When We Were Younger (The Posse #3)

1. Dottie

1

DOTTIE

I've got a love and hate relationship with LA.

I nod my head along to the swooning country pop magic of Kelsea Ballerini, taking a moment to appreciate the irony of this song popping up on the random playlist I have on shuffle.

I, too, have a love and hate relationship with LA. Though these days, the hate is seriously outweighing the love I once felt for the City of Angels.

I've been here for almost ten years, and even after growing up in the smallest of small towns in Tennessee, I acclimated to Los Angeles quickly. I start every day with a green juice. I regularly hike Runyon Canyon. I took up surfing. I never freak out when random celebrities show up at my Sunday morning Hot Yoga classes–at least, not on the outside, anyway. I get my bright-blonde highlights touched up every three weeks, on the dot. I forget how to drive any time the forecast calls for a little bit of rain. I took to Los Angeles like a fish takes to water.

However, days like today make me wish the city would just up and fuck itself already.

What should've been a twenty-minute drive to my home in Malibu from a skincare brand photoshoot in Santa Monica is nearing minute 57, and I'm not even halfway there. I'm about ready to hop out of my car and pitch a hissy fit right in the middle of the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway. I crank the A/C in my BMW iX as the afternoon sun blazes through my tinted windows.

Even though it's October, everything is hot. My steering wheel is hot, my seatbelt is hot, the center console where I'm laying my arm is hot. My thighs stick to the leather seat beneath me, and my undercarriage is a swampland of salty sweat and remnants of the thick body moisturizer and spray on tan from the photoshoot. Not to mention, I have to pee so goddamn bad. I've been squeezing my thighs together for the last ten minutes, but I'm convinced a little pee has leaked out. After all, my bladder isn't the same as it was when I was bar hopping at 21, refusing to break the seal until I got home for the night.

It's definitely going to take a good 'everything shower' and some serious exfoliation to get my ph. balance back to normal after this.

Kelsea Ballerini fades into Olivia Rodrigo, which is followed by some Tina Turner, thanks to the eclectic girl power playlist I've curated for rides just like this. Traffic inches forward, and I start to sing and dance to Proud Mary, not caring that the people in the cars around me can see my attempts at recreating my high school cheer routine in my SUV. I don't care what anybody thinks, it's physically impossible to sit still while Tina Turner belts about rolling on the river.

And let's be honest, in traffic like this, if I don't dance, I will most definitely start to cry.

The congestion of cars inches along like a tortoise racing a hare until eventually, finally, there's a break in the jam. I squeeze my way onto the shoulder and glide past the stalled traffic to my exit. From there, it's smooth sailing as I–carefully–speed through the side streets and into my neighborhood.

I'm barely fully parked in my driveway before I'm throwing the door of my car open and sprinting into my house. Just as I expected, as soon as I turn onto my street, my bladder connects with the Bluetooth from my toilet and I'm about half a second away from peeing myself as I tear my shorts and thong down and fling myself onto the toilet.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I start crying just a little when I finally get to relieve myself.

Next time I have a photoshoot ending at rush hour, I'm packing an adult diaper.

After washing my hands and finger brushing my hair into a bun on the top of my head, I head back to my kitchen. I find my Valentino tote open on the floor, its contents spilled all over the tile from where I haphazardly threw it in my attempt to make it to the toilet on time. I lean over to scoop it all up, and as I do, WAP by Cardi B and Meghan Thee Stallion starts to blast from the phone nestled in the inside pocket. I know immediately that it's my friend Kira. She's the only contact in my iPhone with a personalized ringtone, one she set for herself.

Knowing she'll be on video, I choose to answer on my iPad instead. I prop the pink tablet up and swipe to answer the FaceTime call as I climb onto one of the barstools at my kitchen island. I'm pondering whether I should eat one of the apples in the fruit basket in front of me or order a hundred dollars’ worth of tacos when Kira's ecstatic face pops onto the screen.

"…it's ringing!" I catch the end of my friend's sentence as the call connects. She's calling over her shoulder, most likely trying to corral our other pals into her orbit so they can join the conversation as well.

As soon as I see the fancy balcony and glowing sunset creating a halo around Kira's features, I'm reminded of what my best friends have been up to today while I was working. I'm sure I can deduce exactly why they feel the need to call me in the middle of it.

I push off from the island, taking my iPad with me as I go to the fridge and pull out the bottle of vintage Dom Perignon I've been saving for this very occasion.

Kira McKenna is my best friend from my hometown. We moved to Los Angeles together after graduating from high school and navigating the weird world of 'influencing' and being social media moguls together. She's a certified genius with way too much energy, so she used her double majors in biology and kinesiology to go into fitness and personal training.

