Chapter Eight #3
I turn just in time to watch Renee’s fingers pinch open the last button of her white linen shirtdress.
It falls open, parting around a black strappy bikini, its neon-pink boning tracing her soft curves at sharp angles.
I can feel my pulse in the roof of my mouth.
Of course she has the perfect swimsuit for the occasion, one that simultaneously adheres to the theme, stands out from the crowd, and activates a kick of something urgent and hot in my throat.
The black is stark against the neon, both high contrast against her skin. But that’s not where my focus is.
It’s not that I forgot Renee had great boobs.
They’re one—two—of her very few positive attributes.
And she’s always been hot. Anyone with functioning eyes would agree.
But the gentle slope of soft skin sitting plush above each cup of her bikini…
I mean, c’mon now. Who looks like that? That’s just not fair.
“Um, Alice?” Gin says.
My attention snaps to the bride. “Huh?”
She’s playing with the pop tab of her hard kombucha can. “You’re staring.”
“What? No.” I meet Renee’s sparkling eyes, and a tidal wave of heat crashes over me.
She arches a brow, and I start to sputter.
“Her—I mean your, uh…” I gesture to…I don’t know what, but I keep waving broadly until I figure it out.
“Your…your shirt.” I motion to Gin beside me.
“Isn’t, uh. Isn’t only the bride allowed to wear white? ”
“Ooh, she’s right, Renee,” Chrissy hollers, and Renee’s eyes drop to her shirt. She peels it off, eyes on me the entire time. It makes me sweat. Then again, it’s a million degrees out. Everything is making me sweat.
Once there’s a drink in every dominant hand—hard kombuchas all around and a bottle of water for me—we toast to what’s sure to be a legendary weekend.
The second round of hard kombuchas disappears as quickly as the first, and round three begins while we’re all still taking turns with the SPF 50.
When I offer Chrissy the sunscreen, she bats the bottle away.
“I don’t burn.” She smiles and tosses her blown-out bob. “I’m Italian. We just tan super well.”
“At least put some on your face,” Renee insists. “For wrinkles.”
“Can filler melt?” I wonder out loud.
Gin swats my arm, stifling a tipsy giggle.
A better reaction than I’d hoped given I’d meant to keep that as an inside thought.
Chrissy is oblivious; she’s fully wrapped up in her phone again, taking a selfie and smirking at a text seconds later.
Gin sidles up to her on the sectional. “Who are you texting, Chriss?”
Chrissy presses her phone to her chest, looking faux guilty. “Oh my God, okay, don’t make fun of me. Promise?”
Gin and Renee promise, but I keep quiet. I can make no such guarantees.
“Okay. So.” Chrissy rolls her shoulders back. “Do you remember that waiter from the engagement party? The tall one with the super-white teeth?”
Gin gasps. “You’re dating him?!”
“Stop, no!” Chrissy blushes. “We’re just talking. But he was so cute, right? And I’m trying to stop dating people I work with.”
I’m smearing my ears with sunscreen, but they still burn at the mention of Chrissy’s job, which I still haven’t figured out. “Who are the people you work with?”
“Coworkers. Duh.” Chrissy shoots me a look like I’m the crazy one here. “Anyway, Gin, not to be annoying, but are we getting plus-ones for the wedding?”
Gin’s laugh is practically carbonated. “Seriously? Would you really invite…wait, what’s the guy’s name?”
Chrissy’s lips shrink down to a sour-lemon pucker, her eyes wide and darting left to right. “This is so bad.” She winces. “I’ve just been calling him Waiter Boy.”
“You don’t know his name?!” Renee swigs her hard kombucha before slamming it down on top of the mini fridge. “I watched you text this boy when the flight took off and when it landed and you don’t even know his name?”
“I’m gonna figure it out!” Chrissy says.
I choke back a laugh. “Before or after they put Waiter Boy on the seating chart?”
Gin guffaws. Her cheeks are beginning to flush, but I’m not sure if it’s the sun or the booze. “Wait,” she says. “Waaaaaaaaitaminute. Chrissy. Have you slept with him?”
