DRASTIC (Book 4 of the Soundcrush Series)

Chapter 3: Smart Girls Regret Vodka

Okay friends! Now that Tantric is finished we are moving forward with Drastic. If you just finished Tantric, you might recall that I posted the Prologue of Drastic and the first two chapters a while ago...way before Tantric was finished. If you are getting the notification for this update today, and it's been awhile since you read the opening of Drastic let me remind you we are taking it ALL THE WAY BACK , nearly to the beginning of our Soundcrush timeline. These opening chapters of Drastic are SEVEN years before the END of Tantric. We are at the end of the first summer of our story...the September Labor Day beach party that we have seen from Trace and Kat's view in Epic, and from Mac and Adam's view in Urgent. We didn't hear about this party in Tantric because Tantric began AFTER this party, in the fall of the same year at Tam's Wedding....

Got it? Good....

Don't worry, we are going to advance the timeline more quickly in this book than in others. Yet we will also be having flashbacks to when Bodie was fifteen...it's gonna be a DRASTIC swing in time, in this one...

Oh...one note about the song...Demons...it's really probably Marley and Bodie's theme song...especially sung as a duet like this. They have such a big mess in their past that they made and the consequences have been simmering for a long long time...and the pot is about to explode...

Here we go...again...

Marley, In The Kitchen At Martha's Vineyard

I'm hungover as fuck.

God. I haven't been that drunk since I wasn't Marley. I mean...since the days I lived a different life with Daemon. I can't really say since the days I was Jasmine, because I am still her, no matter what Bodie thinks. The choices I made as Jasmine changed my life and forever tied me to the world she got lost in.

Jaz is still a nickname I hear daily. It stills falls off the tongue of some of the most important people in my life...like TJ and his mother Pat.

My head is pounding as I drop my soft, oversized bag on the counter and it melts there, conforming to the shapes inside it. I stare at it, feeling much the same. Like a formless shape, draped over the hidden things inside.

I fight the urge to melt onto the counter and sob. What the hell was I thinking...nearly sleeping with Bodie last night? That was...so damn stupid. I am too smart to get tangled up in another mess like that. My life is complicated enough. I don't have space for a reckless romance. In fact, I don't even know what I am doing here at the Call-Out. I don't have the luxury of being able to waste time like this.

I have a routine. I have a job. Two, in fact. I have student loans, and now I have to make rent alone. Not to mention, private school tuition. I don't have time or energy to party like a rock star...with a rock star.

The thought of Bodie—his dreads swinging as he strolled toward me on the beach last night, his arrogant grin as he busted up Kade's play, his angry scowl as he called me out for keeping him in the dark about who I was, his lost, confused look as he said I don't even know what to call you, the feel of his heated hands on my skin as he was pulling my shorts off—they twist my gut with something that is both thrilling and terrifying.

I make it to the deck railing before I vomit. A lot.

It eases the horrible churn in my stomach, but makes my head hurt harder. I stumble back into the kitchen and drink water with my hands from the faucet while I paw around in my purse for the little makeup bag that has ibuprofen in it.

That's when I realize my phone is not in my purse.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I can't leave without my phone.