Authors: Elizabeth Hayley
“This is true
. Is that why it was so easy for you to suck Eric’s dick under his desk without anyone knowing?” I laughed as I said it, and then added, “Actually, I kinda feel like I’m missing out a little because I’ve never gotten fingered or dry humped in a corporate setting before. It seems to happen all the time in books.”
As always, Steph had to rein us in again. She said that there would be a concluding ceremony with a prize for the winner after the three weeks were up.
Once we all agreed on the terms, we spent what was left of the day discussing our plans for the night. We agreed to meet at Steph’s house, as she would be our designated driver. She said we could leave our cars there and spend the night if we needed to. Steph’s boyfriend Dan had just moved in, but she said he was sweet, and he definitely wouldn’t mind us staying.
Danielle wouldn’t tell us what was in store for the night.
She actually said that the trick to a “good night from hell” was that you didn’t plan much of anything. You just let things unfold naturally. We’d start at a local bar and see where the night took us.
At 4:30, I headed toward Bader’s office to drop off the “revised” LaPorte account.
Not because I wanted to be berated in an English accent about how incompetent I was, or how the female sex was only good for procreation and knitting. I went to Bader’s because Hot Rod’s desk was on the way. As I strolled toward him on my way back to my office, I held my phone out and pretended to text as I snapped a photo of him with his legs open wide, leaning back casually in his chair examining a spreadsheet. Definitely not the close-up crotch shot I had hoped for, but it would do for my first attempt.
Practice makes perfect.
I grabbed my belongings from my office and quickly texted the picture to Steph before throwing my phone in my purse and heading toward the elevators.
***
I sped home, eager to get the night going. Well, “sped” might actually be an understatement. I never go the speed limit. Ever. So when I say I “sped,” what I mean is that I used the shoulder as a fourth lane to get through traffic on I-95, and when the road finally opened up a bit, I changed lanes like Mario Andretti and floored it down the left lane. When my exit finally approached, I found myself perpendicular in front of a tractor-trailer as I cut across the highway. The driver blasted his horn loudly.
Fuck you, asshole. I got places to be.
When I opened the door to our apartment, Lily was lounging on the couch reading.
Teachers.
She had barely done anything all summer. She was always texting me stupid pictures of herself relaxing and mocking me for having what she called a “real job.” I told her if she sent me one more picture of her feet from a lounge chair at the pool, I would cut her friggin’ toes off one by one. She had finally gone back to work for those meetings or whatever bullshit teachers have to do in the beginning of the year, and she
still
managed to have more free
time than I did.
“What’s goin’ on?” I asked, since she didn’t look up from her book when I came in.
“Nothing’. Just hanging around. I grabbed lunch with Sarah earlier and then got a pedicure. I thought about texting you a picture, but decided against it.” She laughed. “You can see ‘em live.” She lifted her foot off the couch and wiggled her freshly painted toes in the air.
Asshole
.
“Wait, I thought you had work?”
“Took a personal day.
Yesterday was
so
boring. They talked our ears off for seven hours straight about how we aren’t supposed to lecture to kids. Irony at its finest. Not to mention, we learned our theme for the year: be a hands-on teacher. I don’t wanna know what that even means. I couldn’t do another day of that shit without a break first.”
“A personal day?
The last two months were a personal day, you crazy bitch. Now get your lazy ass off the couch and get dressed. We’re going out.”
***
When we arrived at Steph’s at 8:15, we followed her onto the back deck. Danielle was already there, and she was clearly buzzed. She’d been pre-gaming for a good hour or so. A half-empty bottle of vodka was on the table, and the two of them were sitting with Steph’s boyfriend Dan.
“Funnel cake, ladies?” Dan asked as we opened the gate to the backyard. “I just made ‘em.”
Who makes friggin’ funnel cake in their house?
“Hell yeah, I’ll take some funnel cake,” Lily nearly yelled, as she ripped off a piece from Danielle’s plate. “Can you make fried Oreos, too?”
