Chapter Ten #2
Thankfully, another round of cocktails appears before Gin can push the point. “I loooove our bartender,” she slurs. “Don’t you just loooove our bartender?” She walks two wobbly fingers toward poor Shawn. “We should get a picture together,” Gin insists, wide eyed and extremely serious.
“I’m happy to,” Shawn obliges.
“Can you take it, Alice?” Gin asks, and I set up the shot.
“But wait. Not like this.” She plants her palms against the bar and pushes back, the stool stuttering beneath her.
“I’m gonna…I think I should…” Without finishing the thought, Gin acts on it, hoisting herself up on the bar and very nearly sitting on the calamari.
I can feel the eyes of the other bachelorette parties on us, hot with envy that they didn’t think of sitting on the bar to increase the visibility of the fun they’re having.
“Okay, so my fiancé’s name is Rishi,” Gin explains, leaning in so Shawn can hear her over the music.
“So instead of saying cheese,” Gin goes on, “we say…OH MY GOD.”
I smell it first. The singed smell of too many middle school mornings with a straightening iron in hand. I’d recognize it anywhere: the smell of burning hair.
I hear it next. The loud, piercing shriek of a bride whose perfectly styled ends have dipped a little too close to the candle on the bar top.
When I see it, it’s in fragments. The lick of a flame.
The stretch of Gin’s eyes. The horror on the face of poor Shawn the bartender.
And my thumb, steady and eager on the big red button, getting the shot.
Then, in one swift, desperate motion, I grab my mocktail and toss its contents directly at Gin’s head.
It all happens so quickly, yet simultaneously in slow motion, but in the blink of an eye, I’m looking at a partially drenched, entirely shell-shocked Virginia Bennett, looking like she might topple off the bar at any second.
“Okay, maybe we come down now.” I grab both of Gin’s hands, and she slides off the bar but not out of her daze. The restaurant murmurs and stirs, the other bachelorette parties trying not to stare.
“Are you okay?” Shawn, the now-bewildered bartender, asks. Gin doesn’t respond. She’s too busy raking her trembling fingers through her hair, her lower lip wobbling as she turns sheet-ghost pale.
“She’ll be fine,” I answer on her behalf. “Can we close out?” I smack down my credit card, and Shawn sweeps it away.
“No, no,” Renee insists. “We’re putting it all on mine, remember?”
“It’s fine,” I say. “We’ll figure it out later.”
Or maybe we won’t. Maybe I’ll put this enormous bill on my credit card and never see a dime of it ever again. Right now, I don’t care. I just want to get us out of here. I take my eyes off Gin just long enough to call us a ride.
“Is it really bad?” she asks, but it comes off as more of a plea. “Tell me the truth, Alice. Is it bad?”
It doesn’t look awful, exactly, but no one would call it good.
Against her sleek shoulder-length tresses, the burnt chunk is noticeably shorter, fraying like old shoelaces in some places and dead tree branches in others.
She’ll certainly be losing a few inches, and her curtain bangs might become a little more like venetian blinds.
“It’ll be fine,” I say, pocketing my phone. “We’re gonna go back to the hotel and order room service, and when you get home, your stylist will just cut off an inch or two.” Or three. Or four.
Either Gin knows I’m downplaying it or she really hates room service.
Her wail carries throughout the restaurant, turning heads at several tables.
We are definitely no longer a front-runner for the bachelorette party having the most fun, but the competition has come to a halt out of respect for a fallen player.
As I guide Gin toward the exit, three separate brides try to step in, pulled by some white-veiled bond to offer up encouragement.
Unfortunately, it falls on deaf ears—or damaged ears, at least, thanks to Lagoon 42’s bold decision to handle the situation by cranking the music and drowning it out.
Our ride arrives, and we pour Gin into the back seat.
Renee slides in after her, quick to be the one to sit beside our bride in need, but I’m not far behind, so Chrissy takes the front.
Halfway back to the hotel, Alicia Keys’s “Girl on Fire” plays through the radio, and Gin bursts into big snotty sobs, and the driver turns the radio off.
The only words out of his mouth are “Have a good night!” as we spill out into the hotel parking lot.
