Stuck With Him

Chapter one [ 1 ]

Chapter one: Nasty Surprise

"I'm heading there right now, Mason. Are you sure you remembered to leave the key for me?"

My best friend groaned loudly. "For the millionth time, you nutjob, YES", he yelled. I held my phone far from my ear as he muttered some less flattering comments of my neurotic ways.

I chuckled as I dragged my luggage out of the airport lobby and tried to find a cab. "I'm sorry but I've just been through an 7-hour flight from London to New York and then another flight here and I really don't want to stay in your yard for the night."

"Give me a little credit, Harper. I wouldn't forget. And I think I deserve a little love. I mean, I am letting you stay in my house free of charge."

"Thank you for doing this, M. And on such a short notice, too. I'll bake you a pie when you get back to the country."

"That's my kind of woman. Hey, Harper..." Mason sighed and paused.

"What?"

"Things with Alex --"

"Done. So fucking done. You know, I'm thinking of a man cleanse. Yup, bestie, it's happening. I'm swearing off men."

"OH MY GAWD, gurrrlll, you're like so right. Hey, we should get to together for some girl-talk, do our nails and braid each other's hair!" Mason exclaimed in a high-pitched fake girly voice.

I burst out laughing. "Too girly?" I guessed.

"You so need to get a girlfriend. I'm not discussing boys with you."

"Screw you. Though I'd loooooove to braid your hair", I smirked and because I'm evil, I shrieked: "Gotta go, babyboo, love you so much, honeybunny, mushymushy" and then I made a bunch of kissing noises. I got some weird glances directed in my way but heck if I cared. I love annoying Mason.

I heard a burst of laughter and catcalls in the background. "Fuck you, Harper. I had you on speaker phone and now all the guys are laughing their asses off", Mason complained.

I heard a chorus of "HEY HARPER!"s from Mason's team. I figured they were in the locker room after a game and could practically see how Mason rolled his eyes as he said:

"Now look what you did. They are gonna hold this over my head for the rest of my life. Thanks a bunch, Harper."

"You know you love me, loser", I said smiling and hung up. I was then able to catch a cab and slid on the backseat as the poor driver began to drag my somewhat heavy luggage to the trunk. I told him the address when he got to the car and then played with my phone as a sign that I didn't want to chitchat with him. Fortunately, he got the message and I got to enjoy a ride without having to put on a fake smile. Lord knows soon I wouldn't be able to do anything else when everyone in my old hometown would get a wind of my return.

As I was playing with my phone, I noticed that there were 34 missed calls and 97 messages from Alex alone. I popped our convo open and read the latest text. It read: "You can't avoid me forever, Natalie."

"We'll just have to see about that", I murmured to myself. Alex was in for a nasty surprise: when I had gone to get my things from our apartment while he was out, I had smashed his Xbox, Playstation and every single video game I could find. I hadn't touched the furniture though. I had wanted to, but I had bought many of them and I couldn't bring myself to hurt them even though now Miss String Bikini will be using them. God, I feel sick just thinking about it. How could he?