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Chapter 1: Fantastic Fish Female
“You have got to be fucking kidding me with this shit.”
I glare at my phone sitting on the table in front of me when Buckcherry’s “Crazy Bitch” blares through the low hum of conversation in the coffee shop for the seventh time in so many minutes.
“It’s okay. You can answer it. I don’t mind,” Natalie, the perky blonde sitting across from me, says with a smile.
I turn my glare in her direction, adding in a lip snarl for good measure as I scoop up the phone and jab my finger against the screen before bringing it up to my ear.
“You better be dying in a ditch somewhere,” I mutter in greeting.
“Ariel?” my friend Cindy questions through the line.
I let out a long suffering sigh, closing my eyes and pinching the bridge of my nose.
“You called me, dickface. Who else would be answering my phone? Are you dying?”
“Uh . . . well . . . no,” she stammers.
“Then for the love of God, why in the actual fuck are you calling me? Hang up and text me like a normal person or I will slit your throat.”
Natalie has the good sense to look slightly terrified as she subtly pushes her chair a few inches back from the table and out of arm’s reach from me. It’s not that I want her to be afraid of me exactly, but if this interview continues in the direction it has been for the last thirty minutes, I may have just found a new roommate. It’s good to establish who’s in charge right from the get-go.
“I was just calling to make sure you’re still going to help Anastasia and I move into PJ’s house tomorrow,” Cindy states.
“Again, something you could have said to me in a text,” I growl in annoyance.
I love my best friend, I really do. I just don’t like talking on the phone to anyone. I’d like to say that my irritability right now all stems from being forced to speak on the phone, but deep down I know that’s not true. I am woman enough to admit that ever since Cindy announced she and her fourteen-year-old daughter would be moving in with her boyfriend, I’ve been feeling slightly off. Add to that the fact that I need a roommate to help pay the bills since I’m drowning in debt and my life is just one big suck fest lately.
“Belle and Vincent are going to be here at nine tomorrow morning to help as well. I’m going to pick up coffee and donuts!” she tells me excitedly, like coffee and donuts will make getting up at an ungodly hour and lifting heavy shit all day worth it.
Okay, fine. The donuts are definitely a perk.
I swallow back another groan when Cindy mentions my other best friend, Belle, and her boyfriend Vincent. When the three of us became friends, no one was more shocked than me. For one, I don’t do girlfriends. Just thinking that word makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit. Women are too moody and judgmental and hold grudges about shit that happened twenty years ago. On top of that, Cindy was a prude housewife and Belle was a shy, nerdy librarian. Polar opposites of myself. But then we each realized we shared similar money problems and were in dire need of making cash very quickly and, I don’t know, we just clicked.
I helped the two of them learn how to break out of their shells and become the strong, independent women they were always meant to be, while at the same time, starting our own business called the Naughty Princess Club. It’s basically strippers who make house calls. Think of it like a Tupperware party, but with less clothing and no appetizers. It was all fine and dandy until those two assholes had to go and fall in love and ruin everything.
Okay fine. They didn’t ruin everything. They just made me feel like something was wrong with me because I wanted absolutely nothing to do with men or love or romance or any of that other nonsense. Cindy fell in love with PJ Charming, the owner of Charming’s Gentlemen’s Club, where we initially went to get stripping lessons before we opened our business. And then Belle fell in love with Vincent “Beast” Adams, the surly bouncer from Charming’s, who shocked us all when we found out there was a sweet, thoughtful man hidden under his bad attitude.
“How did your roommate interview go?” Cindy asks, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“It’s still going,” I inform her, watching Natalie nervously rip the napkin in front of her into a million pieces.
“Is she nice?”
“I guess,” I shrug.
“Is she too nice?” Cindy questions.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
Cindy sighs through the line.
“It means, is she going to turn into single white female and dye her hair the same color as yours and try to screw your boyfriend?”
