“I don’t know why you’re so against this. He’s hot. And he’s sweet. And he’s totally into you. And I’m fairly confident you don’t have to worry about Eric telling you he’s gay, like your ex did,” Cindy laughs.
Oh, shit.
“Yeah, definitely not,” Belle adds. “That man is without a doubt hetero. The sexual tension between you two even made me sweat, and I don’t like to sweat. Is that what you’re worried about? That he’s going to do what your ex did? I don’t have the statistics on that exactly, but I’m pretty sure the chances of you finding another man who turned out to be gay would be staggering, and it would never happen.”
Oh, God, why did I tell them such a stupid thing? WHY?
“Siri, what are the statistics on a woman having two relationships where both men turned out to be gay?” Belle says loudly, holding her phone up to her mouth.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand your question.”
“I said, what are the statistics on a woman having two relationships where both men turned out to be gay?”
“Searching for gay bars in your area.”
“DAMN IT, SIRI! GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER!” Belle shouts. “WHAT ARE THE STATISTICS ON A WOMAN—HEY!”
I smack the phone out of Belle’s hand before she can repeat the question again, and she narrows her eyes at me when the phone goes flying across the carpet.
“You don’t need to look up that stupid fucking statistic. I know Eric isn’t gay; that has nothing to do with why I don’t want anything to do with him,” I tell her, exasperated and a tiny bit panicky.
“Ariel, it’s fine if you’re gun-shy because your ex-husband lied to you your entire marriage about liking dicks instead of chicks. We get it. I’d be freaked out to get back on the horse too, after something like that,” Cindy says in a kind voice that makes me want to shove a fork in my eye.
Not because she’s being kind, but because I am the worst friend ever. The absolute worst.
“I swear to you, that’s not it.”
Just suck it up, Ariel. You can’t keep this from them forever.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s not like you turned him gay or anything. I’m sure—”
“MY EX WASN’T GAY I JUST TOLD YOU GUYS THAT BECAUSE I WAS TOO EMBARASSED TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH AND I KNOW I’M THE WORST FRIEND IN THE WORLD FOR LYING TO YOU BUT I JUST DIDN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED!” I shout in one long-winded sentence, to get it all out before I lose my nerve.
Belle and Cindy stare at me with wide, shocked eyes, and I’m thankful that at least they aren’t looking at me with anger and betrayal written all over their faces.
“Does this have anything to do with why you’ve been putting off dancing on stage at Charming’s so you can finally start booking your own stripping parties?” Belle asks softly.
“Pshaw, no!” I scoff with a nervous laugh. “I already told you this a hundred times. I’m letting you two assholes have your shining moment after living like nuns for so long. You deserve the spotlight for a little while. You should be thanking me because I’m so giving.”
Jesus, I sound like a moron.
“So, let me get this straight: The Naughty Princess Club was all your idea—which turned out to be amazing, by the way—and yet ever since it started taking off, you’ve been giving us one excuse after another about why you don’t want to dance yet, and you’re saying it has absolutely nothing to do with your ex-husband, who we suddenly find out was never gay, and everything to do with you letting me and Belle have our moment?” Cindy asks skeptically.
“Fine. We all know I’m an asshole. The truth is, like the wise Beyoncé once said, I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly. Once they get a piece of me, your pickings for parties are gonna be slim.”
For fuck’s sake, why can’t I stop talking out of my ass?
I try to keep a confident smile on my face, but it’s no use. Not when I’ve got my ex swirling around in my brain, refusing to go the fuck away. This is why I kept everything from them. This is why I’ve held on to the lie for so long. I’ve spent too many years building myself back up after what he did. And since one stupid phone call from him a few weeks ago, I’ve done nothing but relive every moment of my marriage.
“Chéri, do you really think a donut is wise for breakfast? You know what carbs do to you.”
“Mon amour, that dress is a little tight, no? I think it’s time for the next size up.”
