Chapter 15 - Kate
“Friday girls’ night!” I raise my martini glass and toast with the two badasses flanking me at our once-a-month book club dinner, a tradition we stitched together with glitter, gossip, and a questionable amount of cocktails.
We’re two short tonight because Nicki has a family engagement and Becca’s mom bailed last minute for babysitting duty.
I’m gutted for her. She deserves a night off with a newborn keeping her up around the clock.
We’re catching up for lunch this weekend to make up for it, and her husband can wrangle the little human then.
My book babes stare and wait for me to make the toast, wine hovering.
Oh, yeah.
I give them a wicked smile and lift my glass higher. “To our bookish empire, masked villains who kiss like they mean it, lots of cock, and men who don’t leave towels on the bathroom floor.”
Glasses come together in a resounding clink.
“Here, here, Glitter Flaps!” Harper crows, tossing back half her glass.
Ms. Anti-color is dressed in black faux leather pants and a cropped corset top that shows off a sliver of belly button piercing and stomach tattoos. She looks criminally hot with whistle-worthy curves.
I’m a kaleidoscope of sparkle in a backless knit mini dress that flashes pink and silver, depending on the light. Curves rolling everywhere. Hair voluminous and makeup on point. Boobs staged for drama.
Booze and a night of dancing will make me forget my job dangling by a thread, and the mountain of unpaid invoices waiting at home.
At dinner, Charlie’s quiet at first, twisting her napkin in her lap, smiling a beat too late, and flinching at the sudden scrape of a chair behind us.
Once the laughter starts, and Harper makes a joke about toxic men and duct tape, Charlie exhales, her shoulders drop, and her hands still.
I place a hand on her thigh and smile reassuringly at her.
Finally, she reaches for a slice of garlic bread like her body remembers it’s safe to eat.
“Spill.” Harper points a black-tipped nail with a skull on it at me. “You’ve been dreamy-eyed since we sat down. If you start drooling hearts in your fettuccine, I’m staging an intervention.”
I pause on my garlic bread and lick dripping butter from my hand. “What makes you think I haven’t already named my vibrator after him?”
Charlie chokes on her food and swipes her glass, washing it down. “You saw your mystery man again, didn’t you?”
“Stalker,” Harper corrects, tone dry as a martini. “Don’t let her romanticize it before I’ve eaten.”
“Excuse me.” I raise my manicured purple finger. “I prefer to call it cautiously investigating a morally ambiguous man who may or may not be my soulmate.”
“Who puts spying devices in your lamp.” Harper raises a brow. “You didn’t serenade me through the wall with your moans of moral conflict.”
That’s what she thinks. She wasn’t home last night. Or home on a lot of nights for that matter. I suspect she has a secret fuck buddy she hasn’t let on about. Now she sits across from me with her heavily ringed fingers, staring at me like there’s something new behind her thick eyeliner.
I shrug with my hands. “You weren’t even home for the duet.”
She shrugs and downs more of her Black Widow cocktail. “Don’t deflect.”
I laugh and pick up my Poisoned Apple. “I’m redirecting like a good book boyfriend in denial.”
Charlie giggles into her mojito, eyes darting between us, trying her best not to grin. She’s useless at hiding secrets, yet the look in her eyes spells something I don’t know. I’ll pry it out of her at our next spa night.
I stretch out my hand and admire my manicure. “Yeah, I had a night with my grumpy stalker.”
Harper throws an olive at me, and it lands on my plate. “Tell. Me. Every. Filthy. Little. Detail.”
Charlie nods, backing her up, then gives me one of her soft looks that says she’s worried but trying not to show it. “Are you sure you’re okay with this? After everything?”
The waiter delivers our mains, me the Gnocchi alla Sorrentina, Harper the seafood risotto, and Charlie the Scarpariello Pasta.
I stab a cherry tomato. “He’s unpredictable, but he’s never crossed a line. He actually… took care of me. Like real care. Gave me a semi-home-invasion fantasy with loose bindings and a blindfold.”
Harper and Charlie exchange a glance with something flickering behind it.
“What?” I swallow the gnocchi dipped in basil, tomato sauce and dripping in mozzarella. “Why are you both smiling cats who caught a canary?”
