If there was such a thing as justice in the world, Shanya had never tasted it.

Five days had passed since her horrible encounter with Christian. She had returned to work on the third day, opting to act as though nothing had happened. It would have worked if she hadn't seen the disturbing look Christian sent her way the moment he came barging into the kitchen door. It was a mixture of shock and a healthy dose of confusion. As if he hadn't expected her to return.

It was gone in an instant, replaced by the usual sneer. He'd barked orders and stomped about like a Mama Bear. She hadn't expected him to be all sunshine and daisies, but she also definitely did not expect him to act like he'd been victimized. There was not a shred of remorse in his countenance and he barely spoke a single word to her.

If anything, he was even meaner and treated her no less than anyone else. The latter, Shanya had enjoyed. It was nice not to be the bearer of unwanted attention for once. She'd never cower before a man like Christian. Never let him think he'd gotten the better of her. But seeing him prance about so wantonly had made her want to buy all the acid in the grocery stores and douse him with it, one bottle after the next until he was nothing but charred skin and bones.

No. She didn't just want him dead. She wanted him seesawed, obliterated, nothing left to bury.

A sexual harassment claim would've been a mere slap on the wrist—prison was too good for the swine.

"What are you thinking?' Lily's soft voice echoed through her mangled thoughts. They were sitting on the couch facing the flat-screen TV, a breakfast tray of scrambled eggs between them. Shanya was wearing a yellow off-shoulder top, ripped white shorts, her favorite sneakers, and a pair of large hoop earrings. Lily was in a large orange dress shirt, her long braids dancing around her shoulders. Pretty without even trying.

"I'm thinking, isn't this too much?" Shanya waved her hands over her outfit, hoping she was convincing enough.

"Too much, are you kidding?" Lily snatched the remote control from her lap and paused the boring law show playing on the screen...getting away with something, Shanya couldn't care less. Lily loved law shows. Shanya once watched her binge all nine seasons of Suits in the space of a week. She on the other hand preferred cartoons.

"It's too little!" Lily continued. "I told you to go with the hot, blue dress I got you for Christmas, but did you listen? No."

Shanya narrowed her eyes and ate more scrambled eggs, the weight in her heart already getting lighter. Lily had a warmness to her that could rival the sun even though she tried to hide it. Shanya envied that about her. "This is not about your feelings."

Rich dark eyes bored into hers. "You're going to see Paris Boden. Trust me, this is about my feelings."

"Really? I don't see how."

A throw pillow slammed into Shanya's face just then, it tumbled into her plate of eggs before falling to the newly carpeted floor. There was a slight oily stain on the cushion. Shanya pinched her nose at her friend and pointed an index finger towards the pillow. "You're washing that."

"Listen," Lily said, disregarding her friend's warning as she walked over to Shanya's wardrobe and shamelessly shuffled through her things. "What you need is something that says, 'I'm not wearing this for you, I'm wearing this for me but I might let you unzip it if I think you're worthy of consent'."

"I'm not going to let you whore me out, you Pimp. Put your butt back on the couch."

In that instant, Lily shrieked and did a double-take as she held up a washed-out blue turtle neck silk shirt. It was long-sleeved and had puffed-up tendrils along the base of its neck. Utterly offensive to the sight. Hideous.

"What is this?" Lily breathed. Her face had contorted into the most heinous look of disgust as if what she held in her hand was horse dung. "It looks like - it looks like Miss Trunchbull died and came back again in a younger body with an even more grotesque fashion sense." She shook her head unbelievably fast as she blinked wildly. "This is the most ghastly shirt I have ever seen. This shirt is where fashion goes to die."

Shanya couldn't help the overwhelming gale of giggles that escaped her lips as she perched forward and cradled her pained stomach. She'd thought the same thing when she'd first seen it. It was a gift from her brother, Chicago, who obviously had no sense of style in the female department. But she hadn't had the heart to throw it away. And she was glad she hadn't. It was worth it just to see the look on Lily's face right now.

"Burn this abomination ASAP," Lily ordered, dropping the poor shirt on the ground like it was filth. It was, really.

She reached into Shanya's wardrobe and this time brought out a multicolored shirt with depressing frilly tendrils at its ends. Courtesy of her brother.

"Really," Lily swung her head to Shanya, pinning her with an incredulous look. "How are we even friends?"

Shanya, not fully recovered from her fit of laughter didn't bother to look up from her bent-over position. "I ask myself the same question every day."

A light thumping sound followed indicating that the shirt had joined the other one on the ground. "I'm actually fearful of what I might find next."

"Well, then don't look," Shanya advised, finally raising her head up. She wiped away at the tears of laughter glistening at the corners of her eyes and nearly jumped out of her skin when Lily squealed in delight.

"Oh my gosh, found it!" Lily practically bobbed up and down, waving the aforementioned hot, blue dress she'd gotten Shanya for Christmas. It was honestly gorgeous. White polka dots mated its entire length and a beautiful bow hugged at its waist. The back was bare. Shanya didn't mind dresses like these, not at all. She simply preferred her comfy jeans and sneakers.

"You've got to put this on."

"No."

"Please! It would be such a shame just leaving it here—"

"I said no."

With a disapproving pout and an annoyed glare, Lily returned the beautiful dress and shut her wardrobe. She circled back and thrust her butt in Shanya's face, causing Shanya to swat it away irritably before Lily sat on the couch.

"There's just no pleasing you."

"Lies. I'm easily pleased," Shanya countered, mimicking her dad as she continued eating her scrambled eggs. He'd once said the same thing to her when she'd returned home from school, flaunting her Mona Lisa sketch she now knew was ghastly, and had asked, "So, are you pleased?"

