Douche is really pressing my buttons today.
I have never used my mother to further my modeling career.
Everything I have achieved has been due to my own determination and hard work. Sure, I could have taken an easier route and got Mom to use her connections, but I’ve always wanted to do this on my own. “If she’s so broken, in your opinion, why are you wasting any time on her?” I challenge.
“Step down.” A burly security guard materializes at our side, and I’m guessing clipboard girl called for backup.
Travis leans forward, pressing his mouth close to my ear. “Because fucking the stupid bitch up will bring me satisfaction, and I can’t wait to see the look on your face when I take the one thing you wanted but could never have.”
Red coats my vision, and I lose it. Grabbing hold of his neck with both hands, I squeeze tight before I slam him up against the wall and pummel my fist in his face. I know he baited me on purpose. To get me kicked off the show. But I don’t fucking care. No one gets to talk about Selena like that and get away with it.
* * *
“You’ve gotto be shitting me,” I mumble to myself as I’m forced to park my X5 at the side of the road. I have an assigned space in the small parking garage underneath the building where we live. But some asshole is in my spot, leaving me with no choice but to park outside.
There are only four condos in this private six-story building. All condos are spread over three levels, so there are two condos occupying the bottom three floors and two on the top. It’s a very modern design and not at all usual for this part of town, which is mainly full of student rentals.
We only moved in three months ago, and it’s great having a place to call our own.
When we turned eighteen, we received the first lump sum from our trust fund, which gave us the funds to buy our first home. Next year, on our twenty-first birthday, we’re due to come into the bulk of the inheritance our grandfather left us.
During freshman year, my brother Kent and I stayed in an apartment belonging to our parents. Our other brother Keaton was supposed to be living with us too, but he ditched Harvard for Berkeley, surprising the hell out of Kent and me.
As triplets, and the youngest in the family, we’re close. Closer than I am to any of my other four brothers. Our plan had always been to attend Harvard together. Until Keaton made alternative plans without letting Kent or me in on the secret. We were more than a little pissed, but we’ve gotten over it.
And sophomore year is off to a good start now we have our own place. I love the independence that comes with home ownership.
I glance up at the impressive gray stone façade, grateful we found something like this so close to campus. My brother Kalvin was the one who discovered it. He’s in his last year of his architecture degree program at the University of Florida, and he clearly has his finger on the pulse of the Boston market. I suspect he’s planning to move back to Massachusetts when he and his wife Lana graduate next summer. It’s just a hunch, but why else would he know enough to recommend this project and an up-and-coming new architectural firm if he hadn’t already been scouting the market back home?
Kent and I own and share the top left-hand space of the building.
A space that is currently lit up like a fucking Christmas tree even though it’s after two a.m.
I climb out of the car and sigh. Can’t say I’m surprised. I’m used to my brother’s party boy lifestyle by now. Weary resignation settles over me as the thumping beats of loud music instantly greet my ears. We are lucky we live on a side street in a part of Cambridge notorious for its student population. Otherwise, I’m sure we’d regularly have the cops beating down our door.
I grab my duffel from the trunk, lock the car, and head into the building.
The dark cloud hovering over my head grows thicker and blacker with every step I take. I pause outside the door to our condo, resting my forehead on the door, preparing myself for what I’ll find when I cross the threshold.
Kent has a tendency to throw last-minute parties at the drop of a hat, and I’m getting really fucking sick of this shit. Sick of random strangers passed out all over the lower level of our place. Sick of cleaning up puke, filthy cigarette butts, and piss-filled bottles and clearing away evidence of drug use.
For a time, when Sel and I first split up, I lost myself in Kent’s world. Drinking myself into oblivion. Fucking nameless, faceless women. And partying like it was my new career. But it’s getting old lately, and the stuff we got up to on Nantucket a couple months ago, when we were there for my brother Kalvin’s wedding to his childhood sweetheart Lana, put the final nail in the coffin.
I’m so done with that lifestyle.
And Kent needs to learn to compromise better if we are to continue to live together.
Lifting my head, I open the door and step into chaos. The room is teeming with bodies, and a blast of noxious, odor-filled heat hits me in the face. The stench of weed permeates the air as I step over a drunken couple dry-humping right in front of the door. I push through sweaty bodies jumping around the living space, glad to see Kent at least had the foresight to remove the large cream rug from the room and to push the blue velvet couch back against the wall.
I spot my brother leaning against the end of the kitchen counter. His body is pressed between a pair of slim, tan thighs, his face buried in the blonde’s barely concealed tits. Her head is thrown back, and she’s moaning, wrapping her legs around Kent’s waist while she grabs his hair, tugging roughly.
I yank a fistful of Kent’s shirt and haul him away from the slut grinding on the place where we eat.
“What the hell?” Kent slurs, raising his fists, ready for battle.
“End this now or I will,” I snap, having used up all my patience reserves earlier.
Kent stumbles a little as he turns to face me. “Da fuck happened to your face?” he asks, prodding his finger into my swollen, discolored cheek.
