Breakaway (Beyond the Play, #2)(5)

I throw it across the room.

My roommate bursts in, wrapped in a towel, her dark hair hanging over one shoulder, eyes wild with panic. Is that a razor in her hand?

“What’s going on?” she demands—at the exact second my bright blue dildo hits her in the face.

You know when you see something horrible happen in real time, and it feels like slow-motion? Yeah. That’s my dildo hitting Mia like a freakin’ puck to the face guard. It smacks her cheek, the fake balls bouncing, before landing on the floor with a wet smack.

We stare at each other for a moment that stretches out for approximately a million years. Her grip tightens on the razor as she wipes at her cheek.

I remember something very terrifying. My best friend used to play softball, and she was a pitcher.

“Penny!” she shrieks, slicing through the air with the razor wildly. I duck, but it doesn’t leave her hand. “I thought you were dying or something! What was that?”

I throw the blanket over my head. The mortification of this moment hits me like an avalanche, and if I look at Mia for even half a second longer, I might throw up. My cheeks must be redder than my hair. “I’m so sorry!”

“Fucking Christ. You threw Igor at me? I’m going to murder you!”

This stops my would-be anxiety attack in its tracks. I make myself into a tiny ball, torn between screaming again in frustration and laughing. If I laugh, though, Mia might slice me open with that razor. She names all my sex toys, and I forgot the big blue dildo’s name until now. Igor.

She snatches the blanket off my head. I grab it back and use it to cover my boobs. Why did I have to get myself totally naked for this? The murderous expression should make me want to flee, but it bursts open the floodgates instead; I double over in laughter that feels dangerously close to tears. I feel her pull my hair, but I just snort.

“Igor,” I say in between wheezes. “He went flying.”

“And now I’m traumatized for life.” I peek at Mia; she’s wiping at her face again. I don’t blame her. I might not have gotten off, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t feeling it. I’ve held back her hair while she threw up in the gutter, but that doesn’t mean she wants my… stuff… all over her face.

“You should probably go back into the shower.”

“You’re lucky I don’t kill you right here.” She smirks, but then her expression softens. “You couldn’t do it? Still?”

“No. And now I can’t stop thinking about… him. Ugh.” I press the heels of my hands over my eyes as my amusement fades. “Fuck this. I’m so tired of being stuck.”

Mia sits on the edge of my bed, her hazel eyes big as she looks at me. She rubs her hand over my shin. “He’s just a memory.”

I take a deep breath and nod. She’s right. I haven’t seen Preston in years, and even if it means never setting foot in Arizona again, I never will. But this isn’t even about him. This is about me. I might be good with my fantasies and stories most of the time, but they can only get a girl so far. While everyone around me has been having the college experiences of their dreams, I’ve been stuck in neutral, unable to make my desires my reality. When getting off used to be easy, I could pretend I didn’t care, but now?

Now I think I’m going to scream if I don’t orgasm. Fuck Preston Biller. Fuck the love I thought we shared. I draw my legs up, hugging them to my chest through the blanket. “I hate being broken. I can’t do this anymore.”

“Don’t say that.” Mia takes my hand. Our manicures match. We went to the fancy nail salon at the Moorbridge mall yesterday. Hers are bright green with black tips and little ghost stickers, and mine are white with orange tips and pumpkin stickers. Perfect for October, which starts in a few days. She squeezes reassuringly. “Maybe you just need to spice it up a little.”

“I’ve expanded my hot fantasy creature roster to include orcs,” I say helpfully.

She rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean. Maybe it’s time.”

A pit opens in my stomach and my heart jumps straight through. “I don’t know.”

“You’re at a huge university. Surely there’s someone here on campus who you’d like to hook up with.”

She’s not wrong; technically speaking, there are potential hookups everywhere. We go to McKee University, which has thousands of undergraduate students alone, and it’s not like guys haven’t tried to hook up with me. Usually, it’s some gross flirting that involves asking if my carpet matches the drapes, since I’m a ginger, but still. College guys don’t need a lot of encouragement with hookups; throw a wink their way and they’ll chase you all evening.

“You know it’s not about that.”

“I know,” she says gently. “But you can’t go on like this.”

She looks through my nightstand, pulling out my journal and waving it around.

“Hey,” I say, snatching it away from her. I hug the bright pink cover to my chest. “Treat her gently.”

When I first started going to Dr. Faber, she wanted me to keep a journal, and while I have three years of notebooks now, I always start it with the same list. It’s a list of everything I wish I could do with someone else in bed; everything I want—desperately—but haven’t had. Preston took away my biggest first and ruined it, so I wanted to reclaim whatever I could, to make it mine to control. Since I first wrote it, I’ve refined it, taken away some things and added others. When I started college last year, I updated The List and decided I was going to make it happen. I’d find a fuck buddy, or maybe a couple of guys, and go through The List item by item. But every time I got close, I just couldn’t pull the trigger. I retreated into my books and fantasies, no matter how hot the guy was or how nice he was acting. How could I trust a stranger? He might have been nice then, but who knows what he’d really be like, alone and in control of me.