Sorority Girls With Guns (6 page)

I am, after all, wearing my favorite Lady Gaga t-shirt. “No, but I am every bit as talented a singer as she is.”

We’ve reached the end of the pier now, and the moonlight would be romantic…if Hoolio’s nose ring wasn’t throwing such a glare in my eyes. It occurs to me, as Hoolio takes a step closer, that I’ve never actually kissed a guy with such a big nose ring. The little studs, sure, small rings, but this is one of those huge double-nostril numbers that would look cruel if it was stuck in a bull’s nose.

Here’s the problem: I really, really hate my own nose, because it’s long and beakish and absolutely my worst feature. I would get it fixed in an instant, but the truth is that I really don’t trust doctors. You have one quack send you on one horrifically bad trip – we’re talking the sort of thing I’ve heard old people wax poetic about when recounting what little they remember of the sixties – in a failed attempt at anesthesia and you never mess with that shit again.

So, how this affects the problem at hand – I have a long nose and Hoolio has a big, honking nose ring and he’s leaning in for the kiss and I decide to just turn my head so I don’t awkwardly clunk his nose ring. Apparently he’s already thought of this, because he leans his head to the side too, and too late I realize that we’re going to miss. I end up catching the corner of his mouth with my tongue, and that’s about it for that kiss.

“
Kissing with this nose ring takes some practice,” Hoolio says, and I can see his face getting red in the moonlight.

“
Okay, just hold still.” I stand up on tiptoe – Hoolio, like most people in the world, is a lot taller than me – and kiss him, just long enough to leave him wanting more.

The next step, for me anyway, is always to bounce back to hard-to-get immediately. “I’ll see you around,” I say, and start walking back toward the hotel.

As I predicted, Hoolio runs after me like a dog going after a tennis ball. “I’ll be working at the restaurant during the day, but I get off at five.”

“
Sounds nice.” I keep walking.

“
What are you doing tomorrow night?”

I continue walking, but slow my pace so he can keep up. “I don’t know. I’ll have to check with my friends. We’ll probably spend the day together, hanging around the beach or something.”

“
Well, if they ditch you for a party tomorrow night, maybe we could hang out,” Hoolio says.

I shrug noncommittally. “Sure, if I’m free.” I pull his phone out of his shirt pocket, enter my number, and hand it back to him. “See you around.”

Chapter Six

"I'd like to thank my friend Tiffany for her support, but all she ever did was tell me to give up on getting famous and find a rich guy to marry. I'd like to thank my friend Morgan, but she once told me I had as much chance of getting my own reality show as the Grumpy Cat had of being in a good mood. I'd like to thank-"

"Shade!" Morgan is screaming at me and shaking me out of my awesome dream. "Wake up! It's an emergency!"

My eyes open and my brain, still half-asleep, attempts to process the situation: I am not on stage accepting my first of many Grammys. I am in a dumpy motel room with cigarette holes in the hideous bedspread and rust spots creeping across the brass lamp on the nightstand. And Morgan is standing by my bed, shaking me awake and screaming that there's an emergency.

"What's...happening?" I have trouble finding my words before I'm awake. That would be before I have my coffee. "Are they having a sale on Miss Me skinny jeans?"

"No, this is serious!" Morgan yells. As my brain starts to function, I realize that she must be right. The thing about Morgan is that she always looks perfect - her hair, her makeup, her clothes. Nothing ever fails to match. She never has a hair out of place.

Well, she never did until now. Her hair is uncombed, tumbling in dark waves around a pale, makeup-less and totally unnatural-looking face. (It takes Morgan at least three layers of makeup to reach a "natural" look.) She's wearing a terrycloth bathrobe and one slipper.

I wrack my brain for what could cause Morgan's uncharacteristically uncaring behavior. "Did you lose your phone charger again?"'

"No, I'm about to become a viral internet sensation in the wrong way - and it's all your fault!"

