“Bad day?” Lucy Preston, or whatever her married name is, is standing beside me, removing her coat, and arranging it on the back of the barstool next to mine.
I don’t know what part of my anything right now is screaming for company, but I don’t tell her to leave. She’s too little and beautiful and porcelain-doll like that I fear I might break her if I so much as speak loud.
So I smile. “Don’t mind me; I’m just having an existential crisis.”
“Ah,” she says, jumping onto the stool. The man behind the bar brings the drinks over, and she pushes two toward me, and then practically inhales one of hers. It’s impressive, really, and I’m kind of in awe. “What is that?” she asks, licking her lips.
“Manhattan.”
“Fancy,” she giggles, then faces me. “You’re paying, right? Because I’m a broke bitch.”
The laugh that busts out of me is so foreign to my ears. “I got you.”
“So,” she says, and she’s turning her entire body to me. “What are you doing here at 6 p.m. on a Tuesday evening drinking fancy drinks and slamming your head against the bar top?”
This woman is funny. Had she always been like this? She wasn’t really around when I was, so I don’t really know her, and maybe that’s why I’m not getting those same dark vibes from her that I do her brothers. “You first.”
She shrugs. “Just finished work, meeting someone for dinner, but they’re running late. Now you. Existential crisis of the penis type?”
“No!” I gasp and look around. I may be buzzed, but I’m not one to have conversations about private parts in public places. I feel my face redden, and she giggles.
“So, not a boy problem?”
“No.” I almost laugh at the thought. “The b-word motherly type.”
“B-word?” She says the word slowly. “How old are you?”
My smile falls. “Twenty-two.”
Her grin spreads. “Say it. It’ll make you feel better.”
“No.” I’m shaking my head, looking around again.
“Do it!” she encourages, and she’s smiling so wide, I can’t help but grin along with her.
“Bitch,” I whisper.
“Oh, Mia,” she says through a giggle. “Girl, you gotta shout that shit.”
“Bitch,” I say, a little louder, and she shakes her head, disapproving. I inhale a huge breath, and then let it out. “Biiiiiitch!” My eyes widen as soon as I say it, and I look around, expecting a scene from those movies where the music stops and everyone freezes and looks at you. No one is looking at me. Nothing has changed.
Lucy laughs, clinks her cocktail glass against mine. “‘Attagirl.”
I sip my drink.
“So, what’s up with Vagina?”
She has said both penis and vagina in the span of a minute. In most cases, I’d be put off by the crassness and maybe a little disgusted, but as I said: porcelain doll. “You call her the V-word, too?”
She giggles again but lets me slide this time. “Girl, I made up that name. Pretty sure I said it the moment I saw her, to her face, and then accused her of trying to be with my dad for his money.”
I mean… she’s not wrong.
“My dad wants to get remarried, so he needs to get a divorce. Technically they haven’t been together together since I was born, so…”
“So what’s the bitch’s problem?” she asks, and she’s already finished her second drink. I raise my hand to the bartender and ask for another two for her.
“She doesn’t want to sign them because she thinks she’s somehow entitled to his wealth.”
“Wealth?” she asks, one eyebrow cocked.
I nod. I don’t really like talking about Dad’s money, but in this case, I don’t see the harm. “He made some smart investments right out of college and has kept making them since, so he has a lot of money.”
She nods, slowly, and then gestures for the bartender. “I’ll take another two on top of the two she just ordered, please and thank you.”
A giggle erupts from deep in my chest.
“You can afford it, right?” she asks, and I nod. “So, she wasn’t around when he earned the money?”
“No.”
“Where were you?”
“I stayed with my grandpa. I didn’t really have much contact with either of them growing up, but my dad’s really stepped up the past five or so years, and I love his fiancée, so I’m doing it for her mainly.” Why I’m divulging all this to a virtual stranger is a mystery, but… I figure I’ll never see her again, and truth be told, it’s nice to get it off my chest.
“Got it,” she says, then sucks in