Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Pippa
“A game?” I ask, my suspicions up. I narrow my eyes at Sandra like she’s just suggested we all take up professional pole vaulting. “What kind of a game?”
Sandra grins like the proverbial cat who has just discovered the jug of cream and is plotting to drink it all herself. She slaps her hands on the table, making the empty shot glasses stacked on it clink together.
“The kind of game that guarantees you’ll finally stop whining about George bloody Parker,” she says.
I don’t think anything exists that can stop me thinking about George, let alone a game, but now Lucy perks up, already intrigued, and I see that I am outnumbered.
“I like this already,” Lucy says with a smile.
“Oh no. No way. Whenever you two start conspiring, I end up humiliated. Or drunk. Or both,” I say, with a groan, but I fear I am already too late now that Sandra has Lucy on her side.
Sandra points at me with mock severity. “Us humiliate you? You do a good job of it yourself.”
“That’s not comforting,” I grumble.
She ignores me and launches into her grand explanation of her game. “Ok, so it’s a pretty simple game. It’s called the truth blitz.”
Lucy raises an eyebrow. “That sounds made up,” she says.
“Of course it’s made up. All games are made up.
What, you think Monopoly grows out in the fields and Scrabble is native to North America?
” Sandra replies, making Lucy nod approvingly at her to go on.
“Trust me, it’ll be brilliant. Here’s how it works.
I will ask you some questions - ten in a row, rapid fire style.
You must answer honestly, and without hesitating.
If Lucy, our impartial referee, decides you hesitated or lied, you lose a point.
If you answer quickly and honestly, you gain a point.
If you refuse to answer, you lose twenty points.
The same goes for me when it is your turn to ask me the questions.
At the end, whoever has the most points wins. ”
Lucy leans back in her chair, sipping her gin with an air of importance. “I can live with being the referee. And I’ll be fair. Probably.”
Sandra shoots her a look. “You’d better be fair. This is a high-stakes competition.”
I frown at them both. “What are the stakes exactly?”
Sandra’s grin turns wicked. “The winner gets to set a forfeit for the loser.”
I sit up straighter and shake my head. “Absolutely not. The last time we did forfeits, I ended up running around Hyde Park in a tutu while yelling that I was the woodland fairy.”
Lucy chuckles at the memory. “That was a good day,” she says dreamily.
“Maybe for you. For me, it was freezing and utterly mortifying,” I remind her. “And there was a man walking his dog who looked genuinely afraid for my mental health.”
Sandra waves away my protests. “Relax. It’ll be fun. Besides, I need something to amuse me since it’s my night off. Consider it entertainment value. And you never know. You might win and get your own back on me.”
I highly doubt that will happen. Sandra has very little in the way of a filter, and I am afraid she won’t hesitate to just blurt out the truth, no matter what I ask her.
Me, I am a little bit more caged-off than that.
They are both looking at me with eager, expectant smiles, though.
God, I hate disappointing them. I groan into my cocktail.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Nope,” they cry in unison, both of them looking smug as anything.
Lucy adds sweetly, “Come on, Pips. What’s the worst thing that can happen?”
“Famous last words,” I mutter.
But Sandra is already rubbing her hands together like an evil mastermind. “Right then. Since I invented the game, I’ll ask the questions first.”
“Why do you get to go first?”
“Because I said so.” She grins at me across the table. “Ready?”
“No.”
“Too bad. Question one: Have you stalked George on Instagram in the last forty-eight hours?”
The second she starts talking, my mouth goes dry. I take a sip of my drink to wet it. That is a big mistake. When she finishes the question, I nearly choke on my drink.
“That’s unfair,” I shriek.
“That’s not an answer.”
Lucy raises her referee hand. “Tick tock, Pippa.”
I scowl. “Fine. Yes, of course, I have.”
Sandra cackles with delight. “You hesitated, though. That’s one point lost already.”
Before I can protest, she holds her palm up to me and raises one eyebrow warningly. I sit up a bit straighter, determined not to lose the next question.
“Question two. Did you or did you not send George a text last weekend that said, and I quote, I miss your stupid face?”
Lucy gasps. “Fucking hell, Pippa, you didn’t.”
My face burns. “Maybe.”
“That’s another point lost for avoiding the question,” Sandra declares triumphantly.
And on it continues with Sandra throwing out increasingly ridiculous questions like would you lick a stranger’s shoe for five hundred pounds, and have you ever fantasized about your postman (for the record, my answers were fast and true – no and no.
But all the while, Lucy delights in blowing an imaginary whistle every time she thinks I’ve hesitated.
By the time it’s my turn, I’m massively losing, and I am going to have to go way below the belt if I want to win.
“All right, Sandra,” I say, narrowing my eyes. “My turn. Question one. Have you ever kissed Peter May?”
Sandra’s mouth drops open. “What? No. Absolutely not. He’s my boss, for goodness’ sake.”
Lucy tilts her head. “That was a very fast answer. Almost too fast.”
Sandra glares. “Don’t you dare.”
Lucy smirks. “A point will not be deducted for ‘too fast’ answers.”
The game goes on, our laughter bubbling over the music as we trade truths and accusations. But even with a few good jabs at Sandra’s love life, I can feel myself slipping further behind.
Finally, Lucy claps her hands together like a judge delivering a verdict. “That’s it. Game over. And the winner is …” She draws it out for dramatic effect, even giving herself a little drum roll on the table. “… Sandra Milton.”
Sandra leaps up from her chair, throwing her arms in the air like she’s just scored a hat trick at Wembley in the World cup final. “Yes. Yes. Thank you, everyone. I worked hard for this victory. I deserve it.”
I slump back, pouting. “This was rigged.”
Lucy shakes her head. “Nope. It was just brutal honesty. And you lost.”
