He is the choice in my life. I chose him once, I can choose him again. Joanne has urged me to take ownership of my actions. I damn well will take ownership of this one.

Of this choice I’m making that is mine and mine alone.

I reach into the bag, open the box, and gasp when I see a long, flowy dress in the color of champagne. It’s gorgeous and it’s nothing a whore would wear.

I run my tired hands over the dress – it is the only thing beautiful in my ugly life. I can’t rely on my mother. I am wrung dry from her, worn out and tattered from her cruel words. Nor can I lean on Trey. I thought I was falling in love, but he walked out without giving me a chance to explain.

I rest my cheek against the soft chiffon. This. This is all I can depend on.

Power. Control. Manipulation.

Because there is no such thing as love. Love is a fiction, a fable, an ode spun by poets and drunks, a fantastical tale told across one thousand and one nights. It is the genie in the bottle, it is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it’s the lie designed to seduce you.

My almost-now-ex-boyfriend doesn’t love me, my father never did, and the woman who raised me didn’t want a daughter. She wanted a sister, a confidante, a friend.

And she wound up with a whore.

This is who I am.

I discard my soft side, my loving side, my vulnerable side. With my chin held high and my dress in hand, I march up the stairs.

I am, and always will be, a working girl.

“Where’s Trey? What happened?” Kristen asks when I unlock the door to the apartment. She’s draped over Jordan and they’re watching a Mark Wahlberg flick on her laptop. She’s compromising and it’s fascinating seeing what a boy and girl do as they come together. Fascinating like a science experiment I’m observing through a microscope. Because that’s all this closeness, this kind of compromise, will ever be to me. Something to take note of from a distance, to jot down on lined paper. But not to live. “Trey was supposed to come up thirty minutes ago. Did he get lost in the basement?”

I shake my head. “He left,” I say in a dead voice, then I head to my room and flop face first on my bed. I could cry, I could curl up in a ball, I could bang my fists into the bedspread until they turn blue.

But there’s nothing left in me. I have been drained of emotions, and maybe I never even had any in the first place. Maybe I’m missing the gene that lets you feel for real.

Seconds later, I hear my door creak open.

“Hey,” Kristen says in a soft voice. She pads over to my bed, sits down and pets my hair. “You okay?”

“I wouldn’t really use that word to describe what I’m feeling right now,” I say in a muffled tone into the bedspread.

“What’s going on? Want to tell me?”

I flip over, stare up at Kristen and shrug. “Where to start? Imagine your worst-case scenario. Double that. Multiply it by ten. And add one thousand.”

“Oh, sweetie.” She squeezes my arm. “What happened? Tell me what happened. I want to know.”

“You go watch your movie. I’ll be fine.”

“No. Jordan can wait. You’re more important. I don’t even like this movie.” Then she calls out to Jordan, telling him to finish it on his own. He shouts back a victorious yes, and I hear the volume rise again on the film.

“Talk to me,” she says. “You let me in the other night when you told me. Now I’m in. Let me be in. Let me help you.”

I choke up because her words might be the kindest ones I’ve ever heard. Then I suck back the tears, and I tell her about my shitty day. When I’m done, she gives me the biggest hug a girl could get.

I may not know love, but I am starting to grasp the concept of friendship.

This is the only thing I know to be true.

Chapter Twenty-One

Harley

Slut is a dirty word.

Slut is a loaded word.

Slut is for microscopic miniskirts and tramp stamps and tottering red plastic high heels. Slut is for ripped t-shirts sliding down shoulders, for shots drunk off of bellies, for names written on bathroom stalls.

Slut is for loose girls. For easy girls. And it is only for girls.

That’s why I hate the word. As I shower and shampoo my hair, I think about how I want to eradicate it from the English language. I want to extradite it, handcuff it, lock it up in the backseat of a sedan and shove its head below the window where no one can see it. As I turn off the water and grab a towel, I think about a thousand billion Sharpies blotting slut from every dictionary that ever existed in any language.

Just the word itself sounds dirty. Even if it meant kitten or unicorn it would still sound like a guttural insult.

As I zip open my makeup bag, I picture a counter revolution, I imagine girls taking back that word, co-opting it, owning it, declaring it theirs. “Oh, Sally! You’re such a funny slut!”

But see, there’s nothing tramp-stampy or bathroom-wall-worthy about the dress Cam bought me, the event I’m going to, or the way I look when I am Layla. I blow dry my hair, apply my makeup and zip up the champagne dress. I am classy, I am a prize, I am worthwhile.

The only slutty thing I’ve ever done was mess around with Trey.

And he’s history.

Grabbing the tattoo concealer I picked up this morning from the make-up counter at a nearby department store, I cover up the red ribbon on my shoulder.

Erasing my mom, erasing Trey. I am back to me.

Kristen barricades the doorway. She presses her palms on each side of the frame, feet out wide, forming an X.

“I can’t let you go,” she tells me.

“Kristen, I’m fine.”

“This isn’t you. You told me you were done with that.”

“Well, I’m done with being done. I’m back. And I have a job to do, so I really need to go,” I tell her in a firm, clear voice.

“Harley,” she says, sounding wistful as she shakes her head once. “Tell me how I can help you.”

“I don’t need help.”

“I don’t know what to do, but I know this isn’t what you want.”

“Actually,” I correct. “It is what I want. It’s the way for me. And if you don’t move I’m going to be late for a very important fake date that will net me a few thousand dollars for rent,” I add, figuring that will convince Kristen to move.

She doesn’t.

I sigh heavily. “Kristen, I appreciate this. I truly do. You’re trying to stage an intervention or something, and I will grant you mega BFF points for that. Seriously, you have earned a big-ass friendship bracelet or something. So thank you. But this is my choice, and I am fine with it, and I really need to go because there is a car waiting for me.”

She sags and relinquishes her post, holding her arm out in a defeated gesture.

“Thank you.”

“Wait. Tell me where you’re going. Just in case something goes wrong.”

“What? You think Mr. Stewart is going to shank me?”

“I have no idea! But it would just make me feel better if, god forbid, something happens to you.”

“Fine,” I relent. “I’ll be at the Parker Meridien.”

Then she wraps me in a hug. “I love you, Harley. I do. I know this is your choice and I don’t like it, but I’m still your friend and I won’t stop being your friend even if I disagree, okay? You need to know that. I will be by your side.”

The back of my eyes sting and I suck in the tear that threatens to ruin my perfectly applied mascara. “Don’t make me cry,” I whisper and squeeze back. “Oh, and that was the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. So thank you for being a friend.”

Her friendship is the closest thing I’ve ever felt to some kind of love.

Inside the air-conditioned town car, it’s as if I’m in a capsule, transporting me in its secure, hermetically sealed spaceship to a better planet. One where these messy things called feelings no longer prick me like porcupine quills. On the planet I’m rocketing to, we strip ourselves of emotions. We are stronger, safer, better like that.