Unashamed by Emma Janson Page A

was just another conquest. In our gang of eight, I was the only female, so the boys felt like it was their duty to look after me no matter what kind of wild child I had become. In the months of sitting at our regular table three times a day, we all became very close, so with one space empty, we’d know someone was spitting game to get laid. Well, with the exception of one guy. He was getting married and had to undergo taunts and jokes with the occasional punches in the arm, all in the name of brotherly love. The nudges the boys gave each other as we sat sometimes accompanied a thumbs-up hand gesture or the motion of sucking dick with hysterical laughter.
    Just because I was the only girl didn’t mean leniency from teasing. I would scrunch my lips with the wide-eyed stare that moms give to their kids at the mall when they are misbehaving. You know, the look that will stop a kid cold through a crowd and somehow by forces unknown draw him back to the mother with a sulk. This is when she would proceed to escort him to the door by the neck and beat his ass at the car. As soon as I knew Douglas was looking at me again, I would smile and seem glorious, much like the mother’s expression would be after returning to the mall to finish her Christmas shopping.
    Each time I sat with Douglas and left an empty chair at my usual table, the boys would shrug and point to my seat as if to say, What the fuck? Are you ever coming back or what? We miss you. Eventually they didn’t bother us in our little booth, off in our own little world. Maybe I just didn’t notice. I was in la-la land with him, totally smitten, yet reserved because I did not think he would ever give me the time of day. I felt like he was someone who would never date me simply because he was just too good-looking and far too intelligent to be interested in the barracks ho. My self-worth was low.
    But then one day, before I turned the corner to leave the lunchroom, he shouted from his booth, “Hey, do you want to go to this club with me and some friends this weekend?”
    I turned in shock, my head cocked to the side, and I paused for a moment a complete skeptic. From across the noisy chow hall, I stood in the exit with my jaw to the floor. Even as we smiled at each other, I thought he was joking. I blinked a lot before shouting back, “Sure.”
    When I entered the chow hall, I was on foot, but, when I left, I was floating on a cloud.
    Impressed with him in every way, I was further awestruck by his car. How cliché, right? It wasn’t some fancy speed racer that caught my eye. It was that he had a top-of-the-line new car that still smelled and looked like it had just rolled off of the sales lot. The interior and trunk weren’t just clean; they were immaculate.
    Intimidated by this, I wondered how I would fit into his expensive world. But I felt stately as I got in and smiled while introducing myself to the couple seated in the back. Terrance shook my hand first as he said, “Yeah, I know you. What’s up, girl?” Then he squeezed my shoulder in friendly recognition.
    “Oh my God, T, you know Douglas?” My eyes shifted from Terrance’s smile in the back to Doug adjusting the rearview mirror in the driver’s seat. Admittedly, I was confused as to how they might know each other because they were so different. Terrance was a hardcore party animal who frequented raves. Not that Douglas couldn’t party, but he just seemed to be in control of things and very responsible. Club kids and studious college students don’t usually hang in the same crowds.
    “Yeah, girl, this here is my boy! The pimp!” he said as he shook the headrest on Douglas’s seat, then scuffed the top of his head. Douglas immediately began to fix his hair in the mirror, but he didn’t seem pissed; he was smiling.
    I knew Terrance from the club where we had been friendly dance partners a few times. The weekend prior I had given him a lift when he was too drunk to shake his lanky ass anymore. He