Pretty Little Lies
Lex
Six YearsEarlier…
Manhattan in springtimeis still far too icy to wear a skintight dress with its hemline just below the crotch—not to mention the plunging neckline, but that didn’t stopme.
Over the last three months, Axel has actually convinced me to explore a friendship with him, one he said that I promised. I did no such thing, but of course, he and his manipulative ways won out once again. And for once I’m glad aboutit.
I didn’t tell him I was coming to the city. After that horrible pre-holiday debacle at the Witch’s Cauldron—the hot spring I was tempted to drown him in—Axel decided that maybe it was best if he went to NYU. It was a relief to me, but it gutted me on a primal level. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I won’t lie—it stunned me a bit to learn he was actually packing a suitcase and finishing out his law degree in New York. All sorts of crazy thoughts entered my head, socialites climbing their way up his chest, scantily dressed girls in flashy Manhattan nightclubs making their move right onto his crotch, and the worst female perpetrators of them all—the all too eager to please coeds who would be surrounding him in number. Axel Collins was a sexual sitting duck, and I knew it. Perhaps that’s the real reason I broke it off with him. In the deepest corner of my black dusty heart, I knew Axel would up and leave me one day. People leave. Relationships end. That’s what happens. It happens to everyone. And it inevitably happened tome.
“Room 205,” I whisper as I head toward the apartment he shares with two other guys—cellmates as he calls them. Axel has no clue that I’m showing up tonight, but he’s filled me in so succinctly on the mundane details of his life I feel as though I can find him in—yes, a New York minute. The door is slightly ajar—typical frat boy move, or more appropriately ex-frat boy since all of these boys have moved on to legal scholasticpastures.
A girl sits on the couch giggling while her dark-haired suitor runs his arms wildly over her back, and my stomach drops as his deep voice strums through the air like an eroticmelody.
I give a hard knock over the door. I will gut Axel like an unwanted pale bellied carp for telling me I’m the only girl on hismind.
The two of them sit up straight as pins, the girl looking every bit the sexed-up coed, and her male suitor looking every bit nothing at all likeAxel.
A huge weight lifts off my chest. That right there was my worst nightmare playing out in real time. Axel with his arms around another girl. The thought is enough to make me want to break every window in this high-rise with a baseball bat. Knowing me, I’d rip the girl’s leg off and smash windows with her stilettoinstead.
I clear my throat and let them know I’m looking for Ax. They roll their eyes as if to insinuate who isn’t, and my stomach is back to doing an impression of arock.
The two of them send me to a club in the basement called the Moulin Rouge—that’s where you can always find him on the weekend, the girl chirps—and I head in the direction they suggested, wondering why Axel never mentioned a nightclub in his building at all. Probably because it shares its moniker with an infamous Parisian strip club. And he’s thereeveryweekend? He let me know all about his favorite coffee shop, the one that reminded him of Hallowed Grounds where we logged countless hours discussing Spanish Influenza during World War I and just as easily our favorite childhood cartoons. Everything was so easy with Axel. We meshed well on an intellectual level as much as we did in bed, and how I miss meshing with him in bed. That’s exactly why I’m here. I pull down the hem of my skirt as I bypass a group of presumably NYU students on my way down the navy carpeted stairs. A sign readingMoulin Rougepoints left, and just as I round the corner on the final flight, the lights dim to nothing with spastic red and blue strobe lights. The sound of techno dance music fills the air with its obnoxious presence, and the smell of malt liquor streams from the clusters of laughing coeds. Blondes, brunettes, stunning redheads—the latter of which Axel has a self-proclaimed affinity for—make my stomach turn. It’s one thing to envision him surrounded with beauties from the Big Apple, but it’s another to witness theevent.
I head into the club, no cover, no carding. Great. That means this place is most likely crawling with high school girls, too. God knows a seventeen-year-old has the capability to look twenty-six with a little mascara and Mommy’s redlipstick.
My heart thumps in rhythm to the caustic music, and it only seems to get louder, booming with intensity until I can feel it thumping through mychest.
