Petty Rage by Thandiwe Mpofu

Chapter 2

NOAH

Past

ME: Just so we’re fucking clear, you and I don’t know each other.

Stormy Stalker: How did you get my number?

ME: Just like you sleepwalk, I dreamt it.

Stormy Stalker: Do you even sleep?

ME: Every now and then…

Present

The road to hell is paved with fake, fucked up goodintentions.

I should know, I’ve spent my fucking entire life doing my fucking best to be good. Well, as good as I’ll ever be.

The thing is, that word was marked the day I was born but after tonight and what I plan to do, there’ll be no fucking doubt in anyone’s mind that I’m a fucking asshole. And I’m not even sorry.

Everyone thinks they fucking know me.

They think they know my story. That they know what I’m all about.

They would’ve been right, if this was fucking ten years ago before the biggest clusterfuck hit my life like a tidal wave of the fucking century, erasing all traces of humanity in me.

After all the blows I’ve taken, I’m pretty fucking sure I’m no longer a person with a damn soul or a working conscience for that matter because if I did, I wouldn’t be here right now with a plan for disaster ready to go the moment I spot her.

See, I no longer have the ability to tell right from wrong. It’s all one and the same now.

And forget about forgiveness and amnesty! Life’s been bashing at my door and serving me shit. It’s high time I reigned down hell on this world in retaliation.

Only weak ass punks take punches and smile about it. I should know, I was one before.

Craig decided to leave me and made sure that I’d be the one to find him, a big FUCK YOU to my face because now, all I see whenever I sleep is his half blown out head.

I let my own fucking best friends lie to me, keep secrets from me, treat me like I’m a fucking retard and then turn around and tell me it was all for my good.

One of them, fucking George, faked a death which precipitated a fuck load of crappy events that brought up crazy revelations and death.

His was fake. True death and loss were felt more acutely by my other best friend.

Even though King was an asshole, I wouldn’t wish the pain of loss on him, especially when he had to share that loss with Astraea, all because of her twin brother, George.

Then there’s the last asshole. The one who kept a monumental fucking part of his life a secret. Now, it’s as if I don’t even know the guy at all, which is laughable because he’s currently babysitting me right now.

“Remind me again, what time are you kicking rocks?” I snap, after an hour of cold silence between us.

“When you leave, I’ll leave,” he says, looking completely unbothered as he leans back in the couch, with one leg crossed over the other like a freaking God.

“I didn’t invite you to tag along.”

“Lucky enough for me, I don’t give a shit whether you want me here or not,” Emmett says in that low baritone of his. If you heard his voice in a dark alley, you’d shit your fucking pants.

“Why are you here?”

“You’ve got that look in your eyes.”

I roll my eyes, reaching for my drink. We’re sitting on opposite sides, with a leather-bound table with a stripper poll on it between us, which is to say, this isn’t a regular club that silent, brooding assholes like Emmett Easton are comfortable in.

The god of secrets doesn’t do seedy, strip clubs.

While I’m drinking rum and coke like water, he’s been drinking a fucking club soda, watching me the entire time.

“What fucking look?” I demand.

“That look.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Shocker,” he mumbles. “You know, the day you quit acting stupid when caught in your mischief will be the day this world ends in fire.”

“That’s so funny, give me a second to find a laugh for that.”

“That was dry,” he fires right back. “Even for you.”

We stare at each other.

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t the first time Emmett and I have gone to a bar together.

I mean, since Astraea left Westbrook Blues for good over two years ago, and King followed literally hours after we graduated high school, Emmett and I’ve been partying it up together.

Hell, we go to the same college now and live in a huge fucking penthouse off-campus together, but he’s never been up my fucking ass like he is right now.

He’s always on his side of the penthouse, spending hours in his fucking lair, listening to sad, dying man music.

Sometimes, I feel sorry for him but then I remind myself that there’s no way I’m going to lose him too, so I remind him about how life is kinda worth living even though it fucking sucks, by riling him up.

“What is it that you want?” I mutter, rolling my eyes.

“Me? I don’t want anything.”

“You know, you don’t have enough guaranteed heartbeats in that fucking chest to be lying right now,” I taunt. He doesn’t even flinch.

“As opposed to your newfound specialty?”

An impasse.

We reach it constantly when we both decide to go at each other’s throat. But neither one of us has ever backed down. That’s just not us.

“What the fuck does that mean?” I demand, lowering my voice as I stare at my roommate—the highest honor I can give him right now.

“Again, just like whatever scheme you’re brewing in that head of yours, you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

I do. But that doesn’t mean I’ll admit it.

After all, my newfound specialty, as he so delicately put it, is being a lying jerk with anger issues.

