That night in the middle of my sulking, I got a text from Layla telling me to pack a bag.
I texted back, ‘No’. She texted back, ‘Yes’. I texted back, ‘I’m sleeping’.
Ten minutes later, she texted that she was outside my house, and I officially lost the birthday battle. We’d done this tug of war on my birthday ever since we knew each other. She’d try to do something big and showy, and I’d hide under the covers until she literally pulled me out by my ankles.
I hated my birthday, but I wasn’t one of those people who hated it because of the attention or the fact that society said it was ‘cool’ to not care about birthdays. When I was little, I loved the attention, loved the parties, loved it all.
My eighteenth birthday was when it all went down the shitter.
Layla insisted this year though, bribing me with unlimited drinks and seclusion away from all the bullshit she didn’t even know I was sitting in at home. She’d planned the entire thing, even confirmed with Mrs. Sharon to watch Charlotte overnight.
And that’s how I ended up here, lounging in a pool chair on my twenty-first birthday at a resort outside of town, halfway to drunk and whispering not-so-subtle objectifications about the pool bartender with Layla.
“Can you imagine how much he pulls with a face like that? Walking around, handing out extra boozy drinks and throwing out winks like he did to us?” Layla drawled, teeth still clenched around the straw of her drink, eyes peeking over the bridge of her lowered pink polka-dotted sunglasses.
“Oh, that thing was fucking deadly.” I pulled back another mouthful of whatever Layla had ordered me, fruity pops of flavor sliding down my throat and adding another fuzzy layer over my brain.
“Why don’t you go get yourself some birthday sex?” She jabbed her sharp chin in the bartenders direction. “I’m sure he’d be better than Daren.”
Laughter made a pfft past my lips. “That’s not setting the bar all that high above average.”
“I’m so glad you broke up with him. He was such a tool.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“Do you remember how he basically tried to piss all around you in front of your cop boss?” she continued with a chuckle.
At the mention of Dominic, I shoved my straw in my mouth and nodded a distracted, “Mhm.”
“He wouldn’t stop moaning while you were gone with him. I came this close to shoving my ice cream in his mouth so he’d shut up about it.”
“No need to throw perfectly good ice cream down a shithole.”
“Yeah.” There was a small splash a ways away, and I squinted through my sunglasses to see the only other person out here emerging from the turquoise water. It was an older dude—like a lot older. The kind that thought speedos were cool and my eyes needed to be melted today.
“Gross,” I muttered, speaking around my straw. “Is it just me or does no one look good in speedos?”
“What about your boss?”
I gritted my teeth, swallowing hard. “Well, I haven’t seen him in a speedo.”
“Are you saying you wouldn’t want to?”
The goddamn smirk in her voice was too much. The alcohol hadn’t healed enough of what I’d inflicted upon myself yesterday to be ready to talk about him again. The freaking swimming pool could be filled with top-shelf liquor, and I wasn’t sure even that would help unless I drowned in it.
I bit down on my straw until the plastic broke, and I shoved my drink on the small table next to me. “I’m saying we’re done talking about him.”
“What—” Layla blustered, shooting my profile a keen look. “Why?”
“Because it’s my birthday, and I say so.”
At full-tilt, Layla sprung up in her sunbathing chair, pushing her sunglasses back into her hair to show me her big eyes. Uh oh.
“Fuck your birthday. Did something happen with him?”
“No.”
She let out a sharp gasp. “You’re lying!”
“How does everyone always know when I’m lying?” I exclaimed, sinking down in my chair and folding my arms.
“Because you’re really bad at it. Like epically bad at it.” Two hands wrapped at the base of my chair, pulling with hulk-like strength until I was facing Layla and her hungry-for-gossip eyes head on. “So what happened?”
Lips parted, a strangled whimper cracked through.
What a simple question with the least simple answer. Where to start? At the first kiss? The second? Or just straight to how I was fired because his wife was totally suspicious and with every right to be because I was absolutely, idiotically sick for her husband?
“Holy shit, okay. Your face is telling me we need another drink for this.” Layla shifted to standing, pulling her fingers along the underneath of her baby pink bikini bottom. “Hold the tea while I go get more alcohol.”
She disappeared, and I flopped back in my chair, hiding my flushing face in my arms.
Once Layla returned with a drink stronger than the last, I launched into the story. I told her everything. I started at the heroin chemistry and worked my way to yesterday when I screamed at him and cried all because of that stupid chemistry.
Layla was quiet and surprisingly patient while I spoke, only nodding, gasping, and squeaking when she couldn’t hold in her reactions. By the time I finished, my chest was all knotted up, and I was slurping at the ice in the bottom of my drink, trying to suck whatever alcohol I could out of them.
Layla hadn’t actually said anything while I was talking, and now that I was finished, her mouth was parted, but no words came out. The look she was giving me, however, was talking up a fucking storm, but I had no idea what it was saying. She was just staring at me like she’d been caught in a freeze frame of an epiphany.
