Throb

  Throb

  Club Grit Trilogy, Volume 2

  by Brooke Jaxsen

  Published by Brooke Jaxsen, 2013.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  THROB

  First edition. October 24, 2013.

  Copyright © 2013 Brooke Jaxsen.

  Written by Brooke Jaxsen.

  Table of Contents

  Throb (Club Grit Trilogy, #2)

  Chapter One:

  Chapter Two:

  Chapter Three:

  Chapter Four:

  Chapter Five:

  Chapter Six:

  Chapter Seven:

  Chapter Eight:

  Chapter Nine:

  Chapter Ten:

  Chapter Eleven:

  Chapter Twelve:

  Chapter Thirteen:

  Chapter Fourteen:

  Chapter Fifteen:

  Chapter Sixteen:

  Chapter Seventeen:

  Epilogue:

  Playlist

  About the Author

  This book goes out to everyone from East River Dorm! We had some crazy times last year, let’s do it all again this year, and more.

  Chapter One:

  I DIDN’T EXPECT SENIOR YEAR TO BE THE YEAR EVERYTHING WOULD CHANGE. But, it had been. It all started the week after Spring Break. I’d come back from Fort Lauderdale with the girls in my sorority, Omega Mu Gamma. Out of all the sororities at University of California- Beverly Hills, Omega Mu was the best sorority to be a part of. Every member, from pledges to Bigs like me, were all attractive, accomplished, and amiable. Even though the social season for the school year was drawing to a close, as social chair of Omega House, it was important that I make sure nobody was bored. Other sororities had been known to attempt to poach our pledges and although I was sure that none of the pledges would want to leave, I wasn’t about to take any risks.

  That’s how we ended up at Club Grit for Throwback Thursday, their weekly retro event. The theme tonight? Eighties. I wasn’t about to break out studs and stripes, so I went with a neon green and pink Lilly Pulitzer dress with thin straps like the other Bigs, who also picked classy dresses. We were there to set an example. I pulled out a small mirror to brush my hair out of my face. My caramel colored weave had lasted through Spring Break admirably, and I adjusted it so it sat over my mocha shoulders just so, before I was interrupted by Emma, one of the pledges.

  Emma bounced up to the VIP. She’d had more pills than me that night. She had no idea how to just say no or to tell people she’d had too much. “Hey, guys, I was wondering if you guys knew anything about that guy, the bouncer,” she said, pointing out a guy in black clothes with tattoos. Of course, she’d go for him.

  “I don’t think he’s a bouncer, I haven’t seen him here before,” said Kim Lee. Kim Lee: “daughter of a Korean businessman who ruled the entire South East Asian fashion market”, or so the story went. She was a force to be reckoned with, and even though in terms of chain of command, Emma should have been asking her Big, Samantha, for permission, Kim was the one who would decide whether she could or could not see him.

  “No, you’re wrong,” I interrupted. “He’s new. I was talking to Jason earlier and he said they just hired on new staff.”

  Samantha interjected, “Don’t go for it, Emma. Trust me. There’s so many guys like him out there. There’s some cute guys at Beta Rho Omega that run the door during parties. Go for one of them, not some townie. UCBH students stick together. Together.”

  Emma put on that face only the devil could say no to, and Kim rolled her eyes and said, “Fine. Go get him. But don’t come back without him. He better be good in bed.”

  Emma said thanks and left us to talk in peace. That girl needed so much coddling and handholding, it was ridiculous.

  “So, you were talking to Jason?” asked Sam, bumping me with her shoulder. She always wanted the details about the guys I was dating, or in Jason’s case, “seeing” but not actually really doing much with outside of bed.

  “Yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes to hide the blush forming under the smattering of freckles that ran across my nose, joining the areas beneath my eyes. I’d been embarrassed by them as a kid, but now, they were considered chic.

  “Well, what about Keanne?” asked Sam. Kim was too busy taking notes on her black and red clipboard to talk to us. Although we’d been friends since before college, she and I had taken on different roles in the sorority. She was in charge of keeping pledges in line, while I kept them occupied.