Bodies glide over one another on the dance floor, off the dance floor, on the bar, behind it. My God, is this what he’s been up to? Wooing me back by day, shaking his hips at underage high schoolers by night? It’s true. Axel was wooing, but I’ve done my best to reassure him we were never to be romantically linked again. The more he pleaded, the more I insisted—all the while buying my plane ticket, having my lady parts waxed by a professional—something my roommate swears is a modern-day necessity. Not only am I going to surprise Axel with my proclamation of love—and I’m loathe to toss around that heart-shaped word so he had better appreciate it—but I’m going to surprise him with my new hairlesskitten.
I twine my way through endless bodies. Men with leering gazes track my every move. An overgrown frat boy offers my bottom a healthy pinch, and I’m quick to slap him away. Just as I’m about to unleash my fury, my budding frustration his way, I spot a familiar dark-haired boy just over his shoulder and my stomachdrops.
My feet carry me forward a few steps until I have an unobstructed view and my heart—the one I foolishly gave away—drops right through the floor. It’s fine. I won’t be needing itback.
Straddled between his legs is a petite blonde with a silver sequin skirt that hardly qualifies as the aforementioned accouterment. Her hair is perfectly tousled, her tanned legs perfectly toned, her stilts perfectly Louboutin. And instantly I hate her. But not as much as I hatehim.
They’re laughing, cuddling, he’s caressing her hair, she’s sniffing, licking his neck, claiming him for thenight.
I suck in a sharp breath as a horrible thought comes to me. Sure, he’s landed himself a skank, but my God, what if he’s gotten himself a girlfriend? I had even suggested it. Stupid,stupidme. But the audacity of him to listen simply blows me away. And courting me on the side? I’ll show her the texts. I’ll show every girl in here his lovesick messages. I’ll make sure he never gets laid in this townagain.
The blonde does a little bunny hop to the rhythm of the music before gliding her leg up his thigh. She whispers into his ear, and his arms wrap tighter around her back. Axel looks up, a laugh dying on his lips, and just like that, his eyes lock with mine. His features quickly morph to horror as he gently guides her out of his way and speeds onover.
I turn to run. “Oh no, you don’t,” I say to no one in particular as I try desperately to weave through the bodies on the dancefloor.
But Axel spins me back by the arm, his face fills with far more horror and surprise than should ever belegal.
“Lex, is this reallyyou?”
“Who the hell cares!” I bite the expletive in his face, and he inches back at the sound. His face contorts into twelve different stages ofastonishment.
“I care.” His tone softens as he struggles to pull me in close. The scent of his cologne lies heavy between us, and it makes me that much moreinsane.
“Is that what you’re doing now?” I shout, pushing him hard in the chest. “Putting on cologne, looking your best while trolling cheap girls on a Friday night?” My voice pitches as tears come uninvited. I hate how I must look to him, to everyone around us who suddenly seems interested. I’m sure they all want to know why some crazy girl is screaming at their favoritegigolo.
“No.” He shakes his head slowly, the denial ripe on his face. “I swear on all that is holy, it’s not what you think. I have no idea who that girl is. A friend of mine put me up to it.” He grips his hair by the temples and spins in a circle. “God.” He glances up as if he were actually summoning the Almighty. “I swear to you, Lex, it looked way worse than it was. My buddy, Keith, is standing right over there.” He looks to the empty bar, and a string of expletives runs from his lips. “I’ll find him. We’ll go right now and find himtogether.”
His grip intensifies over my arms, and I struggle free. “Get away from me.” I beat him off with my purse, a Chanel clutch I found in a thrift store back in Hollow Brook named Karen, after the girl working the register. And to think I spent an entire afternoon envisioning how cosmopolitan Karen and I would look strutting around New York and here I’m nothing but laughable. “I was afraid I’d get accosted in this low-down and dirty town.” I beat him over the chest with my thrift store find. “And here it’syoudoing the accosting!” I smack him hard over the top of the head, and a couple of beefed-up bouncers come up alongsideme.
