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Belle opens her mouth to answer, and I hold up my hand.
“Nope. No. Just . . . don’t. It’s moments like these I almost regret helping you go from a shy, nerdy librarian to a nymphomaniac,” I complain, picking my drink back up and tossing back the whole thing. “Also, this is the best fucking drink I’ve ever had.”
Belle smiles at my praise and takes a sip of her own drink, setting the glass back down on the bar with a clink and immediately going to work making another round.
“It’s called a Panty Dropper.”
I make a gagging sound and shake my head at her.
“Never say the word panty ever again. It’s right up there with moist.”
“But . . . they’re called panties, Ariel,” Belle complains.
“No, they’re called thongs, or boy shorts, or underwear. Panties is just weird and gross and something a pervy old man would say.”
“Fine. Then what you’re drinking is called an Underwear Dropper. Doesn’t that sound sexy and delicious?” Belle huffs. “Anyway, I thought we could talk about maybe adding a cocktail-waitress option to the Naughty Princess Club. We could offer on our website that you can hire a sexy princess to mix and serve drinks at parties where maybe they want to spice things up without the dancing,” she explains, twirling the bottle of vodka in her hand again like a pro as she continues. “Like, say, your grandpa is turning eighty and he’s a horny old bastard who wants some eye candy, but a lap dance could possibly give him a heart attack and kill him. We could call it The Naughty Princess Drinking Club.”
Both Cindy and Belle turn and give me a look. It’s a sympathetic one, and I don’t like it.
“I like that idea. That could be an option for you, Ariel. Since you don’t want to dance,” Cindy says with a soft smile.
“I want to dance. I’m going to dance, okay? I like the cocktail-waitress idea too, and I think we should explore it to add variety to our services, but we’re in this together. We all dance or no one dances.”
No one says anything as Belle refills my glass and Cindy quickly drains hers so Belle can fill it up again as well.
“While we’re waiting for the alcohol to hit our system and for you to be good and drunk to talk about what you need to talk about, and before I forget, PJ has a really good lawyer he wants to get you in touch with about your house,” Cindy tells me. “It’s shitty they just took it away from you without any real warning or explanation. They can’t do this and he thinks you have a really good case.”
“I don’t have a really good case and I don’t need a lawyer,” I tell her with a sigh. “I knew, okay? I got every notice, I got every email, I got every phone call and voice mail. I knew, I just didn’t want to accept it. I’m not an idiot. I knew it was going to happen. I just thought I could fix things before it actually happened.”
“So, why didn’t you just start stripping? You have the most sex appeal and confidence out of the three of us, clearly,” Belle states.
I let out a humorless laugh, holding my glass out for Belle to refill. She quickly does, and I down the entire thing in one swallow. I smack the glass back on the bar and stare down at it, gripping the glass tightly in both hands.
“Chéri, wouldn’t a salad be a better choice than French fries?”
“His name was Sebastian Waters,” I tell them, my voice so quiet I’m not even sure if they heard me.
Just saying his name makes me want to throw up the drinks I’ve had.
“He was the cutest boy I’d ever seen,” I continue, staring at the empty glass in my hands and smiling, even though I feel like crying. “He moved in next door to us when I was a junior in high school. He was born and raised in France and his father got a job transfer. I was seventeen and he was twenty-two, and since his parents were the only family he had, he decided to move with them instead of staying behind. God, that accent of his. It gave me goose bumps every time he spoke.”
I think about the first time I saw him. I was going out to the mailbox at the end of our driveway. He had just gotten home from somewhere and was getting out of his car right next door. It felt like my feet had become one with the cement. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe. All I could do was stare next door as this tall, gorgeous blond got out of his car like he was in slow motion, his hair blowing in the breeze as he tossed his head to the side to get a few errant strands, which had fallen down over his forehead, out of his eyes.
