“Umm, she said something about hosting a few gigs and I think she’s still tattooing out of her mate’s shed…”
“Oh my God, she’s hopeless. I swear to god, if she keeps acting the way she does, she’s going to end up in jail.”
Sam would have bet a hundred bucks the phrase had come straight from Aaron’s mouth. He liked their neon-haired, septum-piercing having sister even less than he liked their sex-advice giving dad.
“Don’t freak out about Tabby, she’s only twenty-three, she’ll straighten out. Besides, everyone at school said I’d go to jail and I never did.”
Nicole sighed. “Look, we need Tabby here. She’s got a huge fanbase and she’s great with social media stuff. I’ll just send her the money to come down to Melbourne.”
“Ah, Nix…?”
Her twin clicked her tongue. “I forgot, sending Tabitha DaSilva money is asking to have it converted into pink hair dye and pills.”
“I think her hair’s blue now.”
Another, even heavier sigh. “I’ll book the tickets and send her the boarding pass.”
“Great. That way we know she won’t hitchhike.”
“She’s been—you know what, don’t tell me.”
“Probably for the best.”
Her sister made a huffy bossy noise. “Maybe we can make this family reunion a two-for-one business trip and intervention?”
Sam gritted her teeth in anticipation of the ‘what are you doing with your life, Tabby?’ arguments she knew were coming. Yet she was still so, so excited to see her sisters. “Maybe. So you’ll be here Sunday afternoon?”
“Yes. We should be landing within an hour of one another. Please don’t forget to come and get me from the airport.”
“I’ll remember. I’ll even pick up a forty-pack of nuggets for you.”
“I don’t eat processed chicken anymore, you know that. Anyway, I should go, Aaron will be home soon and I’ve got work to do.”
Explaining to do, more like.
As soon as they ended their call, Sam dialed Tabby’s number and left a message outlining their plans and reminding her not to tell Nicole she did backyard tattoos for rent. By the time she was done the bathwater was lukewarm, but Sam reclined in it like a queen. Nothing had changed since she’d called Nicole, but knowing that her sisters were coming home was like knowing everything was going to be okay.
Now, if she could just stop having sex dreams about Scott Sanderson, her whole life would be perfect. It had been years since he left, and he meant less than nothing to her. She didn’t need to be having these stupid dreams. She needed to extend some serious willpower toward not thinking about him.
Despite this declaration, her hands wandered down her bare skin, stroking and squeezing her breasts before dipping lower. She’d never done the bath-solo sex thing. She couldn’t help thinking that water was going up her and would stay there, sloshing around like the inside of a snow globe. Yet, now that some of her tension had been relieved, she was feeling decidedly sexy. She ran her hand along her labia, testing her arousal. She was swollen and slightly slippery in spite of the water. Closing her eyes, she imagined Scott gazing sternly down at her. “Have you missed me, Samantha?”
“Not particularly,” she’d say. “What are you going to do about it?”
Without a word he’d reach down and pull her out of the bath. Completely unconcerned about getting water on his clothes, he’d carry her to her bedroom. “You’ve been such a bad girl, but I know how to make you good again.”
He’d take his time placing her on the bed, positioning her exactly how he wanted her, her back arched, her ass exposed. “Are you ready, darling?”
“No,” she’d whimper, but his hand would come down just the same. The slaps would be sharp and hard, sending painful shocks through her skin. Shocks that shouldn’t have been pleasurable, but were. Scott wouldn’t make a sound as he spanked her. He’d just watch, enjoying the way her ass blossomed red marks and her cunt grew slippery before his eyes. He knew she loved the pain and he loved giving it because when he was done spanking her he’d be able to—
“Nope.” Sam pulled her hand away from herself. This was a bad, terrible, no good idea. She stood up, letting the bathwater pearl and drip from her body. Things were starting to look like they weren’t completely fucked. She did not need to masturbate to thoughts of her childhood enemy. Not at all. Not ever. Besides, Galahad had returned to the posho lands from whence he came, and good riddance. She never wanted to see him again.
Probably.
Chapter 6
There was aheavy end-of-weekend crowd pouring out of the arrivals terminal at the airport, but Sam instantly spotted her twin. Among the yawning, Ugg boots and tracksuit pants crowd, Nicole was crisp and alert, walking with the kind of straight-backed confidence they taught in leadership seminars. She’d dressed for an imaginary job interview; her cream silk shirt tucked into a narrow grey pencil skirt. Her black hair was pulled into a tight ponytail and Sam could see diamond chips glinting in her ears. The daisy chain wrist tattoo she and the rest of the DaSilva family shared was hidden under her silver Cartier watch—a twenty-seventh birthday present from Aaron. The symbolism of that wasn’t lost on Sam in the slightest.
Nicole was beautiful. Heads turned all around her as she walked, but Sam found herself thinking the same thing she always thought when she saw her sister these days—she looked painfully,terminally, uptight. There had been a time when Nicole wore football shorts and hot pink nail polish, but for the past five years, she’d been doing her best to become a carbon copy of the Duchess of Cambridge. Now everything from her chemically straightened hair to the tips of her tasteful black pumps was so stylishly neutral, she looked like a sex robot designed by a Christian pastor. Sam pictured a half-metal, half-flesh Nicole lying on a medical examiner’s table.We can rebuild this working class girl from the shitty part of Brunners, we have the technology.