The knot inside my gut rolled around, sloshing with the alcohol in my otherwise empty stomach. What had started as a fun and tipsy kind of birthday was quickly leaning more towards something that would have my head in a toilet by noon.
“You like him,” Layla stated. Fucking stated, not questioned. My stomach curdled. “You like, really like him.”
Groaning, I slid my empty glass on the table. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Because he’s married?”
“Because he’s married, because he’s got a family, because he used me to make his bitch of a wife uncomfortable, which just proves that he’s not this knight in shining armor like he tries to pretend to be.”
“Yeah, no. That was a shitty thing to do, no doubt.” She paused in a way that said more was coming, and whatever it was was something I wouldn’t like. “But it sounds like he’s pretty serious about liking you too.”
A bitter laugh tipped over my lips. “You seem to forget that he’s married just about as easily as I do.”
A pause. Another splash in the pool. Then—
“But what if he wasn’t?”
I cocked a real indignant brow up at her. “What do you mean?”
“Like what if he wasn’t married when you met him? What if there was nothing standing in between you two?”
For some reason, I noticed the intensity of the sun more all of a sudden. Scorching a little hotter, burning a little deeper, making me sweat a little more beneath my bikini. “I don’t see the point of this since he is married. Married as in for life.”
“I’m getting to the point of it.” She waved her hands in front of her, catching my arm with a slight slap. She was definitely feeling the buzz in her bones while I was feeling it in my anxious gut. “I’m saying that if he walked in here right now and told you he was getting a divorce, would you go for it or would you find another excuse why you couldn’t be with him?”
Okay, I was not prepared for this type of emotional dissection on my birthday.
“I’d say being married isn’t so much an excuse as it is adultery.”
Layla deflated with a huff back down in her chair. “You’re missing the point on purpose, dumbass.”
Yeah. So?
Just then, my phone started to vibrate inside my purse strung over the back of the chair. Grumbling, I scrambled up to my knees on the flat part of the chair to grab it out.
When I saw the name on the screen, the alcohol conducted my reaction before the panic could.
“Oh my god, no,” I cried out, dropping my head back to the sky.
Layla sprung up to standing in seconds. “What’s wrong?”
I shoved my phone towards her. “It’s him.”
Dominic. The man my heart would love to die for.
“See what he wants!”
“No!”
She not-so-gently nudged my shoulder. “Maybe he wants to tell you happy birthday.”
“He doesn’t know it’s my birthday.”
His name flashed over my screen again and again, pulsing like my heart was in quick-timed beats all dedicated to him. Why was he calling? Didn’t he hate me after what I said to him yesterday? Didn’t he have a wife to attend to?
“Just pick up! Now I’m curious.”
My thumb hovered over the answer button, sweat gathering along my hairline in a sticky mess that I swiped through with my other hand. Fuck. I didn’t want to talk to him. I couldn’t talk to him, but the rum and sugar running through my blood pressed my thumb to the screen before I could think straight.
“You just hung up!” Layla screeched.
“Oh, fuck, I didn’t mean to!”
“Yeah? You really didn’t mean to?”
I met her sarcasm with equal bite. “No! I really didn’t. He made this whole point yesterday about always picking up if he called so he’d know I was all right and shit.”
My best friend let out a coo. “That’s so sweet.”
“Shut up!” My phone lit back up in my palm, Dominic’s name flashing over the screen again. “He’s calling back!”
“Okay, press the green button this time.”
I made a gaggle of unintelligible noises to mock Layla’s instructions before answering. “Hello?”
The loudest pause I’d ever experienced passed between the phone line. Every muscle I had screwed up in anticipation for the impact hearing his voice would have. And then it happened, curving its base note around my obstinance and tripping it up.
“Kat,” he sighed my name on a wave of relief. His voice flooded between my ears, drowning my mind in a way the alcohol could only ever hope. Plucking words to speak out of the sea he created in my head felt impossible, but I somehow managed.
“What do you want?”
He bypassed my terse question with one of his own. “Where are you?”
The thought to lie to him evaporated quickly. Why bother?
“Celebrating my birthday.”
When he picked up, there had been this odd mix of urgency and alleviation; a strange tone to begin with. All of that shoved aside as he quieted his voice for me.
“Today’s your birthday?”
Sucking back my bottom lip and biting down hard, I said, “Yeah.”
A heavy beat. Almost a somber one.
“Really?”
My face pinched together, and I caught Layla’s curious eyes. “Yeah, really. Do you think I’m lying about my birthday?”
“No, I—” He dropped off with a sigh, and I pictured his jaw sawing to the side and back. “You’re not at home. Where are you?”
He’d been by my house?
“I’m at a hotel outside of town. Why?”
“Which hotel?”
My brows plunged together. “I don’t really think that’s any of your business.”
“Don’t do that right now,” he shot back. “Where are you?”
I pulled the phone away from my lips, mouthing to Layla that he was asking where I was. She mouthed back that I should ask him why he wanted to know so badly.
