Page 70 of Drilled (Dad Bod Contracting 2)
I nod. “Yeah. Turned me into the laughingstock of the entire fucking school—I guess everyone knew except me. Even the girls he was fucking in rotation knew there were others, just not who.” I stand up, pace, and sit back down. “I worked out with a guy who knew Jared in high school, and he told me this was just his M.O.—a regular rotation of girls on the side, plus a clueless girlfriend. He had the system down pat, how to keep everyone separate, how to avoid suspicion and getting caught. He just didn’t factor in me and my friends varying our routine, since we never did, except that one time.”
“Was it the cheating that hurt the most, or the fact that you were the clueless girlfriend?”
“It was everything. The cheating, the obviousness of it all. I mean, he wasn’t really hiding it—he’d walk around in public with these girls, he just wouldn’t be publicly affectionate with them. But everyone saw them coming and going, and knew what was up, except me. And I saw him with them myself, I just prided myself on not being jealous, on trusting him to have female friends without going apeshit.” I sigh, rubbing my face. “The fact that I was the clueless girlfriend? Yeah, that hurt. But so did the fallout of my stupid, naive revenge. I thought I was taking him down, you know? Like, tarnish the sterling rep of the school’s golden boy. Apparently, his rep went deeper. Guys thought he was the man because he could haul down all this ass and not get caught by his girlfriend, and girls thought he was a pig, but they didn’t care because he was hot and they just wanted him for his cock. Which was, honestly, pretty magnificent. And he was good with it, too. Which made it all the worse—because the stories about him were all true. Girls would spread stories about how great he was in bed and how big and amazing his cock was, and I just thought they were all jealous, like, how could they know? That was the one thing that should’ve clued me in earlier, but I just dismissed it as jealous gossip. But all the stories were true, which was what, for some reason, burned my ass almost more than anything. Stupid, but true.”
I have to pause to gather myself, and Franco just listens, watches, and waits.
“Then, just as icing on the cake, after my revenge-reveal article published, my so-called friend who helped me publish the piece revealed in another op-ed that she knew all along that Jared was banging other girls, and she knew how everyone would react—laughing at me, and only cementing his rep on campus—and that she herself had fucked him several times in the library.”
“Well fuck.”
“So I only managed to burn myself. Everyone laughed at me. They’d always laughed at me, just behind my back, but after that it was to my face.” I have to choke back a knot in my throat. “Ruined me at the school—and it’s not like there was much to ruin, since I never really cared about my social status all that much…or so I told myself. But being Jared’s girlfriend had, annoyingly enough, afforded me a popularity I couldn’t have achieved on my own, and it did feel nice, even if was only because of him and not me.”
“Fuck, Audra—that’s brutal.”
“The rest of my time at the school was utter agony. Just pure hell. He went open with everything—started flaunting his rotation. A few girls bailed, not wanting to be open about it, but he replaced them easily enough. He was like a…like a pimp, except all the sluts were selling themselves to him for free.” I groan. “Stupid metaphor, but you get what I mean.”
“That was a simile, actually,” Franco points out with a smirk.
“You’re seriously correcting my English right now?” I demand, half laughing. “Some nerve, asshole.”
He just laughs. “I’m just messing with you.”
“Not in the mood to be messed with, Franco.”
“Sorry, sorry.” He smiles, winking. “Anyway. So that was what cemented your hatred of love and relationships?”
I nod. “Yep. I spent the next ninety days after the story broke celibate, as in not a damn thing, not even with myself. And then…” I sigh. “And then, the month before graduation, I did something a little crazy.”
“Uh-oh. Crazier than going Magnum PI on your boyfriend?”
I bob my head side to side. “That’s debatable. I vowed I would erase Jared from my system, and get over him by getting under as many guys as I could, as further revenge. So, I slept with a different guy every single day for a month.”
Franco whistles. “Wow. That’s some interesting revenge.”
I eye him sidelong, watching for his reaction. “Gross, huh?”
He shakes his head. “Nah. I’m in no position to judge. After my divorce from Maria was finalized and I had my own place, I sort of went nuts, too. Brought home a different girl every night, played the single Don Juan, until I got tired of the whole stupid game.”
