Page 130 of A Really Bad Idea

“Hey, you’re the lady Ian brought home last night.” A young girl is standing against another bedroom door, wearing a bra and boy shorts.

I try to ignore the fact that she called me lady and not girl.

Makes you wonder what a thirty-five-year-old guy with a tattoo of Thor near his junk is doing, living with a college coed—strike that. I don’t want to know.

“You were a lot of fun last night,” she says.

I vaguely remember talking to her about my ex—the reason I was out, making bad decisions, in the first place.

“I hope I can still party like you when I’m thirty,” she says.

I cringe and feel the need to explain myself, “I don’t make a habit of this sort of thing.” I point my thumb to the door behind me and the sleeping Ian behind it.

The coed giggles and curiously eyes me. “Yeah, me neither.” She leans forward and gives me an exaggerated wink. “It was a good time until you started crying about how your eggs are going to shrivel up.”

Yep, time to leave.

I bail out the front door and pray I’m not too far from home.

The sun is even brighter than I thought, the city is louder than it needs to be, and from the stares I’m getting, I look way worse than I should.

I spin around and catch my reflection in a storefront. Matted hair that was pressed straight is now sticking up. I reach up and try to smooth them when I see the caked up mess that is happening under my eyes. I lick my fingers in an attempt to get rid of the raccoon-eyes. I smooth my fingers over my skin until I’m raw, and then decide a hot shower and a lobotomy are the only things that will make me look and feel like myself again.

Screw it. I stand up straight, chin up. Wearing a cocktail dress and five-inch heels on a street in downtown Manhattan, I do the walk of shame.

In New York City, you can pretty much do anything and not get noticed. I could wear a rainbow wig on my head and ride a unicycle while reciting excerpts from The Vagina Monologues, and no one would look twice. But a woman strutting down the street in last night’s threads with a face that screams, I slept with a stranger, and everyone seems to notice. Seriously, from the bread deliveryman to the early risers heading to SoulCycle, I’m like a magnet for attention. Even the homeless guy on the floor is giving me the side eye.

I reach in my purse and grab my phone. I need a distraction on my trek home, and Naomi is the only one who can provide it.

“Hello?” a groggy female voice croaks on the other end of the line.

I stop and smack myself on the head. “Holy shit. I’m so sorry. It’s got to be five a.m. in Napa.”

“It’s four. Please tell me you’ve been abducted, and you’re calling for the ransom because I’m seriously considering not paying it.”

I slump my shoulders a tad, feeling awful for waking up my best friend. “I’m not even thinking straight. Go back to bed. I’ll call you later.”

“No, no.”

I can hear the rustle of the sheets as her body crawls out of the bed she shares with her husband—a normal person you should be sharing a bed with, not a one-nighter you met on the Internet.

“Are you out of the house already? It sounds like you’re…” She pauses, and I brace myself for the revelation to hit her. “Crystal Reid, are you doing the walk of shame?” Her tone is shocked yet utterly amused.

“No,” I say rather defensively, “I’m just out, grabbing a coffee.”

“You have never been up this early on a Sunday. You went to the bar last night, and you are just now getting home. Oh my God, this is so unlike you. In the fifteen years I’ve known you, you’ve never had a one-night stand.”

“Shut up. My head hurts, my body is sore, and I feel really messed up about it right now.”

“You sounded pretty upset in your voice mail last night. You kept on mentioning Campari, cows, and Steven being a fucker. Wanna talk about it?”

Yes, after humiliating myself at work, I went home and learned that, while I was on my way to being an old maid who yelled at brides on their wedding days, my ex had officially moved on with his life.

“He got married, Nay. And he has a baby,” I state, still so confused as to how the man who had said he never wanted children actually went and had a child. Looks like he just didn’t want to have one with me.

“Crystal, I thought you were over this.”

How could I ever be over the man whom I’d eloped with after a whirlwind romance, only to find he duped me into thinking he was someone else, someone I could share my life with? Hell, I even moved to another state to be with him.