Page 1 of Havoc

Chapter 1

Riley

After a long, hard week of coaching, it was time to kick back and relax with my friends. We were a small, tight-knit bunch of women who had grown up together in Griffinsford. These three women were like sisters to me. Spending time with them was absolutely glorious, the highlight of my week for sure.

I felt light and happy as I walked into Neon Vibes, where the music was always thumping, and the dance floor was always full. When I caught sight of my friends, they motioned for me to come to their table.

When I dropped down into the one remaining empty chair at the table, Dae gestured at the bright fuchsia mixed drink sitting on the table in front of me. “I took the liberty of ordering your first drink of the night. You can thank me later.”

“It’s tonight’s special, right?”

She grinned at me, answering, “Of course it is. You always start with the nightly special, so it seems the obvious choice.”

“Then I’ll go ahead and thank you now,” I said before taking a sip of the cloyingly sweet mango-flavored drink. “Wow, it has a kick.”

They all smiled at me indulgently. My friends liked what they liked. Dae had a large, chilled glass of soju. She was Korean, and that was the only alcohol she liked. Hana loved her amaretto. And Maritza only drank cosmos. We were nothing if not predictable.

Dae asked Hana, “How’s that new dating app working out for you? If it’s making good matches, I might decide to try it myself.”

Hana took another drink of her amaretto and thought it over for a minute. Her face was all scrunched up in a pensive expression. Finally, she admitted, “The verdict’s still out on that one. My first match showed up at the restaurant drunk, and my second match spent the better part of our date talking about how crazy his ex was.”

Dae shot me a meaningful look. “As a life coach, what do you have to say about men who call their exes crazy?”

I swirled my drink around the glass and took another sip before answering. “Sounds to me like they aren’t emotionally mature enough to take their share of responsibility for the relationship breaking down.”

Dae propped her chin onto her upturned hand and gazed at me. “You sound like a woman with a short list of things in your head that are red flags when it comes to men.”

I nodded and set my drink down on the table. Leaning forward, I told them conspiratorially, “You’re not wrong, though I don’t know if the list is that short. First up, men who make and break dates, particularly when you’ve only just met. It means they aren’t prioritizing time with you, they’re disorganized, or their life is too unstable to be able to plan events in advance.”

Hana interjected, “Or they could already be involved in a relationship, and you get deprioritized in favor of their actual partner.”

“Yes. That’s a possibility as well,” I told her. “Talking about exes, particularly in a negative way, sets off my Spidey senses, but words like crazy, unhinged, and things like that are a red flag.”

Maritza, the one in our group who always got the most male attention, asked, “What about the ones who want to hook up on the first date?”

My eyebrows shot up. “Yeah, that’s a definite red flag. And I consider it risky behavior. You don’t know a thing about someone you met off a dating app. Being alone with them is risky enough but being alone and vulnerable with a virtual stranger doesn’t even begin to make sense in my world.”

She rolled her eyes and said, “Killjoy. You really know how to suck all the fun out of stranger sex.”

I gave her a serious look. “If you wanted to have wild and crazy sex with strangers, I’d be the last person to judge. I’d just encourage you to be safe by at least shooting us a group text about who you’re meeting up with, where you’re going, and whether you’re going to his place or yours. That way, if anything goes wrong, we’d at least know where to pick up your trail.”

Maritza froze with her drink in the air. “Wow, you’re serious about this, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, Ritz. When it comes to the safety of the people I care about, I’m always serious.”

Hana spoke up. “I don’t know how dangerous the men in Griffinsford are, but at the end of the day, I think it makes sense to be as safe as possible when hooking up.”

Dae looked from one to the other of us and then suggested, “I say we make a pact. From now on, we shoot each other texts in the group chat like Riley said. It only takes a minute and might save our lives one day.”

Maritza lifted her glass. “Okay, I’m all in. Let’s seal the pact with a toast.” Turning to me, she said, “That goes for you too, Riley. I expect to get a text when you decide to throw caution to the wind and hook up with a sexy stranger too.”

I held up my glass, and as the others brought theirs up to clink against mine, I said, “To safety and women looking out for women.”

Hana murmured, “I’ll drink to that,” and took a long drink of her amaretto. She then prodded me for more red flags.

“Well, a big one for me is men who say they’re just a straight shooter or tell the unvarnished truth.”

Dae, who had clearly had enough rice wine to make her more animated, laughed. “Everyone knows that’s just a secret code for someone who’s an asshole who likes to antagonize other people.”

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