Bad Girls (11 page)

‘
Really
?’ he got out.

Petal smiled. ‘Yeah, go on then,’ she said nobly, feeling him already bucking beneath her, his thighs pumping, barely able to maintain the last remnants of his self-control.

Dan was beyond words. He threw his head back, gasping, his eyes closing, as Petal pulled up off him, wriggling her knees up the sides of the bath to get enough purchase, reaching forward to take hold of him just as he started to come, his arms draped over the sides of the bath, his hips thrusting upwards. The water was so warm that Petal, her hands wrapped around the tip of his penis, couldn’t actually sense his rush of heat as he exploded between her fingers. But she could feel his spasms, hear him groaning, as the bath bubbled all around them and his come mingled with the bubbles pumping up to the surface.

Dan’s eyelids fluttered open again, and he stared dazedly at Petal.

‘You’re
amazing
,’ he mumbled blissfully.

You’re
amazing, Petal thought, remembering him kissing her breasts. I just really,
really
hope you don’t know who my dad is. I really hope no one told you by now. I want to think you like me just for myself, flat chest and all . . .

S
kye raised her head, slowly and cautiously, and squinted her eyes open a crack. It hurt as badly as if someone were squirting bleach through the chinks. Trying not to moan aloud with pain, she wriggled up into a sitting position. As she opened her eyes fully, the sunlight, flooding in because she hadn’t drawn the drapes the night before, scorched her retinas.

We did it again. We fucking went and did it again. After we
promised
each other we wouldn’t.

The display on her bedside clock, bright red numbers flashing mockingly at her, told her that it was just past noon. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Skye sat for a while, head down, fighting the waves of nausea that were threatening to rise dangerously up to her throat. The sunlight didn’t help. The apartment was on the fifth floor, high up enough in this low-rise part of Hell’s Kitchen so it got excellent morning light. It wasn’t ideal for a girl who worked night shifts: she’d had to buy blackout drapes.

And now my head hurts too much for me to even reach out and draw them. Fuck it.

Anyway, her priority was to get to the bathroom. Eventually, she pushed herself unsteadily to her feet.

I’m still drunk. Tequila shots till dawn, for fuck’s sake? What was I thinking? Oh, that’s right! I was letting the blow do my thinking for me! And it always makes such good decisions!

The apartment was trashed. Skye didn’t even dare to glance sideways into the kitchen as she passed down the corridor. She could tell from the sour odour in the bathroom that someone had upchucked in the toilet, but at least they’d flushed it. Skye rinsed out a discarded glass, took two Advils and washed them down with two glassfuls of water from the tap. A good five minutes later, just as she was beginning to think she was OK, which meant she wasn’t going to puke her guts up, she heard someone stagger down the corridor and push open the door that Skye hadn’t bothered to latch.

‘Why didn’t you
stop
me?’ Jada moaned.

Jada looked like hell. She was wearing the jacket of her favourite Victoria’s Secret flannel pyjamas, lime green printed with pink strawberries, and her long shapely legs, emerging from the short jacket hem, were as stunning as ever. At the neck, it was a different story: the bright green, which usually suited her rich dark skin, was a scary contrast with the ashy grey tint of her face. The whites of her eyes were red and inflamed, and the bags under her eyes were puffed out like a frog’s.

She slumped against the chipped paint of the door jamb, staring reproachfully at Skye.

‘Why didn’t
you
stop
me
?’ Skye retorted.

‘At least you don’t have to see yours again!’ Jada complained. ‘I just keep pulling the same old shit, over and over. It’s like a dog going back to its own vomit.’

Skye’s stomach churned ominously. ‘Could you
please
not use that word?’ she begged, pressing both her hands to her stomach as if that would somehow keep her from puking.

‘I need to pee,’ Jada said. ‘You’re going to have to move.’

Staggering to the side of the bath as Jada sat on the toilet, Skye began to replay the events of the night before. She and Jada had got through plenty of blow at the Midnight Lounge – of course they had, that was the trouble with blow. They’d partied and danced till four a.m., closing time, and then, naturally, they’d been all ramped up and no way ready to crash, so they’d had a few more drinks and lines at the Lounge with DeVaughan, and then they’d—

‘Oh,
no
.’