  “What about him?” I asked, pretending that his name didn’t send my heart into palpitations, that it didn’t make me wonder and worry about our future, a future I knew wasn’t meant to be.

  “Are you going to work for him again this summer? Or better yet, date him?” Sam had too much to drink, as usual, and she’d popped pills with Emma before we got to Club Grit, so she was much more outgoing and sociable than usual.

  One of the pledges who was still hanging out in the VIP section with us squealed, “You worked for Keanne? Like, the Keanne Slims?”

  “Yeah, I was his personal assistant, before he got big.” I wanted that to be the end of the conversation, but she didn’t get the clue.

  “What’s he like? What did you do? Tell me everything about it!” Ugh, her voice was so grating, but I obliged.

  It was true: the summer before, I’d been working as an intern for Keanne Slims, the most eligible bachelor in the USA. I’d answered an ad for a personal assistant but I had no idea that my boss would be the most popular rapper in America, a Canadian actor who wanted to test out the music industry. His first album was about to drop, and while it was in production, I was the one that made sure Mr. Slims (who insisted I call him by his first name Keanne) was pleased, in every way: organizing his professional schedule, his personal schedule, his social life.

  My internship was unpaid at first, but once the album dropped and became an instant hit, and Keanne was booked for tours and shows, I was traveling around the world and our relationship became something else entirely, even though we never slept together, not even once. Out of everyone in his entourage, I was the one that was closest to Keanne at all times, the one he trusted with things like lyrics for the next album, numbers of lingerie models he wanted in his hotel room that night, and even his stash.

  “Well, and then what?” asked Samantha as I finished up telling the random freshman about my time with Keanne.

  “Well, it was the end of August, and it had to come to an end,” I said with a sigh, taking another sip of the bubbly champagne. It reminded me of Keanne, it always had: he’d always had a bottle of champagne chilled in his trailer when he had a show. “I knew I had to finish up my major at University of California, Beverly Hills, if I ever wanted to be a competitive candidate in the work force. My parents had worked hard to make sure that I had an education before college and my financial aid would run out if I didn’t go back this semester, so I had to say goodbye to the life of glitz and glamour, of jet setting and gift bags. Keanne gave me a check for ten thousand dollars for all the help I’d given him over the summer, even though the internship was supposed to be unpaid. He insisted I keep it.”

  “Wow, that’s a lot of money,” said Sam. “Especially seeing as you got all the other “perks”, right?” she asked with a knowing nudge. She’d worked in a law office and was proud of the fact she’d had some trysts in the supply closet with partners, interns, you name it, she’d fucked it. Sluthood was a badge of pride for Sam, not something to be ashamed of. Before I’d met Sam, I was shyer about that sort of thing, shy about being inexperienced, but the more she and I went out, the more I got to learn about guys, hands on, intimately.

  I sighed as I thought to myself of Keanne,
the images in my head not from pics in tabloids or videos on MTV, but from actually being with him, one on one. What I want wasn’t his money, but something else, something I couldn’t have, because Keanne didn’t ask me out. That wasn’t his style. He wasn’t a one woman kind of man, he’d explained after we’d had sex in a hotel room in New York, and he wasn’t about to settle down so soon. I understood: I was an intern, he was my boss, and what had happened between us was a mistake, a mistake we repeated not once, not twice, but an uncountable number of times.

  The only thing Keanne did promise? A place in his entourage the next summer, the summer before my senior year. I was going to take him up on that offer. It was hard to keep Keanne off my mind and I’d poured myself into my sorority instead, Omega Mu Gamma, the hottest, coolest sorority on campus. I was the social chair, in charge of organizing activities for the sorority members the way I had arranged Keanne’s schedule. I didn’t brag about the internship to anyone, just listing it on my resume, but it got out and people knew about the fact that I’d had the summer that most people only dream, the kind filled with concerts, rock stars and rappers, and celebrities.

  “You smell kinda funky, honey...did you bang him against the dumpster or something?” I was glad to have the topic changed, because truth be told, I didn’t really like talking about my work, especially anything about Keanne. The girls interested were usually the gold digger types that wanted backstage VIP passes for free even though their daddies could afford it, not the kind of girls that Keanne was interested in...at least, I hoped not.

