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“Where are you?” I ask, ducking out of the way as a horde of Slutty Nurses stampedes past.
“Don’t hate me,” Mary-Alice begs.
I pause. “Why would I hate you?” I ask, getting a bad feeling.
“We all got food poisoning!” she wails miserably. “I’ve been on the bathroom floor for the last hour, vomiting my guts out.”
“Oh no!” I gasp. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“What part of on the bathroom floor didn’t you understand?” she whimpers. “The whole family’s got it. It’s like the beaches of Normandy in here. I’m basically holding my guts inside my body with two bloody hands.”
“I’m so, so sorry,” I say with a wince. “Do you want me to bring you anything on my way home? Saltines? Soup? A lifetime supply of Clorox?”
“Home? You’re not coming home yet,” Mary-Alice protests. “You need to stay out and have fun!”
“Fun …” I echo, watching as three girls in Barbie costumes help their Weird Barbie friend vomit into a storm drain. “I don’t know … this isn’t exactly my vibe.”
“You mean, compared to sitting on my couch watchingThe Bacheloretteand drinking iced white wine?”
“There’s nothing wrong with ice in my wine!” I protest. “I like it crisp.”
“Ivy Madeline Fortune, you need to heat it up, not cool things down,” Mary-Alice points out sternly. “You haven’t gotten laid since your divorce became final.”
“Well, cursing the existence of man and divorce lawyers took up all my free time,” I reply, “But I rallied, I got back on the horse. Remember, I had that greasy pancake hookup over the summer.”
“You mean the guy who could barely get hard?” Mary Alice counters.
I pause.Good point.
Or, to be more accurate, not nearly pointy enough.
“Look, I’m texting you the address of the party,” she urges. “You should go anyway, meet some people. Men. A hot man. Who’ll take all your clothes off – and then know what to do with you after.”
I glance down at the feat of modern garment engineering that’s keeping me squeezed in and pushed up. “I don’t know,” I murmur, “That might take a whole team.”
“Even better,” Mary Alice laughs. Then, before I can answer: “Oh, fuck.” She makes a groaning sound. “I gotta go.”
The line goes dead.
I slowly lower my phone. She’s right, of course she’s right. The mourning period for my disaster of a marriage is over, along with the angry raging period, and the plotting an intricate and potentially illegal revenge period, too. Now? I’m safely in the “moving on, living my best life, and only stabbing his eyes out with a ballpoint pen every time I see his smiling face taunting me from the pages of theTV Guidemagazine” phase of divorced bliss.
That’s what I get for marrying reality TV’s hottest treasure hunter, Jake Fortune: the tanned, hunky star of theFortune Huntingfranchise.
Except, of course, when I met him in grad school, he was just Jake Grandowski, bashful archeology buff who couldn’t do a single pull-up. But with my knack for historical research, attention to detail, and – oh yes – headline-ready name, that was just the beginning. We went from tracking Aunt Dottie’s long-lost antiques to making significant archeological finds on one of the top-ranked reality shows around – him flashing his trademark grin on camera, while I ran things behind the scenes. We were a team.
The two of us.
Together.
Until Jake let all that protein shake powder go to his head, started banging the doe-eyed research assistant, and our marriage went the way of the Aztecs. A formerly great civilization reduced to rubble in under two years flat.
Now, the dust has finally settled, my marriage is archived away in storage, and I’ve spent the past year rebuilding things back in my hometown of Milford Falls. I always liked it here, nestled in the mountains, and I’m enjoying being back, taking things easy after all the chaos. It’s quiet. Uneventful–
OK, maybe alittleboring. But I’ll take boring over “gut-wrenchingly chaotic” any day of the year.
But since it is Halloween…
A burst of music echoes from a nearby bar. TheGhostbusterstheme. I’m debating going to this party solo, and seeing if I can find someone of legal drinking age to warm up my long-neglected flirting muscles, when the lights change ahead of me, and a man crosses the street – leaving something behind on the sidewalk.
