Author's note:
Thank you to everyone who left comments on the previous chapters, and if you haven't, I would love to hear what you think, even if your thoughts are negative, it's interesting to hear what people like and don't like about the story, so if you could comment, even if it's just to say "I hated it, learn to edit better, idiot." Then I would appreciate it.
Alex was excited to see Rachel after yesterday, he was nervous to see Alice, but she the reasonable sort, she'd listen to him when he explained what had happened, that she'd just started dressing like that, and he'd tried to ask why, tried to talk her out of it.
When he arrived at the study circle today, he found he was alone, neither Alice nor Rachel were here, he was alone, stuck sitting in silence, quietly studying, after the past two days of stress and sexy outfits, this was jarringly mundane.
Trying to alleviate his own boredom, he texted Olivia.
"Been awhile, hasn't it? I know you can't really respond often, but just wanted to say that I'm missing you, this place just isn't the same without you."
He hit send, and knew that he was unlikely to get a respond for days, the art camp Olivia had gone too was far out in the wilderness, meant to inspire students with natures beauty or some shit like that, he didn't see the value; The place was fucking expensive, but Olvia seemed like she wanted to go, so he talked to her, convinced her that she wasn't being selfish for leaving the group for a month and a bit, that she should take this opportunity to follow her passions, if she could afford it.
Alex had silently hoped that she would just decide it was too expensive and not go, but he didn't want to stifle her dreams, and had supported her in this decision, he missed her, and most days he wished he had been selfish, told her that he'd miss her company, that'd be miss her, told her that he loved her, and always had.
But he had Rachel now, he was 98% sure of that from their conversation yesterday, and he wasn't about to stab her in the back, he wasn't that kind of person, so he and Olivia would just be friends forever, or so it seemed. Honestly, he could live with that, romance, or no romance, he liked being with Olivia, and he meant it when he said he missed her.
He then texted both Rachel and Alice, asking them what was keeping them, were they sick, just tired, still arguing about Rachel's newfound dress-sense?
Rachel never read the text, and Alice did read her text, and seemed to be constantly responding without ever hitting send, odd, both were usually the sort who responded immediately, but it just confirmed to him it was probably illness.
Unbeknownst to him, Rachel, now refusing to call herself anything other than "fuckhole", had failed to come in due to the on-going changes in her life, she thought she couldn't show herself to Alex in her present state, and was presently doing two thing she felt urgently needed to be done, namely a breast enhancement, and she was trying to withdraw as much money as possible from her accounts, so she could give it to her master.
Her attempts to withdraw the money in cash had been very slow, the bank did not keep anywhere near as much cash on-hand as Rachel needed, and she was capped at withdrawing $100,000 in cash per day, she could get around this by just digitally bank transferring everything she had to Alex, but she didn't know his account number, and felt she would have been an absolute failure if she bothered him by asking such a question as "what's your bank number so I can give you all my money." Needless to say, her sense of reality and her relationship with Alex had become a little... deranged beyond any and all recovery.
Cash withdrawals it was, immediately after the withdrawal, she'd load the cash into an envelope, and mail it to Alex, being careful to remove her name from the mail, along with any indication that it had come from her, that would be vanity in her mind, implying the money had ever been hers and not his.
This process was time-consuming, and she considered it her job to at least transfer 10% of her wealth before she could look Alex in the eye again, this would take at least a week by her reckoning.
She hadn't seen Alex's text, because she had smashed her phone into a thousand pieces after it wouldn't let her edit to username to fuckhole due to "profanity concerns". As a result, she had no means to contact Alex, and wasn't going to seek one out for a while, the time she spent without seeing him had taken its toll, (i.e., less than a full day.) but the numerous pictures of Alex that Alice had sent her to replace her décor had helped a bit.
Alice, meanwhile, had a much simpler reason for not showing up or replying, she was existentially terrified of just talking to Alex, so great had her worship become, if she misspoke, or bored him, even for a second, how could she live with herself? So, she sat in silence, quietly panicking over how to respond to his message asking where she was, eventually she decided the best response to his query was silence, after all, he wouldn't want to hear the thoughts or reasoning of someone as disgusting as her, so the best answer, was none at all.
Alex waited two hours, trying to study, but compulsively checking his phone for a response, yet, all three girls failed to respond, concerning, but it's possible all three were just busy, he wasn't that worried about all this, eventually, he got bored and decided to return home.
