Page 24 of Ready to Score

Jade gasped. “I am not repressed! And I’m not horny either. I’m… I’m very satisfied.”

Miri pressed her lips together and made a very unimpressed face. “When was the last time you even touched yourself?”

“I’m a grown-ass woman, Miriam; I think I have a genuine understanding of how to give myself pleasure.”

“I’d agree with that. It also wouldn’t matter if you never did it, if I didn’t know that you’re good for just straight up pretending like you don’t want it.”

Jade sighed and pressed her head against the tabletop. Her best friend wasn’t wrong but… she didn’t see it as repression. She saw it as compartmentalization. And, well, she supposed she was in a bit of a dry spell.

“I hit up Marley the other night, and she completely blew me off.” Jade’s words were muffled by the furniture under her face, but Miri still heard.

“Jade… Marley told you she loved you a year ago, and you were basically like ‘Appreciate it. Deuces, babe.’ You think she’s lining up to bump pussies after that?”

Jade opened her mouth to respond but was interrupted by the clearing of a throat. Her head was off the table so fast it almost spun. Behind the bar in front of them was a young white boy with wide eyes and a face as red as a tomato.

“Um.” His voice cracked. “I’m here to—to take your orders.”

Miri grinned and ordered a crispy chicken salad as if she hadn’t just completely embarrassed all three of them.

“I’ll have the patty melt,” Jade said, trying to convey an apology in her smile. “And a strawberry milkshake on her check.”

The kid walked away with barely another word.

“I think he goes to Greenbelt,” Jade groaned. “I’d be surprised if every high schooler in this town doesn’t hear about that shit within the next ten minutes.”

Miri rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. You should hear the stuff these kids say. You thought we were bad? My eight-year-old nephew used the wordbussythe other day, and my sister-in-law almost had a stroke behind it. Trust me, that’s nothing to what that kid sees every day on Snapchat.”

Jade supposed that was fair. She wasn’t the type of teacher who sat around talking about how much worse the kids these days were than kids in her day. It simply wasn’t true. Almost everything her freshman kids did was a direct copy of the types of shit she’d gotten up to at their age. Sometimes, though, she found herself speechless at their antics. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d had to look up terms they used, only to find herself rubbing her temples as she pleaded with them to at least keep that language out of her classroom.

“Either way,” she grumbled, completely unwilling to lose the little spat. “Keep your damn voice down. I don’t need everybody in here knowing that I get no ass.”

“You could get as much ass as you want to. Stop playing.” Miri’s eyes cut to somewhere behind Jade for a split second before she smirked. “I think you just want one particular ass right now, and it’s blinding all the others.”

Jade didn’t have any prospects at present. She was a bisexual with a roster as dry as the Sahara. It was a sad thing to be, but it was the truth. She’d been trying to big herself up by remembering that she was just too focused on her goals to give anything of herself to anyone else, even if the anything in question was just a bit of no-strings fun.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Miri’s eyes cut away again. This time, Jade was forced to swivel her head to see what had gotten her friend’s attention.

“Aww fuck,” she moaned.

Francesca Lim was standing in the packed line in front of the hostess booth. She was wearing a pair of tiny running shorts and a tank top, and Jade had to drag her gaze away from the stretch of her long legs.

“That’s her, right?” Miri asked. “The art teacher? The one you supposedly hate?”

“I don’t hate her.”

Miri laughed. “Of course you don’t hate her. You like her.”

“Are you out of your damn mind?” Jade’s voice came out much louder than she’d intended, and a couple a few seats down from them turned to look at them with questioning eyes.

“I mean, she’s cute.”

Jade took another peek at Lim, who luckily hadn’t noticed their gazes on her. It was clear that she’d just come back from the gym or a run or something. Her long, dark hair was in a messy knot at the nape of her neck. Her skin was glowing, and even from feet away, Jade could see the blood pumping under her skin, making her cheeks pink.

“She’s all right.” Jade turned back to the bar, finger idly playing with the sweat on the outside of her cup.

Miri made a noise at the back of her throat, and Jade knew that she’d been about as convincing as a Piggly Wiggly cake at a church bake sale.

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