I fumble around in my purse for the room key, Rey opens the door before I even find it. She is frowning at me.

“Hey, sorry, so sorry. I got held up.” I quickly push past her and walk in.

“Sure you did, just like all the other times you got “held up” She air quotes.

Okay, so she is pissed. Whoops, I guess I found out how many times I can blow her off before she gets pissed.

“You smell like sex and weed.” She points out.

“Do I?” I quickly get a change of clothes for the shower.

“Was she even good?” She clips her words.

“No, not really.” I shrug before heading into the restroom.

Who cares if she’s pissed at me, I’m still pissed at her. Fucker. Let’s go to Cali Scarlet, it will be fun, I’ll show you around. Yeah right! more like let’s go to Cali so I can ditch you in search of my ex, which I do all the time by the way. And maybe I’ll convince her to finally take me back. Asshole.

I turn the shower on and wait for the water to warm up.

She walks in and has her arms crossed. Look at her trying to look all holyer than thou. What a shit head.

“What?” I snap at her.

“Nothing.” She turns to leave.

Oh no she doesn’t.

I grab her and pull her into me.

“Fuck you,” she says.

“Payback is a bitch.” I lick her ear.

“I didn’t sleep with her!” she says.

“But you would have had I not walked in. Therefore I believe we are even, besides ex’s carry a lot more baggage than my one night stand.”

“Whatever.” She tries to pull free.

“Nu-uh, you are mine now.” I kiss her neck.

She shudders.

“Take a shower with me.” I pull her towards the shower.

“If you were here earlier we could have, but I already took a shower. You snooze you lose.” She pulls free.

I pout after her. What a tease.

She looks me up and down before biting her lip and going to bed.

“Asshole I know you want to!” I call after her.

“I don’t know I’m pretty tired. I might fall asleep before you get out of the shower. But if you hurry…”

Shit, what a tease.

I quickly strip and jump under the warm stream of water. I hear her chuckling. That little shit head. I will finally have sex with her before we leave if it’s the last thing I do. I wash the remanents of Isabel’s sweat off of me as well as the stench of weed. When I am done I quickly get dressed and walk into the room. Rey is laying on the bed flipping through channels on the Tv.

I crawl into bed next to her.

“Come on, stop teasing me.” I pull her into my arms.

“Stop yanking me around.” She turns the tv off.

“You started it.” I point out.

She sighs as we lay in the dark.

“I don’t want to have that kind of relationship with you.” She says.

“Emm, you should know before we agree to anything that I am a very petty person. You piss me off, you can bet your ass I am going to do something equally as bad if not worse to piss you off right the fuck back. I got off work early to finally spend time with you, I did not expect to find you lying naked on top of your ex about to get it on. That was a real shit head thing to do.”

“I love her. I really do. After you ran her off she called me and cussed me out, told me she was only using me to get back at her new girlfriend. Once a cheater, always a cheater, I guess. Anyways I learned my lesson and I’ve been feeling very shitty about it since. I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“You should have told me your ex lived around here, that you had ulterior motives all along. I thought you came here for me, not for yourself. As if this whole experience wasn’t shitty enough you really piled it on thick you know that?”

“I’m sorry. If it makes you feel better my experience has been equally as shitty.”

“That does not make me feel better.” I hold her tighter.

She turns in my arms so that her head is resting on my chest.

“How many times have you thought about her today?” she asks.

“Who?”

“You know who.”

Too many.

“Scarlet.” She demands when I don’t say anything.

“A lot. I lost count.”

“Are you even ready to move on?” She sighs.

No.

“You said it yourself, the pain never goes away.”

“Let’s stay here, let’s never go back. We can run away together.”

My heart flips around at this.

“Not you too.” I frown.

“I hate my family, I hate my life. I just want to be with someone who wants to be with me.”

“Even if I wanted to stay here, which I don’t, my job would look for me. My mom would look for me, and so would my friends who are currently here in California I might add. I wouldn’t be able to get away. They would find me. You and I would never be free.”

“It just seems like everyone here has it better. The grass is always greener, the sun is always shining.”

“Don’t believe that for a second. The people here are just as miserable as the people everywhere else. I’ve seen it firsthand. You can’t fall into that trap. If you do you’ll be stuck here forever. Before I came here I had this fantastical idea about what living my dream would be like. Now I am not so sure that’s even what I want to do anymore. The whole experience has been a bit more than I can handle. I really just want to go home to my apartment and sit in my big closet and rock myself to sleep, forget this whole nightmare ever happened.”

“Was it all that bad?”

“Not everything, there were a few good moments.” I pinch her side.

She giggles.

“Tomorrow will be our last day here, I want to spend it with you. I don’t have work so we can do whatever the hell we want. What do you say?”

“Sounds great to me.” she smiles into me.

“Good, now if you stop yanking me around, I’ll stop yanking you around and maybe we can finally get somewhere with all this sexual tension between us.”

“What sexual tension? You know I think that’s all in your head.” She teases.

“Yeah right, I saw you watching me change the other day. Not to mention when you “accidentally” walked in on my shower. You ain’t fooling no one.”

She giggles.

I run my hands up and down her back. She moves to get more comfortable.

“Let’s have sex,” I say.

“No. not yet. I don’t want to sleep with you right after you just fucked some skank.”

“That skank is a world-renowned model thank you very much.”

“That doesn’t help your case.”

“Fine, I’ll wait. Besides I have a headache, her boobs were like rocks. I swear she almost knocked me out with them.”

She busts out into laughter.

“She did! I swear. She should put a warning sign on those things. Caution, rock slide ahead.”

“Stop, you’re bad.” She laughs.

“I’ll do better teacher, honest.” I tease.

“You better or I’m giving you detention.”

“We’ll see who gives who detention.” I kiss her cheek.

“Night.” She snuggles deeper into me.

“Night my ray of sunshine.”

She laughs.

“Too corny?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll work on it.”

She kisses me lightly on the lips before laying her head on my chest and getting ready to fall asleep. I pull the blankets over us and close my eyes. I want my last thought to be of Rey, but instead, my last thought before I fall asleep is,

In less than a few days I will be face to face with Maddison again.

I wonder if she will hate me.