Angry God by L.J. Shen

Icame to school every day for the rest of that week.

And on the last day of school, I really fucked it up with Len Lenora. (She is not your fucking girlfriend, ass face.) The air was swollen with mischief and ninety-five degrees. Humidity level: two fucking thousand.

That was SoCal for you. Palm-tree-lined hell.

Everyone was wearing bikinis and swim shorts under their miserable excuses for clothes. Guys skidded on the damp floors, shooting water guns and chasing each other in the hallways, making it difficult to believe they were the sperm that won. Someone had sprayed black paint over the mirrors in the girls’ bathrooms, resulting in hysterical teenyboppers who couldn’t get ready for the traditional school’s-out selfie. And someone else had too much free time, because helium balloons sailed idly across the ceiling, nasty rumors written on them in Sharpie.

Alice Hamlin sucked Vaughn Spencer off in front of her boyfriend.

Hunter Fitzpatrick gave the Lemke twins crabs.

Knight Cole is a virgin.

Lenora Astalis is a creeper.

Re. The. Fuck. Wind.

Even though I hadn’t spoken to her since I chivalrously bled all over her bathroom and hoovered her face into my mouth, I wasn’t down with the idea that some asshole who wasn’t me was going to ruin her last day of school. I still remembered how she tasted—like the black roses in Carlisle’s courtyard would. Delicious, sweet, and fresh, like raindrops on petals.

Like raindrops on petals? Get the fuck out, and take the vagina you grew with you.

I plucked my Swiss knife out of my boot and hurled it at the balloon. It burst noisily, the sound making people in the hallway yelp and jump. The rubber fell at my feet. I picked it up and walked the length of the hall, tucking my knife back into the side of my boot and fingering the material.

“Who’s responsible for this piece of fine art?” I wondered conversationally, looking around as people glued their backs to the lockers.

Some students aimed their phones at my face, recording my unexpected outburst, but no one spoke.

I stopped in the middle of the hallway, sneering. “Well, then, if no one speaks up, I guess it’s time to rate each blow job I’ve been given from freshman year till now. Ya know, for old times’ sake. Fair warning: some of you have failed.”

I took a black Sharpie from my back pocket, uncapping it with my teeth. I put the pen to a locker and started writing Stacee’s name over it when a voice behind me shrieked.

“Bruh! It was just a fucking joke. Chillax.”

Soren Kayden.

If the dictionary had pictures—which, for people like Soren, maybe it should—his blond-bearded, stoner-surfer face would be featured under the word douchebag, complete with his dumb, what-day-is-it-today? expression (Thursday, assclown).

He dealt Oxy and Vicodin so he could feed his gambling addiction and was shadier than a three-dollar bill. He’d once tried to fondle my selective-mute friend, Luna, hoping she wouldn’t tell anyone. Spoiler alert: she did. A week later, he had two implants for teeth because Knight had knocked them out, and I decorated the rest of him with shiners and a forehead scar in the shape of a dick.

I spun, shoving him against the opposite wall of lockers and snapping the torn rubber in his face. He flinched, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing at the red spot on his cheek.

“Ouch! What the fuck!”

“The fuck is you’re a piece of rotten shit.” I stepped on his toes, shifting all my weight onto them, so angry I could kill him.

I shouldn’t have come. Cutting a bitch was already on the menu because I was on edge about the move to England. Soren was just an easy excuse. I wasn’t Lenora’s savior. I wasn’t even her fucking friend. I cared about her ass a little less than I cared about Uncle Dean’s ingrown toenail. If anything, she was corrupted by soft living. Getting pushed around a little was just what the doctor ordered.

By me.

Not anyone else.

Only. Ever. Fucking. Me.

“Throw down at three o’clock!” someone hollered, cupping his mouth.

Knight and Hunter showed up behind me. Soren’s surfer friends rushed in, too, but they stood on the sidelines, too pussy to come at me or my crowd.

“It was a joke!” Soren cried, throwing his arms up defensively.

Arabella hurried to his rescue, blazing toward us in her nine-inch heels and planting a hand on his shoulder. The entire school gathered around us in a circle, glaring.

“Oh, come on, Spence. Since when do you get butthurt over harmless fun? All the rumors on the balloons are true, anyway.”

They weren’t.

Alice never sucked me off in front of her ex-boyfriend, Jason.

The Lemke twins gave Hunter crabs, not vice versa (file under shit I really need to throw into the recycling bin of my brain).

