legs gives the glimmer of a wicked grin. “On three,” she trills. “Three.” She pulls the cotton strip off my pink parts, and it feels as if a demon from the pit of hell just breathed the fire of a thousand suns onto my poor vagina.
“GOD ALMIGHTY IN HEAVEN! Please strike this woman to my right with a very lively, very white-hot bolt of lightning!” My voice penetrates the walls so thoroughly the windows shake from the effort.
Lex perks up on her elbows to garner a better look in my direction. “Did you just cast a pox on me?”
Without missing a beat, the evil clinician darts to Lex and rips her tender bits to pieces as well, and this time it’s Lex moaning like a dying animal.
“Damn right, I cast a pox on you, and a hex, and whatever the hell else the universe allows. You, my friend—no—my ex-friend, will have hell to pay once we leave this dungeon of darkness.”
Lex chortles at the thought as the clinician tends to our raw undercarriages and quickly soothes us with warm oil and heated towels.
“Dear God,” I pant as I fall back onto the poor excuse for a spa bed and contemplate all of the bad decisions I’ve made thus far in my twenty-seven years. And, believe you me, bar none befriending this she-devil at my side is by far the worst of the worst. “Most mean girls traditionally give me the side-eye and the occasional finger. You really know how to go the whole nine hairless yards.”
“Oh, quit your bitchin’.”
I suck in a quick breath as I roll onto my side to get a better look at her, and a dirty bomb goes off on that landing strip I just scalped. UGH!
Honest to God, if a single pubic hair ever grows back, it will be a miracle worthy to report to the Vatican.
“Excuse me.” I take a moment to appropriately stare her down. “Did you—the queen of all things prissy and proper, just let an expletive fly?” I’ve lived with Lex long enough to know she’s allergic to colorful language. Lex Ximena Maxfield is a mean girl to be reckoned with. And honestly, it’s why I like her best. She’s not my typical kind of girlfriend. We met quite accidentally through my best friend, Harlow—Low, once they haphazardly befriended one another. Whether Lex wants to admit it or not, most things in her life unravel haphazardly. And sadly that, right there, is something we have in common.
“Listen, Raven”—she rolls over casually and winces as the bite of pain sinks in, and don’t think the sarcastic inflection over my name wasn’t noticed either—“the real reason I pulled you out of that pizza box fort you built in my living room, out of those two-week jammies that had adhered to your body—”
“Oh, come on. I hit Hallowed Grounds every single day for coffee, and you know it!” I might have been wearing the aforementioned jammies, but that’s not any of her beeswax.
She scoffs. “Whatever. The bottom line is both Strudel and I have decided it’s time for you to go.”
The world stops a moment. Her words sting just as efficiently as that slap Hilda dealt my pretty pink parts every three seconds for a hellish five minutes.
“Go? Does that mean what I think it means?” My mind reels. I knew as soon as Lex started dating—became engaged to Axel Collins, that my days as her cozy little roomie were numbered, but deep down I envisioned her moving in with Axel, and me having her place all to myself for a while—read forever.
She blinks those wildly long lashes my way. “If you think it means I’ve already packed your belongings and set them in the trunk of your car—then yes, it means what you think it means.”
“You what?” I squawk so loud my voice comes back as an echo.
“Relax,” she hisses, waving me down as if trying to curb my panicked enthusiasm. And am I ever enthused in a very bad way. “I took the time to gather your toiletries. And I also did you a solid by washing that snake-like creature comprised of fruity colored thongs you let breed all over the floor. My God, it’s like playing a game of Candyland just trying to go to the kitchen.” She falls back and tosses her arms up over her eyes with exasperation.
Her words sink in, and that panic she incited just bolstered itself into hysterically dangerous levels.
“But where will I go? What will