“Oh my god, NO! Can you imagine?” Chrissy lazes back on the sectional and releases a loud, seductive moan. “Ohhh, Waiter Boy.” She convulses for effect. “Don’t STOP, don’t STOP, Waiter Boy!”
Someone from a neighboring cabana whistles and yells back, “You tell him, girl!” Personally, this would send me into hiding. Not Chrissy. She jolts upright and takes a dramatic bow. The unison cackle that explodes out of our cabana could drown out two Madonna-spinning DJs and a crowd twice as loud.
“Oh my God.” Gin doubles over, hanging on to her own knees for dear life. “Do we have to go into hiding the rest of the weekend?”
“I’ll still associate with you in public.” Renee shimmies her shoulders toward Chrissy. “That is, if Waiter Boy brings a friend.”
The Waiter Boy jokes spill into the fourth round of drinks, and my only contribution—subbing waiter for skater in Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi”—is an enormous hit.
The girls shriek-sing the chorus repeatedly, and when the DJ finally puts it on, their victory howl is deafening, devolving into laughter and booty shaking and Chrissy filming every second of the fun.
I sway my shoulders and smile when she turns the camera on me, but I can’t match their energy.
I’m weighed down by this sad, shrinking feeling in my belly that I wish would either go away or swallow me whole.
I haven’t been in a situation like this—me the sober one while everyone else is drunk—and I’d forgotten that I only started liking parties when I started drinking too much to remember them.
I miss the person I could be when I drank.
Not mean, aggressive Blackout Alice but the bubbly, brazen person I would become after the first two or three drinks.
But I could never stop there. I’ve only ever been able to drink too much or not at all.
Sober, I feel a little like I’m peering through the glass of an aquarium I can’t jump into.
When Avril gets to the bridge of “Sk8r Boi,” Gin struts toward me, arms outstretched and a mischievous glint in her eyes.
She takes my hands and tugs me up onto my feet for the last verse and chorus.
I try to dance. I try to sing. I even lock eyes with Renee a few times and test out a watery smile.
I’m still trying. With Renee. With everything. For Gin.
Somewhere between the sixth and seventh rounds of hard kombuchas, I turn into the annoying sober friend. It is sweltering, and Renee’s minute-by-minute itinerary leaves no space for a trip to the emergency room.
“Plot twist of the century,” Chrissy jokes while I pass out a third round of waters. “Blackout Alice making us hydrate? What’s next? Is Willie Nelson gonna tell us to quit smoking weed?”
Gin laughs and shushes Chrissy, all in one breath. “She’s Sober Alice now.” Her head turns before her eyes do, lids weighed down over a clownish grin. “That’s why you’re mothering us. Right, Alice?”
Even through her drunken haze, Gin must see the hurt flicker in my eyes, because her smile slips and she chugs her water, apologizing by way of sobering up. Or so I think until she stands and clears her throat.
“Speaking of Willie Nelson,” Gin says. “Did you know that Alice Pierce once performed with the man himself?”
My cheeks burn, and no SPF can save me. “Gin, please.”
“No, no.” She holds one finger aloft. “The people deserve to know one of the coolest stories of all time. The Handful was playing Willie’s birthday party, right?
In Texas? This big show, and we were right out of college.
We got to be backstage, and Alice Marie Pierce.
” She burps. Grins. “Making herstory, slammed a beer and joined them. She shared Willie’s mic.
And Alice’s dad had to be, like, No no no, it’s okay, security—that’s my daughter. ”
Chrissy crackles with laughter, and Gin fumbles for her phone, insisting she can find a video.
If it’s possible for a person’s soul to turn red, mine is blazing.
I glance toward Renee, whose mouth hovers just above the lip of a spiked seltzer can.
She’s not laughing. She’s not even smiling.
A shadow passes through her eyes as they flick toward me, and then—
“Cannonball contest!”
It’s a total Hail Mary, and for a split second, I’m not even sure I’m the one who said it, but I kick off my flip-flops and take off at a sprint. My feet scald on the concrete. My cheeks burn in embarrassment. I can’t take another minute of this damn heat.