My vision clouds with tears and I curse under my breath, squeezing my eyes closed before those damn things even think about falling.
As much as I hate to admit it, just hearing that asshole’s voice through the phone line reverted me back to the woman I swore I’d never be again. One who would let a man break her and kill any confidence she’d ever had in herself. I haven’t resisted stripping because I want my friends to get all the glory for a little while, although it’s a nice thought. I haven’t started stripping because for the first time since I signed those fucking divorce papers two years ago, all I hear is his voice in my head telling me I’m not pretty enough, not skinny enough, not good enough.
“We’re gonna need alcohol for this, aren’t we?” Cindy asks after a few quiet minutes.
I open my eyes and nod my head, knowing it’s time my friends knew the truth.
“Oh yeah. A whole fucking shit ton of alcohol.”
Chapter 7: Panty Dropper
“This bar is amazing! It’s stocked with literally everything you’d need to make any drink you want,” Belle says excitedly, easily twirling a bottle of raspberry vodka in her hand before pouring some into the cocktail shaker on the bar in front of her.
Cindy and I sit side-by-side on the high stools across the bar, staring at her in shock when she adds a scoopful of ice to the shaker, smacks the lid on it, and shakes, the ice cubes rattling loudly.
“Can we talk about why you suddenly look like Tom Cruise in Cocktail right now? When the hell did you learn to mix drinks like that?” Cindy asks while Belle uncaps the lid from the shaker, using it as a strainer to evenly fill three highball glasses, finishing off the drinks with a splash of cranberry juice in each.
“Vincent has been teaching me,” she explains with a shrug, pushing two of the glasses across the bar towards me and Cindy.
“Is this explanation going to end with a visual of the two of you naked, covered in grenadine and maraschino cherries?” I ask, pausing with the drink halfway to my mouth with a grimace on my face.
“No,” she huffs with a roll of her eyes as I take a sip. “Well, unless you count that time he ate a cherry out of my vag—”
I start choking on the mouthful of drink I’ve just tried to swallow, hacking and coughing until Cindy reaches over and pats me on the back.
“For the love of God, Belle!” I complain when I can finally breathe again. “Your vagina is not a fruit storage bin!”
“Seriously!” Cindy complains, before lowering her voice and leaning across the bar closer to Belle. “But was it hot?”
Belle opens her mouth to answer, and I hold up my hand.
“Nope. No. Just . . . don’t. It’s moments like these I almost regret helping you go from a shy, nerdy librarian to a nymphomaniac,” I complain, picking my drink back up and tossing back the whole thing. “Also, this is the best fucking drink I’ve ever had.”
Belle smiles at my praise and takes a sip of her own drink, setting the glass back down on the bar with a clink and immediately going to work making another round.
“It’s called a Panty Dropper.”
I make a gagging sound and shake my head at her.
“Never say the word panty ever again. It’s right up there with moist.”
“But . . . they’re called panties, Ariel,” Belle complains.
“No, they’re called thongs, or boy shorts, or underwear. Panties is just weird and gross and something a pervy old man would say.”
“Fine. Then what you’re drinking is called an Underwear Dropper. Doesn’t that sound se
xy and delicious?” Belle huffs. “Anyway, I thought we could talk about maybe adding a cocktail-waitress option to the Naughty Princess Club. We could offer on our website that you can hire a sexy princess to mix and serve drinks at parties where maybe they want to spice things up without the dancing,” she explains, twirling the bottle of vodka in her hand again like a pro as she continues. “Like, say, your grandpa is turning eighty and he’s a horny old bastard who wants some eye candy, but a lap dance could possibly give him a heart attack and kill him. We could call it The Naughty Princess Drinking Club.”
Both Cindy and Belle turn and give me a look. It’s a sympathetic one, and I don’t like it.
“I like that idea. That could be an option for you, Ariel. Since you don’t want to dance,” Cindy says with a soft smile.
