Free Savage Lane by Jason Starr

then Karen grabbed her, forcing her back toward the table. Deb lost her balance, tripping backward over a chair, and Karen fell with her, still grabbing her, as the tablecloth got yanked and dishes fell off and some smashed. Now Karen and Deb were wrestling on the floor, screaming, cursing at each other, and then Karen’s hands were pushing down against Deb’s throat. Deb said something and Karen spit in her face.
    Mark watched the surreal scene for several seconds, too stunned to act, then he snapped into action and managed to separate the two. He got Deb to her feet and pulled her away as she screamed, “Lemme go, I said, lemme go!”
    Mark forced her to walk toward the exit, saying, “Did you drive here? Did you?”
    “And I was gonna go to fucking Italy with you,” Deb rambled. “Why would I go to Italy with you ?”
    “You didn’t drive here drunk, did you?”
    “Where is she, huh? Where’s the whore?”
    “Come on,” Mark said.
    He walked ahead, pulling her toward the front of the clubhouse. She kept resisting, screaming for him to let go. He knew everyone was watching them and, Jesus, some people were holding up their phones, filming. He was looking away, trying not to make eye contact with anyone. The only one he really cared about anyway was Karen, and he just wanted to get Deb away from her. He felt awful that Karen had gotten caught up in this, and he was terrified that she’d be upset and blame him.
    Then, as he exited onto the terrace, still pulling Deb along, he looked back toward the table he’d been sitting at and saw that the nightmare was already happening.
    Karen was gone.

O WEN H ARRISON didn’t get what was up with Deb. Last week everything was so cool. They’d hooked up that afternoon in his room when his mother and stepfather were away and his brother was at school, and they were texting regularly too, and she seemed as into him as she always was, then today, out of nowhere, she was freaking, and he had no idea why.
    He’d started worrying about her attitude in the morning when he’d texted her about how psyched he was to meet up at swim practice, and she’d gotten all panicky, afraid her husband would see some texts. He was hoping that was all it was—panic—that it didn’t really mean anything. So he just chilled the rest of the morning, driving his brother to the practice, and then slipping away up to the classroom, waiting for his naughty student. When she arrived right on time, he’d thought, Okay, this is cool , because, seriously, if something were really wrong, would she even show?
    So they did their whole teacher-student thing, which was as awesome as always. Well, he liked it better when they were in his bedroom and he could get her to put on the schoolgirl outfit he’d bought for her on eBay, but the actual fucking was always awesome. He loved telling her what to do, giving her orders, especially when it was stuff that he thought was really nasty. He got most of his ideas watching porn online. His favorite scenes were schoolgirl and cheerleader scenes which he knew didn’t make a lot of sense because in those movies the girls were always young and the teachers and coaches and whoever were always old and in real life he was into MILFS. Well not totally into MILFS. He hooked up with girls his own age sometimes, and it was okay. But older women were different. There was just something about the idea of being with a woman who was as old as one of his teachers, or his mother, or one of his mother’s friends, that drove him crazy. Before Deb, he’d had another older girlfriend. Well, she wasn’t old-old like Deb—she was his babysitter, Melanie. She was sixteen when they’d started hooking up, and he was like twelve, and it continued until she went away to college at Oneonta and got a boyfriend up there sophomore year and wanted to stop. Owen was angry and tried hard to get her back, but it turned out to be okay, even better, because right around then he’d started