My record of being a high school dropout who failed her GED test twice and stowed away in Kira’s dorm at USC landed me some modeling gigs, a bit of DJing, and eventually, the world of lifestyle influencing. A few years ago, Kira got a job opportunity she couldn't pass up working as a spin instructor at a startup called Spin Sync. The company hosts on demand fitness classes both in person and online that can be streamed through their own line of cardio and strength equipment.

The job took her out of LA and up north to San Francisco, where she met Rachel Davenport, a coffee shop owner and all-around sweetheart. I met Rachel in one of Kira's classes on a visit two years ago, and she immediately became part of our friend group. Kira officially dubbed the three of us 'The Pussy Posse'.

Then a few months ago, Georgie Hansley wandered into Rachel's coffee shop on an errand for a temp job she was working at the time. When Rachel brought her to meet Kira and then me–via group chat, of course—our little threesome became an inseparable foursome, and The Pussy Posse was complete.

Having three best friends that live in an entirely different city hours away from me is difficult, to say the least. Unfortunately, my work keeps me here in Los Angeles, but I visit my girls in San Francisco every chance that I get.

Which brings me back to today. In a total whirlwind romance, Georgie and her boss from that temp job I mentioned–tech billionaire and Official Hotty James Adler–fell madly in love. A few weeks ago, he flew me up to San Francisco to have lunch with him, Rachel and Kira so that he could officially ask us for our blessing to marry Georgie.

It was sweet and romantic as hell.

Today, James and Georgie are throwing a housewarming party at their penthouse in the affluent Pacific Heights neighborhood. A party that I unfortunately couldn't attend due to my photoshoot obligation. Even though he promised he'd try to wait for a time that I could be present, I always knew James wouldn't be able to wait long. I had a feeling when I woke up this morning that today would be the day he popped the question.

My suspicions are confirmed when Georgie is dragged into the frame by her left hand, Kira shoving Georgie's ring finger directly into the camera so I can admire the huge oval diamond resting on a simple gold band.

"Our girl is tying the knot!" Kira shrieks as she bounces, the motion of the phone moving up and down, making me feel borderline seasick.

"Keeks!" Georgie and I say at the same time as Rachel pops into the frame and places two hands on Kira's shoulders to settle her. I set my iPad down on my coffee table and plop crisscross applesauce on the floor in front of it as I pop the cork on my bottle of champagne .

"I knew he'd do it today!" I squeal as I take a swig of Dom. I plaster a smile on my face to hide the dull pang of hurt that I'm not there in person to hug my girl on such a special occasion.

"How?" Rachel asks as she opens their own bottle of champagne. "It was seemingly out of nowhere."

"Yeah, one minute I'm entertaining the crowd with tales of my sexual escapades and the next, Adler practically had his dick out and up Georgie's dress on the balcony. Seriously, I saw a full-on cock print. His fly was bursting at the seams. G, how does he keep that thing contained? I imagine it's something like trying to wrestle a king cobra into a tube of mascara."

"KIRA!" Georgie, Rachel and I all shriek at once, me fighting off my laughter and the two of them looking like they want to whack her upside the head with a throw pillow.

"Wait!" Georgie says between giggles, picking up the phone from where it fell out of Kira's hands and onto the floor. When her face fills the screen, she looks lovely. A happy pink glow on her cheeks compliments her signature bright red lipstick. "How did you know he was going to propose at all?"

I give my girl a sly smirk and the three of us take turns filling her in on the tale of how her fiancé brought us together, acknowledged that the four of us we were each other's soulmates, and asked us for her hand. I can't help the lone tear beading in the corner of my eye as Georgie swoons and cries on the other end of the call.

"I want to be mad at the archaic notion that a man would need anyone's permission but mine to marry me, but let's be real. If he didn't have The Pussy Posse stamp of approval, Adler would've gotten a hard 'no' from me." Georgie wipes a tear from her own cheek as Kira holds a bottle of champagne to her red lips, urging her to sip.

"Alright!" I say, clapping my hands together to get the attention of my ladies. "Georgie girl is engaged, it's time to get down to business. Bridesmaids, color schemes, locations, dress inspo. I need a Pinterest board going ASAP!"

Over the next hour, I pester Georgie about details while scrolling through social media looking for inspiration for her big day, while she hems and haws and says some variation of "I don't care, I just want to marry him!" every few minutes. I'm concluding that I am going to be planning this wedding on my own and hopefully, with unlimited access to a billionaire's credit card.