“Nothing.” Harper’s poker face is legendary, but the twitch of her lip is a billboard screaming she’s getting lucky.
Charlie aims for innocent but comes out as a good girl gone bad. “We’re just happy for you.”
Uh-huh. Sorry, I don’t believe either of them. “You two are hiding something. Got stalkers of your own?”
Someone new enters the restaurant, and it sets off her nervous tick. She tugs at the hem of her denim jacket as if stretching it longer and safer. Her blue dress is soft and pretty, more suited to a dinner party than a bass-thumping warzone.
I clasp her hand and stop her from tugging, continuing my story to sidetrack her. “He calls me Glitter Bomb.”
Harper chuckles darkly. “That’s perfect. You’re sparkles and fire.”
I sigh dramatically and bat my lashes. “It’s upsetting how well he sees me.”
I pull out my phone to show them the photos of Glitterhoof, the glass unicorn I take everywhere with me, except for my clubbing clutch.
“Look what he made for me.” I turn the phone around to show them. “It’s made from melted glass. It’s multicolored, fragile, and beautiful. Basically, my personality trapped in glass.”
“Wonder what else he burns with his hands.” Harper raises her brows over her glass and sips her cocktail.
Charlie crushes my hand. “You’re not falling for him, are you?”
I match her stare, know where this is going. “I know. I have a black belt in dodging commitments. But yes, I did fall for him after last night.”
“Wear flats,” Harper mutters. “So it hurts less when you fall.”
Warmth buzzes in my chest. They’re both worried in their own ways and letting me make my own choices. That’s love, right?
Charlie hooks our pinkies like we’re twelve all over again. “Just promise us that if he gets creepy, we get to jump him.”
I get in before Harper throws around threats of knives and blood. “Absolutely, but I’ve got dibs on interrogating him with scented candles and Celine Dion ballads.”
I let Harper have her say when she lifts her drink. “To men we don’t understand but let ruin us anyway.”
Something I can get behind. We toast, laugh, and clink glasses for the second time with the kind of ease that comes with survival and sisterhood.
After dinner, we’re lined up in the queue at Velvet Underground nightclub. The night hums with the promise of music, heat, more alcohol, and fun.
“Ready to dance, girlies?” I ask my friends.
Harper smirks. “Ready to start a bar fight.”
I wave a finger at her. “No arrests tonight, please.”
Charlie’s breath shortens and her fingers bite into my palm.
She’s dressed for bravery yet clutches her silver purse like a security blanket.
Pink lip gloss, pearl studs, tight curls, and low heels show off the romance heroine about to slay her social anxiety with sheer determination.
Fuck, I love her for it, and for shining so bright.
I squeeze her hand and lean in. “You’re doing amazing. We’ve got you. If you want to call it a night, I’m cool, okay?”
Her eyes flick from the neon sign to the line of strangers to the bouncer and back to me. “Remind me why I thought this was a good idea.”
“Because you’re braver than you know.” After last night with Grumpy Daddy, I’m pumped full of courage and want to dust a little on my friend. “And because Harper promised not to ditch us for a guy wearing eyeliner.”
Charlie nervous laughs. “Yes, I need to face this.”
Pride swells in my heart. “That’s my girl.”
She nods and murmurs our safe word, “Josh.”
“Love you.” I kiss her cheek.
Her shimmery blush has an extra glow. “Love you even more.”
“Enough for a threesome with a hot stranger?” I nudge her and give her a theatrical wink. “Asking for a friend.”
She splutters and twitches. “Not that much.”
Charlie’s more conservative than Harper and me. Raised by a strict mother who monetized her childhood, banned friends and boyfriends, and punished her for wanting normalcy.
She nudges me back. “Maybe one day I’ll work up to it. Right now, I want to be the center of attention.”
“I get it.” I rub the top of her cold hand. “If I had a harem, I’d be the center of the orgy. No sharing!”
“You’re both vanilla,” Harper calls over her shoulder, eyeing the bouncer like she assesses whether she can take him down Cat Woman-style.
I poke my tongue at her. “I prefer morally gray vanilla, thank you.”
