Page 71 of Ruck Me

Aoife: Here’s something else for you to study. If I were you, I’d expect a thorough examination on the subject tonight.

“I know what you just did,” Brienne sing-songed from a few feetaway.

I jumped, slamming my phone face down on my desk. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I stammered, my inability to form a coherent sentence giving away my obvious guilt.

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone you’re sexting with yer man,” she laughed, her eyes never leaving her screen.

“We’re not sexting,” I argued.

“Sure, that’s why you didn’t just take a picture of your tits. Speaking of, I’d kill for them. These—” Brienne slid her hands from the keyboard, swiveled her chair around to face me, and cupped her perfect DDs “—can be quite the nuisance sometimes.” She looked down. “I shouldn’t have gone thisbig.”

“Wait, those are fake?” I asked, astonished. Here I thought she was just really, really blessed. Hers were probably the best surgical enhancement I’d ever seen. You could usually spot a boob job a mile away, especially ones that were bigger than C-cups since they usually stuck out like two under-ripe melons. But Brienne’s, while large, were shapely and full and hung perfectly down her chest.

“Oh yeah,” she said, dropping her hands away. The foundational strength of her lacy undergarments meant they’d barely moved. “My 18th birthday present from my mother.” She lightly tapped her finger against her nose. “And this was for my twentieth from Daddy.”

“Holy shit,” I whispered. “For my 18th, I got a DVD, and my mam completely forgot about my twentieth.”

“Yeah, well. In my family, you get plastic surgery. It’s practically a tradition. My cousin who’s 23 doesn’t even look the same as she did at sixteen. She went for the whole Kardashian look, which if you ask me, is way toomuch.”

“You’re like from a whole different world,” I said, my eyes raking over her and wondering what else she might have haddone.

Though I’d tried to be subtle about it, Brienne didn’t miss it. “Nothing else, unless you count this.” She twisted her long, blonde ponytail around her fingers. “But this is from extensions, and everyone has those.”

I didn’t, but clearly she didn’t mean girls like me. She meant the D4 set, of which I was most certainlynot.

“I also work out every day for at least an hour,” she continued, standing and patting her perfect, pert ass. “Two hundred lunges before work, every day, whether I want to or not, so I don’t have to get a butt lift later on. Those are brutal to recoverfrom.”

I considered my tiny frame. I was thin and trim, but that had more to do with genetics and my metabolism than anything else. I was pretty sure the 20 minutes of yoga I did every morning really only helped my flexibility. Hell, I still got winded walking up more than three flights of stairs, which Eoin couldn’t stop teasing me about. He still intended to get me running and lifting weights, but I’d fought the good fight on that front and had no intention of givingin.

“I hate exercise, which is why I’m a weak little thing.”

Brienne laughed. “You don’t think I do it because I like it, doyou?”

“I don’t know. Whyelse?”

“I have to look good to find a husband.”

“What? Are you the same person who was just going on about wanting to fuck every guy she fancied?”

She sat back in her chair and leaned forward, her eyes bright with determination. “Yes, exactly. I have to get it out of my systemnow.”

I shook my head. “I really don’t understandyou.”

“Nothing to understand,” she said with an indifferent shrug. “My daddy’s rich, and he’s hell bent on me marrying one of his cronies while I’m still young and beautiful and can make a proper little trophywife.”

It wasn’t like I didn’t know this sort of thing happened all the time with a particular subset of the population, it was just that I’d never known anyone personally who lived like this. That and the blithe, almost cheery way she’d shared it all had caught me off guard. I stared at my new friend for a minute, my jaw hanging open, waiting for her to say, “Just kidding.” She didn’t. She stared back, her face solemn.

“You’re serious.”

“As a heart attack.”

“Doesn’t it bother you? Having your life all mapped out likethat?”

“Not at all,” She said, pushing back to her workstation. “I like being pampered, and I like nice things. If having to look good gets me that, who am I to complain? Chances are, I’ll be married in a couple of years with a baby in my belly, and I won’t have to work atall.”

“But we’re so young,” I pointed out, mystified that anyone from my generation would be actively planning on being pregnant, let alone a mum, before the age of twenty-five.

“You might be young, Aoife,” she said, going back to typing, “but I’m wise beyond my years.”

I shook my head and pulled up the article I’d been reading before. She could go ahead and keep thinking that, but anyone who wanted to shackle themselves with a kid before they’d ever really lived was a fecking eejit as far as I was concerned.

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