Page 7 of The Toy Maker (The Pink Cherrie #1)

SIX

When my alarm went off, I groaned and rolled onto my side where the sun couldn’t hit my eyes. The last thing I wanted to do was spend my day in that stupid cubicle and fight off advances from sex-deprived Brandon.

A moment passed before I remembered I didn’t have to anymore, and my body flooded with relief.

Two weeks had gone by, and I was deep in the throes of Cherry training.

The memory of my time in unemployed hell faded more each day, except for when I first woke up.

The wooden bedroom floor froze my feet, and I fought the urge to dive back under the covers.

I made a mental note to invest in rugs. My last roommate stole them all when she moved to California.

Dedicated to ignoring how tired I still felt, I went straight to the bathroom to get clean before another day of exercise, assigned by Kitty.

Despite appearances, Pink Cherrie required a lot more dedication than I anticipated.

A mandatory two hours in the work gym kept all the Cherries in their best physical condition, although it felt like death.

All the Cherries assured me I would get accustomed to it, but for someone who considered walking up one flight of stairs to be extreme fitness, I had a hard time believing that.

Before I stripped out of my pajamas, I adjusted the shower temperature and hoped it wouldn’t take too long to warm up.

Glancing down at my abdomen, I still saw no sign of muscle, but I figured that took a lot more than a few weeks of half-assed sit-ups.

Frizzy bunches of my hair fell over my chest and made my skin appear lighter.

I crinkled my nose. When was the last time I was really outside?

Two more weeks and I would be the equivalent to a Vitamin D-deficient doll for a stranger. Since I still needed the money to pay for upcoming bills, I needed the most generous stranger I could snag. There wasn’t a choice to it.

Yet my desperation had evolved to a sense of peace. It was hard to hate your decisions when you refused to acknowledge there was another option.

When I finished brushing my teeth to get rid of the morning taste in my mouth, I took a steamy shower. The hot water soothed some of the aches in my shoulders, and I released my stress for a few moments.

I examined the bruises on my hips; there were so many from falling on stage, but they had started to fade.

After a lifetime of avoiding sports like the plague, I learned how deeply uncoordinated I was.

My brother, the shining child that every mother prays for, must have sucked up all the natural talent allotted to our family before I could be born.

And he had a life, a nice one, tucked away in the suburbs. I would just ruin it.

After a much longer shower than I intended, I had no choice but to throw on whatever clean clothes I could find in my disorganized closet and grab a granola bar for later.

The training, while torture, proved its worth as I sprinted down to Pink Cherrie.

Kitty waited for me behind the front desk with two cups of coffee and grinned as soon as I rushed through the door. She glanced up at the clock on the wall, one of the only non-erotic pieces of wall décor. “You’re late.”

In broad daylight, Pink Cherrie almost looked like a normal sex store.

Or as normal as a sex store could look. The rows of merchandise and BDSM gear were on display toward the back of the building, leaving the front to look like a perverted jewelry store with gold chains dangling on the walls and jeweled butt plugs in the display case we used as a front counter.

I grimaced. “I know, I’m so sorry.”

Kitty scanned my appearance, taking special note of my wet hair.

“You’re fine. We’ve all been there.” She winked and slid a cup of coffee my way. I could still see the steam coming off the top. “Showers have a way of stealing time.”

My cheeks flushed, and I avoided eye contact. Somehow, she always knew what I was thinking. My running theory included her installing cameras in my apartment and a microchip in my brain while I slept from a post-cardio coma; I filed away the unsettling idea.

“So, are you excited?” she asked while taking a sip of her equally hot coffee. How could that not burn her tongue off?

My brows scrunched. “For what?”

She pushed a strand of hair out of her face and gave me a peculiar look. “Today is the end of your training.”

The vague memory of her mentioning it from the night before came back to me. I could only take in so much after finishing seventy-five push-ups; she should have known that already.

Still, I sighed in relief, “I don’t think I could take one more test on the names of toys that we carry.” Over five hundred and more being added to the collection each month. Thanks, Jason.

“I know the feeling,” Jade jumped into the conversation.

She had just come out of the back room with a sexy black garment in hand. Her thick hair was pulled up, revealing her heavily pierced ears, glimmering with gold jewelry.

On my second day of training, I learned Jade did a lot of the sewing and design work for events. The theme nights were the most elaborate, and she spent most of her time preparing for them.

Her eye for colors and attention-grabbing designs made every show more incredible than the last. When she wasn’t in the room, Kitty told me she would be doomed without her.

