Page 17 of Sour Lollipops and Sweet Nightmares
“Does she?” I asked back. “I don’t know about you, but no one said shit to me about it.”
Until my father said the words “She belongs to…,” Georgia was free game.
“You say that now,” Ravi arched a brow. “What if she’s yours?”
“If she is...” I leaned back against the wall and crossed my arms. “She won’t survive the trials.”
“You know it’s not that simple.”
He was right. Last year, I was Levi’s older brother’s second. It was my job to make sure he completed his four trials, and I did my job. Not only that, but he fell for her. Graham was currently back in England, happily fucking his new wife.
I wouldn’t make the same mistake he did. If Georgia were mine, she was breeding stock and nothing else. I didn’t have to like her to put a baby in her. I didn’t like any of the bitches I fucked.
“So what if she does?” I shrugged. “It wouldn’t change anything.”
One way or another, Georgia Pyne would pay for fucking with us.
Ravi arched a brow. “So, we’re still doing this?”
“Absolutely.”
There were a few things off the table, but not enough to make it difficult. If anything, we could have a little extra fun. Sympathy was for the weak.
“Alright,” Ravi said. “When do you want to start?”
There was no time like the present. “Where is she now?”
Georgia
College was vastly different from high school. There were a few similarities, such as cliques and parties. I’d received invitations to three parties—two of which were frat—and I hadn’t even been here for 24 hours.
Spending nights with alcohol and debauchery was very high-schoolesque to me. Although no one ever invited me to the high school parties. I don’t think anyone in my graduating class knew my name, let alone thought of including me in social gatherings.
That wasn’t one of the differences I enjoyed. Those came with the overall atmosphere and attitude of the student body.
Teenagers were incredibly vain. All anyone had to do to see that was take a look at high school politics. To succeed in life, one had to be either intelligent or talented. Yet, the only requirement to be at the top of the social ladder in high school was beauty.
This was especially true for girls. The poorest girl who was failing all of her classes could still end up the queen bee, as long as she was beautiful. And what did that set them up for in life?
Disappointment.
Popularity didn’t matter after graduation. Years later, the so-called ‘it’ girls would show up to reunions desperate to relive their glory days because their lives didn’t turn out the way they thought they would.
High school was where they peaked. If they put more effort into the things that mattered, then maybe their life wouldn’t be so disappointing.
My mother was a perfect example of that. She was that girl in school. The one everybody wanted to be friends with or date, and look at her now. She was a thirty-six-year-old single mother who had gone through divorce twice.
Where were all of her so-called friends when she found out she was pregnant at seventeen? They moved on with their lives, as if she never existed, because beauty didn’t equate depth, just attention. And not in a good way.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved my mom. She was a wonderfulperson, but the cost of her personality change was a lot of heartache. There was nothing like being used and dumped over and over again to humble someone enough to look past a person’s exterior. She saw herself as an object to be admired, so everyone else did too. When that adoration started to die off, she turned her efforts to me.
My early childhood was one long game of dress up. As if my mom were trying to say to the world, look how beautiful mydaughter is. I hated it, and I hated her for seeing me that way. I wanted my mom to see me, not just my appearance. I didn’t want her to tell me how pretty I looked, likehedid. Bad things happened to pretty little girls.
Now, my mom bragged about my academic accomplishments, but it took a lot of rebelling and pain to get there. While other girls were shopping and going to the spa with their mothers, I was cutting my hair and hiding from the world.
I often wondered if that was why I was so socially awkward. Or was it something else? Sometimes, I felt like there was an image or memory right there, but I couldn’t quite grasp it.
While we didn’t have the same views on life, my mother and I were remarkably similar-looking. I even had the same dusting of freckles across my nose. All I heard as a kid was how I was going to grow up to be just as pretty as her. I didn’t want to be like her. Actually, I was terrified to end up like her.
