“Um… where are you?”
The sun is so fucking bright today. Side effect of the liquor and the drugs someone slipped into my drink. Could it have been his sister? Another man? I don’t remember anything and my head hurts so damn badly. But I’d better let Rana tell me her story too…
“I met this Turkish guy and he took me back to his apartment. It was crazy, Aricia. He ate my ass!”
“I’m going to throw up.”
“It wasn’t that gross! He’s Turkish. He has a bidet.”
“It’s not about your ass eating,” I groan. “Something bad happened to me last night.”
“What? Did he have a small dick? Please say he didn’t have a small dick. That would literally ruin my life.”
“Rana, I have to get home and shower so I can make it to the funeral home today. I shouldn’t be thinking about anyone’s dick or trying not to throw up because?—”
“Oh my God, are you okay, Aricia?”
“No. I think someone drugged me last night.”
“The Italian guy?” she says. “Should we call the police?”
“I think he was just as out of it as I was. Can you leave your Turkish man and come to my place? My rideshare just pulled up.”
“I’ll be there,” Rana says. “I’ll leave my thong behind so he remembers to call me.”
I don’t know if her strategy will work, but I’m not in the position to argue with Rana. The car pulls up and I worry that if I don’t get out of here soon, Peter will follow me. I shouldn’t have done this. I shouldn’t have slept with him…
His cum oozes down my leg and nausea flips my stomach again. The driver climbs out of the silver Hyundai Elantra and holds the door open for me. I say goodbye to Rana and step inside.
“See you soon,” I tell her, sliding my phone over my thigh as I slip into the backseat. Speaking of thongs… What the hell happened to mine?
Rana gets out of the cab at my place a few minutes after I get out of the shower. I get clean, but nothing can remove the evidence of this man inside me except… Plan B. But I don’t have time for Plan B because at 2 p.m., I have to go to the funeral home and do something I always knew I would have to do at some point, but always expected to feel sad about.
Now, I’ll have to avoid acting like a psychopath in the funeral home because I’m not exactly going to put my business out there about the situation I caught my husband in that caused him to have a heart attack on my front lawn. My sister, Olivia in Pittsburgh and Rana both think that I’ll laugh about this one day.
I just feel dread right now. Rana walks into my house and heads straight towards my refrigerator like every real ass best friend. As she pours herself orange juice, she gets straight down to business.
“What the hell happened to you last night? The Italian?” Rana’s eyebrows raise and I feel like I’m going to disappoint her by refusing to share the salacious details. I can’t even remember what happened between us. I don’t remember saying no. I rememberhimtrying to stop the moving train at one point.
But we’re grown… and we still have those desires… and sometimes all that self-control you have as an adult woman hits a wall and unravels all at once. I’m not embarrassed that I had sex, but the timing couldn’t be worse.
“I left his house this morning,” I mutter, as if Kennard’s dead spirit might be lurking in the Orchard Park house we bought when we first started the law firm and moved to Buffalo together. If my head didn’t still hurt, I would be tempted to have another drink. Rana remains unbothered by the potential of my husband’s ghost haunting me for moving on too quickly.
“Did he take your number?” Rana asks. She looks incredible for someone who also spent the night at someone else’s house. Her long, waist-length black hair is rolled up and clipped back in a tortoise shell clip and she’s dressed like a Gen Z influencer, which adds to her ageless look.
“No. I hope I didn’t tell him my last name,” I groan. Rana thinks it’s ridiculous that I care and I can tell she’s excited bythe idea of Peter tracking me down like some kind of fucked up Cinderella situation.
“If he’s in the mob,” Rana says with gleaming dark brown eyes. “He can probably track you down. Wouldn’t that be sexy?”
When did stalking become sexy? Maybe to young women or people who don’t work in the legal profession. I raise an eyebrow, because Rana has enough experience not to be so unserious as to suggest that this man stalking me would be a turn-on.
“If I were a jobless twenty-one year old, maybe. I own a law firm and my 50% partner just passed away on my front lawn.”
Rana sighs. “It would still be hot. It’s not like he looked scraggly and gross. Do you think he’s really in the mob?”
“I shouldn’t have doneanythingthat happened last night.”
“Somethingdidhappen last night, then,” Rana says. “I’m alert. I think I need prosecco for this orange juice.”