Skye had just realized what Jada was talking about. Not the blow, though they’d said they were cutting back on that too. No, Jada meant DeVaughan. He’d come back to their apartment, picking up a bottle of tequila on the way, and that only meant one thing. Well, two, if you counted the tequila shots with champagne floats. But basically, it meant that Jada and DeVaughan had hooked up again.

‘You did DeVaughan?’

Jada nodded gloomily. ‘It’s not going anywhere, so what the hell am I doing?’ she sighed. ‘The man’s a damn
bouncer
! That’s never going to get me out of this dump!’

It
was
a dump, no question about it. The irony was, a lot of people would have killed for their midtown apartment. It was rent-stabilized, which meant the landlord couldn’t raise the rent more than four per cent a year, and it was a proper two-bedroom, which meant that both Skye and Jada had their own rooms with doors that closed – neither of them had to sleep in a walk-through corridor in a railroad-style apartment.

But it was still a dump. Because the whole building was rent-stabilized, the landlord, resentful at not making a market rent off his tenants, did the bare minimum of repairs. The plaster ceilings were crumbling so badly that sometimes chunks would fall on them while they were sleeping. They had to throw bottlefuls of Liquid-Plumr down the bath and sink every week to get them to drain. The Formica of the kitchen worktops was patterned with mould. Jada and Skye’s bedrooms were barely large enough for a bed and a cupboard, and they’d only managed to turn the kitchen into a sitting room by disconnecting the cooker and putting a piece of plywood over it to use it as a table instead. They lived off takeout food, which they reheated in the microwave.

The kicker was, they paid eight hundred dollars a month each for the privilege of living there, and they could have sublet it instantly for double that sum. Girls at the Lounge commuted in from Bay Ridge, Forest Hills, Harlem, and Bushwick: Jada and Skye were envied by everyone for having had the luck to snag this place a few years ago through a friend of Skye’s mom, who knew the building super.

And sometimes, they’d get drunk and do blow to stay out as long as possible, just to avoid having to come back to it.

‘I need a sugar daddy,’ Jada continued, ‘not some guy who makes less than I do!’ She flushed the toilet, stood up, and stared at herself in the mirror. ‘Ugh, I should have shares in Visine, the amount I go through,’ she said, reaching for her eyedrops.

‘Is DeVaughan still here?’ Skye looked down at the slip she’d pulled on; it was barely long enough to cover her ass. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen her prancing round the Midnight Lounge with even less on, but she’d at least like to put on some panties if there was a guy in the apartment.

‘DeVaughan isn’t. But your guy is,’ Jada said, tilting back her head and squirting half a bottle of Visine into each eyeball.

‘
My
guy?’ Skye’s stomach turned over again.

‘Oh, come
on.
You don’t remember? Go check out the kitchen couch!’

There was nothing in life Skye wanted to do less. She’d have given a great deal to go back to her bedroom, pull on some sweats, and sneak out for coffee. But it was like the horror movies they loved: when you knew some really gruesome murder was coming, no way you didn’t peek at the screen to see the gory details. Even though she knew she’d regret it, she just
had
to see what was on the damn couch.

At first sight, it could have been worse. Even sprawled there, snoring lightly, his mouth sagging open, he was pretty cute. He was white, with short, spiky hair, and the sunlight, pouring in through the grimy windows, glinted off his multiple piercings. Early twenties, tops, with a flat belly and muscled bare thighs, he was in really good shape. Layered T-shirts had ridden up his torso, but thank God he had dragged on his boxers. No one wanted to see a strange man’s junk first thing in the morning. And, in a heap on the floor next to him, instead of jeans or combat pants, were black leggings that looked almost like tights . . .

Oh
God
. They weren’t leggings. They were cycle tights.

He was a bike messenger.

And that was the last piece of information Skye needed to open the lock and have all the sordid, stupid, self-destructive,
dumb-ass shit
she’d got up to last night, or rather, this morning, come flooding back in one horrible rush of memory.

Stumbling down 46th Street, DeVaughan in the middle, she and Jada hanging off his enormous arms, a bottle of tequila dangling from one of his hands, champagne in the other; emptying the plastic Baggie of coke onto a mirror placed flat on the kitchen ‘table’, and moaning aloud at how little there was left; DeVaughan, seeing his chance to get with Jada evaporating, calling up a dealer he knew to get a delivery made; Skye, buzzing in the delivery guy, pulling money out of her bra to pay for the blow, and flirting with him, automatically, to try to get the price down . . .

