“Fuck off! I’m no liar!”
“You’re lying to yourself though”.
“I’m not!”
“Say it then, admit that you’re gay”.
“She’s totally gay”, came a muffled voice.
“I told you, you owe me”, Sadina replied.
“That wasn’t the deal; I said prove she was by having sex with her and filming that shit. You barely kissed”.
Sadina stepped aside, revealing her phone propped up on the counter filming everything and that guy she was making out with in the club on the screen. Rachel was mortified; this betrayal was more than she could take. She knew Sadina had her ways, but this? This was what a monster did. What were they going to do with the footage if she had gone ahead with it all?
She couldn’t deal with this, she felt sick to her stomach.
“Fuck off, you have enough wank material right there”, Sadina snapped back, angrily.
“No deal”, the guy protested.
Rachel, broken and wanting out of there right away, attempted to leave, but Sadina leapt in front of her, blocking the doorway.
“Let me go!” Rachel growled under her breath.
“Not until you tell me what the deal is. Is it a vadge or cock you’d like?”
“Fuck off!” Rachel screamed, aggressively pushing Sadina back into the fridge. Knocking the back of her head against it. Sadina yelped, probably more in shock than pain and was immediately propelled into a fit of rage.
“You fucking bitch! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” She roared.
“Leave me alone! You’re as disgusting as the fucking guys here!”
“Fuck off, you little psychopath! Fucking slobbering all over me like a fucking dog to a bone the past year. Your tongue was permanently hanging out and you didn’t even realise it, now you want to fucking virtue signal?”
“I’m leaving!”
“Whatever! I’m hot as fuck and I was giving you an opportunity you’ll never fucking get again in your life, you ugly bitch!”
Rachel couldn’t muster the energy to argue with her any more, her eyes welled up with tears and she ran out of that house, no idea of where to go, no desire to go back and overcome with feelings, betrayal, heartbreak, anger, extreme sadness, frustration and more she couldn’t yet decipher. After running for ten minutes, she sat beneath a tree in a dark, damp, empty park and wept until she could weep no more.
After what felt like hours of sitting there, she knew she needed to make a decision, both about tonight and about her future here. She called Lori.
Lori was sweet about the whole thing, inviting her in for the night, offering her bed, making her a hot chocolate and sitting with her all night to hear her out. She went as far as offering to let Rachel stay in her room and share her double bed for the remainder of the two weeks of the year. She and another young woman were the only ones remaining in the house anyway.
Rachel was a mess, she hid there for several days before mustering up the courage to step outside again and when she did, she made any final rent payments towards the shared accommodation she had been in, collected her things from the room whilst Sadina was away and never returned there again, finishing up the rest of the year and returning home for summer.
She never did reveal to the mutual friend that she and Sadina shared, why she wouldn’t be living with them going forward or what had happened that night, but her friend accepted her choices nonetheless. They’d remain somewhat close throughout the year, but distance would eventually take its toll on that relationship, what with her attempts to actively avoid Sadina.
Of course she couldn’t completely avoid Sadina on campus, but Rachel was quite content pretending that monster didn’t exist.
Surviving three years of uni and stepping out with a first was probably the greatest sense of catharsis. She’d learned a great deal about herself and had in many ways changed for the better. Her whole life was ahead of her now, a new ship with an ocean of opportunities and a greater awareness of where those icebergs were that she’d have to navigate around.
She wanted to land a good career, move out, find love and more, but she would need to take it step by step. Steady does it and steady was better than the messy rush that Sadina was. Little did she know that her life’s adventures were only just beginning.
Skipping over the mess of clothes scattered across the floor, she crawled across the bed and planted a kiss on her girlfriend’s lips, with flashbacks of her past still fresh on her mind
“What was that for?” Her girlfriend asked, a little taken aback.
“No reason, just felt like kissing you is all. What do you say we skip the unpacking and go explore, we can come back and sort out the rest after the ship departs”, Rachel replied.
Her girlfriend sighed.
“Okay, let’s go. Help me up”.
Giggling, Rachel helped her to her feet. They grabbed their mobiles and left the cabin to explore the ship.
CHAPTER 5 - CHRISTINE
9:33am - 5 Days until outbreak
. . .
. . .
Where in the good heavens had that damned man gotten to now, Christine thought. He had been absent for well over forty-five minutes now. Drop of a penny her behind, anything to avoid work with him. Even on a ship with nowhere else to escape to, he had still managed to find a way to vanish. God only knew when he planned to return.
It had always been tremendously frustrating trying to maintain a relationship with a man who was in and out of their lives more than a cat with a ten second memory. How did one deal with someone so temperamental? Here today,