“Why do you wanna know?” I asked, earning a thumbs up from Layla.
A clipped groan came through. “Can you please not be difficult right now? Please?”
I shot up with my temper, standing on two feet on the base of the pool chair. “I don’t think I’m being difficult by asking why my ex boss wants to know where I am after checking my house. I’d say I’m being pretty fucking smart, actually.”
Irritation growled at me through the phone, and he didn’t say anything to me for a few moments. He was talking to someone else, barking out things I couldn’t understand and words that got muffled.
His deep voice cut back in for a short second. “Do you have it?” Another male voice followed, and then Dominic was talking to me again.
“Kat, who are you with?”
Something about his tone set my nerves on razors, one wrong move away from splitting in half.
“Layla…?”
“Okay.” Then his voice sounded closer. More honed in on me, just for me. “Take her and stay indoors. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t go outside. Tell me you understand me.”
I eased down in the chair, knees in my chest and curled the phone against my cheek. “Dominic, what the fuck is going on?”
“Tell me you understand me,” he snarled back with so much power, I gasped.
“I understand,” I said. Even though I didn’t.
“Good.” Over the line, his breathing lingered for a few seconds like he was afraid to hang up. He did, though, and I dropped my phone from my ear and met the wide stare of my best friend.
“What’d he say?”
I blinked, still digesting. “That he wants us to go inside and not talk to anyone.”
Layla nodded, adjusting her polka-dot sunglasses back down on her face. “Are we doing that?”
I paused at her question, feeling my emotions as they overruled my smarts. All I felt was pissed that he’d called and tried to ruin the first birthday in four years that wasn’t shitty. All I felt was livid that I was thinking about him and even considering doing what he said rather than enjoy this day that Layla planned.
“Fuck no.” A rush of defiance pulsed through me and blew a smile up my cheeks. Layla met that smile, giving me an impish grin. “We’re gonna order another drink, get shit-faced, and go swimming.”
My natural rebellious flare had been asleep lately thanks to Dominic and the sickness, but today?
I was gonna let it fucking shine.
About an hour later, my blood was pure sugar and alcohol, and the pool had become my second home. The water was cool and perfect, smooth over my bare skin like a brush of silk. The yellow sun had taken a small dip behind a cluster of cotton white clouds, and I closed my eyes with the momentary shade, gliding on my back over the water.
Everything about this was perfect. My body was all warm and fuzzy from the kiss of the sun and constant buzz I had going on. I only thought about Dominic and his weird phone call once, and I took a quick shot to douse those thoughts back into muddled fragments.
The only thing taking away from the perfection of this moment was the pang in my stomach that whined for more food.
The world rolled with me as I spun onto my front and wobbled as I planted my feet on the cemented pool floor. “Do you think we could get any more of that fruit from Golden Locks?”
Layla sputtered, stroking her fingers through the water. “First off, the character is Goldie Locks, and second, I don’t think Mr. Bar Boy’s supposed to give us that stuff. He only did it cuz you offered to flash him.”
A rum-inspired smirk peeled across my lips. “I’m pretty sure he thinks he’s having a threesome with us later.”
“I wouldn’t be mad about it,” she commented, shrugging and somehow finding a beat to groove to within the movement of the shrug. She popped her shoulders up and down, bopping her way through the water with exaggerated pursed lips like a duck.
“What music do you hear in your head right now?” I laughed.
She pointed up near her high ponytail with a fluid hand twirl. “Despacito is on full blast up in here.”
She started humming the notes of the song now, shimmying towards me in the water. From drunken Layla experience, I knew once she hit the bridge of the song, the notes coming out of her mouth would turn not so quiet and not so pretty. The water around us would turn to glass just so it could shatter.
“Okay, you keep dancing, and I’ll go see if Goldie will give us another bowl of strawberries for one tit, mkay?”
“Aw, only one?”
“Are you saying one isn’t good enough?”
Layla sent a splash of water my way. “Bitch, you know you have great tits. I’m straight and I would still jizz all over them.”
I barked a laugh, treading through the water over to the pool steps. I wound my fingers around the metal pole angled along the steps, lugging myself up the first step. In the back of my mind, I knew the metal was hot and I probably should let go, but all of my nerve endings were too numb and tingly to care.
I hoisted up, only for gravity to push me right back down as I lost my balance. Layla’s laugh shot off behind me, and I whined aloud, going back in for a take two with the steps.
“Huzzah!” I reached the top step, throwing my arms in the air in celebration and gaining a slow clap from our blonde-haired, blue-eyed bartender. Hand to my heart, I bowed dramatically without falling over a second time, knowing he was getting a great show of the girls in this bathing suit.
Red was always my best color.
I spun back to Layla to give her a suggestive wink, except something behind the gates sectioning off the pool caught my winking eye first.
Something tall and big. Something shaking and pissed off. Something staring right at me with enough intensity to drown me on dry land.
My breath hitched.
“Oh, fuck me.”
