Chapter Text
I’m three drinks deep at my best friend’s bachelorette party, and all I can do is wail in the bathroom. Sob. Shriek like a banshee. Scare the shit out of the other women coming in to piss and shit. It’s a classic assortment from my college days long gone.
One girl waits too long and I pound on the door to her stall. Her glittery pink heels jerk back.
“Take a shit, you coward!” I slur. “Take a shit!”
“Get the fuck out of here before I pepper spray you! Crusty bitch!”
I’m thirty and not crusty. What does that fucking mean, crusty? Do they think you get leprosy when you hit the big three-oh and start shedding skin like a fucking snake? Christ. I’m not old.
But I leave the bathroom anyway, stumbling back to the bar to find a guy who won’t make me into a lampshade. Or a girl. I’m feeling old and crusty so either one will work, but the odds of finding a hot girl in a bar at three AM who isn’t crawling with gonorrhea are slim to nil.
Rose is with her new friend from work, Bazine, who has manicured nails and blonde hair in a ponytail. I glower from afar and plop in a torn seat at the bar. Bazine is married and has a house where Rose and Finn are looking, and they both drive Volkswagens. Good for them. Must be nice being so put-together.
I rub my temples, tormented by the strobe lights. “Frank, gimme another whiskey sour.”
The bartender, an old friend who helped raise Rose and Finn and me, turns and rolls his eyes. He’s short and bald, your typical Brooklyn middle-aged white guy, and he’s also sick of me getting wasted in his bar and puking outside. I am too, and yet.
“Rey,” he says, “go upstairs and go to bed. Fern can set up the roll-out for ya.”
“More alcohol, Frank.”
That makes him scowl and turn away from me. I stick out my tongue and scan the bar for anyone worth taking home, but there’s nothing good. Hasn’t stopped men from trying to pick up my crusty ass in a black dress, because I keep in shape, and men still want to fuck thirty year old women.
The bathroom girl emerges and I point and shout that she took a shit. Her friends gather and shuffle her off and Rose finally does the rounds to see if I’m less miserable than I was an hour ago.
She sits next to me, all bedazzled in purple and cheap dollar store dick jewelry. That’s the only thing I got her because I’m poor and work as an auto mechanic. That’s just because I’m stupid.
“Come sit with us,” Rose says. She smiles in the way she does. “Bazine knows a really good Thai place out in Seattle. All the rain is bringing you down.”
“I like the rain,” I mutter.
It’s the Olympic Peninsula—I better like rain.
Rose sighs. She knows I’m upset because I’m thirty, two years older than her, and not married. Having a family is important to me but it’s not happening, and things like this remind me that it’s not.
But it’s selfish to be such a slob at her party. She’s marrying Finn in two weeks and she’ll move to the suburbs to have the cutest babies ever with him. I’ll stay behind in my forest cabin, driving to work in my project Porsche, working my hands raw at Firestone Complete Autocare. I work for the man. In college I swore I’d never work for the man.
But Rose settles in and takes out her phone. “You need to find a date for the wedding. How about Poe?”
“Poe Dameron? My ex who lives in Phoenix?”
“He’ll come here!”
I huff. Poe is nice enough but he’s shallow and more worried about flying than anything else. I dumped him when a stewardess called asking where his next flight would terminate so she could find a hotel.
Rose groans, letting her head fall back. “Rey, what do you want me to do?! I can’t buy you a boyfriend! If I could, I’d use all my savings!”
“It’s so sweet,” I manage, genuinely close to tears, “that you would buy me a gigolo.”
We laugh. Rose brings me back to the group of women and I have some wine and laugh with them, too. I need to get a grip. My best friend being happy and finally getting what she deserves in life isn’t a reason to get shitface drunk and cry.
So I enjoy the rest of the party and kiss Rose a little too long on the lips when Finn comes to get us.
He leans on his Jetta and whistles. He’s still in his suit with an umbrella for the rain, because Finn is always prepared where Rose… isn’t.
“Girls Gone Wild!” he hoots. Then he tugs Rose away. “Okay, seriously, don’t make out with my wife.”
I hug them both like when we were kids growing up on the same dirty street together. Finn helps us into the car and worries about dropping me off home alone, and Rose and I make fun of him like when we were kids. He’s always worried. Always thinks something will go awry.
We bumble down my driveway to my small house. Finn helps me up the porch until Rose flies out of the car screaming about freedom. She vanishes into the dark rainforest and Finn books after her, leaving me to struggle with my keys.
I get a bad idea.
“Can buy wives,” I mumble. The key crunches. “Can buy… husbands?”
Hmm. Is it illegal? Probably. Human trafficking, I think, but I’m too drunk to care. I can have a husband delivered to me, no need for awkward dates or learning he’s really close with his mom.
I stumble into my dark house, already typing away on my phone. My cat, Regis, comes to me meowing for dinner that he had before I left. Greedy man.
Finn is a lawyer and makes lots of money—Finn knows if it’s illegal. But I peer out my door and find him making out with Rose against the side of his car, and decide I better not interrupt. I shut my door and wander down the hall to my bedroom, scrolling through weird Craigslist ads.
Most of the rest is lost to the liquor. I collapse on my bed and laugh hysterically as I agree to a contract, then I throw up in my new fiddle leaf fig and pass out. It’s a typical night for Rey Niima.
I think.