Page 40 of Twisted Play

Vi

You’re an idiot, Eva.

Sage

*thumbs up emoji*

Rory

*thumbs up emoji*

Rory shook her head. “The group chat thinks you’re a fucking idiot.”

As four scholarship students who’d met pulling food bank shifts as freshman, we’d bonded over cheap ramen and processed mac and cheese as we struggled to make ends meet.

“C’mon, let’s go grab a drink.” Rory turned her gorgeous blue eyes on me and batted her lashes, as if I’d ever been able to resist her. “I’ll lock up.”

Five minutes later, we stood on the sidewalk. I desperately fought to hold in my yawns and, not for the first time, regretted the distance I’d have to travel to get home so late at night.

A car pulled up in front of us—Violetta’s junker. “Get in, losers. We’re going drinking,” she called.

Sage cackled and vacated the passenger seat so I could climb into the back.

“We’d have been done earlier if you’d stopped by to help,” Rory said, clambering in after me.

Sage giggled and adjusted her seat so Rory’s legs weren’t quite so squished in the back seat. “Oops.”

“Have you started drinking yet?”

“No, but we could start faster if you two would buckle your seatbelts and let me drive,” Violetta snapped. “Let’s go!”

Obediently, we strapped ourselves in, and the car roared back to life.

“Does this thing have heat?” Rory asked.

Violetta’s laugh told me everything I needed to know.

By the time we arrived at the bar, we were laughing, shivering, and ready to let loose after a long, stressful day.

“I’ve got the first round,” Rory said. “And Eva’s not paying for shit tonight.”

Hot tears pressed at my eyes as she brought back a tradition we’d put to rest the year before, when we all thought we were finally financially stable enough that none of us would show up to an event unable to afford to eat. Before then, when we suspected any one of us was particularly strapped, we’d cover her drinks. Or her dinner. And sometimes, just her ramen.

“Remember the rules,” Sage added, interrupting both my thoughts and the question Violetta was about to ask.

No questions—a rule we’d established early on, when we weren’t secure enough in our friendship to trust each other with our secrets, one that had lingered as our secrets became more painful.

A tear streaked down my cheek. What had I done in this life to deserve these women as friends?

Rory was a natural leader whom I admired deeply, with a ruthless capacity to organize people and get shit done, even when her private life was a shit show or when she’d rather be in the studio painting.

Violetta was fiercely protective, even when she was running on empty herself, a general who’d go to war to protect the people she loved, even if she never knew who she’d be crashing with that night. She’d change the world so no one would suffer like her father.

And Sage, whose relatively stable upbringing by a motorcycle club polycule hid an absolute willingness to commit violence on behalf of the people she loved. She was a little bit of a psychopath, and that was why we adored her.

And me? I was a hot mess, desperate to turn the courseof events through sheer force of will, as if I could move mountains if I just worked hard enough.

Sage wiped the tear from my face before licking it off her finger. “We’ve all been there.”