BACK INTO IT
1
“Woooooo! Cheryl’s getting married!Wooooooooo!” Eden drew in a deep breath, clearly preparing to ‘woo’ harder.
Cheryl put her hand in her best friend’s face. “Is doing that ironically making it funnier, or what?”
She shouldn’t have bothered trying to silence Eden; the male dancers—who were currently dressed as firefighters—rolled their hips in unison, and ear-splitting cheers rocked the bar like a hurricane. Eden jumped to her feet to scream alongside everyone else, and Cheryl sucked more daiquiri from her penis straw, resisting the urge to check the time.
This was a problem of her own making. She’d told Eden she wanted a cliche bachelorette party. She was tired of ‘paint and sips’ where everyone drank one glass of wine and reproduced the same shitty oil paintings of a pot plant. She was done with cheese boards, yawning aunties, and polite games of‘Guess where the bride and groom met!’
She never thought she’d get married, let alone to the hottest, sweetest guy in the world, and she’d wanted to fuckingcelebrate. She’d wanted old-school chaos. Veils with dicks on them andpink sashes and massive cocktails and naked dudes. The whole nine yards. And that had led her to here, front row seats at the 2am performance of Thunder from Down Under.
That was the problem with Eden, her maid of honour and best friend since high school; she was a touring trance DJ who had taken planning the most insane, old-school bachelorette party as a personal challenge. Cheryl had wanted chaos, and she’d gotten it. Eden had hired three pink buses, filled them with every female, femme and non-straight dude Cheryl had ever met, and it was off to the races. A penthouse suite full of high tea and sparkly drag dress-ups, axe-throwing where all the targets were pictures of Cheryl’s ex-boyfriends, personalised penis-shaped hydro cups brimming with tequila, a pass the parcel in which more illicit substances were unwrapped with every layer, dancing, drinking, everything,anything.
But good as she was, Eden couldn’t have planned the enthusiasm with which her friends and co-workers had plunged face-deep into the bedlam, getting more fucked up than Cheryl had seen many of them in years—if at all. It had been a long year, and it was apparent she wasn’t the only person sick of eating too much cheese and being in bed by eleven at bachelorette parties. The levels of steam-blowing-off were uncharted. She’d had fun, wasstillhaving fun, but she was also starting to feel a little detached. The truth was, she was almost thirty-four and had dedicated more time than most to partying her brains out. The novelty factor would always be limited in terms of what she’d never done before. And it turned out that when it was your party, everyone wanted to talk with you, drink with you, dance with you, and all the attention had burnt her out. She felt like an asshole for feeling that way, though, especially since this whole thing had been her idea.
The club DJ transitioned to that staple of the male strip show—Ginuwine’s ‘Pony’—and Cheryl got to her feet alongside a onceagain wooing Eden and gave a few half-hearted dance moves. Luckily, the guys were giving it their all on stage, and she was left to sway and sip daiquiri. She’d already had her ‘bride-to-be dance’. She’d gone backstage and been carried out by six shirtless guys to ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time.’ It had been amazing, but it had also been two hours ago, and Cheryl’s feet hurt. She’d hoped people would be considering bed by now, but the pass-the-parcel prizes were well and truly keeping everyone on their feet.
She pulled out her phone and found a text from Patrick.
Derek: AWOL.
Byron: On his phone.
Martin: Convinced stripper is in love with him.
Jason: Convinced he’s in love with same stripper.
Antony and Dom: Arm wrestling.
Willow: Arguing with bouncer about Super Rugby.
Teammates: Going in and out of the toilets like someone’s giving out free money in there.
Bouncer: Too busy arguing with Willow about Super Rugby to notice.
Me: Reminding myself I’m going to marry the hottest girl in the world, and I only have to do this once.
Cheryl smiled and sent him a heart and a crying, laughing face emoji. Secretly, part of her had wanted a huge bachelorette party so she wouldn’t feel left out when Patrick’s footy mates took him on a tits and ass tour of Melbourne’s finest strip clubs. It wasn’t that she thought he’d cheat, but he was gorgeous and younger than her, and female strip clubs had none of the campiness of male ones. Patrick wouldn’t be dancing around toBritney songs; he’d be trying not to get a boner while some uni student showed him her entire labia.
“I don’t need to go to the strippers,” he’d told her a hundred times. “I don’t give a fuck what the guys think; they’re getting a night’s worth of free piss and paintball. That’s enough.”
But Cheryl knew as well as anyone that if Patrick didn’t indulge his brothers and colleagues in touching boobs they weren’t married to, she’d get the blame. And since she was already self-conscious around his teammates and family, she didn’t want the heat. She was secure enough in their relationship to let her fiancé get lap dances… At least in theory. It was still nice to know his night wasn’t sunshine and rainbows either.
“Holy shit,” Eden shouted. “Look at Bridgette go!”
Cheryl turned to see her former boss—the one who’d shit-canned her with no notice last year—waving a fistful of notes at the biggest, horniest-looking dancer. Considering the smallest Australian note was a five, that was certainly more money than Cheryl planned on giving anyone who wasn’t holding a small baggie.
“Get it, girl,” she said mildly as Bridgette was immediately ushered on stage and seated in a leather chair.
“I’m sorry she’s here,” Eden groaned. “She saw the email I sent your mate Devon and invited herself, and everyone at your old work was so worried she’d flip tables if she wasn’t allowed to come?—”
“It’s fine,” Cheryl said as Bridgette pressed her face into the dancer’s greasy abs. “You can’t deny the entertainment value.”
“Fuck her entertainment value, you should be up there! Hang on, I came prepared. I can simply lure these hoes away with cash...”
Eden dug through her purse, and Cheryl touched her wrist. “Don’t worry about it. I’m gonna go catch a break.”