And Lenora Astalis was a lot of things. She was not a creeper, though.

Speaking of, Good Girl peeked out in the sea of faces staring back at us. She wore her hair up in a ponytail, her eyeliner extra thick today. Combat boots like mine, and black skinny jeans with a Stone Roses T-shirt. She looked only mildly interested in the scene, yanking her huge earbuds out of her ears and tucking her Discman into the waistband of her jeans.

Arabella followed my line of sight and plastered a poisonous smile on her pink lips.

“Creeper at three o’clock. What’s up, Good Girl? Is this a figment of my imagination, or did you suck Vaughn off and get a perfect ten, so now he’s your knight in Wal-Mart armor?”

Len’s eyes widened and sliced to mine. She thought I’d told people about our kiss. Maybe worse. Arabella called her Good Girl, but that was a fluke. Truth was, I hadn’t told anyone about her nickname or kissing her. Twice. I would erase both kisses from my memory if I could.

Lenora pretended to laugh. “Don’t flatter yourself. You don’t have brains, much less imagination, Arabella.”

“That’s not a denial.” Arabella popped her finger into her mouth, sucking suggestively.

“You want an official statement?” Len rolled her eyes, folding her arms over her chest. “Fine. I’d never kiss Vaughn Spencer, let alone do anything more with him. I’d rather die than touch him. Happy?”

A dispassionate smirk played on my lips. “Feeling’s mutual, Astalis.”

“Ouch, Spence. That means you defended her pasty ass for nothing. She doesn’t even want you,” Arabella taunted.

Anyone with half a brain could tell from a hundred-mile radius that she was trying to rile me up. That, in itself, didn’t bother me. It was Lenora’s words that pissed me off.

I’d never.

I’d rather die.

Fuck. You.

“Defend?” A smirk curled in the corner of my mouth. “I didn’t defend anyone. The mean-girl bullshit just gets old. And boring.”

“I-I’m not a girl,” Soren pointed out, stuttering.

I threw him a disinterested glance. “But you are a pussy.”

“Liars. Both of you.” Arabella stretched like a kitten, trying to be sexy.

Soren looked between me and Lenny. They were right. If I had a penny for every time I stood up for someone who’d been bullied at school, I wouldn’t be able to afford a fucking used piece of gum.

So why her? She was the only girl at school not to give me mad respect.

“Oh shit, man. I didn’t know she was your girlfriend.” Soren cupped his mouth, his eyes glittering.

He thought she was my weakness. My Achilles heel. He thought wrong.

“She is not my girlfriend.” I yawned.

But Lenora had the poker face of a tablecloth. She was scarlet red and had her fists curled beside her body. Everything about her screamed rattled.

“I hate him,” she said, losing her footing.

It was annoying, but not unwarranted. I took her internship, manipulated her dad, bled all over her bathroom, and threw garbage at her door. It was only a matter of time until she snapped.

“Why would I ever want to be with someone like him?” Lenora shook her head, oblivious to the audience around us. “I despise him in every single way. He is a monster. A cruel bully. A fuck-up.”

Monster.

Cruel bully.

Fuck-up.

I swallowed, but grinned, cocking my head at Arabella.

See?my humorless smile said. No love lost here.

“Hmm. Still unconvinced. Prove it.” Arabella jutted one hip out, pushing her breasts in my direction, even though we were standing a few feet apart.

“You act like I give a fuck what people think. That is very unbecoming for someone who is not a complete idiot. You know what the word unbecoming means, right, Arabella? And idiot? I’m sure you’re familiar with that word, too.”

Arabella blushed under her five coatings of makeup and insecurities, but didn’t break character. She knew how to fake it—unlike Lenora, who was too real for her own good.

“Why don’t I suck your cock in front of Emma Watson’s Goth twin? Let’s see if you caught feelings. It’s been long overdue, anyway. You did take me on a family vacation, did you not?”

Fucking Indiana.

Everyone in my family was on my case after that. Nobody bought our relationship. They all wondered who I was trying to piss off.

Myself, I wanted to scream. I deserve a piece of shit like Arabella, so that’s who I invited.

Arabella’s lifelong goal was sucking my cock. She put more effort into her cause than most researchers working to cure cancer. Unfortunately, her sheer desire to please me made her a boner-slaughterer of the highest degree. I’d get turned on by a baboon trying to lick its own armpit before considering dipping my dick into her mouth.