The excitement starts to wind down and I'm ready to bid my friends farewell to treat myself to a long bath, an orgasm or three with my air vibe, takeout sushi and an early bedtime. Then Kira utters the question I've been dreading since the first time she brought the subject up a few weeks ago in August, while I was trying to enjoy my first pumpkin spice latte.

"Dot, you still have to tell me what you're doing about the holidays. Are you gonna pull your head out of your ass and come to Tennessee with me?" she asks, pulling the phone away from where Rachel is styling Georgie's hair into a twist to demonstrate a possible wedding day-do.

I groan, loudly and for an exaggerated period, like I always do anytime the topic of returning to Tennessee is broached in my presence.

It's not that I have anything against the state. Tennessee whiskey? The Lord's juice. Nashville hot chicken for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Sign me up.

But Dottie Lynn Hart setting foot back in Fox Hill?

To quote the great Randy Jackson: "It's a no from me, dawg."

"Do we have to talk about the holidays? They're weeks away," I whine, pushing my face down onto the counter and nuzzling into the crook of my elbow.

"Oh I don't think so," Kira chastises, standing up and shaking her head. Her southern accent is all but gone at this point, but Rachel says that whenever Kira and I talk, both of us fall back into our twangy voices. I can confirm because right now she sounds like a grandma sipping on a mint julep, threatening to whoop me from her front porch.

"G, I'm going to your office. I need to yell at Dottie girl in private," Kira calls over her shoulder, and I look away from the screen to avoid the inevitable motion sickness I'll get from her skipping.

That's another thing about Kira. Girlie skips everywhere she goes. She's perpetually happy and I don't understand it.

"Dottieeeeeeee, you always make me go back to Fox Hole alone. Every damn year. Christmas, Fourth of July, Arbor Day. It's not fair. What's the point of showing up all those girls from high school with how hot and successful we are if you're not there with me?" Kira says, slamming the door to Georgie's office closed behind her.

"Keeks, I gotta say, I'm not quite as invested in ‘showing up all those girls’ as you are," I say, exaggerating my finger quotes right in front of the iPad camera.

"You should be. We're sexy, we're rich, we're part of a gorgeous girl group chock-full of brilliant women, and I don't know about you, but I have the numbers of James Adler's Centurion card saved on my phone. You and I are living the fucking life. I will never understand why none of them wanted to be our friends when we were teenagers."

I don't have the heart to tell her no one wanted to be our friend because I was always too busy with my boyfriend and most people thought she was way too loud. Instead, I ask,

"Does James know you have his card number saved?"

"What I do with James Adler's credit card is none of his business," she scoffs, waving a hand. "Come on. Come back with me. You can stay with me at my dads’ place. You know Pops and IronDad would love to have you. We can do all the cheesy Fox Hole holiday shit. Plus, Dean will be home between games! You know you love seeing my brother get white-girl-wasted on Pop's Cosmos! You don't have to even leave the mountain if you don't want to. "

I chew on the inside of my cheek. It's been nine and half years since the last time I was in Fox Hole. My mother skipped town not long after I did, but even if she hadn't, I wouldn't be clobbering to go visit her in my childhood home. Mom tolerates my existence just as well as I tolerate hers: perfectly, if we continue to pretend like the other doesn't exist. I haven't seen her in years, haven't spoken a word to her since the morning after senior prom. I don't even know where she lives anymore. Florida, maybe?

Who knows, who cares?

As bleak as that sounds, there's no true sob story there. Mom got pregnant young and the guy skipped town. She didn't want me, she drank, she criticized, she said some shit that messed with my eighteen-year-old brain and I left home as soon as I possibly could. I've made my peace with it in therapy, and that's that.

"Dootttttiiiie," she whines, "Come keep me company. It's got to be better than sitting all alone in Malibu."

"You mean in my beachfront home, overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the gorgeous Southern California coast?" I tease.

"Exactly. Yuck."

"Maybe I'll fly up to San Francisco for the holidays."

"You know you don't want to do that. James and Georgie are newly engaged and will be attached at the genitals. And if you have to spend more than an hour with Brian, you’re likely going to want to stick knives under your toenails just to have something better to do. "

I cringe, both at the imagery and at the prospect of spending an extended period with Rachel's wet napkin of a boyfriend. We're all collectively counting down the seconds until she finally wises up and ditches him.

"See? Is avoiding Fox Hole really worth having Brian incorrectly mansplain the effects of caffeine on egg counts again?"

"Kira, I appreciate the thought you've put into this, but you know it's not the town I'm avoiding." My voice drops to something resembling a whisper as I get close to admitting the truth that everyone knows but I'm too prideful to say out loud.

