“Hey, Camilla, do your men know where we’re headed?” Summer asked as she and her newly-married sister, Margot, sat side by side, pouring tequila shots for all the ladies who wanted them.
Maizy watched Camilla with interest as she waved a hand nonchalantly. “Of course! Ben and Quinten are right down the street at the Dollhouse throwing Patrick and Beck their last hurrah.”
Lucy growled and said, “Shit, don’t remind me.” She sucked down the shot Margot handed her and nodded when she offered another.
“Whoa, girl,” Camilla said through her laughter. “You’re gonna be shit-faced before we can even get you front and center with Jacob. Wait…What did Beck do this time?”
Grace piped up, after coughing over her shot, and said, “Hey, now, don’t be hating on my sweet Beck. How do y’all know it was him that got in trouble?”
“Because it was,” Lucy growled. “The shit.” She frowned into her tequila shot but then giggled. “It’s a damned good thing he’s really good at makeup sex.”
One of the women, Chloe, a friend of Lucy’s from out of town said, “Spill, Lucy. What did he do?”
Lucy let out a sigh of disgust and turned to her friend. “I know he was trying to be helpful, but Beck decided to do my laundry for me while I was at my morning appointments.”
Someone giggled and said, “Oh, shit.”
Lucy looked ready to gnash her teeth. “I may have flipped my lid…a little. He separated colors, bless his heart, but he washed my delicates with my slacks and jeans and then…”
“Oh, crap.”
“He put it all in the dryer. There was even some ‘dry clean only’ stuff in one of the loads.”
Charity shook her head in disgust and raised her index finger. “Justin did my laundry once, when we were first married. Once. I would’ve flipped the fuck out too, Lucy.”
Lucy looked like she was just warming up to her tale and Maizy had to hold back a giggle. The girl was a sight when she had her back up. “So, I was understandably stressed, since some of the lingerie was ruined, and my pants were shrunk too short to wear again. I was justified in how I felt. He backed off, made himself scarce, and I’m all thinking ‘smart boy.’”
“Oh, crap,” someone said with a giggle-snort.
“So he comes back with a sack from the pharmacy and slips it into my hands and gives me this super-sweet kiss. I’m thinking he’s just about back in my good graces because he not only gave me some space, he got me something to make up for it. You want to know what was in that bag from the fucking pharmacy?”
The peanut gallery was a mass of giggles and every one of the girls was on the edge of her seat, all nineteen of them, waiting for the answer.
“Midol. Fucking Midol.”
“That shit!”
“What a douchetard!”
“Dumb shit!”
“Oh my gawd!”
Everyone started talking all at once and Lucy burst into laughter. “Like I said, it’s a good thing he’s great at makeup sex.”
Charity snorted. “I thought you were walking a little bowlegged tonight, honey.”
Everyone burst into laughter and Lucy shushed them as Chloe sat forward, giggling, and flapped her hands. “I have to tell you, Lucy. That’s all my fault.”
“Huh?” one of the girls called out. Lucy quickly explained that Chloe was Beck’s ex-girlfriend and that she and Lucy had become fast friends the month before when they’d met under pretty dire circumstances. She and her best friend, Emily Anne Bancroft, were both from Lusty, Texas, and had come to Divine for the bachelorette party and were staying the night at the Hourglass Inn in Divine.
Giving her the floor, Lucy downed her shot and said, “This I’ve gotta hear, Chloe.”
Chloe said, “Sometimes I have really bad PMS. Cramps, moodiness, crying spells, you name it. It used to really bother Beck to see me like that and once I told him that I just needed to go to the grocery store and get some Midol, and that he needn’t worry. After we talked, I went to bed with a hot water bottle and took a nap. When I woke up, there was a little bottle of Midol sitting on the bathroom counter. I thought it was the sweetest thing, because, you know…he’s not the type to go tampon shopping or anything like that.”
Lucy snorted and nodded.
“Anyway, I cried like a big baby and hugged and thanked him, and told him he was the most considerate man ever. After that, he got pretty good at watching out for that time of the month and he’d replace the bottle when he saw that I was getting low, without saying a single word about it. So I always had them when I needed them. I thought it was one of the sweetest things he did for me.”