Who the hell asks questions like this?
“Damn right, I can make fried Oreos.
Comin’ right up.” Dan left to go inside and make us some more treats.
Was this how “good nights from hell”
always
started?
For the next half hour
, we gorged ourselves on fried desserts and vodka before deciding that it was time to head out. By nine o’clock we had arrived at O’Leary’s, a bar about ten minutes from Steph’s house, which had a deck overlooking the Delaware River. It was perfect for an August night. O’Leary’s was already packed when we arrived, despite the fact that it was a weekday. The bar was popular because of its drink
specials. On Tuesday nights, they offered a free Jell-O shot with every drink.
After about fifteen minutes, we somehow managed to find an open table out on the deck. Danielle bought us a pitcher of margaritas, and when the waitress arrived, we immediately threw back the
Jell-O shots that she brought with her.
“So Dan seems awesome,” I said genuinely to Steph as I poured my drink. I had never
actually met him before tonight, so I only knew what she had told us about him.
“Yeah, but he’s definitely weird sometimes. I mean, who makes fucking funnel cake at home?”
My thoughts exactly.
“He does shit like that all the time,” she continued. “He likes to make dinner, and he’s a good cook because that’s what he went to school for, but he makes up these stupid songs while he cooks. It’s so annoying. I’ll be sitting there reading a magazine, and I’ll hear, “Going to put the oven on now, oven on now.” She mocked him in a low-pitched singing voice that didn’t resemble his at all.
“Dude, you’re fuckin’ lucky,” I told her. “Let him sing if it means he cooks dinner. Nate’s idea of starting dinner was sitting in his video game rocker with his Xbox controller in his hand and yelling, ‘It’s six o’clooock. Are we gonna eat sometime or what?’ Just put in some fucking earbuds if it bothers you, and let him do his thing.”
Steph laughed loudly and agreed that I was probably right. “You know me, though. I find fault in almost every guy I’ve ever been with. You know . . . one doesn’t have side steps on his truck . . . another wears the wrong shoe size. You know how I am.”
“Hey, shoe size matters,” Lily interjected, already starting to slur from the alcohol. She ran a hand through her wavy brown hair to pull it out of her face.
“Yeah,” Danielle chimed in, “at least you have a boyfriend, Steph. I have what I’m supposed to call my ‘man.’”
“What?” I laughed. “What’s that mean?”
“
You
tell
me
. You know I’ve been seeing Brandon for like two months, right? Well, for my thirtieth
birthday a few weeks ago, a bunch of my family got together for a little party at my uncle’s house. I invited Brandon, and I asked how I should introduce him. I’d been meaning to have this conversation with him anyway, and I figured it was a good time for it.” Danielle poured herself another drink and wiped the table in front of her with her napkin where the margarita had spilled a little. “Well, he said he wasn’t in high school so he wasn’t anyone’s
boyfriend
. He was like, ‘just tell ‘em I’m your man,’” she mocked in her deepest, dopiest voice. “I mean, what the fuck? I think my exact words were, ‘My man? Who the fuck
says
that? You may not be in high school, but until I start wearing cheap hoop earrings down to my shoulders with my name in the metal and get a fucking airbrushed T-shirt, I’m sure as shit not calling anyone
my man
.’ I mean, can you believe that?”
We all burst out laughing. Danielle was the only person who could put that kind of flair on such a mundane occurrence. I loved hearing her stories.
“I gotta pee,” I said. “I’ll grab another pitcher on the way back.” As I rose and began to make my way inside, I definitely started to feel the alcohol in my system. My eyes focused on the wooden floorboards as I weaved around people and headed toward the restrooms. The line was surprisingly short. And if it weren’t for the fact that I had dressed like a dumbass, my trip would have been brief.
As I entered the stall, I realized my mistake.
Who wears a romper to a bar?