"You're not gonna see him, Dot," Kira says softly, and my stomach flips as my eyes snap to meet hers through the screen.

"How do you-"

"He's a hermit. He works, he eats dinner at his parents’ house, and he sleeps. I've never seen him out. Not in nine years. Okay maybe once, I think I saw him in the yard when IronDad was having the back deck done a few summers ago, but even then, it was only for a second. He could've been a mirage, for all I know. That was the day I took mushrooms that I bought from that kid who used to do the Naruto run down the halls between classes. I don't think they settled well with my birth control or something. I was seeing things for days afterwards," she shrugs, as if to say 'eh, just another day in the life.'

Hallucinogens aside, I know Kira is a liar. Though I've avoided Fox Hole for the better part of a decade, it hasn't stopped me from attempting some light internet stalking of the boy in question.

Well, I suppose he would be a man now.

The truth is, my curiosity has creeped in several times over the years, usually after a lonely glass of white wine and a sad orgasm given by a vibrator leaving me with nothing but post-nut depression and the urge to cry.

Besides one single picture on the Hudson Family Construction website, Stephen has no internet presence.

I'll admit to spending more than my fair share of time on that website, staring at that picture. I remember the day it was taken like the back of my hand. It was a sunny day in June, the summer I turned seventeen. He was standing in front of a brand-new backhoe, his hands tucked in his pockets. He rarely smiled for the camera, but I told some stupid knock-knock joke that made him smile so hard that he claimed to pull a muscle in his cheek. After it was taken, we laid down in the grass and laughed and laughed and kissed until the sun set on the horizon behind us.

That lack of internet presence has never come as a shock to me. Stephen was always too lowkey, too cool for something like social media.

"Life is meant to be shared with the people you love, sweetheart, not the people you hate", he used to say when I'd get frowny over the lack of likes on my latest selfie.

He does, however, appear all over Fox Hole social media proper, usually in the background of some photo. There was the one from last summer featuring the new playground at the elementary school where I eagle-eye spotted Stephen way in the back using a wrench on a swing set. Or the one where he was swigging a beer in a corner booth at the only bar in town, completely unaware of the sorority girls home for summer taking selfies on the dance floor. Just enough to feed my morbid curiosity, but not nearly enough to tell me anything about who he is, what he's doing, or what he really looks like now.

Besides, I imagine he's too busy to be posting life updates on Instagram. He's certainly got his hands full if he finally took over his father's business the way he always planned to. I know his older sister is probably still keeping him on his toes, especially since I saw that she married that boyfriend we all hated a few years ago.

Stephen could be freaking married for all I know. I could totally see him going for a slightly older divorcée, the two of them falling in love slowly and all at once while he built her a new porch or repaired her attic or some other super-homey, meet-cute shit. They probably have two kids. A boy and a girl, maybe a third on the way. I'm sure they spend holidays with his parents, building gingerbread houses and sucking on peppermint candies. I bet they're in love, they're happy, and Stephen has the small-town life he always wanted.

I swallow down the lump that forms in my throat at that thought.

I don't want to confirm or deny the life I've created for him in my head. And I truly don't give a crap about any of the silly Fox Hole holiday traditions showing off to any of the people I went to high school with.

But a part of me can't stop wondering what might happen if, after all this time, I were to look Stephen Hudson in the eyes again.

Does he miss me?

That thought niggles in my brain, an itch I'm desperate to scratch but can't quite reach…

Not from here in Los Angeles, anyway.

I look around my home, gazing out at the view of the ocean through my back window. My life is stagnant. The things that once brought me joy, like DJ-ing and making 'get ready with me' videos have gone stale. I'm booking less and less modeling work with each passing day. My real friends are hundreds of miles away and I'm…

Here. In Los Angeles. Alone.

My life is at a crossroads. I've known that for a while. It's time for me to figure out what's next, and something in my head is telling me that I won't be able to move on if I don't at least take a glimpse at the road not traveled.

"Alright," I sigh, conceding to the continuous begging Kira has been doing as I've drifted in and out of thought. "Even though we both know Stephen Hudson is not a hermit and that you're a lying liar who lies and there's a 99 percent chance of me having to confront the emotional ghosts of my past, you've worn me down. I have no fight left in me. Tell your dads to throw some spare pillows in the guest room for me."

"OH MY GOD! IT WORKED? YOU'RE COMING?!" Kira squeals, jumping up and down, shaking her head back and forth. I can't help but laugh at her enthusiasm. You'd think I just agreed to pay off her student debt and gift her a lifetime supply of tequila, not accompany her on a trip to her parent's house after her years and years of negging me.

"Tis the damn season, am I right?"