  “Ha. Ha. No. I wasn’t even gone that long,” said Emma, but I wasn’t about to let it go that easily. The sooner she left, the sooner the convo about Keanne would start again.

  “Honey, you never know!” I teased.

  “Yeah, no success,” said Emma, reaching towards the drink tray.

  Kim Lee pulled the tray away from Emma. “You don’t need another drink. What you need is to get that number off that bouncer. Don’t make me look like a fool for giving you this privilege. I want you to come back to this table with his digits or you don’t get to come back with us at all. You’ll have to find your own way home. If you want another pill for confidence, that I can offer. You can wash it down with the champagne if you want.” Emma took a pill and swallowed it, washing it down with our last glass of champagne, before leaving. That girl was such a mess! She had no ability to just say “no!” to Kim or the other Bigs, but she wasn’t my Little so it wasn’t my problem.

  Our tray of drinks empty, I now had the opportunity I needed to get out of the VIP and clear my head. “I’m going to go to the bar,” I said, getting up from the plush seats of the VIP and heading down the staircase that put the VIP section on a different tier, looking over the club like a watch post. I made my way through the usual crowd: girls in dresses too tight, too shiny, too flashy, in heels that they’d stumble over, and guys that smelled more strongly of product than the Omega House bathroom, and finally got to the bar, sitting on a stool with my elbows back against the counter as I watched the dance floor, looking out to see who the pledges had picked to bring home: as usual, a few duds, but a lot of hotties, all townies, but that was to be expected.

  “Hello, stranger,” said a voice, and I recognized it all too well as I turned.

  I didn’t even have to run my eyes down his body, from that pin striped fedora with a gray grosgrain ribbon, to his chiseled face he insisted on ruining with a smattering of stubble, to the vest that matched the awful hat, the white shirt with the sleeves rolled up over firm biceps, to know who it was.

  “Hello, Jason, a pleasure as always,” I said sarcastically. Jason and I had...a history. I hadn’t seen him since our “meeting” last week. He’d been the one I went home with instead of some random douchebag on the dance floor, the kind that wore more perfume than me, and increasingly, it’d become a bad habit: I’d raised my standards to the point that if a guy wasn’t at least a point hotter than Jason, he wouldn’t even get my number, and I’d ended up in Jason’s bed an embarrassing number of times.

  “Chocolate Martini?” he asked slyly.

  I looked at him deadpan. “Classy. A race thing? Really?” I’d heard all the shitty pickup lines from guys that fetishized me for my ethnicity, that decided that my skin tone was a reason to objectify me, and I wasn’t about to take that from Jason, of all people. He knew I wasn’t into that sort of thing: being called “chocolate temptation”, or “ebony temptress”, or any other stupid combination of words that guys like him called girls like me.

  He rolled his eyes. “No, sorry, Becca, I’m an idiot...it’s the special tonight. Two for one, chocolate martinis.” Jason pointed at the chalkboard sign with the cartoonish drawings of cocktails. Indeed, there was a pair of brown tinted martinis, glasses meant to look like they were clinking, on the board and the sign read Two for One: Chocolate Martinis.

  “Sure, two chocolate martinis,” I said, embarrassed I’d accused Jason of making it a race thing when it hadn’t been. I just really wasn’t in the mood to deal with him or his bullshit, especially given the fact I was trying to escape something from my past: the whole “Keanne” issue, and the questions that everyone had about us now that the school year was ending and people thought it’d be a given that I’d be more than Keanne’s intern this summer when the truth was, I had no idea what we’d be.

  Especially seeing as he hadn’t even contacted me since September, a few weeks after the internship ended.

  Especially since that’s all I’d wanted him to do.

  I watched as Jason took the shaker, added ingredients that looked like they belonged in a Frappuccino instead of in a cocktail, and after doing his mixological magic, poured out the mixture into the martini glass, garnished with a cherry on a small neon plastic sword. Of course, it had to be 1980’s somehow, and what was more eighties than neon?

