Knocked Up By the Russian Boss by Bella King

Chapter 6

IVORY

“Ivy, you’re being lame as fuck right now!”

“My name is Ivory!”

The guy who pressured me into drinking another beer has been following me around this party for the last two hours. Every time I look for my friends, he attempts to start a conversation about nothing, something I don’t care about, or something he knows I’m unfamiliar with in order to keep it one-sided. I’ve tried dozens of times to lose him, but he’s relentless. If he was a nice person or at least less belligerent, it would be sweet. But he isn’t.

“We’re all going skinny dipping in the lake down the hill. You want to be the only person watching from the beach?” he asks, masking his contempt for me through a filter of feigned concern. “We just don’t want you to be lonely up there.”

I’ve always been considerably more modest with my appearance and my body than any of my friends have. Even in high school, I would change for gym class in one of the bathroom stalls instead of the communal locker area. I was teased mercilessly for it, but at the end of the day, I never had to worry about what anybody could say about me.

It was an elite prep school full of spoiled, bulimic volleyball players who would have done anything to have a new target to absorb their boredom and self-hatred. I didn’t have nearly enough mental fortitude to handle that.

“Ivory, please-uh!” whines the familiar voice of Drunk Courtney from behind me.

You know this asshole? I think to myself, unsurprised but a little embittered that she would allow this creep to stalk me all night.

“We haven’t done anything fun together in like three months,” she continues.

“I’ve been busy with school,” I reply, a little more loudly than I had anticipated. My face flushes from embarrassment, but Courtney is too drunk to notice. Her refusal to accept my commitment to my degree has been weighing me down a lot lately. Not everybody went to college just to get laid and do drugs.

Courtney has donned her bratty pout face, something that has always nauseated me regardless of my level of intoxication. I just know that she uses it to get what she wants from everyone, like Tommy and her dad.

“God, fine,” I relent.

My stomach twists into knots as I realize that this entire party is going to see me completely naked. Nobody ever has before. It feels selfish, really. I’m so concerned with the fact that other people will see me when none of them even know or care about me. Somehow that makes it even worse. I just want to fucking go home.

As everyone begins to make their way over to the little sand patch at the base of the hill, I fight the urge to vomit on myself, rendering my whole existence unsexy and irrelevant to the aesthetic of the hillside beach party. I hear some broken glass crack under my shoes, heightening my anxiety to the point of trembling.

Courtney begins removing her crop top and jeans sloppily, almost tossing them into the water by accident as she giggles hysterically. She can be so embarrassing to be around sober, and intoxication just adds more layers.

Her breasts hang perfectly from her chest as she removes her bra, a single infected nipple piercing glinting in the moonlight. She should probably not be swimming in the lake with that, but what do I know?

The pushy guy from before, Chad, takes off his shirt, and of course, he has an eight-pack lined side to side with tribal tattoos. In a better mood, this kind of thing might excite me somehow, but right now, all it does is amplify my insecurity. Why does everybody here need to be so fucking perfect?

Removing my own bra feels like it takes a millennia, like I’m moving in slow motion, and everybody is waiting for me to finish.

As I glance around, I realize that nobody is even looking in my direction, which eases my fears a bit. My bra comes off, and immediately, Chad howls at me loudly, attracting the attention of everybody within a five-mile radius.

Anonymity was a nice thought, I guess.

I fight the urge to cross my arms over my chest, to hide myself. If I’m going to do this, I need to play it off as something that doesn’t have me on the verge of passing out.

As I slide my panties off, I feel some of my apprehension replaced by raw, primal shame, somehow arousing me in the worst way possible. My labia swell a bit at the thought of being seen stripped bare this way. Maybe all the guys would want a taste, having to conceal themselves from their girlfriends.

I snap myself out of my depraved fantasy. Who is this person who just took over my brain? I’ve never even had sex before.

Courtney shambles into the water like a three-legged pitbull, squealing as soon as the water hits her. “It’s freezing!” she screams, her voice traveling across the water and slamming into the rock formations at the other end of the lake.

I instinctively glance back, anxious to see cops shining flashlights over the hill and bathing my body in harsh, white light.

A firm push from behind sends me toppling forward, and I nearly lose my footing on a smooth stone as I fall. I catch myself, my heart beating a million miles an hour as I gaze down into the black water below me.

Chad laughs from behind me.

Alright, asshole, I’m going in.

Everybody else has already descended into the deeper parts of the lake as I begin to wade in. What if we lose somebody? How would we know with so many drunken college students in the middle of the night? The thought makes me sick.

Regardless of my manifold anxieties, I carry on into the water, relieved to be at least partially concealed by the blackened depths. Just as I’ve started to find my footing and regain my confidence, Chad makes his way over, and before I have the sense to casually swim away, I can feel him touching my leg.

“Hey, fuck off,” I exclaim, this time with as much intent as I could muster.

Chad doesn’t react.

Despite the frigid temperature of the water, I can feel my blood boiling hot as my patience thins. “Leave me alone, you fucking psycho.”

He recoils. “Jesus, I was just trying to have fun. Didn’t realize you were going to be such a little bitch about it,” he replies, putting his hands up as if I’ve apprehended him with a gun instead of telling him to give me space. His reaction is so typical of men like him; poking and prodding and slithering into a woman’s personal space and then playing the wounded victim when he gets bit.

I glare at him. I’m not having any more of his bullshit. I’ve already put up with enough as is.

“You know what? Fuck you too, princess,” he continues, nearly hissing at me as he starts to leave the water.

I could scream. After all of the mental effort I made to be left alone, to be stripped naked in front of a group of people I don’t know, he has the goddamn balls to decide that the game is over, actually, and he would like to leave. It’s been on his terms the entire night.

He isn’t the only one leaving the water. One girl pukes a couple of times, and that kind of kills the mood for everybody. It’s only been around thirty minutes before everybody starts to leave, and within five, they were all gone.

I quickly wade out of the water and put my clothes back on, reveling in the return to my comfort zone, even if my dress is now wet and full of sand.

“Courtney! Where did Tommy park the car?” I ask, hoping for an answer in the sea of darkness surrounding me.

No answer.

“Courtney!”

Courtney is nowhere to be seen. The only person I recognize is the girl who vomited in the water, lying on her side in the grass and muttering something to herself about Costco. Part of me is compelled to stay with her, but my phone had died while I was swimming, and my own drunken state made me less than helpful.

I look around.

All my friends are gone.