Especially today.

Today was the beginning of Hell Day, marking ten fucking years since Craig blew his own fucking brains out.

I never used to be like this.

Well to be honest, I’ve been the kind of jerk that fucks girls—always made them cum at least twice, so don’t fucking judge me—and then never calls them again.

I prank people and then die laughing at their expense until they start crying. I was that kind of jerk, but I’ve never been one to lie.

I used to hate lying, until the one person who promised me she’d never fucking lie to me… did.

Don’t get me wrong. She wasn’t the only one.

King was almost the same way, but in his own way, he wasn’t a liar—which, let’s be honest, is pretty fucking shocking.

Emmett, well, he’s always been blunt about everything so him keeping secrets about his health has been a big fucking blow to the gut.

And George, well, that motherfucker is now persona non grata to me after the Hollywood sized stunt he pulled.

To put it simply, I’m not the naïve sad boy I used to be.

“That’s all nice and grand but you should leave now.” Emmett just stares at me. I get the message loud and fucking clear. “If you don’t leave, I’ll leave.”

“Something tells me you’ll leave right after you do whatever the hell it is you’ve planned to do here tonight.”

“The only plan I have, dearest Emmett, is to get shitfaced.” I give him my best fuck off smile that he just shrugs off, completely unbothered.

“You’re always shitfaced.”

“Then I want to go all out.”

“You always go all the way out. Even when you’re not supposed to.” He isn’t wrong. I always do the most these days. “I’m surprised J.D. isn’t your drink of choice tonight.”

Ahh, now J.D. is the shit.

I’m pretty fucking sure that sixty fucking percent of my body is made up of my favorite friend, Jack Daniels.

He keeps me warm when I mostly feel like the chill that set in my bones right after my thirteenth birthday would finally take me out.

He did all the heavy lifting, numbing out the unmentionables that I don’t deign give a name to because it doesn’t matter.

Nothing fucking matters and that’s a fact that I used to run from.

Which is where the ‘they-think-they-know-me’ fucked up part comes in.

I spent half my life—if not more—trying to paint myself with bright fucking colors.

The neon threads I wore were not just for fucking show—though I eat that shit up too—it was a poor attempt by a miserable shithead of trying to be a cheery person who could shake shit off his shoulders.

I failed at that.

But that’s not all I failed at.

“Is there something wrong with switching it up?”

“For normal people, no,” Emmett says. “But for you, I’d say you’re a few ticks away from getting your ass into some fucking trouble.”

What did it matter that I was out trolling for trouble tonight? It’s none of his fucking business but here he was, annoying the fuck out of me the one night I need to be alone.

“Who told you to babysit me?” I demand.

He decides to act Sunday School dumb and innocent with me.

“Well, you can tell whoever the fuck it was that I said a big fucking FUCK YOU!” I seethe.

See, this is the shit I hate about my friends.

They treat me like I’m the one who’s a few screws loose in the head and need protecting. Protecting from myself and my own fucking actions.

“People should really learn how to mind their own fucking business,” I seethe. “It’s not like my life is falling apart.”

“You think aspiring to be an alcoholic with a seriously fucked up moral compass isn’t the definition of falling apart?”

“Since when have either of us had a moral compass?” I deadpan.

He mulls it over for a second. “You’re right about that but still, it’s this new, over the top reckless behavior that has me in this fucking club, watching you like a damn child.”

“So what are you going to do, Emmett? Are you going to child proof this fucking strip club?”

“In a manner of speaking,” he mutters, watching with a disinterested eye as some girls saunter into the room, scantily clad in some heavy BDSM type shit. “What is this?”

I smirk.

See, Emmett does things on his own time. No one in this fucking world can rush him—well, no one apart from maybe Astraea, and definitely the girl he’s lying to himself about not having feelings for.

“A show.”

“That’s not the show you came here for,” he says with a frown.

He’s right but what I want to happen won’t happen without this show.

“Why else do people come to strip clubs, Emmett? To sit in silence and reflect on the last book they read?”

“If you read more than you do now, you’d find that revenge schemes will find a way to backfire in your face.”

“Revenge schemes, huh?” I seethe. “How quickly you forgot what happened last Christmas.”

He visibly tenses in his seat and gives me his famous ice-cold stare.

After all these years of knowing the guy, I swear there are days when I think I’m a bit scared of him. See, unlike King whose anger you can see from a mile away, Emmett is silent—with everything. You don’t see him until it’s too late and you’re lying flat on your back, bleeding and groaning from the pain of a heavy-handed blow.

“I haven’t forgotten,” he grits out.

