Chapter Three
ROME
Have you ever tried getting your dick sucked after you’ve been snorting yourself stupid for three days?
It’s all milk and cookies on day one, all warm and soft and lovely. But after a while ... After a while, it just hurts.
“Rosaline,” I mumble. My hands are on her head, but there’s so much loose blonde hair that I can’t find her face.
It’s day three of a sex-and-drugs bender that should have ended before it began, when Rosaline called me on Friday night. I’m still not sure why I answered, but you can probably blame my aforementioned dick for that.
This girl is insatiable. She’s so pale, her small, firm tits firm in my palms as she bounces in my lap. We’ve moved to fucking now that her jaw is sore. Rosaline’s pussy is tight enough. My dick is hard enough. It’s all vaguely pleasant. And yet … it’s like sandpaper against my skin at the same time. I’m too high to come. I’m like an engine revving at eighty percent, but my handbrake is jammed on, and I’m not getting anywhere. And goddamn it, her hair. It’s everywhere. There are strands on my couch and on my clothes and earlier, when I swallowed a mouthful of the beer she'd handed me, one of those strands got stuck halfway down my fucking throat and made me gag. She’s got so many hair extensions weaved into her head, if she committed a crime a lot of innocent Russian women would be going to prison.
“Rosaline,” I snap, pushing her off my lap.
“What are you doing?” she asks, toppling to the side of me, landing on a pile of cushions at the far end of my long, antique leather couch.
I put myself back together, wincing as I tuck my thoroughly-fucked cock back into my jeans and button up. I fasten my belt, too, selecting a notch one tighter than normal. What is it about girls who get high and suddenly turn into sex-crazed demons?
Though, to be fair, Rosaline is a sex-crazed demon when she’s straight. Can’t blame the coke for her insatiable libido.
Rosaline leans back on my leather couch, the only nice thing in this falling-down room. Her eyes are red-rimmed and empty. She’s fucking high, and her comedown is yet to kick in. Oh honey, just you wait. The higher you go, the further you fall.
“I’m tired,” I say, my only explanation. I stretch my arms above my head and let them fall out to the sides, my head resting on the low back of the couch. I’m an offering on an imaginary cross, a crucifixion of my very own making. Because I’m starting to come down off this shit … and the fall is brutal.
Rosaline pouts beside me. She’s still flying high, her eyes like a cat stalking in the middle of the night. She straddles me again, placing her hands on the back of the couch, lifting herself into a position where she can graze her nipples against my lips. She rubs herself all over me like a sex-starved devil, as if we haven’t just been screwing for days, and when I don’t take the bait, she pushes off me dramatically.
“You hunt me down in a bar, bring me to your piece of shit house, I let you fuck me in the ass, and this is the thanks I get?”
I laugh. “This house is not a piece of shit,” I reply. I would be offended, but it kind of is a piece of shit. “And I seem to remember you begging earlier for me to — well, you know.”
Her eyes narrow. “Think you’re so fucking cool, living in a house that’s falling down around you, just to spite people who’ve forgotten you exist.” She jerks her thumb over her shoulder, toward the large bay window, and the estate that is basically a modern castle on the lot next door.
“Ouch,” I say, holding my hand to my chest as if she’s wounded me.
She rolls her eyes in response.
“Trust me,” I say, staring at the rose garden that flanks the Capulet residence next door. The rose garden they keep finding snakes in during the summer, when the damn things slither through my uncut jungle of lawn and spook their horses in the stables out back. “They haven’t forgotten.”
“Well, I might be forgetting you,” she snaps. “I need a fucking Uber.” She stands up, twisting her knotted blonde hair in her fingers. “You fucking idiot, is this cum in my hair? These extensions cost me three thousand dollars!”
Her comedown has arrived. Rosaline gets nasty when she’s strung out. Also, if she’s really paying that much for her hair, she’s being ripped off something wicked.
“Oops,” I deadpan, spreading my palms. “In my defense, your hair is impossible to escape, Rosie. It’s literally everywhere.” I pick a strand off my pants and hold it up to prove my point.
“Don’t call me Rosie, you fucking perv. Rosie is a child’s name.”
“Well, you’re kind of acting like a child,” I reply. “Does that count?”
She huffs.
I raise my eyebrows, letting out a laugh. My throat is dry from all the drugs, and I end up sounding like an old man, coughing and wheezing at the end.
“Holy shit, I need some water.”
“They have running water in real houses,” Rosaline says, taking a little plastic container out of her purse and placing it on the mirrored coffee table. I side-eye her as she pulls out a tiny baggie of brown powder, a spoon, and a neatly wrapped syringe.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I ask her, snatching the baggie from her hand. Her eyes go wide; she thinks I’m stealing her shit.
“You can have it back when you leave,” I promise. “You like cheesy crust on your pizza?”
“Don’t take my shit and offer me pizza,” she seethes. “Give me that.” Her skinny arm shoots out, her hand trying to rip the baggie of brown powder from my hand, but I’m stronger.
“No heroin in my house. Ever,” I say, shoving the bag in my jeans pocket. “You can have this back when you leave. Unless you’re leaving now?” Please leave now, you crazy bitch.
She hesitates. “I want to stay with you. But I’m not eating pizza. Carbs make me bloat.”
I look at her tiny frame dubiously. “We haven’t eaten in three days,” I say to her.
She smiles deviously. “You can eat me again,” she says, pointing at her red lace panties.
“Rosaline,” I say slowly, enunciating every syllable. “No more sex. No more drugs! I’m. Ordering. Pizza. What do you want?”
“One more bump,” she says, smiling sweetly at me. She’s a pretty girl, but I wish she wouldn’t smile. Her teeth are pointed like a cat’s, and when she grins, she looks like a damn bloodthirsty vampire, angling for my jugular. “And order me a green salad.”
I shake my head, pulling my cellphone out and dialing. I order the pizza, complete with cheesy crust, and a fucking green salad on the side. My stomach growls angrily as I end the call, just in time to see a river of red liquid erupt from Rosaline’s face.
“What the fuck!?” I yell. She’s got a blank expression on her face, blood pouring from her nostrils, and ladies and gentlemen, this is what happens when you have one more bump after three days of snorting and fucking. Your nostrils decide to give up the fight, and bleed like fucking fire hydrants full of red paint.
“My sofa,” I say. She’s oblivious. “Rosaline. Get off my fucking sofa!” I stare down at her in dismay, watching as she stains the only decent thing that I own outside of this property, this rambling decrepit mess that the fuckers next door keep trying to have declared uninhabitable. Not my sofa. Anything but my sofa.