“Shut up, you little whore,” Eli says.
“And we’re done here,” Holt says. “Ziggy. Bathroom. Sir, you have ten seconds to leave on your own before I make you leave.”
“You can’t make me do a goddamn thing.”
“You’re harassing my staff. The exit is behind you.”
“She’s hitting on me. Little cunt knows?—”
There are approximately five words in any of the three languages I know that will set me off.
And that one?
After Abby Nora used it at her baby shower, that’s the biggest trigger of all.
I elbow my way around Holt and get up in Eli’s face. “What did you just call me?”
He leans into my face with his whiskey breath. Holt grabs my arm and tries to tug me back while shoving between us.
“I said, you’re a little cunt. You know you want me.”
My brain fills with memories of that video call in to the shower.
Oh god, don’t say her name. I’m so glad she’s not here. Such a cunt, thinking she’s better than the rest of us because she has a fancy job on some cruise ship. She shits in an airplane toilet on fish piss water all day, but ooooh, we’re supposed to lick her feet becauseshe knows all about wine and sails around the Mediterranean. Whoop-de-fucking-do.
They hate me. They all hate me.
Such a cunt, and I don’t call people cunts.
Everyone in Abby Nora’s circle thinks I’m a terrible person.
Cunt! Cunt! Cunt!
I have to make this stop.
You guys… Ziggy’s on the phone. She can hear you.
I don’t know where I am, and I don’t care.
All I know is a blinding hot rage at being called that wordagain.
Does he know who I am? Did Abby Nora tell him I’mone of those?
Is that why he’s using it?
Better question—do I care?
“Ziggy,” a voice says beside me.
I don’t listen.
I’mbeyondlistening.
I don’t want to fuckingdefuse.
“Ziggy—” Holt repeats as I duck around his attempt to push me behind him once more.
I have to get up on my tiptoes to get even partially close to Eli’s face, but I do it. “You’re a rude, uncultured waste of oxygen who can shove those vitamins that you bought with your daddy’s money right up your ass.”