Now I'm definitely awake. "You didn't accidentally post a vid to one of the other social media sites, did you? You know GluedToYou won't give us any money if it turns out the clip was previously published to another-"

"I accidentally made a sex tape last night and it's all your fault!"

I stare at Morgan. "You...forgot to turn off your phone before you and Richard had sex?"

She looks at the floor, which is covered in a tacky shag carpeting that looks like it's seen better days - like the seventies. "Not...exactly."

"With someone other than Richard?"

Morgan sighs heavily. "I've told you before, there's nothing between me and Richard. We just like to talk."

"So he won't be upset if he sees this sex tape of you and...?"

"Just because I don't have a boyfriend who'd get jealous doesn't mean I want the world to see me in a sex tape!" Morgan yells, so loudly I think she's trying to advertise the damn thing. "I'm applying to medical schools this fall. I can't have some tawdry sex tapes floating around!"

"So you accidentally recorded yourself and...I'm guessing some guy at that party you went to?"

She shrugs. "His name's Biff."

"Please tell me you're kidding."

"Do I look like I"m laughing?" She's pacing the room now, wearing a track in the filthy green shag.

"So how did the video get away from you? Did Biff steal your phone or something?"

She stops pacing, hands on hips and stares down at her bare feet. At least her pedicure still looks perfect. "No, I still have my phone. But this morning, I was looking at the videos I made yesterday after I stopped the live feed, in case there was anything interesting I should post. And I found this vid of me and Biff, which I deleted immediately. But then I was looking through my sent texts to see if I sent Biff my number, because I was wondering why he hadn't called me yet-"

I consult my own phone as I reluctantly climb out of bed. "It's only just barely ten o'clock, Morgan. The guy probably isn't awake yet." Unlike me, Morgan is a morning person - she willingly gets up at 5:30  most mornings. Sometimes on the weekend she sleeps in until seven.

"Well, anyway, I was looking through my sent texts and I saw one with a video attachment sent at a little after midnight last night."

I squeeze toothpaste onto my toothbrush and prepare to face the ickiness of a dumpy motel bathroom sink. "I'm guessing you had a few drinks last night."

She shrugs. "A few. But I remember coming back here to go to sleep." She points at her rumpled bed. "I got back around twelve-thirty.  The text was sent around midnight, before I left."

"So you think Biff emailed himself the video while you were...stumbling around the room picking up your clothes?"

She chews her lip. "Yee...aah."

I stick my head in the bathroom, spit in the general direction of the sink and duck back out. "But you don't know he posted the vid, or that he's going to. Maybe he wanted it for his own personal enjoyment later."

"Ick." Morgan crinkles her nose, but then she adds, "I hope so. But I'd feel better if we got the video back from him."

I sigh. "Even if we stole his phone, he could still access his email from anywhere else with an internet connection. And he could have saved copies already. I don't think there's any way of obliterating the thing now."

"You're right." Morgan resumes pacing. "What we need to do is try to buy the video back, or at least bribe him not to splash it across every social media site in the world." She stops, her mouth forming a silent O. I wonder, vaguely, if she made that face in the video or if Biff is all hat and no cattle. "Oh, crap. I only have four-hundred-seventy-four dollars left. And I can't get a cash advance without my credit cards, which Richard has." She looks at me. "Hey, could you-".

"Loan you money?" I say with a snort. "Even if I did, we'd still have less than a thousand. You think a guy like Biff would give back a video like that for four figures? I bet he'd hold out for at least five."

"But what else can I do?" Morgan wails.

I start rummaging through my suitcase for my workout clothes. "You come running with me. We drop by Biff's room and see if he's even awake. If he looks like
I
do, he probably didn't wake up until we banged on his door, which means he probably hasn't seen the text. In that case, you distract him and I'll try to delete the vid from his phone."

"And if he's already awake, or not there?"