I jump, a clean cannonball breaking through the water, which isn’t nearly as cold as I need it to be.
I feel safe beneath the surface with the muffled bass beats, then even safer when a second cannonball splashes beside me, then a third and a fourth.
We bob up to the surface one by one, their drunken laughs just as loud as the music.
In this moment, even sober, I feel like a part of the group.
By the end of our pool day, Chrissy is the color of a boiled lobster, and three out of four of us are very drunk. Renee stumbles through the sliding glass door of our room, then flops down on the bed in her still-damp bikini, blond hair splayed out behind her like a mermaid.
“Sleepy?” I tease.
“Exhausted,” Renee slurs. “I’m so…I don’t even remember if tonight is Disco-Cowgirl night or Dress Like Your Favorite Martini.”
“The martini one,” I remind her.
She sits up, nose scrunched. “What are you gonna wear?”
“Blue,” I tell her. “Because my favorite martini is water.”
Renee snorts—adorable—then stabilizes herself on the edge of the bed, suddenly droopy eyed and serious.
“I’m sorry about…the dress…themes,” she fumbles out.
“The dress…costumes. I just…it’s just fun.
” She swallows hard, her soft blue eyes blinking in and out of focus.
“I think I might need some…of your favorite martini.”
A laugh fires out of me. Renee might be funnier than I thought.
She topples back and starfishes across the bed, and in the time it takes me to fill a cup from the sink, she’s asleep.
I leave the cup on the bedside table and take the first shift in the shower.
Tonight’s look—and most of my clothes for the weekend—comes courtesy of Village Thrift.
It’s a cobalt-blue sheath dress that skims my shins, and with silver sneakers, I am… well, a tall drink of water.
When I come out, all dressed, Renee is awake again, holding a now-empty water cup and seemingly a bit more in control of herself. I, too, am looking for a bit of self-control. The longer Renee sits on that bed in her bikini, the tougher it gets not to stare at her boobs.
“Hey,” Renee says, no longer slurring, but softer than usual. “Gin told me about the dress.”
I pinch my collar. “This dress?”
“Her engagement-party dress. How she spilled wine on it and you switched with her.” She bites her lip. “That was…really cool of you.”
My heart loosens its grip. “It was her day. I was just trying to help.” My gaze shifts to the empty cup. “Can I refill your water?”
Renee nods and hands off the cup. “Thanks.” When I bring it back, she blows a raspberry. “You’re being so nice to me,” she complains.
“Do you want me to start being meaner?”
“Nooooo.”
“Are you sure? I’ve stockpiled plenty of insults. You’ve given me a ton to work with.”
She swats one limp hand like she’s batting away a bug, spilling her entire cup of water in the process. I fill it up again, and Renee glugs it down, then pounds a fist against her chest, coughing twice. “I’m…sorry that I’m kinda drunk right now.”
“It’s a bachelorette party,” I remind her. “You’re supposed to be drunk.”
“I know, I know. I just feel weird about it because you’re not drunk. You won’t be drunk. All weekend. I don’t think.” She squints at me. “Will you be?”
“I will not.”
“That’s what I thought, but…I didn’t even…I didn’t drink that much.” Her head turns before her eyes do, and she peels a wet strand of hair out of her eyes. “It’s just…so hot out there.”
“Which is why we’re drinking water,” I remind her, but it comes out a bit infantilizing, and she rolls her eyes. I deserve that.
I refill Renee’s water one last time, filling a cup for myself too. I toss it back like a shot, and Renee makes a pinched sound, something adjacent to a laugh.
“You still got it in you,” she says.
“Huh? Oh, you mean…” I mime taking a shot with my empty cup. “Only with water these days. Or espresso.” I check the time on my phone. “You should shower. We’ve got dinner in thirty minutes.”
Renee sits forward, holding my gaze for a moment longer than I expect. “You read the itinerary,” she says in a light, airy voice that borders on impressed. It’s likely just the booze, but I’ll take what I can get.
“I read the itinerary,” I confirm. “Now c’mon. Half hour. And you better not make me late.”