"That's gonna cost you."
I look at Anastasia with wide-eyed terror, a mute plea on my trembling lips.
She looks back at me with the feral smirk of a predator. I hate that I love how confident and cocky she looks: a glowering smile, an arched eyebrow, a challenging glimmer in her eyes.
Just being under her gaze makes me shrivel in the chair. I can't believe I've come to look to my friend like someone sitting in judgement, but months of incremental humiliations have progressively rendered me spineless.
I hate how weak her words make me feel. She's used them so often that I feel like I'm being pavlovianly conditioned to respond to them.
That's gonna cost you.
That's what she told me the very first time, when I first made my -- in retrospect, fatally unwise -- request. And now, here we are, sitting in a fancy restaurant that Anastasia could never have afforded on her own. Now, she's taken great delight in inviting me here.
I know the glint in her eye. She's going to pick the single most expensive dish, and the single most expensive wine on the menu, and it'll be my treat. Because it's gonna cost me. Like it always does.
Looking at us, no-one would assume I'm the rich family heiress, and she the studious, determined working-class girl. She looks positively radiant in the cobalt dress she's wearing, which goes so well with her deep green eyes.
My dress, of course... until it was no more. Because it was going to cost me.
Her copper hair drape her clever, beautiful face like a crown that befits a queen. Me, I've been confined to a more modest attire, a cheap plastic dress that makes my skin chafe. And that's the least of my reduction.
Anastasia is wearing my jewellery -- on this particular occasion, a pearly necklace that was a family heirloom for uncounted generations... until I gave it up to her, in my desperate servility.
Because it's going to cost me.
I'm not allowed any jewellery, of course, save for a corny wristband with letters spelling out her name. Proclaiming my nature as a simp for my friend for all the world to see.
My own golden locks tied in an unassuming bun, my makeup toned down to make me look plainer. To make me disappear, while she draws all the looks. She the sun, and I the moon, unable to shine with my own light.
I feel invisible, next to her. It's what I've always wanted. Isn't it?
That's what led to my original request, anyway. I know how it sounds, a rich girl complaining about how hard her life is, but listen... I didn't grow up under a rock. I know I've been absurdly privileged, and I appreciate that. I just... didn't want my wealth to define my social relationships.
Except, of course it did. When you're rich like my family is, it colours every conversation, seeps into every nook and cranny. How you dress, how you hold cutlery, how you greet someone. It's everywhere. And with it, come the vultures.
The constant barrage of tittering sycophants, the hangers-on looking for a favour or a connection they might leverage one day, the false friendships... it was exhausting. I hated that I couldn't tell what was real and what was fake any longer.
In my frustration, one day I just asked Anastasia to stop being nice to me. A part of me knew, even back then, that she was the ideal candidate. A true and honest friend, yes. But also someone who's always valued hard work and outspoken opinions, over wealthy affectations of propriety.
I didn't know what I was asking for. Or maybe part of me did, and that's where the thrill came from. I did know Anastasia has always been... bossy. Strict. Demanding. Even authoritarian... but I couldn't imagine how much, until that first time, when I shared my frustrations with her, and asked her to never, ever be nice to me again.
That's when she first said the cursed words to me.
It's gonna cost you.
And it has. Oh my, it has.
It started simple, really. Anastasia really did stop being nice to me. She became curt with me, and I found myself, uh... responding. Snapping at attention, or squirming under her verbal assaults, and of course there was no mistaking the sudden warmth radiating from my sex...
I'd just wanted to be treated like an average person, a peer, but Anastasia spotted something in me, and went straight for the jugular.
She started treating me like a social inferior. And I... liked it.
I started carrying her textbooks, walking into uni a step behind her. At her direction, I always tied up my hair, trying to "be less showy" in her presence, as she put it. Our daily afternoons of study became more and more centered around her studying.
I would brew her tea, fetch her snacks, go buy pizza myself (when we could have ordered it). My grades, already lower than hers, began to dip. But my arousal began to heighten, and with it, so did my servility.
That's when the foot massages began... and with them, my downfall. But truthfully, I don't even think of my debasement and prostration before her as the defining moment of our new relationship. No, there is another...
In retrospect, I think the first time she directly asked me for money... that was the point of no return. The threshold in the permanent change between us.
It started with a simple fiver, but since then, it's gone up, and up, and up -- and I've only gone further and further down, into the abyss of my own depravity...
"Earth to Olivia," Anastasia says, snapping me from my reverie. "I said, it's gonna cost you. I have cooler friends I could spend time with, you know? I need motivation to hang out with a loser like you."
My cheeks redden like the fires of hell at her demeaning words. Even more damningly, my thighs rub together in my arousal.
"C-c-cooler friends?" I say, in a half-broken whisper.
"Oh yes," Anastasia says, leaning in with a glint in her eye. "Friends who have worked their butts off for what they have, like me. Not privileged brats like you. They have interests, hobbies, motivation. You're so empty, and vapid..."
I mewl like a kitten, trying desperately not to let the entire restaurant hear me.
"And spoilt, and stupid..."
"Please..." I ask, putting down the glass. My hands are shaking so hard that I fear I'd drop it.