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CHAPTER 1
I always know when I’m the last to arrive to a dinner with the Todos girls because the moment I step into the restaurant, the hostess gives me a half-grin, half-cringe. She’s been briefed on the penalty I face for being late – which I’m considered even if I arrive on time, as long as everyone else got there before me. Adriana, being hyper-punctual and a sadist, implemented this rule after too many of our reservations went to waste because our party was incomplete. The culprit is normally Linh because she’s compelled to Instagram every flower or flowy skirt on the sidewalk, but tonight, it was myself. So for the very first time, I was the one forced to drink the foulest available vodka at the bar – one shot for every five-minute increment that the girls were kept waiting.
I was thirteen minutes late tonight but Adriana rounds up, so I was promptly greeted with three shots of Georgi, which Em informed me the place didn’t actually carry – it was just staff party leftovers that the cute bartender had volunteered. Like so many others, he was charmed by our ruthless tradition.
“Bottoms up.” He winked at me, watching as I struggled to down each shot of coconut-flavored punishment. But underneath my heavy cringing, I felt the tingle of a thrill. It’d been years since I’d been able to really hang out with the girls and the shots made me feel like I was back. Out and alive again, not trapped and alone in Ben’s miserable, echoing penthouse.
“‘Kay,” I croaked when I was finished, taking a solid ten seconds to finish shuddering. It was only then that the girls began greeting me with kisses on the cheek and a few sympathetic coos – at least from Adriana and Linh, who hadn’t seen me since the breakup.
“You lost so much weight!” Adriana exclaimed as she pulled away from our hug. Cute Bartender and several patrons looked over at me despite having no prior frame of reference. I couldn’t blame them. No matter where we went, Adriana’s jubilant voice always demanded attention — especially at restaurants and bars, and mostly from the male population. If it wasn’t that, Em’s sports banter or Linh’s compulsive pixie flirting would do the trick. Once upon a time, I contributed to our collective charm. I think. But then a long-term relationship happened – more specifically one with Ben.
Tonight, to make up for three years of doing it his way, I wore something tight, white and crocheted that he would’ve punched a wall over.
“Girl, how?” Adriana held her arms out in awe, still gaping at my body. She paused and then gasped. “You’re depressed!” she guessed jovially.
“I’m not depressed, Ade,” I laughed, already tipsy as we got seated. Drunk, really. I’d lost any shred of tolerance in the last few years away from the girls. It was as if I’d been living in a cave. It did feel that way.
Linh studied me as she wound a lock of black hair around her finger. “But three years is forever,” she said in her wispy voice. “It would be normal to be depressed.”
“Guys, she’s really not though. The opposite, really,” Em spoke up for me while reading the menu. Being the only one of them left at Todos Santos, where I’d begun waitressing again, she’d had the most time to talk to me since the split. Plus, she’d been the one I could safely gripe to about Ben over the years. She was sarcastic but mellow and unlikely to round up all her bouncer friends to go and intimidate him, which I could actually see Adriana and Linh doing, though Linh would probably make them swear to only scare him. Adriana, on the other hand, would give them the go-ahead to throw punches, even use restraints if needed. For those reasons, I couldn’t tell her about my relationship. I had to tell Em.
And being that person, she knew the truth — that despite being technically dumped, I was beyond relieved to be out of what had felt like a twisted marriage. From the ages of eighteen to twenty-one, I’d essentially been Mrs. Benjamin Kingdon.
Adriana eyed me. “Guess I’ll believe Em since you tell her everything now,” she said, cocking an eyebrow. I tensed, but she relieved me by changing the subject and playfully pouting her full, berry lips. “Anyway, thank fucking God you’re back, honey. You were too young to be married!”
As far as she and the girls were concerned, I had been a wife for the past three years. While they were still starting their nights at 1AM and hooking up all over the city, I was tending to Ben’s every need in his TriBeCa loft and if not that, waiting for him to come home from work where he always stayed late. When I wasn’t at Todos or school, I was raising our child, Jack – the Akita puppy that he one day decided he wanted.
“Oh! Look at that,” Adriana feigned surprise when a complimentary round of drinks arrived at our table. I held back a laugh. I’d missed this act of hers. Half the reason she ever played our late-girl shots game was to amuse the staff and endear us to them. They’d always want to send a consolation drink to whichever one of us had to down the disgusting vodka, but then of course they’d feel the need to include the rest of the girls on the free round. And then once it was delivered, she and Linh would flirt with our server, be it a boy or girl, and this friendship for the night would ensure free dessert sent to our table at the end of the meal.
But tonight, Adriana had other orders of business. Sipping on her strawberry Caipirinha, she peeked mischievously at me. “So. Drunk enough to start talking about Ben? Since, apparently, I need to get you hammered for you to tell me things anymore?”
I frowned. “Ade.”
“I’m just kidding. I know it was because that prick was holding your silence hostage. Like a true fucker.”
“Ade, this is why I didn’t talk about him,” I protested with a laugh. “Because I don’t want to get you all riled up. I know you hated him.”
“We all hated him. Ade just talked about it more,” Linh said truthfully. She plucked a yellow flower from the table and tucked it into her wavy hair. “Probably because Ben hated her most.”
My lips pursed awkwardly. We never really talked about that, but leave it to Linh to casually say things that most people tiptoe around. “Let’s not talk about Ben,” I decided.
“Why not?” Adriana wore a sassy look as she let her cocktail straw hang from her lips like a cigarette. “Isn’t step one of recovery acknowledging the problem?”
Yes. She had me. Step one of getting past Ben was talking about him, but I didn’t know where to start. Despite the fact that we’d dated for so long, he was still a stranger to the girls. He’d hung out with Em the most because he thought she was “calm” and “civilized” compared to Adriana and Linh, but that still just meant on four brief occasions over the course of three years. Three years that I spent being tight-lipped about our relationship, too stubborn to admit that he was the reason for why I’d eventually left work, quit school and stopped seeing my closest friends, especially
Adriana. To Ben, she meant danger. She was the best friend that every girl wanted — beautiful with a contagious sense of adventure and charisma that attracted men everywhere she went. Confident, good-looking men whom Ben figured would eventually start flirting with her friends. And so he resorted to calling her “trashy,” even “slutty” when she was actually neither.
Far worse, I let him.
Ugh. Thinking about what an asshole he was and what an idiot I’d been made me feel ready to spill about the failed relationship. As long as Adriana didn’t ask about the last straw – that final argument that I hadn’t told a soul about yet. It was too humiliating and I couldn’t stand the filthy, crawling feeling I got every time I remembered it.
“So?” Adriana’s challenge stirred me from my thoughts.
I heaved a sigh. “What do you want to know?”
She squealed. “Oh my God, Linh. Where do we start?”
Linh didn’t hesitate. “How much money did he give you for allowance?”
