable mouth hung open, utterly speechless.

Poppy exhaled loudly through her pointy honker of a nose, while I turned on my Manolo Blahniks with Taddy at my side and sassed, “Buh-bye.”

Poppy White Goes M.I.A.

“Why is it that every time something horrific happens in this town, we’re to blame? It’s utterly ridiculous. I ask you this: when in the heck are we gonna get a frickin’ break? We should just change our names and move to Canada. For the record, the Manhattanites and I may not be perfect. However, we did not, I repeat, did
not
abduct TV host and fellow student, Poppy White.”—Lex Easton, rock-n-roll royalty, women’s studies major.

A Dateless Weekend

Sherry Netherland

Monday Night

Screw midterms!

“How in the heck is it that I have not one, but two—yes,
two
—frickin’ boyfriends and
still
didn’t score a date this past weekend?” I whined aloud to my besties, who were sprawled out on the sectional sofa in the penthouse’s front living room.

Looking up from reading the latest copy of
Curvy Girls
magazine, Lex replied, “It’s kinda nice not having them around. Just family. No boys.” She wiggled her freshly pedicured toes in my direction.

“Thanks, Lex.” Appearing well rested from the weekend at his parents’ house, Blake rolled his bright blue eyes in her direction.

“Oh…you know what I mean. You’re one of us
girls
. Plus, I like it when they’re
not
here.”

With their own bedrooms at the end of the hall, Lex and Taddy had been living with me ever since we’d started college the previous semester. Blake was the only one of us who lived in the dorms. He rather enjoyed campus life. Personally, I think he just liked seeing all those naked jocks running around in the halls.

Sometimes when we were between classes, Taddy and I would sit outside Blake’s room with his roommate and gay best friend (GBF), Thor Edwards.

When the boys, wrapped in their towels (or sometimes nothing at all), strutted from the showers to their sleeping quarters, we’d hold up scorecards, as if we were judges on some reality show where you had to dance for us.

Usually, the boys would entertain us and do a spin or a shake of their hips and we’d be gracious, giving them an eight. If they were hung like Donkey Kong, a ten. If they weren’t, a two.

Low scores were often followed by Thor booing and hissing at them. Yes, he’d go there. He always went
there
. Take Blake and make him ten times sassier and a millionaire. Basically me with boobs. That was Thor Edwards. I just loved that man.

There was this one student from Russia, named Anton Shayk, who played on our college basketball team. Anyway…he strutted around the dorm twenty-four-seven, night and day, with his ginormous dick out. I swear he could knock someone unconscious if a strong breeze came by and caused his penis to upswing.

“Sweet Freaky Dick Jesus. I’ve never seen anything like
that
before,” Taddy had muttered the first time we’d laid eyes on Anton, aka Donkey Kong. “How does he run down the basketball court without tripping over…
it?
”

“That’s why they wear those jockstraps, to keep it up and in place,” I’d replied, as if I had some clue as to what I was talking about. I didn’t play sports. Heck, I didn’t believe in exercise.

“Oh, darling, a jockstrap would cause his dick to point up toward the sun.”

“So…” I didn’t follow.

“If that happened, he’d be able to rest his chin on his cock.” Taddy clarified.

“Ha!” Taddy laughed so hard at Lex wanting the penthouse all to herself, her snort dragged me out of my Donkey Kong memory. “Darling, you’re just saying that because the last time Jay Austin and Seneca came over, they ate all of your jellybeans.”

“What. Ever. That seasonal candy just happens to be my favorite, and for good reason. It’s not as if I can just go to the grocery store anytime of the year and purchase fresh jellybeans. Shoot, I wait months for them to be stocked on the shelves.
Months
, I tell ‘ya.” Contentment flashed in Lex’s eyes as she popped a candy in her mouth and chewed slowly.

For as long as I’d known her, Lex’s vice had been candy. Over the years, she’d tried to modify and sometimes even quit her sugar. The previous semester, after Lex had broken up with her boyfriend, Ford she’d sworn off men and doubled her sugar intake. I tried not to worry about her health, because in a way—for Lex, at least—it was her Xanax.

Poor thing.

“You and your sugar. Birdie has her cocaine, and you have candy,” Taddy sassed. “You know, studies show it releases the same ‘feeling’ in the brain.”

“What does?” Lex asked, wiping her lips as she sat up from the sofa.

“Cocaine and sugar.”

“Oh, shut your pie-hole. They do not.” Lex threw a jellybean at her.

Blake snapped his long fingers and shook his head at Taddy to stop it.

Feeling annoyed, I put down the letter I’d been working on to Sanderloo’s parents. I was on my third draft, which wasn’t going to sell. “Stop picking on her.”

If anyone could sympathize with addiction, it was me.

Our senior year at Avon Porter, after we were released from juvie and I’d given up my baby, Rose—that was the name I picked for her—I’d gotten hooked on Oxycodone for a few months. Anything to numb the pain of having to give my baby up for adoption, I shoved down my throat. That drug got a hold of me in a way I never thought possible.