Ashley.

Ho ho ho . . . speaking of Concord.

If I weren’t drunk, I’d ignore it, but the Ciroc makes me tap the icon and say, “Hello, Ashley.”

Ashley says something but I can’t hear her.

“Wait a minute,” I say. I nod to the other girls and walk to the door, stepping outside into the nighttime heat, which is identical to the morning and afternoon heat.

“Sorry,” I say, “I couldn’t hear you. It was noisy where I was. I’m outside now.”

“Oh, partying it up, huh?” says Ashley. “I can’t believe you. What is wrong with you, Abigail?”

In an instant, all feelings of wanting to be back in Concord vanish. “What is wrong with me? What the fuck, Ashley?”

“Are you drunk? Oh my God, you’re drunk, aren’t you?”

“I’m on vacation!”

“Vacation? You’ve been gone for two weeks. This is more than a vacation, Abigail.”

“Ish my right. Ish a free country.”

“Freedom has nothing to do with it. You have family obligations and responsibilities.”

“To do what? To be a prim and proper Missh Prissh to please Mom?”

There is a long pause on the other end of the line. I stare at the closed used car dealership next door. Two Latino guys eye me as they walk by. One makes a joke in Spanish, and then they disappear around the corner. I duck into the shadows of the overhang.

“Abigail,” says Ashley, “you know the deal with Mom.”

“Do you know she was the one who turned Zander in?”

“I’m not having that conversation with you right now, Abigail.”

“Oh, and by the way, thanks for asking how I am.”

“Why are you doing this, Abigail? Why?”

“Doing what, exactly? I’m on vacation. Don’t I deserve a fucking vacation? I’ve done everything Mom has asked for years. Is it ridiculish to think that maybe, jush fucking maybe . . .  . . . I can get a fucking break, a trip down here.”

“I can’t talk to you. You’re drunk.”

A pickup truck full of guys turns and pulls up in front of the club. I back further into the darkness of the overhang, concealing my presence.

“Hang on,” I say.

Three guys get out of the truck. One has a long beard and a ponytail with a beer gut. Another is a skinny but muscular kid in a straw hat. The third one has a pockmarked face with a chin that looks like it’s been carved from stone. He carries a baseball bat.

Uh-oh.

I press myself further into the shadows.

“Um, Ashley,” I whisper, “I gotta go.”

“Well, sister, I have news for you. Dad is coming down to find you. So be warned. He’s going to be there.”

The image of my father in Miami would make me laugh if it weren’t for the fact that the three guys just walked inside the club.

I hit End on my phone, effectively hanging up on Ashley, and dial 9-1-1.

“Emergency dispatch,” says the operator. “Your call is being recorded. What is the location and nature of your emergency?”

I tell her the address and the name of the club. I swear she snickers.

“Where did you say?” she says.

“T’s,” I say. “T’s Gentlemen’s Club. Three guys just walked in and they look like trouble. I’m outside. They’re not customers, I can tell. One has a baseball bat.”

The dispatcher sighs loudly. “We’ll send an officer out. Are you being threatened right now?” I hear a giggle in the background. What the fuck?

“Yes!” I say and hang up. Assholes.

I’m afraid to do anything. I stay in hiding. Those guys looked like trouble.

But wait! Karissa! I can’t let anything happen to Karissa!

I don’t know what gets into me. Maybe it’s the vodka, or the feeling that I have to protect my friends even if it means going up against three guys, one with a baseball bat, like there’s anything a girl like me could accomplish against them.

I’m almost at the door, ready to accept my fate, when the guy with the ponytail and beard flies past me, out and onto the ground. I hear a scraping sound as his forehead hits the pavement.

Behind him stands Chantel, her thick black hair reflecting the streetlights from her sparkly gold highlights. Her thick lips are glossy and her eye shadow is a deep shiny blue.

“You okay?” she says to me in a throaty voice that is naturally deep.

“Um, I think so,” I say, totally bewildered by her actions.

Next out the door is the pockmarked guy with the baseball bat. One eye is shut and bloody. Holding his arm behind his back is . . . oh my God! . . . Karissa.

She presents the intruder to Chantel who punches him in the gut. I feel the intensity as a gust of air launches out of his mouth with a loud oof!

Karissa lets go of him, raising her leg and literally kicking him in the ass. He falls forward face down onto the gravel.

“Too easy,” says Karissa in a non-plussed tone like nothing has happened.

“There was a third guy,” I say.

“Oh, Diamond is taking care of him,” says Karissa. “I don’t think he’ll ever be the same.”

I laugh. “Does this happen a lot?”

“Too often.”

“How do you do this? Knowing that you have to fight off haters like that?”

“Honey, you do what you need to do. I ain’t living my life for anyone else’s rules. I do what I want. Sometimes you got to fight for it. A lot of times you got to fight for it.”

A shocked and thoroughly naked skinny guy—straw hat gone—is marched out with his hands behind his back by six-foot-five Diamond. His dick is pathetically tiny. Actually, next to Diamond, everything about him is tiny.

She marches him over to the pickup truck and slams him into the side of it.

Ouch. That’s gotta hurt.

“Now get out of here!” she says.

The three men painfully and slowly climb into the truck. The headlights come on and it drives off.

Once it’s gone, a Miami-Dade cruiser pulls up with its lights flashing. Two cops get out, one male and one female.

“We received a 9-1-1 call,” says the female officer, a tough-looking Latina. “Is everything okay here?”

“Everything is perfectly fine, officer,” says Karissa. “Nothing to see here.”

She winks at me.

Chapter 5

The door looks much the same as the last time I was here. Brown steel surrounded by off-white adobe.

I’m back on Ocean Court, here for my first real session at Lorena’s submission “academy” and placement agency slash matchmaking whatever the fuck.

The weather is much the same, too. Steamy sun giving way to rumbles and fast moving dark clouds.

Here we go again.

Last time, Erica just found me. This time I knock.

Nothing.

A rumble shakes the sky and the earth. Wispy misty cloud funnels form overhead.

Shit.

I don’t want to get stuck in one of those downpours again. That was awful.

I knock again.

Nothing.

Another rumble. The sun is gone now. The air has that thick steamy sense of impending violence. The palm fronds in the trees whip around furiously.

I can run to Ocean Drive or Collins. On Ocean, I’m under the overhang of a restaurant. On Collins, I have to duck into a clothing store.

The rain starts.

Shit, what do I do?

I pound on the door.

It opens.

And there she is.

The bespectacled Erica with her thick black frames and wide blue eyes.

Again she’s in another resplendent bikini/negligee outfit, this one a bright yellow.

Oh God, I might be in trouble. Am I bisexual? Shit, I think I might be.

Oh fuck, she’s glowing again. She had to be glowing again, right? A warmth, accompanied by a jolt, jiggles between my legs. I can’t help it. She’s fucking gorgeous. And the glasses so work on her. What is it about the damned glasses?

“Well, look at you”, she says with arms folded and the hint of a sneer around her eyes. “You’re back.”

“Yes, I’m back.”

“I saw your name on my list. I thought you had decided this wasn’t for you.”