“Really? Because if I were you, I’d be out there hunting my own father who wants my friends dead.” I know I’m pushing it, but like he said, I’m reckless. “Better yet, why don’t you join George in that Phoenix Corp bullshit he lied about? You’d be an invaluable asset.”

If looks could kill, I’d be a stone-cold corpse on the floor of a strip club by now.

“I think I’m fine right where I am, thanks though,” Emmett says sarcastically. “But since we’re on the subject of what we should do, why aren’t you picking up your mother’s calls?”

Fuck.

Now even he knows I’ve been ghosting my mother. Fuck you, King!

It’s not that I don’t want to talk to my mother. I love her to death.

It’s just, I know there’s something she’s been keeping from me and well, I no longer subscribe to that particular newsletter of half-truths and empty assurances.

There was once a time when I desperately wanted to be the son who kept his fragile, hella fucking toxic family together.

I cracked the jokes, I tried keeping the peace, just so I could see a smile on my mother’s face. Maybe then, she’d stop hiding in the cellar, drinking her broken heart away.

If I made a fool out of myself more, then my brother would laugh and engage with me instead of drowning in his head from all the hate and ridicule he was getting all because of who he was attracted to or not.

If I’d kept the peace in the house, then my father wouldn’t have…

Ha! What a fucking idiot.

There was a time when I’d answer my mother’s calls without fail, but that time is gone. And to be fucking clear, we’ve never shared this day at all.

My mother was always away and I… well, I found ways of celebrating Craig’s birthday all by my-fucking-self by destroying something or people.

It just so happens that tonight, I came for her.

“You’re ticking again.”

I take another swig of my drink, gulping it down as the girls start to dance. It’s fucking showtime.

I reach over and press the button for a server, knowing the manager will do as I directed him.

“I know you heard what I said,” Emmett presses.

You know what the downside of being richer than a fucking continent is? You can’t shut up another asshole who’s equally as rich as you. Especially if they’re practically like your brother.

Despite being in a fucking loud-ass seedy club, with techno music switching from one hit to another, I can hear the shithead sitting across from me, judging me with his silent words. Hell, I can fucking hear the fucker breathe. Damn this VIP room to hell!

“I know you know I’m trying to ignore you,” I murmur.

Emmett Easton might have a fucking heart condition that makes me fucking weary of each day that comes—because no one knows when he might drop dead—but don’t get it twisted, he’s still a stormy, brooding god.

His hearing is pretty fucking stellar but his presence here today when all I want is to be alone…

“Why did you come with me?” I demand.

“Do I need a reason?”

“The disgust on your face is making the girls nervous. Cut it out and let them dance.”

I unroll my band of Benjamins and start flashing them at the girls. They start squealing annoyingly, but I pretend it’s all good.

I give them my best charming smile to ease them up, but I’m not really paying attention to what they’re doing.

One is swinging around the pole, two others are trying to finger each other in front me, and another is trying to get Emmett’s attention despite the permanent frown on his face.

One look at Emmett and they all back up, but only barely.

“This is my regular face,” Emmett says, sipping his club soda like a fucking wimp.

“No. You look fucking constipated. There’s a private bathroom at the back. And don’t worry, they also have baby wipes. I know how particular you are about your billion-dollar tush.”

I shoot him my best smile, but even I can feel how brittle, hard and fake it is. Today just isn’t the fucking day for all this bullshit.

“I guess you frequent this fine establishment often, then?” He cocks his eyebrow at me, and I almost spit my drink all over my custom-made Balenciaga leather jacket.

“Fine establishment? What the fuck?” I croak.

“What?” he demands, with an impassive, expressionless face.

“Who talks like that?”

“Normal people.”

“Nah, you’re not fucking normal.” I wave my empty glass at him. “You’re reaching new heights of douchebag.”

Emmett cocks his head to the left, his eyes narrowed now on my bestie. “As opposed to your screwed up determination to kill yourself?”

Well then.

“Fuck you!” I murmur, looking away as I take another swig just to rub it in his fucking face. “I’m enjoying a drink as one does when one frequents this establishment,” I mock.

“You think so?” he counters. “Does that alcohol help with the ticking?”

No, it doesn’t. What will help is if she fucking walks through the doors like I anticipate her to in the next minute or so.

The unmentionables are out to fucking play tonight. I can feel the burning and chill, both rushing through my fucking veins, taking root like acid being poured in all my cuts and wounds.

I look away from him. Maybe I need another drink. I should order another one. I reach forward and press the button for service.

“Never thought I’d see the day when you became suicidal.”

Everything flips in the blur of eye.

I’m out of my seat and in his fucking face in a second. Strippers jump back as I charge for my best friend, but he doesn’t so much as flinch.

