Chapter 1

"I don't want to go in there," I snapped, trying to dig my heel into the concrete floor beneath me.

"You can't back out now!" Nicole, my best friend, hissed. She wrapped her fingers around my elbow and pulled me in the direction of the glass doors ahead of us. "Come on, bitch!"

This was a horrible idea. I had known it from the moment she brought it up, more than two months ago. When she mentioned coming to the convention, she had winked a sneaky eye at me and said, "We're going to the convention and you're cumming! Get it?" Yes, I did get it. Un-fucking-fortunately. Now there we were, right outside the convention hall with our passes around our necks, and I wanted to vomit and die, in no specific order.

"Nikki, I really don't want to go in there. Please," I begged.

She just rolled her eyes and sighed in annoyance. "I don't give a shit. I got you a pass and we're going in. Do you know how hard it was to snag these bad boys?" she asked, pointing at the laminates around each of our necks. "It was a bitch. So, you and I are gonna go in there whether you want to or not."

My eyes immediately went left to right, watching the varied groups of people milling around the outside. There were men and women of every age, few dressed in casual jeans and t-shirts, others not so much. Tiny skirts, platform heels, leather pants, and lingerie were also staples in the fashion that the people wore. I sucked in a breath and tried to ignore the bursting heat that I was sure was swallowing my cheeks whole. No one seemed to be paying any attention to us; we were both dressed pretty conservatively compared to the other people here.

For once, I felt out of place with my clothes. My skinny jeans, blue blouse, and flats seemed so out of place here I felt like I was starring in Alice in Wonderland. "Nikki..." I whined like a little kid.

"Shut up. You'll thank me for this later," she huffed and pulled at my elbow again.

I knew there was no point fighting with her. Nicole Jonasson always got her way. Always. It was one of the things that I loved most about her; she was fearless and strong. Despite her current attitude and shit-talking, Nikki was one of the nicest people on the face of the planet. You just had to get to know her. When I met her for the first time in English Lit, she had just finished tearing a guy a new asshole for not holding the door open for a handicapped student in our class. She was tall, sandy-haired, hazel-eyed, and just absolutely kick-ass.

I fell in love with her after she looked at the student, with violence in her eyes, and muttered a frustrated, "I'm going to break into your room when you're sleeping at night and take a shit on your face if you ever forget to hold the door open for another person again." Needless to say, we ran into him a few years later and caught him holding the door open for at least a good minute for the person trailing behind him.

She was everything I wanted to be in life— strong and confident. There was nothing that Nicole, or Nikki as I usually called her, couldn't overcome.

Including me.

"Oh my God," I moaned as she pulled me behind her through the glass doors.

The two security guards at the doors checked our credentials before allowing us into the convention. A huge picture of a pretty redhead with jizz all over her face hung by the entrance, and I tried my best not to balk at her look of feigned pleasure. A big goop of it was stuck to her eyelashes, and I couldn't help but wonder to myself how much her eye stung after that.

"C'mon, Kat," Nicole called after me, making a beeline for the first booth right off to the entrance to the exhibit hall.

I slowly walked after her, eyeing the really random people that were walking all over the place, crowding over and into booths like kids in a candy store. Well, I guess this was like a large candy or toy store— for adults. Ha.