Page 4 of Beautiful Monster

“Don’t say that, Sun. You don’t mean it.”

“I know. Did Fischer and Liam leave?” I ask.

“Yeah, they didn’t like me flirting with the rich guy so much. Seriously, Sunny. Think about how nice it would be if I could land a guy like Alexander Caldwell.” Flipping onto her back, my sister fans out her gorgeous black hair against the bright white comforter on my bed. It looks like black roots, ink spilling into the ocean.

“Don’t move,” I mumble as I sketch each strand onto a blank white page. My sister is used to being my muse, so she continues on like I said nothing.

“And I don’t mean just fucking him, Sunny. Imagine if I could settle down with a guy like him. We could both get out of this house.”

“I’m not living with you and your rich husband.” Concentrating on my sketch, I think about it anyway. How nice it would be to have a happy home to live in, instead of one filled with so much spite that we eat hate for breakfast each morning.

Cadence doesn’t know about my plan. It’s the only secret I’ve ever kept from her, but I’m afraid if she knew, she’d try to stop me. Maybe I’m being selfish for wanting to leave without her in the first place, but Cadence has more options than me. She wants to get married. She actually likes living with my mom—most of the time.

After dropping out of art school last semester, I don’t have any real opportunities, and no one is replying to my job applications, even though I put out about a hundred last month alone.

“Besides,” I continue. “I don’t think Alexander Caldwell is really the settling down kind of guy.”

“You don’t know that. I mean, he bought a house in the suburbs. Plus, he’s what…thirty?” she says, screwing up her face.

“Forty.” Yeah, I looked him up on my phone while my mom was trying to get him to drink a second margarita.

“See? I bet he’s looking for a nice young woman to give him lots of orgasms and babies.”

“Gross,” I mutter, as I finish the sketch with the curls at the top of the page. “You really want to hook up with some guy so much older than you?”

“A guy like Alexander? Yes, please.”

I cringe at the thought. Alexander is attractive and rich and not at all gross-looking, but he’s still in another league entirely.

“You’re almost twenty, Sunny. You’ll be horny for guys like that soon enough. It’s weird that you’re not already.”

Oh, I am. Sometimes it’s all I can think about. I’m not the innocent girl everyone likes to paint me as—at least not in my thoughts. Men, sex, bodies, lust, passion. I imagine what it must feel like being pressed against the wall, a man’s body covering mine, his lips on my neck, my breasts, and everywhere else.

I like to imagine the weight of a man on top of me and the sensation of having him inside me. The version my daydreaming cooks up is usually rough in nature and wild in passion.

The very few kisses I’ve shared with random boys at school were nothing more than sloppy and overly aggressive expressions of lust. There were no real feelings involved. Nothing to write home about. I let one of them, a college kid who assumed I’d be as loose as my sister, put his hands up my shirt, and it was nice—just nice. But when he tried to unbutton my jeans, I pushed him away. He called me an ugly tease and left.

Later that night I drew a naked sketch of him with a tiny penis and gave it to Cadence. When I told her what he did, she was livid and posted it online—she even tagged him.

That night, she came into my room and made me promise to wait as long as I could before having sex. According to her, she lost her virginity too young and regrets not taking the time to find the right person or discovering what felt good instead of letting desperate horny teens paw all over her for as long as she did. She made me swear to her that I would wait.

And I did.

I was fifteen at the time.

A shriek comes from the front of the house, jolting us both from our laughter. Cadence tenses next to me.

“Caaaaaadence,” our mother howls.

“I better go see what she wants.”

“Tell her we’re out of tequila,” I mumble without looking back as my sister climbs off the bed. “Get her high instead. It chills her out.”

When I turn, my mother is standing at the door. Her eyeliner is running down her face, and for a moment, I feel bad for her. I almost miss the woman beneath the shell, but then she looks at me, and I feel her disdain.

“You were so rude to Mr. Caldwell today,” she slurs. “Couldn’t even get up and talk to him. I raised you to have manners.”

“He was talking to Cadence. I didn’t want to steal her spotlight.” I say this because I assume it’s what she wants me to say, to acknowledge that my sister is a piece of meat we’re trying to take to the market for the highest price.