“I want to dance. I’m going to dance, okay? I like the cocktail-waitress idea too, and I think we should explore it to add variety to our services, but we’re in this together. We all dance or no one dances.”
No one says anything as Belle refills my glass and Cindy quickly drains hers so Belle can fill it up again as well.
“While we’re waiting for the alcohol to hit our system and for you to be good and drunk to talk about what you need to talk about, and before I forget, PJ has a really good lawyer he wants to get you in touch with about your house,” Cindy tells me. “It’s shitty they just took it away from you without any real warning or explanation. They can’t do this and he thinks you have a really good case.”
“I don’t have a really good case and I don’t need a lawyer,” I tell her with a sigh. “I knew, okay? I got every notice, I got every email, I got every phone call and voice mail. I knew, I just didn’t want to accept it. I’m not an idiot. I knew it was going to happen. I just thought I could fix things before it actually happened.”
“So, why didn’t you just start stripping? You have the most sex appeal and confidence out of the three of us, clearly,” Belle states.
I let out a humorless laugh, holding my glass out for Belle to refill. She quickly does, and I down the entire thing in one swallow. I smack the glass back on the bar and stare down at it, gripping the glass tightly in both hands.
“Chéri, wouldn’t a salad be a better choice than French fries?”
“His name was Sebastian Waters,” I tell them, my voice so quiet I’m not even sure if they heard me.
Just saying his name makes me want to throw up the drinks I’ve had.
“He was the cutest boy I’d ever seen,” I continue, staring at the empty glass in my hands and smiling, even though I feel like crying. “He moved in next door to us when I was a junior in high school. He was born and raised in France and his father got a job transfer. I was seventeen and he was twenty-two, and since his parents were the only family he had, he decided to move with them instead of staying behind. God, that accent of his. It gave me goose bumps every time he spoke.”
I think about the first time I saw him. I was going out to the mailbox at the end of our driveway. He had just gotten home from somewhere and was getting out of his car right next door. It felt like my feet had become one with the cement. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe. All I could do was stare next door as this tall, gorgeous blond got out of his car like he was in slow motion, his hair blowing in the breeze as he tossed his head to the side to get a few errant strands, which had fallen down over his forehead, out of his eyes.
“My dad hated him on sight. I assumed it was because he was older than me and more sophisticated. Plus, he spoke to me in French right in front of my dad. It was all innocent French words thrown in between English ones, but to my dad’s ears, I’m sure it sounded like he was saying he planned on defiling his daughter in thirty different ways on the kitchen table right in front of him. I should have probably questioned my dad’s hatred a little more, but I was a teenage girl and all it did was piss me off and make me want to defy him.”
“Whatever you want, mon amour, it’s yours. I’ll make all your dreams come true.”
I pause to close my eyes, take a breath, and get my bearings, remembering that I’m sitting with my friends who love me and would never judge me for the choices I made, and that I’m not that same stupid, young, teenage girl.
Opening my eyes, I see that my glass has been refilled again, and I smile at Belle.
“Suck that Underwear Dropper back, baby,” she tells me, returning my smile and clinking her glass with mine before doing the same with Cindy.
We all toss back the drink and my friends remain quiet so I can continue.
“We were together every waking minute for the next year while I finished high school and tried to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I had no clue what I wanted to do; all I knew was that I wanted to be with Sebastian. He promised me the world. He promised he would do everything to make me happy and support me with whatever I decided to do,” I explain, hating myself for being such a trusting fool. “All my life my dad had been grooming me to work at the family used car lot but when I started getting serious with Sebastian, he did everything he could to try and convince me to go away to college, telling me I could have any career I wanted as long as I got out of town and explored all my options. He wanted me as far away from Sebastian as possible. Two hours after I graduated high school, Sebastian and I were on a plane to Vegas. I left my dad a note, and I eloped with the cutest boy I’d ever seen.”