But Arabella didn’t only want to suck me off. She also wanted to hurt Lenora, who never bowed down to her Queen B status and had slapped her at her own party.

I happened to have a dog in this fight, too.

Good Girl thought she was too good for me. Maybe she was right, but it was time to teach her a lesson. I was going to take every single thing she loved and cared about. Not because she interested me, of course, but because she was a means to an end. A way to get what I wanted.

Both kisses had been mistakes.

The first one, in the janitor’s room, was to calm her the fuck down and prove a point—that I could have her if I wanted her.

The second one was human error.

I was drunk, busted up like a piñata, and she was there, piecing me back together. Literally. Not metaphorically. I refused to grow a vagina like Knight, who was a total fucking goner for Luna, the girl next (to his) door.

I wasn’t going to make a third mistake, and the sooner Lenora knew that, the less chance I’d have to gain another pathetic stalker.

Plus, it fucked me up to think I hadn’t gone all the way with Alice in the janitor’s room. I always went all the way, and Lenora couldn’t continue screwing shit up for me.

“Spen-cer! Spen-cer! Spen-cer! Spen-cer!” People threw their balled fists in the air, chanting in the circle formed around us.

It was nine o’clock in the morning, and way too goddamn early for anything that wasn’t coffee and a bullet to the head. But Arabella wanted to suck me off, and everybody wanted to see it.

I glanced at Good Girl. Her eyes glittered with rage. She’d never witnessed me getting a blow job. Yet.

Her eyes said, Don’t you dare.

Mine answered, Fuck off.

Students cupped their mouths, barking, howling, snickering between them. It was one last hurrah before I pissed off from this town for good. Why not?

I pushed the tip of my boot toward Arabella.

“Kiss it first.”

This was where it was supposed to end. I didn’t think she’d do it. Arabella had a reputation to uphold. But I’d underestimated how far she would go to hurt Lenora. She strutted her way to me on her studded heels, stopping when we were toe-to-toe. She sank to her knees, placing her glossy lips on the tip of my muddied boot.

Everybody took pictures of that shit. I looked between Lenora and Arabella. There was a story behind this, more than just this BJ.

This wasn’t about riding someone’s dick. No. This was personal.

Revenge.

What did Lenora do to Arabella?

I glanced at Astalis with a smirk. Her expression made me want to throw up, but she said nothing.

Step forward and end this, my eyes challenged her. She looked like fire, radiating heat from across the room with her gaze alone.

But she didn’t move an inch. She just watched and let it happen.

Arabella looked up, grinning at me in triumph.

“Unzip, Spence.” She put her hand to my crotch. I swatted it away.

“If I don’t come, you won’t be able to show your face in this town again,” I warned.

Why the fuck did Lenora pretend to care? She said she’d never be with me, and meant it. But now she looked like she’d kill me if I went through with it. Which, naturally, made me want to do it even more.

“Daddy bought my way into a fancy school already. After that, I’m probably headed to Miami. Cali is so basic these days.”

Everybody laughed. Everybody other than one girl.

“Soren, Hunter, guard for teachers.” Knight sighed, rubbing his eyes tiredly. He always had my back. He shot me a glance, shaking his head. “You’re such an asshole, V. I’m just waiting for a bitch to bring you down. Hopefully she’ll stab your ass in the process.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time, Cole.” I smirked.

When Arabella’s lips touched my dick, I realized it was real, and it was happening. Fortunately, my cock was hard from the prospect of moving something in the little English Rose’s chest. Her defiance infuriated me. Her rejection angered me. And I still wanted to fuck her up a little before we moved to England, make sure she was sufficiently mortified.

I looked at Lenora with my most unaffected expression, locking eyes with her as Arabella’s head bobbed back and forth at my waist for everyone to see and laugh at.

She stared right back at me. But this time, her face said something else. War.

I heard Arabella sucking and moaning around my shaft and hardened more as I stared at Lenora, imagining it was her lips on me.

Submitting.

Cowering.

Raising the white flag.

There was noise around us. So much noise. Yet somehow, I could hear her silence clearly. Loudly. The way she digested everything.

“Push me, Vaughn, and I’ll push harder. I’m not the same girl you threatened in Carlisle Castle,” she’d warned after she stitched me up. I believed her.

“Do your worst,” I said out loud, looking straight at her, ignoring Arabella as she tried her hardest to get me to come. I couldn’t even feel her.

Lenora smiled, but the fire in her eyes was out.

This was the one war England was not going to win.