Secret Sins: (A Standalone)

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Book: Secret Sins: (A Standalone) Read Free
Author: CD Reiss
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cherry. Behind her, the ocean crashed and the sand darkened close to the waterline.
    “So fucking annoying,” she said. “Like second-hand smoke ever killed anyone.”
    The guy smoking next to her checked her out with a smart smile. She wore a tube top and a skirt so short that her underwear showed when the wind blew.
    I took the lit cigarette from her and pressed the tip to my own, filling my lungs with delicious nicotine. Yoni and Fred were inside.
    “Are they both in there?” I asked.
    “Yeah. The two of them. The hot ones.”
    That would be Strat and Indiana. Vocals and guitar, respectively.
    And hot, for sure. Lynn and Yoni had been chasing them around for a week. Lynn had taught me so much about how to get through doors. How to ask person A for a favor because they knew person B.
    I took it all back. She wasn’t dumb as a box of rocks. She was dumb as a box of fox.
    “I think tonight’s the night,” she said softly, leaning into me. She held up three fingers and twisted them around in a bastardization of “fingers crossed.” Code for a threesome, which the two boys were famous for and what she had been trying to get herself involved in for a week.
    “It’s, like, fifty percent more romantic,” I said.
    She blinked. Didn’t get it. I sighed.
    “Yoni’s in for girl-on-girl,” she said. “I’d ask you but—”
    “No thanks. Not tonight.”
    Not yet. I wasn’t ready for that kind of thing. I’d done some low-level groping, but nothing close to the intensity of what Lynn chased after.
    Yoni poked her head out. Her furry blond bob was held up with a big lace bow, and she wore fingerless, elbow-length gloves with dozens of silver bracelets at the wrist.
    “Lynn,” she said sotto.
    Half the people on the smoking deck turned at the sound, then back to what they were doing.
    “What?” Lynn asked.
    We stepped to the door, and Yoni came out.
    “They have a suite upstairs. Talking about a poker game. You got cash?”
    “Yeah,” Lynn answered.
    “I’m in,” I said.
    Yoni’s gaze sizzled over me, and I realized my error. I was going to be a buzzkilling interloper.
    I stamped my cigarette out under my short boot. “Never mind. I’m going to take a walk. See you guys later.”
    I didn’t wait for a response. If Lynn wanted to screw one or both of those guys, I could get a cab home. I didn’t go to the street though. I went down the wooden steps to the beach. My feet felt the cold of the sand even through my boots. It had rained earlier in the day, and my steps made half moons of darker sand visible in the floodlights. I walked to the waterline out of reach of the light, not looking back, and sat with my knees to my chest, hugging myself against the cold.
    The light disappeared and the night took over a few feet from the line where the sand got flat and wet, streaked with the movement of the tide and punctuated with intestinal piles of seaweed.
    I didn’t have any feelings one way or the other about the orgy. I wasn’t interested. But I liked poker.
    I dug my heels in the sand. Fuck this. I didn’t know what to do with my body, with my place in the world, with my family. I was trapped in all of it. The water broke, foaming and hissing, a few feet from me. I didn’t know if the tide was rising or receding. Didn’t matter.
    I didn’t know what I believed in.
    Desperation defined the lives of my friends. They were desperate to fit in, to make their families happy, or to decide who they were immediately. I didn’t understand the hunger for approval or validation. The backstabbing and garment-rending over people with dicks made me uncomfortable. Men motivated tears and anguish that seemed unjustifiable. Weird. Out of character. I had friends who were normal one minute then started to have a freaking embolism when their bodies changed.
    I felt it too. But we all took the same courses in school. We’d all known it was coming. Why act as if it was a shock?
    I’d backed away slowly until I didn’t

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