I don’t even realize I’m crying until I feel wetness on my cheeks. I swipe away the tears angrily as Cindy quietly grabs a box of tissues in a fucking fancy crystal container from the end of the bar and holds it in front of me. I snatch one out it and wipe my cheeks dry.
“I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that the cutest boy you’d ever seen turned out to not be as supportive and amazing,” Cindy says quietly.
“Understatement of the fucking century.” I nod. “As soon as we got home and found an apartment, it was like I woke up one day next to a completely different person. Or maybe he was always that person and I was just too blind and too stubborn trying to defy my father to see it. He spent his days on the couch smoking pot and playing PlayStation while I worked two jobs just to pay the rent, put food on the table, support his pot-and-munchie problem. He had big dreams of working on a cruise ship and traveling the world. Then he wanted to be a boat captain. Then he wanted to own his own boat. I got a third job so he could take boating lessons. He went to two of them and said it was boring and he was above taking orders from someone else.”
“Jesus, he sounds like cousin Eddie from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” Cindy mutters. “Was he holding out for a management position?”
The three of us share a much-needed laugh at the line from the movie.
“Pretty much. Everything and everyone was beneath him. Including me. As time wore on, the sweet endearments that charmed me from day one became backhanded compliments. ‘That dress looks nice on you, but are you sure you should wear something so tight?’” I say it in my best French accent. “And then the backhanded compliments just turned into criticisms. I was too curvy, my boobs were too big, my hair was too red, my skin was too pale, I wasn’t outgoing enough, I was too outgoing, and did I really need that second donut?”
Cindy gasps and Belle growls under her breath.
“Tell me where he lives. Tell me where he lives right now and I will cut off his balls,” Belle threatens.
God, I love my friends. Why the hell didn’t I tell them this sooner?
“Anyway, after the first year of marriage, I went to a garage sale and found my first antique. I was immediately drawn to it and had to have it. I don’t even remember what it was now. Probably a vase or something like that,” I tell them with a shrug. “I became obsessed with beautiful things that someone didn’t appreciate. Things that were worth so much more than sitting on a rusty table in someone’s garage being sold for fifty cents. I spent every weekend I didn’t work going to garage sales and flea markets, finding things, cleaning them
up, and selling them online. I never told Sebastian. I knew he would find some way to make fun of me or ruin something that made me happy.”
I pause again, and we all do another shot before I continue.
“Six years of that shit, and I’d like to tell you that I walked out on his ass, but I didn’t. By that point, he’d convinced me he was the best I’d ever get, and I believed him. Then one day, he walked through the door of our shitty little apartment and told me he’d finally done it. He’d finally been hired to work on a cruise ship as an activities director. I was ecstatic. He was finally getting off his ass, and he was finally going to contribute, and maybe things would change. We could travel the world together and it would be amazing. And then he told me he was leaving me. That he didn’t love me anymore, and he needed his freedom. He packed up his things and was gone within the hour. I spent weeks crying and feeling sorry for myself, and then I just got mad. I wasted six years of my life with a man who had something beautiful he didn’t appreciate.”
My eyes well up with tears and I quickly blink them back, knowing if I start crying again right now I’ll never stop.
“Anyway, I told you he was gay and took off on a cruise ship because it was less embarrassing than admitting the truth. That he broke me. With each snide comment and put-down, I lost a piece of myself until there was nothing left but a cynical bitch who hates everyone and trusts no one. That’s when I became the bitch on wheels man-hater you know and love today,” I tell them with a bitter smile. “I kept working my three jobs, and I saved every penny I earned, and I eventually opened up my antique store and was able to buy my first home. Then that motherfucker found out how well the store was doing, and since he of course got fired from his cruise ship job when he couldn’t pass a random drug test, he sued me for alimony. And here I am today, a bitch on wheels man-hater who gets a call from her ex-husband out of the blue a few weeks ago because he wants to meet up and talk. And suddenly I can’t get his goddamn voice out of my head telling me I’m not skinny enough, not pretty enough, and just not fucking good enough.”