—

After surviving all the sexual assaults of Tonya with an excuse of headache, Dana turned her back to Tonya, trying to sleep. Tonya covered her with her strong arms from back and rested her face on Dana’s shoulders. Somehow, even Tonya’s light touches felt strange on Dana. She suddenly hated Tonya’s skin on her own.

She stood up. “Where to?” Tonya asked, her eyes closed. “I think I’m getting a cold” Dana lied. “I’m gonna sleep on the couch.”

“Does she have to know what I do every minute?” she thought.

“Good thinking, I wouldn’t want to catch that” Tonya said while drifting off to sleep. Dana was annoyed at the fact that her so called girlfriend didn’t even bother to take care of her when she was supposed to.

Even without Tonya, sleeping was challenging for the tennis player. Every way she turned she saw Alice with Andrew, him being on top of her, her enjoying herself too much. She kicked the air with anger, waking Mr. Piddles from his sleep.

—

Alice‘s door bell rang about 8 pm informing the arrival of a very charming young man to escort her to the opening night of Provocations. When he accepted her invitation, Alice felt a huge weight lifted off of her. She wouldn’t be thinking about her geeky friend and her bitchy girlfriend, instead she would be talking and eventually showing off a very handsome male companion during the exhibit.

—

Dana hated the dress she’s wearing. It was so much like Tonya’s. They would totally look like weird twin sisters. But she didn’t possess the strength to argue about this with Tonya. Besides, she had more important thoughts on her mind, like how she would behave next to her best friend after all the weird stuff that was going on between them. They used to talk everyday before but after the night at the club, they didn’t see each other – let alone talk on the phone. Dana could not help  but felt excitement  washed over her with the thought of seeing Alice, in a ***** cocktail dress complementing her every round curve.

—

Alice walked into the great hall with Andrew, hand in hand. The gallery was full of people even with the negative attention the exhibit received from some social communities. She saw some familiar faces along with the faces she only knew from magazines and TV. Cherie was there posing with her husband, Alice wondered where Shane was and if she saw her. Shane never talked about the relationship but Alice‘s journalist instincts told her that Cherie could have backed out when she felt her social status, glamorous life and marriage were in jeopardy. Maybe Shane was a toy all the way from the beginning. Or things got more serious than it was supposed to be. All Alice knew was Shane switched back to being miserable after being so much in love.