With a quick “I love you,” I end the call before she can yell at me some more and sit perfectly still while I try to will my stomach to calm down before I have to get up, run to the bathroom and throw up ten gallons of wine.
“What is happening to me right now? Why does everything hurt? Even my hair hurts.”
Cracking open one eye, I watch Emma Jo shuffle into the room, holding her hand against her forehead and looking as miserable as I feel.
“It’s called a hangover. Welcome to Hell.”
She slowly ambles over to me and gently lowers her body onto the couch, moaning in pain until she gets seated and rests her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands.
“Did we make pie last night? Why do I remember making pie?” Emma Jo asks.
Leaning forward, I glance into the kitchen and see a mess of flour all over the counter, dirty dishes piled in the sink, and a broken egg splattered on the tile.
“I vaguely remember baking something. And it was pink. Wait, no, blue. It was blue. What the hell did we make that was blue?”
Emma Jo laughs softly, cutting herself off when my cell phone rings in my hand. Glancing down and seeing that it’s my mother again, I quickly hit the button on the side to silence the call, waving Emma Jo off when she gives me a questioning look.
“I remember now,” Emma Jo says brightly. “After Leo left with Jed, we drank the rest of the wine, and I told you that I was supposed to make Jed a blueberry pie for when he got home from his business trip.”
I scrunch up my face in concentration until some more memories from last night come fluttering back. I remember stomping back into the house all pissed off about what Leo said and did, hoping Emma Jo was still busy looking for DVDs and had no idea what happened on her front porch so she wouldn’t get upset. Keeping my lips sealed about it would have worked, if I hadn’t forgotten all about the angry red marks on my neck from where Jed tried to choke the life out of me. She came down the hall from the back of the house a few minutes later, her arms full of chick flicks and her face bright with a smile until she stopped in her tracks and dropped all of them to the floor when she saw my neck. I had no choice but to tell her what had happened and instead of breaking down in a puddle of tears, Emma Jo lifted her head high, walked into the kitchen, and grabbed every bottle of wine that was left. We drank, we bitched about Jed, argued about Leo’s decision to go to the bar with him, and then we came up with a brilliant idea when we polished off the last of the wine.
“Did we really make that douchebag husband of yours a poisoned blueberry pie?” I ask, even though I already know the answer to that since I’m still staring into the kitchen and can see an empty white bottle of Lysol Toilet Bowl Cleaner tipped onto its side next to the stove.
My cell phone rings again and I cut it off once more when I see my mother’s name on the display, rolling my eyes when I tell Emma Jo who it is and why she’s calling.
“Anyway, yes, yes we did make a poisoned blueberry pie,” Emma Jo confirms when my phone beeps with an incoming voice message from my mother. “It was actually a great idea since the pie was blue and Lysol Toilet Bowl Cleaner is also blue. Sadly, we didn’t think that plan through very much, considering Jed isn’t supposed to come within a hundred yards of me and we’d have no way of feeding him the pie.”
I nod with a sigh. “Maybe once our hangovers pass, we’ll be able to come up with a new plan.”
Emma Jo’s home phone starts ringing from the side table, and I hold up my hand to Emma Jo when she starts to reach for it.
“I guarantee you it’s my mother. You don’t need to listen to her scream about what a horrible child I am because I won’t answer my phone. I’ll get it,” I lament, pushing up from the floor and moving over to the table to answer the call.
“Mama, I told you, I’ll stop by and talk to you later.”
“Emma Jo, there’s something in your back yard,” a woman on the other end of the line whispers, sounding nothing like my mother.
“This isn’t Emma Jo. Can I tell her who’s calling?” I ask nicely, remembering my manners so word doesn’t get back to my mother that I’m a horrible phone conversationalist and someone kicks her out of her Sunday afternoon Bridge club for it.
“Payton Lambert, is that you? I heard you were back in town. Bo Jangles has been fit to be tied ever since you yelled at him last night, and now he won’t stop barking at something in Emma Jo’s yard. I think he’s traumatized and he thinks it’s you. Are you outside in the back?”
I try not to sigh too loudly when I realize it’s Mrs. Godfrey on the other end of the line, Emma Jo’s neighbor and the owner of dog who pissed on my leg.