The Carrero Heart - Beginning (Friends to Lovers)

He disappears into the crowd with the force of my assault and I move fast, knowing better than to stick around for him to come back, trying to get out of sight before he gets back to his original spot. Heart racing a little as adrenaline flows and sense tells me to duck and weave faster to the safety of the dark, back wall of the club.

Men in this club are known for being aggressive and perverted at the best of times, and I’ve been groped on more than one occasion to know it’s true. One weekend had seen too close a call with one hot-tempered asshole who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Arrick had shown up just in time and broken his nose when he had refused to back down. Arry my pro boxing hero.

“Leave me alone!” I yell back as an afterthought, almost coherently, to the general direction he’s fallen back; my slurring voice non-existent under the thumping house music and intent on just finding a quiet place to get off my tired legs to hide. I’m exhausted.

I wish Arry was here already and helping me out to his car, so I can lie down and go to sleep. The thought of him coming for me is all that is keeping me sane right now; alcohol and tears are never a good mix. I’m disheveled, out of place and vulnerable. I’m not sure if I should even tell him about why I’m upset this time, why I have been crying.

Arrick hates my friends, not that I can’t see why, as they’re all pretty pathetic and really just the crowd I fell into when I came here.

I can’t ever seem to form real friendships with people, no matter how hard I try, and I know it’s because I don’t ever let them past my outer wall. It’s the same with men I date. I hide who I really am behind that mask of party girl and reckless persona and attract the wrong kind. Arrick hates the men I date almost as much as I hate his girlfriend Natasha, and another sob story about how hard done to I am by one of them again, will just annoy him. I can’t say that I blame him; it annoys me too, that I’ve become this pathetic doormat that men wipe their feet on, and I let them.

My stomach churns like a washing machine, my throat aches, painfully parched. I sobbed for an hour before even calling him this time, letting the hazy flurry of booze clear a little so I didn’t slur as much on the phone to him, and it’s left me feeling raw and woozy.

are, and last time I saw my handbag it was in the hands of that slimy prick Terry. I left him to hold it for me when I’d gone to dance. Terry is the guy I’ve been dating, on and off, most recently, nothing serious. Just looking

a vanity. At first, the disbelief made me stand in open-mouthed silence, before shock, and then outrage hit me. Reacting like a crazy jealous bitch, I yanked him off her and reined a flurry of slaps and abuse at his upper shoulders and

discarded clothes and belongings, before scurrying off like cowardly assholes, and I only realized my bag was with him after I slumped down on a closed toilet and cried my eyes out. Completely betrayed by two people I should

was milking me for anything she could get; a never-ending stream of money on tick with promises to pay it back. My clothes, my shoes and now my man. Luckily, my cell was in the back pocket of my denim skirt, a habit Arry drilled into me from an early age. To always keep

vanished as quickly. As soon as I stumbled out of the ladies’ room, tear-stained and lightheaded to find them, I realized I’d been abandoned. We all came here to get drunk before our main event; a huge party in some exclusive bar across Manhattan, and my time in

isn’t the first time they have all gone on to the next place and left me to it. None of them cares about me, they only care that I pay my share, or more, of the booze, and don’t cause drama. No one bothers even

care of me for a while, that guy who never abandons me, even if he is pissed at me for calling. It’s stopped me falling off the edge

the party but never the aftermath, and even then, only around as long as my allowance doesn’t run out. Tired of being used and discarded by men when they move on to someone else, as though I’m worth no more than a cheap night out when I am no longer a lure for them. I’m just sick of everything, sick of the life I’ve made for myself and don’t know how to get out of anymore. I feel spent inside

never to venture back here alone. Into the depths, but I’m so consumed with

Terry nor Dionne mean that much to me in the grand scheme of things. This isn’t the first cheating asshole I dated, and the constant nagging to have sex with