Chapter 3
Jamie was the only one on the plane who didn’t complain about a lack of Wi-Fi. Even Monique, who was usually the most considerate person in the room, griped that she would have liked to keep an eye on a party at her Manoir that weekend.
It’s not a long flight… Two, three hours if they hit a headwind.
Otherwise, these privileged women could do without for a few hours.
Wasn’t it good enough they were in a luxurious private plane with plush leather seating…
for everyone? Even Etta’s plane she kept on hand at the local airport wasn’t as nice as this.
Jamie was content to draw her legs up in her beige leather recliner and watch the American landscape pass by thousands of feet below.
According to everyone else flying with them, however, this was simply the worst thing to ever happen. How much was Eve paying for this flight? Couldn’t she have secured one with working internet?
“Stop blaming me,” she finally snapped. “Sheesh, you all are too connected to your girlfriends.” Eve glanced at Kathleen sitting next to her. “Especially you. Calm down. You’ll see Ira again and can tell them all that nasty stuff in person.”
Kathleen shoved her phone in her pocket. “Ever since you got Lasik, I can’t trust anything around you.”
“Honey, I’ve been reading your dirty texts for years now. I never needed Lasik for that.”
“Anyway, it’s not what you think. She’s giving me the hardest time about going to a bachelorette party in Miami. Did you know that I am in danger of seeing another woman’s vagina?”
“We can only be so blessed,” Monique said from her chair, eyes half-closed as she fell asleep for the third time that hour. “I mean…”
“Bride’s getting cold feet.” Eve took off her white blazer, revealing a blue blouse dotted with tiny, hand-beaded fringes that matched her white trousers. “Five-thousand bucks says my sister-in-law never becomes my sister-in-law because she ran off with Carmen in Miami.”
“Who’s Carmen?” Jamie asked.
The five other women on the plane looked at her as if she had just asked what the capital of Africa was. “Carmen is the chick who is stealing Monique away from us because she’s not a one-woman girl, no matter how much she says she is.” Eve poured herself some iced water before sitting down again.
“That’s your sister you’re talking about,” Kathleen reminded her.
“I know. Gross.”
One of the other women, a young strawberry blonde named Gwenyth, woke up from her mile-high doze. “How many women?”
“Now this is what I’m talking about,” said the woman next to her. Charlotte had hair darker than Jamie’s, and that was a feat. She also had the fakest tits in the cabin, which she prominently displayed in her purple dress. “Pussy talk.”
“None of that stuffy business-like at the shower.” Eve glanced at Jamie. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay… I know what you mean…” Jamie laughed, uneasily.
I hope I know what she means. Okay, she had to stop laughing.
Things were getting weird on the airplane again.Jamie was considered Monique’s closest friend there, yet she felt so out of place with this bunch that she was liable to open a window and jump out without a parachute.
I am so dramatic sometimes. She couldn’t help it.
She had a stomachache – and a headache – all week.
It was probably ovulation being a bitch, as it sometimes was, but Jamie was tired of taking medicine for it.
She wanted to enjoy a bachelorette party in Miami.
Not throw up all over it after one drink.I don’t think I have the flu…
She had no other symptoms, not even a slight fever.
I should go to the doctor, though. When would she have time? There was a wedding in a week!
“Tell your girlfriend that you’re sleeping with no less than three ripping, big-chested women who are as smooth as a baby’s bottom.” Eve pointed to the phone in Kathleen’s pocket. “Do it on Zoom. I want to see her face.”
“I will do no such thing… and it’s no fewer than. Really, and you’re in grad school?”
“Nobody said businesspeople got good grammar. That’s for you grant writers.”
Ain’t that the truth? Jamie spent an inordinate amount of time correcting Etta’s grammar.
The woman wasn’t ignorant of the language she spoke, but it was clear some things were missing from her English education growing up in some of the worst public schools in the state.
Yet she got into Yale. It took all kinds in the world.
“How are you doing?” Jamie asked Monique while everyone fell into the most inappropriate conversations they could muster. “You’ve looked a bit gray this whole flight.”
“Oh… I’m not the best with flying, particularly if there is any turbulence.” Monique fingered the rim of her empty glass. “Would you mind getting me some water? I’m afraid I’m too nauseous to get up.”
Jamie obliged, but not before giving Monique a hard look. “Are you doing okay?”
