Page 17 of Rent a Bad Boy

Once I’m in the truck, I sit for a minute with my hands on the wheel and the engine off. My head is full of her. The sounds she made. The way she looked at me after. The fact that she was a virgin, which I didn’t expect, and which changed everything about what happened next.

I don’t do gentle. I’ve never had a reason to.

Tonight, I had a reason. The thing that scares me is it didn’t feel like a sacrifice.

If anything, it felt like the first honest thing I’ve done in years.

7

ISLA

I’ve texted Everett four times, which is a totally sane thing to do.

The first one was casual. At least, I was going for casual. Hey, the HOA is coming at noon to talk things over. Can you be here? I sent it at 8:47 a.m., right after I finished feeding the girls and realized my hands were shaking, which is not a great sign when you’re holding a bag of chicken feed and trying to pretend you’re a functioning human being.

The second one was sent at 9:15, and it was a little less casual. Everett. Noon. My house. That was after I checked my phone six times and saw nothing, but my own message sitting there with no reply.

An hour later, I stopped pretending to be chill. Are you seriously not answering me right now?

I’m not proud of the fourth one. I swear to God, if you ghost me after what happened, I’ll find you and I will bring Brad Pitt, and he will peck you to death. Yes, I included a rooster’s name in a threat. No, I don’t care how it sounds, because I’m spiraling.

It’s past eleven now. The clock is ticking. My phone is silent. I’m sitting on the edge of the bathtub, arms wrapped around my knees, wondering how I managed to let a guy I’ve known for less than a week touch me in ways I’ve never been touched before and then just not answer his phone the next time I need him. Was that the point of it? Was he using me?

I don’t want to think about what happened. I don’t want to remember the way his hands felt. The way his voice sounded in my ear. The way I came apart like I was nothing, like I was made of paper, like he barely had to try. I don’t want to think about how afterward he looked at me with those dark eyes, and I couldn’t tell if he was satisfied or amused or something else entirely.

I especially don’t want to think about how much I liked it. All of it. Every second. Even the parts that scared me.

I don’t want to think about any of it because in less than an hour, Christine Jones is going to be standing in my living room, and the one person I was counting on to stand next to me when she does is too busy to respond to a single text. Okay, four. One of which contained the threat of death by rooster peck.

I should’ve known, right? I should’ve known this would happen. This is always what happens when I trust people. They show up when it’s convenient, make you feel things you didn’t ask to feel, then disappear the second you actually need them. I’ve watched it happen my whole life. My mom disappeared before I was old enough to remember her face. My dad died when I was six. Every friend I almost made in high school evaporated the second someone louder or funnier or not named Pickel came along.

Now I can add Everett to that list. He made me believe, for a few stupid days, that somebody might actually show up for me. For my chickens.

I’m an idiot.

“Isla!” Grandma calls out from the kitchen. I swear, she sounds like she’s celebrating. “Come have a mimosa with me!”

I would ask if she’s kidding, but I know better by now. “It’s not even noon, Grandma,” I call out.

“That’s what the orange juice is for!”

I drag myself out of the bathroom and go to the kitchen, where my grandmother is well into what I’m pretty sure has to be her second mimosa, based on the champagne level in the bottle and the fact that she’s humming a song I don’t recognize. She shimmies by the counter, holding her own personal concert.

She’s also dressed better than I expected. I kind of figured she’d be in one of her flashy outfits, but instead she’s wearing a floral blouse and white pants that are actually age-appropriate for once. She’s taking this meeting more seriously than she lets on... or she’s out of leather skirts. It’s hard to say.

“You look tense,” she observes as she slides a glass my way. “Have a sip. It’ll take the edge off.”

“I don’t have an edge. I have a crisis.” I push the glass back and try to ignore the way she rolls her eyes. “Christine is showing up in less than an hour. I have no plan, no backup, no—” I almost say “no Everett,” but I stop myself, because saying his name out loud right now might actually make me cry. I refuse to cry before noon on a Saturday. “I have no strategy.”

“Strategy’s simple.” She takes a sip of her drink and smiles in approval. “We smile, we nod, we tell them we’re working on it. And then we don’t work on it. It’s the same strategy I used with your granddad for thirty years, and it worked like a charm.”

When I open my mouth, she waves a hand and cuts off anything else I was about to say. “Relax. It’s going to be fine.”

It is not going to be fine.

There’s a knock at the front door at 11:30. In a panic, I check my phone again. Nothing from Everett. The screen stares back at me, blank and useless. Something in my chest hardens into a knot, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to untie it later.

I open the door.