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I giggle at Leslie’s earlier advice while I rest my forehead against the mirrored wall of the elevator. I can totally envision Leslie saying something like that to anyone, but me? Even ten sheets to the wind, the thought of me even attempting to tell anyone to fuck off is absurd.
My breath fogs the mirror and I write ‘fuck off’ in the condensation.
But maybe its absurdity is why I should do it. I close my eyes and imagine responding to Kayla’s next incoherent text with ‘fuck off’.
I giggle again.
The couple in the elevator behind me whisper. I probably look highly suspicious leaning against the wall, shoes in hand, hair back to its stick-straight chaotic nature, writing profanity I can’t bring myself to utter.
Another giggle.
I should’ve stayed out with the other girls instead of volunteering to escort Bell back to her room so she could get a good night’s sleep before the wedding.
Although honestly, it was more like she escorted me back. I offered her my arm when we left the club, but as the shots I’d downed after Liz procured a private dining room at the hard-to-get-into Partage restaurant with the help of her brother’s black Amex card were racing through my veins, I’m pretty sure Bell only took my offered arm in an effort to keep me steady during our short trip back to the Bellagio.
I’m not much of a drinker. But after the plane ride, all the effort I put into the party, Kayla’s phone call, finally letting go and having fun only for it all to literally vanish in a puff of smoke, I decided to give it a shot. Or four.
My giggling continues.
And after the last one something magical happened.
I had fun. Real, uninhibited fun.
As sad as it is, in my twenty-nine years I’ve never been out with a group of girlfriends like tonight. Girls who genuinely like me for me. And I know they like me because even with as shy as I am in our normal daily encounters, and as much as I like to be the observer and let them have the stage whenever we’re together, they noticed something was wrong with me – even in the midst of all our Vegas shenanigans.
Hopefully none of them saw me wipe a tear or two away at the table when they got me to admit who Kayla was and what she’d said earlier. They’d all offered comforting words (Bell), a hug (Liz) and advice (Leslie).
Fuck off, Kayla.
Another giggle, this one cut short by the ding of the elevator.
‘Miss?’ One of the gentlemen behind me taps my shoulder. ‘Isn’t this your floor?’
Using two hands, I push off the wall and glance at the number on the screen. ‘Yessss.’ I step carefully over the threshold. But my careful step is too slow, and the doors nearly squeeze me between them. With a hastened hop, I turn to thank the couple, but see the doors close on them in a hot embrace.
Maybe they weren’t whispering about how odd I was acting. Maybe they were complaining that I was in the way of their elevator tryst.
Luckies.
Maybe if I stayed out, I could’ve found someone to tryst with.
My next giggle turns into a snort-cough at the imagined sight of me trying to land a one-night stand. I don’t even know how to find one sober. Thanks to my adolescent fear of the opposite sex and teenage pregnancies, I never even learned how to flirt. Any dates or relationships I’ve had were initiated by happenstance and dumb luck.
Though I did take mental notes on flirting tonight while watching Leslie.
The tall, leggy, forty-something-year-old lawyer drew men around us like a siren. Yet she turned them all away. ‘Girls’ night,’ she’d said. Very impressive.
Almost as incredible as Liz’s impression of her older brother when I admitted to being the culprit behind the elder Moore’s black eye.
‘Indeed,’ she’d said, shoulders back, eyebrows raised, looking down her nose with a serious expression.
Bell assured me that Thomas wouldn’t fire me. That he couldn’t due to the promise he made when Bell thought she was leaving New York for good. Bell got Thomas’s word that I’d always have a job at Moore’s if I wanted it.
Liz laughed and said she would’ve paid serious money to see her brother get dick whacked.
Leslie, as Leslie’s prone to do, simply laughed and said, ‘Fuck him.’
My mind, helped along with the shots and drinks I’ve had, suddenly imagines taking Leslie’s advice literally. The images flashing in my mind have me bracing one hand on the wall of the long hallway, my other hand fanning my overly heated face.