  “Here, try this,” he said, passing it to me gently because he’d filled the glass to the brim.

  “Just one?” I asked. I wasn’t about to get ripped off by Jason, of all people, especially if he expected a tip.

  “It’s on the house. You can be my test subject tonight, tell me which variation you like first, okay?” he said, a glint in his emerald green eyes as he made a visual connection with me. He had a way of persuading me to do things, and the fact I’d already had a good amount to drink helped.

  “I stopped listening after “on the house”. Sign me up,” I said, with a laugh. Jason could be so frustrating at times, but when he was like this? When he went from being someone I had something complicated with, to that bartender friend everyone wishes they had? That’s how he could win me over, easily.

  “Okay, so, that first one, that’s the control, of sorts. I added a cherry, because I know how much you like fruity drinks. How is it?” he asked earnestly.

  I took a sip, expecting something sour because of the whole “martini” thing, but it tasted like chocolate milk, but for adults. The cherry’s juices mingled well with the drink as I bit into it, releasing its juices into my mouth and letting it melt into the chocolate, like a fondue in my mouth.

  “It’s surprisingly tasty,” I said, and Jason smiled. He started to make the next drink.

  “So, why are you escaping from your friends tonight?” he asked.

  “The usual, you know?” I knew Jason would know. He just sort of “got me”, unlike most people that judged me based on what I wore, or what I looked like, or the fact I was a sorority girl. Jason? Jason knew that I was different, and that’s what made him different.

  “Oh, The Guy, right?” I’d been coming to Club Grit often enough that Jason knew not only my name, and the fact I hung out in the VIP with the Omega crowd at least weekly, but that there was a guy in my life, a guy that I hadn’t told him too much about. Okay, well, that wasn’t exactly true: Jason knew everything about me and Keanne Slims, except for Keanne’s name. I knew that would have changed things, that Jason would have seen me as a groupie or something when t
hat wasn’t the case.

  “Yup. They won’t shut up about him,” I said, closing my eyes the way my grandma did whenever she was about to say bless their hearts, which was code for what a fucking mess.

  “And so you escaped to the bar. Nice,” he said with a laugh. “Okay, this next one should be a bit smoother than the last.” He poured the drink, a medium brown versus the dark brown of the first drink, and handed it to me. The drink wasn’t transparent like the last one, looking creamier.

  And it was. It tasted like melted milk chocolate, but at the same time, there was something both comforting about it, like a hot chocolate at home with family, as well as exotic, like sands of a foreign beach. It went down like a glass of warm milk.

  “It’s...different. What’s in it?”

  “That’s got a horchata cream liquor in it, we had to special order it and it’s not very popular on its own. That adds the silkiness as well as a hint of nutmeg and cinnamon. You like it?”

  “It’s good. It’s different, but a good different.” Like Jason. Like the thing we had. I passed the glass back across the bar as I savored the aftertaste of the drink.

  The way Jason looked at me, it was as if he wanted my approval all the time. It was the kind of look I’d call “pathetic” on anyone else, but Jason was like a puppy, ready to please. All my friends said I should go for Jason, that Jason was the perfect rebound because he was sexy, had a cool job, and was obviously super into me. But part of me was still waiting, waiting for Keanne to see that I was the girl he was meant to be with, and I knew that this summer, things between me and Keanne could get to the next level, and I didn’t want to make things messy by involving Jason. Jason and I...we weren’t meant to be. I had an opportunity, to be with the man that I’d fallen for last summer but had never had the guys to tell. And Jason, well, if things didn’t work out, he’d always be around.

  “So, how are things going with “The Guy”?” asked Jason, casually. Even though Jason and I were what people would call “friends with benefits”, we still talked about my relationships. It was weird: Jason never talked about the other girls he was seeing (the girls I knew he had to be seeing, given that he was a bartender and all the bartenders had tons of barflies hanging onto them, wanting free drinks and their numbers), but it was just the way our weird arrangement worked. I talked about The Guy, Jason poured me drinks, I tipped well, and he gave me more than just the tip.