“When I started here there were only, like, a hundred toys and my brain nearly imploded in on itself.” Jade poked her tongue out.

“See?” I motioned to Kitty with a dramatic wave. “It’s just inhumane.”

She held her hands up innocently. “It’s Jason’s rule, not mine.”

Jason, the invisible owner who never seemed to come out of his workshop/apartment. There were plenty of rumors about him being passed from Cherry to Cherry, but I had no way of telling which were true.

Because no one could describe him the same way, it appeared likely that no one had actually gotten a close enough look or they weren’t saying if they had.

According to Sarah, The Toy Maker had dark brown hair and green eyes, but Jade challenged her, saying he had blue eyes. Kitty never joined in their debates about how he looked or what astrological sign he could be. She just nodded along and laughed when we suggested our own ideas about his life.

A knot tightened in my stomach. I had promised myself this was only temporary—a means to an end. Or a steppingstone, not a defining moment. And yet, I felt something dangerously close to acceptance settle in my chest.

“Are you ready to be official?” Jade asked with a soft nudge to my side. She could really be a delight when not under stress.

The last time I heard the term ‘official’, I was under the bleachers with Matt Kennedy. “Never been more ready in my life,” I lied, forcing a smirk. I said the same thing to Matt, although I was less sure about that step than this one.

Because the truth was, I wasn’t just committing to the job. I was committing to the version of myself that could do this. The version that could walk into a room and command attention. The version that could ignore the creeping fear that this wouldn’t be as temporary as I kept telling myself.

The long nights, the aching muscles, the endless rehearsals had brought more than soreness and ice packs into my daily routine; it also brought a lot of exhaustion-induced honesty between all the Cherries, who were mostly there to stave off student loan debt.

Being a part of their world for two weeks had already given me more to look forward to than years at my old firm.

I didn’t have to worry about my managers breathing down my neck about deadlines or punishing me for my coworkers’ tardiness.

Plus, I felt like, for the first time in a long time, that I had friends.

That terrified me more than anything. Because the more I felt like I belonged here, the harder it would be to leave when the time came.

Sarah sprinted from the gym and skidded to a stop in front of the desk. “Have you told her about the induction? Did I miss it?” She had piled her blonde hair into a loose bun on her head that wobbled whenever she moved or talked.

Kitty looked at her in the same way my mom looked at me when I said too much to strangers. “Not yet.” Her lips pressed into a thin line.

I scanned all their faces for information; Jade had a grin plastered across her face and a camera strap around her neck. Wait…

“What’s going on?” I asked before making the decision to run far, far away.

Kitty shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal. “You’ll just be playing.”

Play? “Play with what ?” As soon as the question left my lips, I realized how stupid I sounded.

But the smiles they exchanged made it clear I had given them the opening they hoped for. “Any toy you want,” Kitty went on, and my heart jumped to my throat, “in front of all the Cherries.”

My jaw went slack, and a camera flash captured my reaction to the bombshell.

I clung to disbelief. “Oh,” I said with a nervous laugh, “I get it, this is a joke.”

Their faces remained steady. Shit. This wasn’t a joke. I suddenly remembered the giant corkboard in the backroom with over a hundred polaroids pinned to it, each one with a different Cherry looking just as stunned as I did.

“You could have told me sooner.” I tried to keep my voice from sounding too sharp, but it didn’t work.

“It’s supposed to be a surprise, Tara,” Sarah said with no remorse. “Surprise!”

I half-expected dollar store confetti to fall from the ceiling. At least then I could tilt my head back and choke on it.

Jade shook her head. “How do you expect to fuck yourself in front of strangers if you can’t even do it in front of us?” she challenged, raising a knowing eyebrow at me.

It wasn’t that the thought never occurred to me; I had just refrained from thinking about it so I could still sleep at night. Still, she made a solid point. “Fine.” I sucked in a shaky breath. “When am I doing this?”

And did I have time to go to the liquor store before it started?

“Two hours,” Kitty answered briskly. “Being late didn’t help. We only have so much time to get you ready.” She gave me a pointed look.

Only two hours. Then everything would change.

“Don’t barf.” Jade hurriedly grabbed my hand. “We’ve all done it, and it’s not so bad when you get up there,” she reassured me as I fought to keep my breakfast down.

“Yeah, the only intimidating part is that Jason will be watching,” Sarah added, which earned a glare from Kitty and Jade. “But no one ever really sees him.”

Jason would be there? A pit formed in my stomach as I remembered him on the stage weeks ago. He seemed… different. And while I wanted to protest his attendance, another part of me wished for it, just to see him again.