“That’s not a color,” she counters.
“I just made it up,” I say. “Hashtag morallygrayvanilla. It’s trending!”
Harper rolls her eyes. Rules are her religion. I bend them for breakfast.
My mind wanders to my sexy moral stalker who fits that vibe.
“It’s better than morally black.” I shoot at her head-to-toe noir.
Harper’s mouth twists into a cold smirk. “Did you just shade me?”
“Never.” I wink.
“You’re lucky I love you.” Harper turns back to the line, keeping guard over us, our own personal security.
Inside the club, we order vodka shots and throw back our first round.
I’m glued to Charlie’s side like a sequined barnacle offering comfort.
I whisper stupid jokes, tell her little anecdotes about my hot night with my stalker, and steer away the elbow-jabbing crowd.
By the end of our third drink, she’s looser and relaxed, her eyes focused on the circle of girls, and not skipping from person to person.
I rub her hands between mine. “Want to dance?”
She asked me to push her tonight, and I started gently.
She hesitates. Breathes. Squares her shoulders. “Yes.”
I beam. “Let’s go, brave bitch!”
We drag her to the floor, sandwich her in the middle, and make her the center of our chaotic trio. She flicks her hair like a woman channeling Beyonce. I shimmy, and the glitter in my heart triples.
I whistle. “Look at you!”
She throws her arms up and sways, letting the music’s beat replace her frantic heartbeat.
A few songs in, she tugs on my arm. She needs air, so we peel off to the bar for a water and one last shot. The night throbs like a pulse of neon, sweat, and bass. Harper stays on the floor, glowing and wild. Charlie tenses beside me. I slide behind her, hugging her, being her buffer.
A meathead in a wifebeater sidles up behind Harper and grabs her hip. Big, square, born in a protein shake. Good luck, buddy. She once stabbed a man with a nail file for calling her sweetheart.
Out of the fog steps a man in full Joker cosplay—plum suit and a matching top hat, black lips, white face paint, eyes as dark as a villain arc. Harper’s type to a terrifying T. He whispers something to meathead, and boom, he vanishes.
Cosplay nerd slides a tattooed hand up Harper’s waist and says something to her. She pulls a blade from her boot and presses it to his throat. Foreplay has started. It weeds out the wimps from the black hearts. Her words, not mine.
He grins instead of flinches and drags the blade along his chin like he’s shaving. She licks the blade and tucks it away. They kiss like it’s the end of the world.
Praise the Fiction gods! It’s love.
I signal to Charlie. “Do you think they’ll sharpen each other’s weapons before bed?”
Charlie giggles and sips from her water bottle. “Absolutely. It’s romantic.”
We leave them and form a new girl cluster on the edge of the floor where it’s cooler.
Sweat clings to my back. Strobe lights slice through the darkness.
Smoke hazes the crowd, swallowing some in it.
We dance until we lose track of time, bodies spinning in a blur of lights and heat.
Eventually, my throat begs for mercy and hydration.
“I’m grabbing my water,” I tell Charlie, taking her hand, pulling her with me.
My bottle’s still on our high-top table, lipstick mark facing the same way, condensation pouring down the plastic. I chug half the bottle down, cold water soothing my throat and streaming down my chin.
We take a break and sit, Charlie and I doing our best to chat over the constant musical thumping, me occasionally flicking my gaze to Harper and her man fucking in the shadows. She knows exactly where the cameras can’t reach yet dares everyone to watch.
Countless songs pass, my stomach lurching more by the second. Too many shots.
“I don’t feel so good.” I stumble to my feet to make my way to the bathroom, but don’t make it. Is the floor swelling like a tide, or are my legs not working? Lights blur and people merge into an outline. Noise dissolves into static. The room tilts, and I crash into a velvet booth.
Charlie’s voice cuts through the fog. “Kate. Come back!”
My mouth won’t work, and I can’t reply to her.
A new voice shouts over the din. Male. Nasally. Too close. “Whoa. Easy. Need help?”
Panic hits with full force. This isn’t drunk, it’s something else. Somewhere in the crowd, danger awaits. Possibly the man who has hold of me now and drags me away from my friend, and I can’t fight him.