Everything reminded her of him. Even the damn scrambled egg. It had been a delicacy for him besides avocado and sardine. She'd never been in the kitchen much to learn how it was prepared, but she wished she could make one now.

Lily's phone chimed suddenly and she made a face at the message.

"What? You have that Graham look on your face."

Lily drew out a long breath, flipping the phone on its back. "He wants us to meet."

"Okay...? I'm not getting the doomsday look you have going on there." Her finger made circles gestured across Lily's exasperated face.

"I think he's only with me because of the sex."

"You're only with him because of the sex," Shanya emphasized, leaning off the couch. "It's your one superpower."

She snickered at this. "You make me sound like such a slut. You know I love Graham."

"No, you don't. You're just turned on by him."

"So? It's a form of love."

Shanya burst into a loud cackle of laughter, almost choking on the egg in her mouth. Still, Lily added, "We've been together too long for it not to be."

"Aw," Shanya cooed, feigning sympathy as she tried to hold her tongue from laughing outright again at the fact that Lily thought two months was too long. When they'd first met, Lily was not the kind of girl that fell for anyone. She was a coquette, for lack of a better word. She had flings with multiple men and then ended the relationship in less than a week because she was afraid of commitment. That was why she never picked the right guys. It was always some    douche.

The first month she'd started staying with Lily, it was a guy named Thomas. Poor bastard didn't stand a chance. Now there was Graham. Handsome, charming, just-as-douchey-as-the-rest-of-them Graham, whose only win was that he managed to hold on to Lily a lot longer and apparently, made her fall for him.

Unlikely, Shanya mused as she tried to imagine Lily in a wedding gown, saying the words I love you to a dashing man and meaning it.

She completely and utterly failed.

"Yeah, I'm sure you'll get over it."

"Mm-hmm," Lily hummed, a soft smile brightening her pretty features, but Shanya didn't miss the mischief underlying them. A further study of her friend's appearance—the careless tilt of her head, the far-away look on her face, the subtle biting of her lower lip—had Shanya throwing her hands in the air as Lily's intentions became clear to her.

"You want to solve a sex problem by having more sex?"

Her friend's coy shrug was confirmation enough. Shanya merely shook her head and returned back to her plate, only to find it empty.

"How come you've never had sex?"

Shanya rolled her eyes for the second time that afternoon and set the empty plate on the table before her, recollecting a day when Nala had found out one of the girls in their class was a virgin. She'd acted like the girl had the plague. After that, Shanya had chosen never to reveal her virgin state to the rest of her uncouth crew.

"Why does everyone act like sex is a goal as opposed to something you just do when you're ready?"

Lily leaned in considerably closer as if about to reveal some life-changing secret. "Because, when it all comes down to it, it's just broken hymen really. You think it's this huge life-changing moment but it's actually done in under five minutes—and that's if there was foreplay. Hell, I lost mine under eight seconds to a rich boy in high school in the janitor's closet just to get back at Lisa."

Shanya regarded her friend closely. She'd heard that story many times but it never sunk as deeply as it did in this very moment.

"Well, thank the powers that be I'm not you or your evil twin sister."

"Oh, stop it," Lily teased, reaching for the throw pillow abandoned on the floor and sending it at Shanya's face yet again. "It's the twenty-first century. Only a handful of people are virgins. The rest of us had sex as early as fourteen. It's natural."

"That's such a cockamamie excuse. Cancer is also natural, y'know. So naturalness itself should not be considered a virtue."

Another cushion hit Shanya square on the face, igniting a ripple of laughter from them both. "You're impossible."

Shanya threw the cushion back at Lily this time and got up from the couch before Lily had any ideas to return the favor. "And you're just bitter."

She walked to the mirror in the bathroom and retouched her makeup. A memory sprang to her mind at the action—Gabe, waiting behind her as she got ready for Monica's 15th birthday party. Monica was Nala's little sister, the two were as different as chalk and cheese. While Nala was abrasive and condescending, Monica was sensitive and down to earth. She'd observed this from their first and most likely final meeting.

Shanya had been the kind of popular girl people wanted to invite to their parties even if they didn't really know her because their party would be considered lame if she weren't present. How things changed.

She heard a car park outside their apartment and left the bathroom, shutting out the memory of a past life. Lily had resumed playing the insipid law show again but was already at their window, peering down.

"An expensive car," she observed, smiling approvingly. "I think your chauffeur is here."

"Wipe that ecstatic look off your face. This is a kidnapper we're talking about."

Lily kept the expression on her face as she left the window. "Which is why this will be so fun to watch."

An exasperated Shanya reached for her white fanny pack on the couch. Tying it around her waist, she helped herself to Lily's scrambled eggs before flopping down the brown staircase in twos just as the doorbell rang.

Opening the door, Shanya stood face to face with Teeth's smug face. The tall, big idiot who had tied her to that chair weeks ago. The very idiot who had called her ugly.

"Hi, I'm your ride. Name's Travis," he greeted, standing as stiff as a pole. There was a glint to his blue eyes that irritated her. Those same eyes traveled to where Lily was no doubt standing a little ways behind her, and their color changed to a rather molten one, touched by storm clouds. A soft shock of emotional current washed across his features before he snapped his eyes away from Lily and back at her.

It was so quick that Shanya thought she'd imagined it.

"Are you ready?" He asked, disinterested.

She let her hand fall from the doorknob and kicked Travis's groin with all her might, satisfied when he howled in pain and dropped to his knees.

"Now I'm ready," she announced. Behind her, Lily was bawling in fits of laughter, the sound piercing and comical enough to wake the dead.

Shanya breezed past Travis who was still cradling his member and got into the back seat of the car, slamming the door shut.

A/n: Hoping you'd slam my door shut by hitting that vote button:,-)