“Ugghh,” Lennon moaned into her arms, which were serving as a pillow for her face on the faded laminate diner table. “I’m never drinking Jack again in my life, I swear to God.” Lennon was nursing the hangover from hell, but like a stand-up gal, she answered the bestie SOS I’d sent out this morning. She raised her head and adjusted her glasses, which were crooked on her face. “When you said you needed girl talk with your besties, I assumed you meant me and Sheila. Who else are we waiting for?”
“Sutton,” I replied brightly. “She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s joining our sisterhood.”
“Who?” Lennon asked in a raspy voice. “Oh, the lawyer chick?”
“Yeah, we’re all going to be friends. I can’t wait to introduce her to Sheila.”
Hearing Briar mix my milkshake made me do a happy wiggle in my seat, but poor Lennon just massaged her temples and sighed. Briar came back to our table to deliver my shake and Lennon’s coffee. “Here you go.” She set the carafe of coffee next to Lennon’s mug and pulled a small pill bottle from her apron. “I thought you might need these,” she said as she handed the bottle to Lennon.
Lennon tilted her head in question but accepted the bottle. “Midol?”
Briar nodded her head as Lennon shook two pills into her hand. “Take those, eat your greasy breakfast, and have an electrolyte drink when you get home. You’ll be right as rain in no time.” Lennon handed the bottle back to our server, who tucked it into her apron.
“Thanks, I appreciate it. I feel like I died and was brought back from the dead just so I could be slowly murdered.”
Briar chuckled as she walked away. “Been there, sis,” she said over her shoulder. I eyed her as she walked away.
Lennon took her Midol with her coffee and rolled her eyes at me. “Oh, I know that look. That’s the ‘I found a new initiate into the wicked sisterhood’gleam in your eye, isn’t it?”
I grinned around my straw. She knew me so well! “Did you see her response time when she saw you needed medicine? I bet she could keep all kinds of nifty stuff in that apron! You know I appreciate pockets on a woman.” Lennon snorted a laugh and sipped from her steaming mug of coffee. An old-fashioned bell tolled, and our new friend came stridingthrough the diner door. Her heels clicked loudly on the slightly sticky flooring, causing Lennon to wince. Sutton settled into the booth across from Lennon and me, looking out of place in the shabby restaurant some of the Crows swore by. Briar came by to take her order, but Sutton told her to just give her whatever I was having, like it didn’t matter much what she ate. Boy, was she in for a treat!
“Alright,” she said, leveling a stern look my way and removing her blazer to reveal a soft-looking long-sleeved blouse. My fingers itched to see if it was as soft as it looked, but I didn’t want to scare my potential new friend away. “You said this was an emergency. Please tell me you didn’t murder that poor girl next to you. As your defense attorney, I need plausible deniability.” Lennon flipped Sutton the bird while slowly pushing her hangover glasses up her nose with her middle finger.
“Lennon’s only quasi-dead this morning.” I snickered, earning me a poke in the ribs from my bestie. Snatching my milkshake and taking an irritated sip, Lennon rolled her eyes.
“It’s an emergency of the female variety,” Lennon said after handing my shake back.
Sutton raised an eyebrow. “Yeah… I’m gonna need more clarification. I have a good imagination and a true crime podcast addiction, so ‘female emergencies’ can be varied and horrifying things.”
“Oh, I knew I liked you!” I say, kicking my legs in glee. “See, bestie! I told you she was sisterhood material!” I sighed and took another sip of my shake. “I activated the bestie phone tree because something happened last night, and I’m not sure what to think about it, or how I feel. It’s…confusing.”
Briar chose that moment to deliver Sutton’s milkshake, which she eyed dubiously. She scooted it to the side and poured herself a mug of coffee from Lennon’s carafe instead. When she saw my incredulous expression (becausehello…milkshake!) Sutton shrugged and sipped her coffee.
Putting her blasphemy aside for the sake of our budding friendship, I dove right in. “So last night, Priest put his face in my pussy, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.”
Lennon retched loudly, slapping her hand over her mouth. She swallowed roughly and took a sip of her coffee. Sutton watched her in silent bemusement over the rim of her mug.
“Sorry, sorry. Jack Daniel’s is dead to me, but that gag was also a little for you. Priest is like a grumpy older brother to me…” She shuddered. “But I can do this. For you.”
Briar came back with a tray laden with food, placing dishes in front of us. I slathered my pancakes in syrup, the way Bob intended them to be eaten, and dug in. Lennon looked a little green, but her color improved after she took a few small bites of her steak and eggs.
“So what happened, exactly?” she asked once she was certain she wouldn’t throw up all over the table.
I rehashed whatwent downthe night before (pun intended, thank you very much), shooting Lennon an apologetic look. Sutton took everything in silently as she ate her pancakes. She was a really good listener, but I guess she’d need to be as a lawyer.
“So let me get this straight,” Sutton said when I was done, pulling her milkshake to her and taking a sip. “Mmm, thisisgood.”
“That’s what Indi said last night.” Lennon snickered before Sutton continued.
“You’re telling me Lochlan Abbott got on his knees and handed out orgasms to you like they were Mardi Gras beads, cuddled afterward, and didn’t ask for any kind of reciprocation?” She looked incredulously at Lennon. “That’s who we’re talking about, right? Priest?”
Lennon nodded and took another bite of her steak. I quirked my head at Sutton curiously. “Do you know him?” Sutton huffed out a laugh that sounded a little pained.
“Not anymore. Well, not ever, really. I went to high school with Lochlan, Santiago, and Wren. But I haven’t seen them in ten years. We weren’t exactly friends.”
I looked at Lennon, who muttered, “Priest, Bones, and Cricket,”and I made an awed O with my lips.
I knew Priest’s government name was Lochlan because I’d heard Lorna and Rose call him that in the past, but I didn’t know Bones’s and Cricket’s birth names. They hadn’t volunteered the information, so I figured they didn’t care for me to know. Which was a shame becausethose were really nice names. I’d only recently chosen my own name, and now that I had, the significance of road names made perfect sense to me. You couldn’t help the name you were given at birth, ornotgiven in my case, so when you chose a name for yourself, it was deeply personal and significant. For now, I’d call them by their road names because that was who they were to me.