As if a good night were even still on the menu.
The best we can aim for is a safe landing for our bride back in her hotel room.
It’s hardly ten o’clock, but we’re all turning in, and as the only sober one in the group, I don’t particularly mind.
Unlike the boozy, musty scent of the hotel hallways and the burnt-hair smell of Lagoon 42, our room smells like clean cotton sheets and eucalyptus.
It’s comforting. And quiet. I peel off my handlebar mustache and tie up my sweaty hair while Renee stands still as a column holding up the ceiling, silent until she catches me unpacking my pajamas.
“What are you doing?”
I arch a brow. “I’m…getting comfortable?”
She twitches. “Why?”
“Because we’re done for the night?”
“But we can’t be,” Renee insists. “I already paid for bottle service at Bar Sol. Three bottles of champagne. Do you know how much money that is?” She’s perfectly still, but the thoughts keep spilling out, faster and faster, like they’re chasing her down.
“I messaged the DJ. I paid him to play ‘Gin and Juice.’ I told him what table we’re at so he can spotlight—”
“Hey. Renee?” I interrupt. “The bride’s hair caught on fire, okay? That’s kind of a night-ender.”
“But…but there was a plan!” she cries out either to me or herself, or perhaps some higher power who seems to have forgotten that Renee is in charge. I give her a sorry smile, and her head hangs low. She says it again, weakly this time. “There…there was a plan.”
“And it was a good plan,” I assure her. “It just went off the rails.”
At this, Renee flinches, then eyes me skeptically. “Did I just hear you say it was a good plan?”
“All things considered.”
Her lip curls, eyes two suspicious slits of blue. “But what about all that mean stuff you said about the itinerary?”
“I have my complaints,” I confess, as if I haven’t already made that clear. “But I’ll save my full review for tomorrow. As for tonight…” I pluck up the room service menu. “We’re getting tacos.”
Renee grumbles in stubborn defeat, then yanks off her boots and joins me on the edge of the bed. We order the same chicken tacos we had last night, the closest we can get to a routine amid the madness.
“See? This works out great.” I try out an eager, Chrissy-style smile, but Renee seems wary. “I mean it. Those tacos were way better than the food at Lagoon 42, anyway. I think the calamari was made out of the same stuff they make Crocs out of.”
“Great. So I screwed up the restaurant choice too.” Renee blows out a breath and lies back, propped up on her elbows, while I finish placing our order.
“I’m too hungry to entertain your moping right now,” I say, “but I’m getting you a churro, so maybe things are looking up.”
Our dinner arrives in a brown paper bag dropped unceremoniously at our door.
Not really room service, but it is food that’s been served to our room, and I’m starving.
Renee and I have each had a turn in the shower and changed into our pajamas—red silk shorts and a matching sleep shirt for her, running shorts and an old Willie Nelson shirt for me.
From his birthday show in Texas. Go figure.
Our room has no table, so we eat our tacos in bed, but not before laying out towels on the duvet. Renee insists.
“Always doing the most,” I mutter, smoothing a towel flat.
“What was that?” Renee cups her ear. “Thank you for not letting me sleep in crumbs, Renee? Oh, you’re so welcome.”
We swipe at each other on and off throughout the evening, but it’s different than before.
More playful, often unnecessarily dramatic for entertainment value.
When she mentions a musical and I don’t get the reference, Renee calls me “culturally bereft.” When Renee can’t name a single Willie Nelson song, I call her “the dumbest thing to ever come out of Iowa.” There’s an air of appreciation around every insult and overdramatic diss.
Just after midnight, I’m loudly booing Renee for admitting that she flosses three times a day when Chrissy texts us from next door to request we keep it down.
“A first time for everything. The human noise complaint thinks we’re too loud.
” I show Renee the text, and she snorts while still actively flossing her teeth.
Getting ready for bed feels less awkward tonight, almost familiar, like we’ve had a hundred sleepovers before.
But we haven’t. Renee and I have never, ever been friends, and I’m still not sure that we are, but we’re certainly…
something. Whatever it is, it wasn’t on the itinerary.