{WATTYS 2021/2022 SHORTLIST}{Editor's Pick} {Featured Story}
One girl. Two boys. An impossible choice.
Stella LaFever, a theatre student from California, can't wait to spend a summer in Newport, Rhode Island, with her best friend. She is in despera...
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My throat was dry. My mouth tasted like tequila. My pulse was throbbing in my temples. Angry rays of early morning light bled through our bedroom window.
I checked my phone—it was seven in the morning. Ugh, I was so hungover.
Leona was snoring blissfully away beside me. Unbothered by the light.
I threw the covers over my head and closed my eyes, hoping to hide from the light and the cringe-worthy memories of last night.
Leona and I had gone shot for shot when we got back to the camper, sucking limes and licking salt until well past two in the morning. The bite of alcohol had loosened my tongue about my brush with West and his father.
To say that Leona was furious would have been an understatement. She dropped so many f-bombs that she could've cleared a field of fucks.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me? His fucking dad asked about your fucking pearls? What does that even mean? Your titties? Your p—"
"Leona," I snorted. "Don't say pussy." My eyes widened in drunken surprise, and my hand flew over my mouth.
Then we both erupted into fits of laughter.
"I mean," Leona said, wiping at the tears in her smoky eyes. "Who the fuck are these people?"
I threw back another shot that burned all the way down, then choked out, "Admiral Oyster, and his son the wicked Pearl Snatcher."
Leona held an empty shot glass up to her eye like a telescope. Turning her voice into a pirate rasp. "I'm on the hunt for Stella's elusive pearls. I've been told they're in the back of her throat, but I think she's keeping them under her skirt!"
I laughed until my cheeks hurt, and I had a stitch in my side while Leona hobbled through our small RV with her shot glass.
We went back and forth like that, telling increasingly bawdier jokes about sailors and pirates and pearls until we passed out on our queen size bed.
Laughing and drinking with Leona almost made me forget about West.
Almost.
My thoughts drifted back to that dance and the feel of his body against mine. Those prickles of sweat on his shirt. His touch had set a fire inside me, stoking not just desire but this strange feeling of power. Like there were no rules when we were dancing—just the freedom to move how we wanted.
And then there was the way he said my name.
His breath against my ear.
I twisted in the sheets.
What was wrong with me? I had to stop thinking about him. He was just another smug rich kid who also happened to be in the military. I was never going to see West Tenney again—which I was perfectly fine with.
