Page 73 of Caution Tape

I hide my smile.Oh Natalie, it’s going to be so fun watching you die.

“We’re not together,” I tell her. “Not exactly. I think I… interest him, and that’s it. I’m the exciting, crazy girl, you know. Compared to you.” I gesture at her. “You’ve got it all together. You’ll make a fine Martha Stewart clone, whatever. Me. I’m… a little off. And he likes that, for now.”

She nods feverishly. “So, do I wait? Do I try to make him jealous by seeing someone else? I don’t know what to do.”

“You could. Or…” I cock my head to the left, like the idea is just hitting me. “You could show him that you’re exciting. A little dangerous. Crazy, even.”

Her brows furrow. “What do you mean?”

I can see why Nolan put up with her. It’s easy to lead her around, to lay traps and watch her stumble into them. “Sex, Natalie. He’s using me for some of the weirdest, kinkiest sex. We fucked in the woods the other day.”

Her mouth drops to a thin line and for a moment. Her eyes become slits. She looks feline, almost feral in her barely concealed rage. For that brief flash she’s very attractive.

“What I’m saying,” I soothe, “is that if you surprise him with something like that, he might see a different side of you and want you back.” I pause, then line up the shot that Iknowwill reel her in. “If you give him the night of his life, you’ll never get rid of him.”

That’s what everyone wants, right? A homogeneous blob of a relationship. Someone stuck to your fucking skin, melded into you like two colors of Play-Doh smashed together. Someone to inhale your foul breath in the morning and deal with how awful, irritatingly human you are.

“What should I do?” Natalie’s tone is flat. Low. She’s pissed at me, but now I see something else. The good girl who gets all the best grades is competitive. She wants to win. She wants to take Nolan, rip him right out of my hands.

I almost tell her. I almost tell her about Nolan burying his face between my legs, moaning in pleasure at just the taste of me.

Even better, I almost tell her about him hugging me. Thanking me for unleashing him.

“We’ve been having threesomes,” I say.

“So you’re just a whore,” she blurts out, waiting for me to react. But I don’t. I examine the lines in my palms like I’ve never seen them before. “That’s why he likes you.”

I shrug. “At least I’m not boring.”

“And I am?”

“He dumped you, didn’t he?”

“I hate girls like you,” she snarls, wiping away an escaped tear.

“Ditto.”

“I know every guy wants to do it with two girls but—“

“Nope,” I cut her off. “It was Nolan, another guy, and me.”

Her mouth falls open. “Oh.”

I resist the urge to blow her a kiss. Natalie just makes you want to be awful to her, doesn’t she?

“Nolan’s really generous like that. I was thinking of paying him back with a girl. What do you say?”

Uncertainty etches itself across her face. This is going further than she’d ever imagined. The conversation, the one she’d rehearsed, has gotten away from her. But now it’s something exciting, and there’s a chance to get her precious Nolan back. All she has to do is be a little slutty… like me.

“I guess I could try that,” she sniffles. “We would have to sit down and discuss rules and boundaries first—“

“No. None of that bullshit. I’m going to give you an address. You will be there at 9 p.m. You will dress in a black corset. Black boots. You will wear a mask that covers your face. Do you understand?”

She laughs. “Oh-kay, chill out with the dominatrix vibe.”

I immediately stand up. I scribble Michael’s address on one of the napkins and slide it over to her. I’m enjoying this; this power.

“If you do not show up, I’m going to fuck him so good he will forget you ever existed.”

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