Earlier, I had thought it was a good idea. It was white, and the material was light and loose with spaghetti straps, which I thought would be perfect for the humid night. What I hadn’t considered was that going to the bathroom would be a tremendous pain in the ass, and with the amount I planned to drink, I’d be frequently inconvenienced. I pulled the stupid thing down, but as I tried to hover above the seat, the inside of the fabric nearly touched the toilet.
Eww, no fucking way!
I had no choice but to take the whole thing off completely and squat above the toilet with basically nothing on. I wasn’t even wearing a bra because the romper had one built in.
This is gonna be a long night.
Finally, I made my way back to the bar with the pitcher in one hand and
Jell-O shots in the other. But by the time I returned, there was already another pitcher on the table. I motioned to it. “I said I’d get one.”
“You were taking too long.” Danielle shrugged. “We got thirsty.”
“This is gonna get warm before we drink it all, though.” I thought for a second. “I’ll get another glass. Looks like you’re having a few drinks, Steph. It’s still early.” I looked at my phone. 10:15.
I returned with a glass and poured her a drink immediately.
She took it without protest. “I wanna make a toast,” I slurred way too loudly, splashing liquid out of my glass and onto my hand. “To a good night from hell!” I glanced around to see a group of four good-looking guys nearby staring at me. “And to hot fucking single men at bars,” I added, raising my glass in their general direction.
As I sat back down, one of the guys glided over to us, clearly taking my drunk, impromptu toast as an invitation to hit on us.
“I heard you mention something about fucking hot single men a minute ago,” he said with a smirk. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-three at the most, but looked even younger.
“I think I said ‘
hot fucking
single men’ actually. And what
are
you, like fifteen? Did you borrow your older brother’s ID to get in here, or what?” He was definitely the youngest of the group he’d come with, but he was still cute.
He furrowed his brow, confused. “Huh?
Hot fucking single men? Fucking hot single men? What’s the difference?” He reached his hand out to shake mine. “I’m Colin, and I’m actually twenty-two. That makes me legal. Plus, I like older women,” he shrugged. “But yeah, my older brother Jason
is
over there. So you weren’t too far off.” He laughed and pointed to the tall one with dark buzzed hair, and tattoos peeking out from under the sleeve of his black T-shirt.
“The difference,” Lily said, answering his rhetorical question as she smacked her open palm on the table, causing the glasses to shake, “is that in
her
version, ‘fucking’ is used as an adjective. In
your
version, it’s a verb. That’s a big difference.”
Jesus Christ, did she think
now
was the time for a grammar lesson? Fucking English teachers.
But she didn’t stop.
“In
yours
, it means we wanna
fuck
you.” She reached out as she said the word “you” and poked Colin hard in the chest.
“Okay, then I like mine better,” Colin replied with a wide boyish grin.
He really did look like a teenager.
“Oh my God, oh my God!”
I yelled. “I just remembered. My fake ID is on the wall inside. They took it from me when I was twenty. It’s been up on their Wall of Shame ever since. That was over eight years ago.”
“Holy Shit!
You’re almost
thirty?
That’s even older than I thought.”
My eyes shot daggers at Colin, but I did my best to ignore his flippant comment.
“I need another drink. Then I’m going inside to get my ID back.”
Colin called his brother and his friends over to join us for another round of drinks and
Jell-O shots until I got enough liquid courage to venture inside to get my ID. When I downed the last of my margarita, I told the group I was heading to the Wall of Shame to get back what was rightfully mine. I had often wondered how many people had looked at my ID on that wall. I had never actually seen it myself, though, which would make finding it that much harder.
I pushed my way through the crowd toward the front doors and
leaned up against an adjacent wall casually so I could examine the fake IDs plastered directly behind where the bouncer was seated. When any customer tried to get in with a fake ID, the bouncer would tack it to the wall behind him. That’s how mine ended up there. There had to be hundreds on the wall, and I was too far away to see clearly. I would need to bring in reinforcements. So I texted the girls to come help me. I knew that the noise of the outdoor deck would make it difficult for them to hear their phones, but I was too lazy (and by this point much too drunk) to make my way back outside to get them in person.