This is what he wanted after all.

A reaction.

With all the fucking effort in the world, I reach over with a slightly trembling hand and fix his fucking shirt collar with rough movements.

“Emmett, I respect you, you’re my brother,” I seethe so low only he can hear me. “But if I were you, you fucking god of nothing,” I growl dangerously. “I’d watch my mouth. It might be the reason you die, not your blotched up heart.”

He gives me an equally arctic stare right back, but I know he’s ready for anything. Emmett always is, no matter what time of night or day it is.

“You done threatening me?”

“I might have a whiskey brain but make no mistake, that wasn’t a threat.”

Suicide is my fucking trigger and the fucked up thing is, now Emmett knows it too.

Pulling back, I walk back to my seat as calmly as I can, impatience starting to take over.

“Where the fuck is the server with my drinks?” I hiss at one of the strippers.

She scrambles to get up and rush out the room.

“The way you’re clutching that bottle with a white knuckled grip, chugging that shit down like you want to drown yourself.” That sounds good, but I’m against offing oneself. At least have the dignity of having someone else do it for you. “But you don’t really want that, do you? You just want to cause mayhem and chaos.”

“And why would I want to do that?” I say sarcastically. “Is there a law that says I can’t come to a bar, order my drinks as I get entertained like an adult?”

“Maybe just the law of common fucking sense, Noah,” he snaps in that low tone of his. “And don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Humor me, Emmet. What am I doing?”

“You’re looking around like you’re a fucking suspect… ergo, you’re ticking.”

It’s as he says all that shit that I notice he’s right. I’ve been fidgety for a while now, and here I thought I was doing my best to be like him.

Stoic and impassive.

Big fucking fail.

“You know, all I wanted tonight was to have a drink and unwind. I didn’t see myself solving your freaking riddles or explaining myself for that matter.”

“Really? Maybe let’s break it down for your current level of intellect, shall we?” he mocks. “Why would anyone fidget and look around this fucking dirty, seedy bar?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Have you met you? You’re dressed in a five-thousand-dollar leather jacket with a fucking fairy on the back—which is the only expensive shit you have on you right now—you’re wearing a fucking pair of black faded jeans and a torn up black tee that I’m pretty sure you got from a Salvation Army donation box.”

“A thrift store in SoHo, New York, actually.”

“Right,” he says. “You’re not here to be the fucking go all out and get shitfaced, you’d have dressed up better for that. You’re here to cause a fucking scene.”

“Maybe that person—who isn’t me—is a drug dealer looking around because they’re expecting someone.”

“Finally, some honesty from you and speak of the devil,” the jerk says, looking over my shoulder with a glint in his eyes. “Kimberly! What a lovely surprise seeing you here!”

And right on cue, the hairs at the back of my fucking neck stand on end. I feel my body tense up as the air feels like it’s crackling.

“Emmett!” a sultry voice exclaims from behind me. “Hey you handsome god! It’s so good to see you.”

Urgh, the slight genuine joy in her voice is obviously there because she hasn’t seen me yet.

And she genuinely likes Emmett. I mean why not, he’s not the one she fucking broke.

The douchebag has the audacity to get up, ever the gentleman, and enfolds her in his cannon arms like they’re old-time friends.

My jaw drops to the floor as I stare at him. He winks at me.

“It’s good to see you as well, Kimberly,” he says without a trace of the annoyance he’s been serving me all night. “How have you been?”

Since when is being nice to the girl that not only broke me, but backstabbed all of us when we found out who she really was, okay on God’s green earth?

First, she was accepted back into the inner circle like she fucking belonged there, hell, she was even at that fucked up Christmas cabin—which I’m still reeling from—and now, Emmett, who has his own load of crap, is being nice to her AND even hugs her?

Motherfucker, since when do you ask people how they’re doing?

“I’m doing well,” she says huskily, as she pulls back. “God, you’re the last person I thought would come to a place like this.”

“Same, love,” the bastard says, then glances at me. “I didn’t know you work here.”

“Now you do,” she says but she still hasn’t noticed me. “Out for a wild night?”

“Something like that,” Emmett says, his fucking voice slightly cheerful but I know better. I can hear the ill-veiled jeer directed at me.

I ignore him, focusing instead on her.

It might be a bit dark in the room, but fuck, she’s wearing the hell out of that slutty uniform. Her ass is perfectly round and shaped and those legs… Jesus Christ.

I want her to turn around right fucking now and let me drink her in.

I want her to look at me, to see that I know every move she makes even before she makes it.

After all, two can play a game of stalker—only this time, mine is more…sinister.