Well, she’d gone a little further with
that
than she’d intended.

She remembered pushing him onto one of the kitchen chairs, sitting on his lap; his hands on her ass, his eyes wide with excitement and shock, unable to believe he’d stumbled into a stripper party, trying to turn his head so he could watch Jada and DeVaughan taking it in turns to do body shots off each other on the couch . . .

Jesus. She hadn’t actually fucked him. Or had she? Jada and DeVaughan had eventually headed off to Jada’s room, and Skye had turned up the stereo to drown them out. Ugh. Mrs Chen from downstairs would be on the warpath today, all the noise they’d made. She and Bike Boy had fooled around, yeah, but surely he’d be in bed with her if they’d fucked? And surely he wouldn’t still have his clothes on?

‘We in trouble?’ she called to Jada over her shoulder. ‘’Cause of him not getting back to blow headquarters last night with the money?’

‘Nah.’ Jada shuffled down the corridor, having slipped on the big green fluffy slippers that matched her PJs. ‘DeVaughan rang the guy before we crashed. Said we’d send him back this morning. DeVaughan said the guy thought it was pretty funny, actually. He was laughing his ass off. Said every guy deserves one free night with a drunken stripper.’ She yawned, long and deep.

Skye stood there, staring down at the guy on the couch. The bright sunlight had ceased to bother her, and that was only partially because the Advil had kicked in. She had something much bigger to worry about. Not the guy in front of her, his lip ring wobbling slightly every time he blew air out of his mouth; he was just a symptom, not the problem itself.

This is my life. Getting toasted with my best friend, doing bouncers and delivery boys. This is
so
not where I want to be.

But the real shitter is, I’ve got no idea where I
do
want to be. Or how to get there.

Her phone rang. She was in no mood to talk to anyone, so she didn’t answer it, just stood and watched her bag vibrate wildly with the ringing of her phone. It stopped, and after a few seconds she expected the beep that said a message had been left on her voice-mail: but no. It just started ringing again. Muttering curses under her breath, Skye cracked and lunged for her bag. The number wasn’t showing up on Caller ID, but that meant nothing.

‘Yeah?’ she said crossly.

‘Skye? Skye, baby, this is Lew. From the
National Investigator
.’

Skye’s eyebrows rose to the ceiling. ‘How did you get hold of my number?’

He chuckled. ‘Straight to the chase. I like that. Well, I talked Paulie into giving it to me.’

Skye had thought her eyebrows couldn’t go any higher. She’d been wrong. It was unheard of for Paulie, the manager of the Midnight Lounge, to give a dancer’s number out to a client. Literally unheard of. It was the first thing they taught you at strip-club-manager school, class 101:
you do not give a dancer’s number to anyone
.

‘You’re
kidding
,’ she said dubiously.

‘
And
untrusting! Better and better!’ Lew sounded happy as Larry; Skye couldn’t imagine why. ‘You wouldn’t believe what I had to promise him. I need to talk to you, babe. I got an offer for you I think you’re going to like.’

Skye opened her mouth, but Lew was way ahead of her.

‘Don’t worry. You don’t gotta do me, and you don’t gotta do Kevin. You don’t gotta do
anyone
you don’t wanna.’ He chortled to himself, in what was clearly some private joke he found very amusing. ‘All you gotta do is let me and Kevin take you out for a drink this evening, OK? You name the place and time, we’ll bring our credit cards.’

‘And Paulie knows I’m meeting you?’ Skye was wary. ‘I’m not supposed to see clients out of the Lounge. I could get the sack for that.’

‘Don’t worry, babe. You call Paulie and check it out. It’s all legit. Why don’t we set a time and place now?’

Skye thought quickly. He probably assumed she’d pick the kind of expensive, flashy place that a stripper would be expected to go for, something in the Meatpacking District: the Buddha Bar, Lotus, a bar where the bridge and tunnellers would go because it cost a ton of money and they thought that meant quality. Well, she wasn’t going to fall into that kind of trap.

‘The Cellar Bar at the Bryant Park Hotel,’ she said instead, naming somewhere she’d seen mentioned on page six of the
New York Post
– some hip young movie director had been hanging out there with his equally trendy singer girlfriend. ‘Seven tonight.’