Page 33 of Butterfly

goodbye, Mason

No. Fuck that. I barely resisted throwing my phone against the wall. She was skittish, and it was understandable. I’d hurt her, she thought the naked photos were my idea, and she was worried about what people would think. I’d get her past that, I just needed to be creative.

I wandered out into the living room.

“Matt, do you still have access to that new drug?”

Matt always had access to the good shit, even the newest stuff. Even the stuff that had purportedly been developed by the mafia.

Emory shook his head. “This isn’t the way, Mace.”

“Don’t fucking talk to me about the ‘way’ until you find a woman you want more from than sex.”

Emory shook his head. “Whatever man, you do you.”

Actually, what I was going to be doing was Leslie, but I didn’t bother to correct him. I had more important things on my mind.

“Do you?” I prodded Matt.

He twisted his head around. “Which one, bro? Vixen or Vice?”

“Both.”

13

LESLIE

“Tondue, tondue, plié, plié, ran de jambe, grand plié,” Madame Poirot, the ballet instructor, directed the class. She was, in fact, much too young to be addressed as “Madame”; a young Black woman in her twenties with braids wrapped into a bun, and a tight purple leotard gracing her athletic body. She’d seemed kind at first, until we jumped into exercises, and then the strict ballet teacher came out.

We’d been at it for two hours. I was dripping with sweat, my thighs and calves were burning, and I hadn’t felt this peaceful since I’d first bumped into Mason yesterday. Ballet kicked my ass, and I loved every second of it.

What I didn’t love was the way Emily kept turning around and glaring at me while talking to her friends. Yes, just to make my day shittier, the redhead who’d sat on Mason’s lap during breakfast was not only in my dance program, but in my class. Which meant I was going to have to see her all the time. I really needed to have a talk with Fate.

I tried to ignore her, throwing myself completely into the exercises. My body was going to hate me in the morning because in some ways I was completely overdoing it, especially for just a class most of the dancers were marking their way through. But the more my muscles burned, the more I strained for perfection, the less my brain tortured me with images of the two of them together. It certainly couldn’t doubly torture me with its taunts asking why I cared who Mason was with in the first place.

Or triply torture me by reminding me how good it had felt when he had played with me in the library. My whole body went clammy at the memory, and this time the sweat pouring off me had nothing to do with ballet.

“Alright, class, take a break,” Madame Poirot called. “You deserve it.”

Leaning back against the barre, I opened my water bottle and chugged.

“Oh, it’s the pathetic stepsister, isn’t it?” Emily sneered in front of me, flanked on two sides by her perfectly coiffed friends.

Shocked that she’d gone from passive aggressive glares to outright confrontation, I choked on my water, gagging and spitting it all over my leotard—and her ballet shoes. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t take some satisfaction in that.

“What the hell?!” she shrieked. “Oh, you little bitch.”

I straightened my back. She thought she was the shit because she had Mason’s attention. But I’d dealt with his girls before, and they were the pathetic little bitches, not me. I remembered Tiffanie, so absurdly jealous she’d taken naked photos of me. I’d always thought that Mason was the one who had told her to take them, but now I wondered: if that were the case, why had they never been posted online? Was it possible she acted without his knowledge?

Emily snapped her fingers in my face, bringing me back to the present.

Right, this bitch.

“That was an accident,” I said calmly. “I’m sorry for spitting on your shoes, but I’m not sorry for anything else. I don’t know why you have a problem with me, but get out of my face—now.”

She sneered at me, looking me up and down. “I’ll tell you the problem I have with you. You’re disgusting, crushing on your own brother, you skank. You’re conceited and delusional if you think he actually wants you.”

Well, I had proof that he wanted me, didn’t I? Unless I’d been right and I was just a game to him.

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