I sigh. "We'll just have to think of something else we can use as leverage besides cash. Creative thinking, Morgan. We learned about it in one of my marketing classes - how to get people to buy stuff when you have no advertising budget."

"So, how do you do it?" Morgan asks.

I turn my back to her, yank off my shirt and struggle into my sports bra. I intentionally buy them small so they'll be super-tight, the only way I know that I can run without giving myself two black eyes. If my sports bra is so tight I can just barely breathe, it's perfect. "Well, we'll figure that out as we run. My brain works better when I'm exercising." I grunt as I pull an exercise top, also purchased intentionally too small, over the bra. "Now go get dressed. We can't afford to waste time. Biff could wake up any minute."

Chapter Seven

Guessing a person's income bracket is not just a trick for waiters. It's something you spend years studying in any college marketing program; forget what you think of when you think about who buys a Mercedes, how much money does the average Mercedes owner really make? (It's lower than you think.)

There is no Mercedes parked outside Biff's hotel room. What he does have is an oversized, ridiculously tricked-out pickup truck. And I don't mean tricked out in an I'm-proud-of-my-truck-and-I-want-to-spend-a-few-bucks-on-it kind of way. This thing is so high off the ground, I could easily park my convertible underneath it and still have room to put the top up. It has, for some random reason, these big metal muffler-type things sticking up on either side of the cab. Then there's the pair of longhorns mounted to the grille. If I wanted to segment the market for such a product, I'd call this group "I bought this truck because I'm hung like a hamster".

"You're sure that's his vehicle?" I ask Morgan.

She nods. "I remember almost walking into the damn thing when I left this morning."

She really knows how to pick them.

We walk up to his door and knock. There's no answer, so after waiting twenty seconds or so, I knock again. Harder. "Hellooooooo?" I yell. "The ad on the bathroom stall door indicated that you were hiring for-"

The door swings open and a very bleary-eyed Biff is standing there, a towel wrapped around his waist. I'll admit, he's not a bad-looking guy, but the real reason I want him to drop the towel is because I'd like to see if I was right about the reason he bought his truck.

"Whoa...what's going on?" he asks, looking from me to Morgan, then repeating the process. "Hey, did you bring her back for a threesome or something?"

"Definitely not," Morgan says, clenching her fists. "I just came by because I forgot my...sweater last night."

"Oh...well, come on in, I guess." Biff lets the door swing open as he stumbles backward, still awkwardly clutching the towel.

Morgan moves around the room, pretending to look for her sweater. "I'm sure it's here somewhere. As soon as I find it, we'll be out of your way."

I poke around, pretending to "help" Morgan "look for her sweater". The fact that his phone is not immediately in plain sight concerns me. A lot.

Biff scrunches up his face as if he's rubbing both brain cells together and hoping to form a spark. "I don't remember you even wearing a sweater last night, darlin'."

"I was when I walked in, I'm sure of it," Morgan says tightly, pulling the pillows off the bed and frowning at the rumpled sheets.

"No, I don't remember takin' a sweater offa ya," Biff says, in that grating pseudo-English some fans of county music adore. I find it annoying. "Just that low-cut top of yours." He narrows his eyes at both of us. "Now what are you two really here for?"

All Morgan has to do at this point is insist she remembers wearing the sweater. Biff was, after all, probably just as drunk as she was; he can't expect both their memories to be perfect.

But Morgan is panicking. She doesn't do this often, but when she does, she really goes all out. Before I can think of a way to head her off, she blurts out, "Why did you send yourself that video of us having sex?"

Biff raises an eyebrow. "What's that?"

"You know what I'm talking about!" Morgan yells. "On my phone, I have a sent text to you containing a video of us having sex. I know I didn't send it."

Biff raises his hands in the air and I wonder if his towel will hit the ground. No luck. "Well, neither did I!"

"There was no one else in the room, and it wasn't me. It had to be you," Morgan yells. "Now I need your copy of that video deleted! Where the hell is it?"