Sandra leans across the table, her grin positively feral. “Which means, my dear Pippa, you get to perform the forfeit.”
I don’t know about the fair and square bit. I think I’ve been conned. Dread slithers into my stomach. “I hate this already.”
“You’re going to love it.”
“I highly doubt that.”
Sandra exchanges a look with Lucy, and they both burst out laughing. My stomach sinks further.
“Out with it,” I say, bracing myself. “What fresh hell have you concocted?”
Sandra leans in, her voice gleeful. “Your forfeit is … you have to ask someone out. Right here. In Mason’s. Tonight.”
I blink at her, horrified. “What? Absolutely not.”
“Yes,” Lucy chimes in, her grin wicked. “Sandra and I will choose the lucky victim while you change.”
Clearly, they had this planned between them in advance. That makes me even more nervous. I probably shouldn’t ask, but I have to know. “Change? Into what?” I ask, dreading the answer.
Sandra wiggles her eyebrows. “Into my old Halloween costume. I wore it for my shift here last year and never got around to taking it home. It’s still in my cubby in the break room.”
I didn’t come to the bar last Halloween. George wanted a quiet night in, so I have no idea what costume Sandra wore. It can’t be that bad, though, whatever it is. The way they are both grinning, though, makes me doubt that.
“Can’t I just do it dressed like this?” I plead.
“Nope. Rules are rules,” Sandra says in a sing-song voice.
“If you don’t do it, you forfeit your dignity as well. And honestly, you don’t have much left to lose if you keep texting George,” Lucy puts in.
“Thanks for that,” I say, glaring at them both. “You two are evil.”
Sandra nods her head in agreement. “Evil but entertaining. Now off you go to the break room, if you please.”
Still grumbling, I weave my way toward the bar, the music pulsing around me. Peter May is behind the bar, tall and broad-shouldered with his usual easy smile. When I reach the end of the counter, he grins at me.
“Pippa Fairfax,” he says warmly. “What kind of trouble are you causing tonight?”
I groan. “Don’t ask. Apparently, I need to get changed into Sandra’s costume from last year’s Halloween.”
His smile widens. “Ah, the infamous …” he says, and then he stops. “I’ll let you see it for yourself.”
Oh God, what the hell is it?
“Come on through, I’ll let you into the break room,” he says.
I go behind the bar and through a door there.
I’ve been coming here for years, and this is the first time I’ve been back here.
He leads the way down a short corridor with a closed door marked manager’s office, then a door with a cartoon of a person sitting on a toilet, which I assume must be the staff toilet, and finally, a locked door that Peter unlocks.
“All yours,” he says. “Sandra’s cubby is the second one down.”
He heads back to the bar. I open the door to the staff break room and slip inside, closing the door behind me.
The faint smell of coffee and bleach greets me.
In the center of the room is a table with four plastic chairs around it.
A small kitchenette lines the back wall, with a few cabinets and a sink.
A kettle and a microwave sit on the counter.
The cubbies are to my right, beside a small fridge.
I rummage through Sandra’s cubby. Her work uniform – a branded t-shirt with the Mason’s bar logo on it, and a pair of black slacks hang neatly to one side. Beneath them is her schedule and a battered paperback copy of The Shining. And then, to my horror, I see the flash of shiny red rubber.
What the hell kind of costume is this?
I envision some devil outfit, horned and utterly inappropriate, but I quickly realize that image is nowhere near as bad as the reality of the situation.
When I get it right out and unfurl it, I see it is a long, red dress, but not just any long, red dress.
It’s a skin-tight Jessica Rabbit dress, complete with long gloves.
A pair of red heels that were rolled up inside the dress fall to the ground as I shake it out.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I gasp in horror.
It’s every bit as scandalous as I remember it from the movie.
The thigh slit climbs so high up the dress that my underwear is in mortal danger of showing, and the neckline is designed to hold exactly nothing in.
I stare at it in despair. I’m not just going to be flashing cleavage.
I am going to be showing my belly button.
Still, a forfeit is a forfeit.
I sigh. Maybe it won’t be so bad when I have it on.
Ten long minutes later, I’m squeezed into it.
I tug desperately at the fabric as if an extra inch might magically appear.
My breasts are practically spilling out, and the slit up my leg looks like an embarrassing accident waiting to happen.
It’s alright for Sandra, who is taller, so the split wouldn’t have looked so bad.
Her breasts are also cute little perky things that would have comfortably fitted in this dress.
A direct contrast to mine, which look like they are frantically trying to escape from it.
I catch my reflection in the cracked mirror on the wall and groan.
“I look like a stripper at a children’s birthday party,” I mumble.
The only good thing about the whole get up is that my red, wavy hair looks the part without me having to wear the wig, which was under the dress. I hate itchy wigs, and even Sandra won’t be able to claim I need to wear it when my own hair is perfectly right.
Perhaps the dress will look better once I get the gloves and shoes on.
I pull on the gloves and step into the scarily high heels, but neither helps.
I just look a fright! A ridiculous fright.
Sucking in a breath, I step into the corridor and call out for Peter.
I need him to get Sandra. I can’t go out there dressed like this.
I’m sure once she sees the state of me, she will surely see reason.
Peter appears from the bar, wiping his hands on a towel. He stops dead when he sees me. His jaw literally drops. For a second, I think maybe he’s choking.
I cross my arms across my chest, but realize that only makes my breasts even less stable. Scarily so. I quickly drop my hands back down to my sides.
“Stop staring like that,” I say, irritated. “You think I don’t know how ridiculous I look?”
He blinks, then clears his throat, but the tips of his ears are red. “Sorry. I’m just … just … wow. That’s not what I expected. And you look anything but ridiculous.”
I glare at him, mortified. “Get Sandra. Now.”