Page 1 of The B!tch List

Late by three weeks, Aunt Flo had finally arrived, thank the lord. She’d never been one for being on time, a week or so late for a visit wasn’t unusual, but three was pretty scary. Particularly as I hated the man who may well have put a bun in my oven. Imagine that—me having a baby with Shaw Jackson, the biggest dick on the planet. Despite him being such a douche, it was the second time I’d had sex with him. The first time had been almost a year ago at our friend’s wedding.

While Ellie and Hunter were dancing the night away with their guests, Shaw was giving me a big O behind the the Delaney’s barn. And I mean areal bigO. Obviously I didn’t tell him how good it was, his ego was already more inflated than a bouncy house. Instead, we’d done the deed and then walked away from each other, never to speak of it, or to each other again—at least we wouldn’t have. Sadly for me, we mixed in the same circles. While Shaw had been away at Harvard, it had been easy. I barely saw him except for when he was home on college breaks. Now though, he’d transferred to Texas Tech law school and was working part-time for Tate Hallahan, the town’s new lawyer, which meant if he was at school all week, he was then home most weekends.

Seeing him all the time hadn’t changed my opinion of him. There was no doubt he was good looking, gorgeous in fact, with his blond hair and bright blue eyes, but he wasn’t so gorgeous on the inside—not in my experience anyway. We’d clashed in senior year at high school, and it had gradually grown worse since then. All that pent up hate had led to some hot sex though. Plus, he had a really nice penis—and I mean areallynice penis. Not too big, not too small, nice and smooth with wonderfully manicured balls—his sister was a beauty therapist so maybe that accounted for that, but getting his sister to do that for him was weird!

Nice pecker aside, I didn’t likehim, and I blamed our last round of sex on alcohol. The first time I’d been nursing a bruised and broken heart, the second time I’d been nursing a bottle of fizzy wine and felt the need to share it. We’d both been at Bronte and Carter’s housewarming party, and we’d both gotten drunker than skunks. At the end of the night as we’d waited outside for a couple of Ubers, one shared bottle of warm wine had led to us kissing. As my Uber had turned up first, we decided why not share and have more kissing in the rear seat.

“Seems a shame for me not to come back and finish that wine with you,” Shaw had said.

“Driver,” I’d cried, pointing the bottle in the direction we were travelling. “We’re both going to my place, so step on it. .”

Two hours, forty minutes, and two rounds of awesome sex, some mutual giving of oral, and one finger banging session later, I’d kicked Shaw out. By then we were both starting to sober and lying naked next to each other and feeling a little weird. Now, three weeks later I was more than glad to be sitting on my couch with stomach cramps.

Bemoaning my sexual choices, I held a hot water bottle against my stomach and looked down at my ringing phone. It was my friend Lily which made me groan. I loved her, even though we’d only really been friends for a short time, since Ellie and Hunter’s bachelor and bachelorette party, but we’d bonded over cornering and killing Shaw and my then boyfriend, Minnesota, at paintballing. From then on, we’d become close. She’d helped me come to terms with the fact that Minnesota had dumped me because he hadn’t wanted me to go traveling with him, and I’d helped her to fit into Dayton Valley life. The groan therefore was because I knew she was going to try and persuade me to help out with the birthday party of JJ, the little kid she helped to look after. Okay, so I was a kindergarten teacher’s aide, but I really didn’t want to be near kids when I had stomach cramps. She was also the only person who knew about me and Shaw. I’d felt safe telling her, because at three years younger than me, she didn’t mix with the older ones in my group of friends. She knew them obviously, Hunter was practically her stepbrother after all, but she wasn’t around them on many social occasions. Plus, she wasn’t officially old enough to drink so she was less likely to get drunk and blurt out my secret. The groan therefore was also because I knew she would want to grill me about my missing period, which, even though it had arrived, would lead to talk of Shaw and I really wasn’t in the mood.

I knew however, she’d keep calling until I picked up. “Hey, you.”

“You sound sad,” she gasped. “Oh my God, did Shaw get you pregnant. Damn, Nancy, what’re you going to do?”

“Take a breath.” I sighed. “And no, he didn’t. I got my period.”

“Shit. I was like going like crazy for you.”

After a year in Dayton Valley, she was losing her SoCal accent but from time to time, when she was excitable it slipped in—now was one of those occasions.

“I said you should have taken the morning after pill.”

“I knew deep down I wasn’t. I have the implant and we used a condom, both times.”

“Wait. You did it with him twice?” she asked, her voice rising to a high a pitch.

“Three if you count the wedding sex,” I mused.

“You really do like his penis, don’t you? No matter how much you try to deny it.” She started to make a clicking noise.

“What are you doing?” I asked, shifting on the couch to get a little comfier.

“Thinking.”

“What about?” I shrugged even though she couldn’t see me.

“How we’re going to distract you from the peen in future. It’s quite a dilemma.”

“Seriously, Lily. You don’t need to worry. I won’t be going near it again.”

“Yeah, that’s what you’ve said before. I’m sure they were your first thoughts as you pulled your panties up. Why do you hate him so much anyway?” she asked. “You’ve never said.”

I dropped my head back against the couch and closed my eyes. Good question. Trust Lily to remind me of the night that made me shudder.

“Prom,” I responded, feeling a familiar spike of anger. “He asked me but didn’t turn up. Left me standing like an idiot on our porch while wearing a hideous yellow dress that if I had my time again, I would never have let my mom buy.” Thoughts of my mom made my chest ache and I felt bad at dissing her sense of style. I’d lost my folks in a fire when I was eighteen, not long after that hideous prom night, so as an only child I’d been left alone. My Uncle Raymond called from time to time, but he lived in Boston with his husband Mario. It’d been just me for almost five years.

Lily gasped, pushing my sadness to one side. “Woah. Burn.”

“Yeah, exactly. And he has the nerve to hate me!”

“I mean I never wanted to go to prom, but I could imagine if you did and a guy like Shaw asked you, well that must have hurt.” She whistled and I had to move the phone from my ear.

“What do you mean a guy like Shaw. What sort of guy is he?” If she said ‘a good guy’we could no longer be friends. He was a dick, no two ways about it.

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