Returning home, Alex found he had physical mail for the first time in years, he had a letter, what's more, it was quite a thick letter, as if it contained a large amount of paper, looking at the front, he found that the sender had gone to greater effort to remove their name and address from the letter, it was completely unreadable, not a single letter legible, the sender seemed to have gone over it with a large variety of tools, all designed to make the text illegible, they had succeeded.
Alex, deciding to hold his concern until he had seen the contexts, but his thoughts ran wild.
There's no chance it's a bomb, right? You can't fit a bomb in a letter.
Holding his breath, and tearing open the letter, he saw that it was full of many, many hundred-dollar bills.
"What the absolute fuck?"
One week ago
Olivia had just arrived at camp Brightwood, a camp dedicated to growing creative skills in anyone willing to pay their pricing, and given it was a prestigious art camp in the middle of nowhere, it was bloody expensive.
But, she had long wanted to go here, since the time she had entered university, she had looked up to an artist named Claire Redfern, an artist with a modest following, who had produced some truly beautiful reproductions of nature, often with a twist, using themes of nature to represent themes of humanity, her most famous work being a depiction of a grove of trees, which, upon closer analysis was actually a critique of Gentrification, it was a beautiful and inspired piece of commentary, and Olivia had long wanted to follow in her shoes.
So, she had come here, after Alex had convinced her, to camp Brightwood, where Claire herself had once studied, she talked about it on her blog, and said that it was her experiences here that led to her painting some of her most famous works. She had said she had initially just come here to get away from her ex, but by day one, she had already forgotten him, and gotten lost in the creative inspiration of the camp, of the culture, and even years on, she raved about this camp as a must go.
Olivia didn't quite have the same glowing opinion of the place that Claire did, but she found it to be a beautiful vista, whatsmore, she found the staff and her fellow students to be an absolute joy, they always had an interesting perspective on the nature of art, and what it meant to produce it, she had heard good advice on marketing yourself, how to produce art that appealed not just to yourself, but to your audience, and in two days since coming here, she had already met two girls who she would count as friends, who had couched her through the recent question which had been bugging her life.
Namely, she had recently come to realise two things which had stressed her out, the first is that Rachel had a thing for Alex, upon learning that, Olivia wasn't quite sure what to think, in a sense, she supposed she supported her friend, but honestly, she and Alex had been close for as long as she could remember, and the idea of him being closer to Rachel than her was... strange.
The second revelation was that Alex most likely had a crush on her... this, to put it lightly complicated matters, not least of which because she had never really thought about entering into a relationship with Alex, or anyone for that matter, she had been enjoying life, she had been pursuing her passions, in a sense, it wasn't that she didn't want to be in a relationship with Alex, it's that she truly had no idea whether she thought of him that way, she'd been wracking her head for the past few days trying to figure out a solution to this conundrum, or any sort of answer or understanding.
If she dated Alex, would Rachel hate her? If she dated Alex, would she be happy? Hell, would he be happy with her?
Likewise, if the opposite were true, and Rachel dated Alex... would she be unhappy? Would she grow to hate Rachel? Did the fact she was even asking that mean she did like him?
She truly had no idea...
Honestly, she just wanted things to stay the way they are, wanted to keep the group together, but that looked increasingly unlikely, most of them would be clear of their degrees soon, and after that, what then?
Her newfound friends couldn't answer these questions, but they could help her process it, and once she had made a decision, they told her they would help her see it through.
But for the time, she just put it out of mind, she had a month to go in this camp, she needed to enjoy the sights, and complete her training to become a professional artist, to truly become an artist, meant to perfect her craft, and she had sworn that she would return with something truly impressive to show the group, something which she could be proud of.
Present day
Alex was lying awake in bed, confused, and scared beyond all belief, $100,000 dollars had just landed on his doorstep, in an envelope, with a sender who had clearly gone to great lengths to erase their address and name, they clearly didn't want him to know their name, this could not have been good.
Was it the mob? Had they sent him that money by accident? Were they going to come to his address one day and ask where the money was? Would they be satisfied and leave him alone if he gave it back when they showed up?
He had no idea, he tried to think of possibilities outside of the mob, or some form of organised crime but... who the fuck else just sends $100,000 dollars in an unmarked envelope? He didn't think he even knew anybody besides Rachel who had that kind of money, and if she wanted to send him money, she'd do it in person, or ask him to direct transfer, not just send it to him with no warning without a text in a fucking envelope.
So, he was scared, he waited in silence in his house, listening for any irregular sounds, listening for if someone tried to break in, he though about calling the cops, but what could they do? What would he say? "Hey, so someone sent me a shitload of money, it's unmarked, do something about that."
