In Love With My Strict Bodyguard

“Whoo!” I scream into the night sitting on the head of the seat in the open convertible car.

“Let’s get this night started!”

“Yeah, let’s get wasted!” My friend, Amy, shouts by my side.

Our boyfriends, Gregory (mine) and Leroy (hers) holler, seated in front.

The Ferrari convertible racing to the latest luxurious club to open in town: The Goffer. We get there faster than record time and in mere minutes we are already drunk, near wasted. I am straddling Gregory, dancing on his legs as he sniffs that stupid drug shit that Leroy introduced him to. All three of them and some others who joined our VIP section at the club are sniffing it, getting high on some crazy level. I may be drunk right now and crazy half the time still I won’t try that shit. I have seen what drugs can do to people.

“Sapphire, you need to get on this shit” Leroy drawls, totally high

“Yeah, babe, you are missing” Gregory follows, I roll my eyes and down my cup, the strong alcohol burning my throat. Good stuff.

“This shit is so gooooood!…. On some other level!” one of the guys whose name I didn’t catch yells between sniffs

Amy is completely gone, “I am so fucking wasted!”

I no longer feel comfortable and I am about ready to leave but my friends are not ready to go anytime soon.

Another guy who is the son of some multi millionaire and is not nearly as high as the others, Aidan, says over the loud club music, from across us on the curved seat in the reserved section, “This is the good stuff, Leroy! You got to hook me up with your guy, cause my dealer can’t get me shit like this”

“I could hook you up but you know how it is, it’s got to be on the DL, this shit is highly illegal in nearly all the countries in the world, man!” Leroy replies.

Illegal in nearly all the countries? Why are they even doing this shit? For real, I can never get why they do drugs, alcohol gets me wasted enough.

“I want to go” I say to Gregory in a low voice, no need to be loud as I am still on his lap, his hand loosely on my waist.

In his drug hazed state he doesn’t get what I say, I repeat myself louder.

SHOT.

There is a loud gunshot in the club and pandemonium ensues. People are running everywhere, snapping out of their wasted, high states as more gunshots are being heard. I see the cops come in and there is a shootout between them and some guys at the club. I don’t know who the guys are, probably some criminals, but it doesn’t take long for the cops to surrender them and round them up.

I should have run out of the club by now, but the exist is sealed off and people are just too much everywhere, scampering about, panicky. I can’t move, my heart beats faster, I am entering a panic. It all seems too familiar— the shots, the running, it’s that night again twelve years ago. That night when mom was shot dead at the mall.

The police blocks off the exits leaving those who are yet to run out trapped inside, they begin to take in those found with drugs and there are drugs all around our section. The others around me scamper off, Gregory throws me off his laps— I am surprised I am still on his legs— and runs off, leaving me here as the police heads our way.

“Gregory!” I am able to call him, unable to move from where I am on the ground. He doesn’t look back, Leroy drags wasted Amy away and before he can get across to me who is immobilized by panic, two heavily armed cops storm our VIP section.

Seeing the drugs scattered around plus my drunken state, they need no explanation and take me into custody first, cuffing my hands as they go to gather the others.

What started as a fun night ends with me in the back of a cop car, my hands cuffed, the alcohol clearing from my eyes enough for me to realize what deep shit I have gotten myself into.

Daddy is not going to like this.

***

“What is it with you, Sapphire?!” My politician father, Mr Henry Hackett, who bailed me out of the police custody after they found out I had nothing to do with the drugs, shouts at me the very next day in the living room of his luxury mansion, with me still in my very revealing, short, sequin party dress. Putting on the dress last night, I had looked hot but now, I look like a raccoon that got drenched in the rain while wearing the shiny wrapper of something it found in the dustbin, and after being beat in the rain it hadn’t gotten the opportunity to dry out properly.

“If it’s not one thing it’s another with you!” Father continues, “Tell me are you after my life? My political career? Don’t you want me to win this election?! Answer me don’t you?!” His voice gets louder and more frightening.

I nod, I have nothing against his political aspirations.

“You don’t act like it!” He accuses, and perhaps he is right. “Every new week you turn up with one scandal or the other! And with the way you are going, you can cost me this election! So I might as well say goodbye to being the governor of the state, because my own daughter is out to ruin me!”

“No, dad, it’s not—“

“It’s not what?! That’s exactly what it is!” He tells then calm down, his hand on his forehead as he paces across the center table from me, thinking of what to do. “Sometimes I wonder what I will do with you, you know. I wonder what is the issue with you, where did I go wrong, because I give you everything you need, I even… I got you another mother, after your mother died. A woman as motherly and caring as Marilyn is” he says, speaking of my stepmother, Marilyn Hackett, who is only the nice, caring mother to me when he is not looking. She doesn’t care about me— or my father, truly— she only cares for herself, the two sons she has for dad (nine year old Henry and six year old Hastings) and how much money she can get from my father. She is a mean, pretentious gold digger who only cares about money, but father doesn’t see that. She would always make it seem like I am the one choosing to be difficult, while she is always the angel, and he buys her every lie. She is evil and somehow I am the only one who sees it.

The sound of expensive stilettos clinking on the marble floors as someone descends the double stairs cause both I and father to turn to the stairs. And of course, it is her.

Speak of the devil and she shall appear.

“Darling,” the fake-blonde witch purrs