“I am fine. Or at least I’ll be fine.”
“You want some alcohol?” That was how everyone else dealt with flying.
Monique shook her head. “That sounds dreadful. I’ll save the partying for later.”
Jamie couldn’t help but keep staring at her friend as she refilled the glass of water.
Nor could she help staring at the other women on the plane, all attached to their phones that had no service or falling asleep in plush leather chairs.
Jamie supposed she should be getting her beauty sleep for that night.
Everyone’s going to be dead tomorrow. Jamie counted on it. She wanted to go shopping in Miami, and that would be easiest to do if everyone was passed out in hotel rooms. With or without new girlfriends, from the sounds of things.
“Holy crap, did you see that woman’s tits?”
“I’m too busy staring at that chick’s ass.”
“Can’t we look at both?”
The party had barely started at one of Miami’s most exclusive outdoor clubs. Right on the beach. Under a sea of stars – if they could be seen, anyway. Live Cuban music played far away on a stage, but the acoustics were so good that the party experienced it half a world away.
That wasn’t what everyone was excited about, however. No, that would be the nearly-naked servers who carried drinks to tables full of horny queer women on vacation.
Jamie would have never thought to bring Monique to a place like this for her bachelorette party. She seemed too refined for what basically amounted to Hooters.
“If I were sober, I would let that one ram me.”
“You just like her because she’s blond!” Gwenyth shouted above the music and the rabble of other partiers. “And you’re… you are… blond!”
“What the fuck are you two talking about?”
Gwenyth’s face was plastered to their large table. She had three empty glasses in front of her.
Monique had yet to touch any of the stuff.
Jamie had one drink so far and decided to break it up with the best Shirley Temple she ever tasted.
Monique, meanwhile, traded alcohol for sugar in the form of one Coke after another.
Jamie offered a sip of her drink more than once, but Monique said her stomach was still upset from the flight.
“Mine too!” Jamie told her about her problems from the previous week. “Maybe I just wanna party!”
Monique shrugged. “Maybe that’s my problem. My girls threw me a surprise bachelorette party on Tuesday. There was a lot of alcohol, but they like any excuse to get toasted.”
“What time is it?” Someone asked.
“Time to get fucking wasted and laid.”
“Someone is single over here.”
Charlotte slammed down her second margarita of the night. “I want another one of these and I want it now. I want it from that woman with the gauges. And I want to eat her pussy.”
“Calm down, honey, most of these women are probably straight.”
“How would you know?”
“How would I know if someone is gay?”
Someone lit a cigarette. Next thing Jamie knew, it was passed around the table like a town pony.
At first, Jamie thought it was something else.
But no, that was definitely tobacco she smelled.
Very nice and very expensive tobacco. Etta served it to some of her guests, although she never smoked it for herself.
Everyone at the table took a drag. Everyone except for Monique and her partner in being boring, Jamie.
“Ah, fuck.” Kathleen coughed hard enough to make her friend tipsily smack her on the back. “I haven’t smoked since college.”
“But you have sucked face, right?” Charlotte asked, yanking the cigarette from Kathleen. Someone had a one-track mind.
“Uh, yeah, last night.”
“Thatta girl.”
“No wonder your breath is awful.”
Kathleen backhanded Eve on the arm and coughed again.
“Me too!” Gwenyth cried, lifting her head long enough to join the sordid conversation. “I totally got that pussy last night.”
“Well, aren’t you special?”
Everyone looked at Monique. Before she could respond, Eve said, “Please, no, I don’t need more images about my sister than I already have.”
That just left Jamie. She was glad she had alcohol to blame her redness on because being straight-up asked if she had eaten out her girlfriend the night before made her woozy. Maybe if she were in different company… but even then…
“Ah! Look at her face! She’s gotten more than you, Char!”
“Of course she has. She’s living with Etta Coleman.” Kathleen snatched back the cigarette and this time managed a drag without coughing. “Everyone knows what kind of appetite that woman has.”
Someone snickered. Monique shot Kathleen a somewhat hostile look, but Jamie jumped in before things got ugly. “I would know better than anyone here. Unless you know something you’d like to share with the class.”
“Oh, shit!”
“Damn.”
Kathleen turned her attention to Jamie, mouth dropping open. “Are you trying to say something about me?”
“Oh, no. Unless you have something to share about my girlfriend and…” She didn’t say it. You.