The Wild One by Gemma Burgess Read Free Book Online Page B

remember my childhood so well. It’s almost like I feel so close to my past that I can’t accept that this life is my reality. Grown up and living in New York City, drinking in bars, unemployed and only qualified to do a job I hate, treated like shit by every guy I meet, with a long life ahead of me with nothing but more of the same in store … My God, I am tired.
    â€œYou like watching E!” says Angie, interrupting my reverie. God, she’s right, I really do all my talking in my head. “Want to be a celebrity journalist?”
    I shake my head, not trusting myself to speak without crying.
    â€œTry this!” says Pia. “Close your eyes. Picture yourself in five years. Where are you? What are you doing?”
    I close my eyes. Me in five years. Me, age twenty-six. At first, my mind is empty, blurry, messy … Then an image starts to form. At first I see Rookhaven, and the kitchen, and everyone else … but then I appear, curled up in a leather armchair, next to an open window, reading a book and sipping a mug of hot chocolate. My hair is longer, and I’m smiling while I read. The image is so clear, so real, that for a second I wonder if I’m imagining it or if it’s from a movie or something. But no, it’s me. It’s really me.
    My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of Julia noisily getting down from her stool.
    â€œI don’t think we should make any decisions about your future until we talk to Dad. Right! I’m gonna drain the dragon.”
    â€œYou don’t have a dragon,” says Pia.
    â€œJoe!” Angie slams her empty mason jar back on the bar. “Ten out of ten on the Cold Hard Toddy. What else do you have for us?”
    â€œAnything you want, sweetheart.”
    â€œJoe, you’re going to have to stop this flirting,” says Angie matter-of-factly. “I have a boyfriend with whom I am desperately, passionately in love.”
    â€œAnd where is the lucky man tonight?”
    â€œHe’s sailing in the Greek islands,” says Angie.
    Joe starts to laugh, then stops. “Sorry. I thought you were joking.” He hands a drink over and Angie takes a big swig. “Amazing. Whiskey Sour?”
    â€œWith cassis,” says Joe. “It’s called a Sour Blush. Sweetness with an edge.” He catches me looking at him and winks, and I quickly look away. Goddamnit. Why am I so self-conscious around guys? Especially the cool, self-confident, player kind of guys?
    The band starts the sound check, and I take a moment to head to the bathroom.
    Julia was right, Potstill is a total dump. The bathroom is down a dark hallway leading to a storeroom, and it’s tiny and dingy as hell: two toilet cubicles behind doors barely hanging on to their hinges, a cracked sink, a dirty mirror, once-white grimy tiles, and a single hanging lightbulb. It stinks of cheap bleach, and the toilet seats look older than I am.
    Ew. This is going to be a squat-and-hover pee.
    I undo my jeans and go to peel them down, along with my underwear, you know, like you do.
    But I can’t. My jeans will come down, but my underwear is stuck.
    What the heck?
    Yanking them harder, I immediately squeal in pain. They won’t budge.
    I try again to yank, pull, and peel them off, but it’s no good. They are soldered firmly to my … to my sugar, as Julia would say. To my ladygarden, my cha-cha, my fifi, my hoohoo, my, oh to hell with it, let’s just be direct: my vagina.
    They’re not just stuck to the front either, but the entire thing … the undercarriage.
    How on earth could that have—
    Oh, my God.
    I used that home bikini wax kit before I came out. And I guess I didn’t use it properly.
    Because hard wax is sticking my underwear to my entire vagina.
    And I have to pee. Really. Badly.

 
    CHAPTER 7
    This would only happen to me.
    Think logically.
    Okay. I can’t call the girls for help, I don’t have my