The last time I saw her was at Christmas, but when she starts turning around to see who Emmett is with, I turn away and put on the biggest fucking show of my life.

I bite my lip, watching the girls dancing on the table. They’ve been desperate for my attention and when they notice me watching, they take it up a notch… they start undressing each other.

“Fuck yeah!” I cheer.

I can feel a piercing, scorching set of eyes on me, but I don’t bother giving her the time of day.

“Hey Emmett, can you tell the servant my drink choice for the night,” I say absentmindedly, watching as one girl bites the other’s exposed nipple. It should’ve been arousing but it isn’t. What made my dick hard was Kim’s voice, but she doesn’t need to know that she still twists me up like that.

“The servant?” Kim spits out, but still, I don’t look at her.

“And tell her to hurry the fuck up about it too,” I say carelessly. “No one cares for sloppy bitches who don’t know how to do their fucking jobs.”

Her gasp is as loud as the thing in my chest racing away at her nearness, but I ignore that too.

I lean back into the couch and reach for my hard cock, wanting the feeling to last.

“Come on, ladies, you can do better than that!”

“Oh yes, Mr. Montreal, we so can.”

They start performing this fucking number where they all shake their asses, excited to see that I’m hard.

See, my dick was last this rock hard when I made her cum in the shower stall of that cabin at Christmas. And now, she’s standing just a few feet away—albeit, glaring daggers at me—but still.

“Kim—” I hear Emmett say, a sad, pathetic, definitely embarrassed-of-my-drunk-asshole-friend apology ready to go but clearly, he doesn’t know Kimberly Allory.

“Uh, who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” she demands, burning holes in the side of my face.

I ignore her, looking at the girl closest to me. “Don’t mind her, girls, take that corset off, darlin’ and let those gorgeous tits dance; and for fuck’s sake, tell that bitch to hurry up with my damn drink.”

But see, the thing about Kim Possible is, anything is fucking possible.

So it doesn’t surprise me at all when she yanks off the girl who was crawling her way toward me with her tongue hanging out like a fucking dog.

“Ah, get your paws off of me, new girl!”

Kim does let her go, but the girl goes crashing into the rest of the girls who are watching with horror in their eyes.

In the blink of an eye, Kim is standing right in front of me, seething and revving to fucking go.

That’s my girl.

I just stare up at her with a disinterested glare.

“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to like that you self-involved son of a bitch?” she seethes, staring down at me.

Those steel, grey eyes, they sucked me in the first time I saw them, but now, it’s as if she wants to sink me in them.

Fuck! I wasn’t prepared for this. I wasn’t prepared for her. But hell will freeze over before I ever let her see that.

“I’m the one who wants my fucking drink refreshed and the longer you stand there blocking my view, the more I get fucking pissed.”

“Oh, so this is what you’ve planned to do tonight? Be a big fucking douchebag?” she snaps. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You are, after all, your father’s son.”

A fucking bomb goes off in my fucking chest. No one knows the words to fucking enrage me to hell and back like she does.

The rage in me comes to a fucking boiling point, but I can’t let her see that.

I force myself to remain seated, but she can see I’m bristling.

“Too far, Butterfly,” I whisper. “You’ve gone too fucking far.”

And right on cue, the manager of the fucking club walks in, sees the havoc in the room and quickly makes the right deduction.

“Kimberly! What have you done?” The sleazy manager walks over to us. “Mr. Montreal and Mr. Easton are our special guests. You have not only violated our customer care code of conduct, but you’ve also decided to assault your own colleagues? I’m afraid I can’t tolerate that.”

Kim whips her head around and looks down at me, her eyes wide with panic.

I blow smoke in her fucking gorgeous face that haunts my nightmares.

Yes. I’m the asshole of the fucking century.

“What are you saying?” Kim gasps, looking at her soon to be ex-manager.

“I’m saying you’re fired. Effective immediately.”

“Fired? But I didn’t do anything wrong! It’s this jerk that—”

“Don’t make this worse for yourself. Please, apologize to our VIP guests and leave the premises immediately.”

“But I—”

“Now, Kimberly, I don’t want to have to call the cops on you.”

Well fuck.

I don’t know why I suddenly feel like the shittiest fucking human being when Kim glances at me with a hooded, dark and stormy gaze and mumbles her meaningless apologies to me and then to Emmett.

But Emmett is staring at me, hell burning in his eyes though he doesn’t say a damn word.

He doesn’t have to. Every word he’s using to curse me in his head, I’ve already said to myself as I watch Kim quickly rush out of the room.

But even then, she has her shoulders straight and her head held up high.

That was my sign that I didn’t realize until it was too fucking late.