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Later. That Summer.
"What do you mean Alison is coming tonight?" I asked, hardly able to form the words. Hanna shifted her eyes to the floor, looking away from me.
"Listen Emily I'm sorry. I know it's weird…" She offered, already sloshing a bit of her drink out her cup. We were in her mom's house, with Spencer, Aria, and Hanna's stepsister Kate.
"You didn't even allow Paige to come tonight!"
"Well Paige is your girlfriend…" She explained in a small voice, taking another sip.
"Yes exactly. Girl. Friend. Not boyfriend. Yet she wasn't allowed due to being a love interest. How is my ex-girlfriend by that logic, an appropriate choice?" I kicked off my heels and sat my purse down. I might as well relax as much as possible. Which wouldn't be much considering Alison would walk through the front door all dressed up any second. I briefly wondered if I should text Paige, but why? Nothing was going to happen. Alison would probably just freeze me out the entire night.
"I felt bad for her, okay! You were the one, tenuous string holding us to Alison. And yes she can be a terrible person. But I felt bad not including her on purpose. It makes a statement I didn't want to make about the dissolution of our group of five friends!" Aria and Spencer looked up from their drinks at this point.
"Don't pull out your big vocab words to make your point Hanna" I rolled my eyes as I grabbed a beer from Hanna's fridge.
"I CAN'T HELP BUT USE BIG WORDS WE ARE IN COLLEGE. And this is MY BACHELORETTE PARTY!" She roared, slurring her words a bit as Spencer refilled her "pink drink" that I worried was pink lemonade and everclear.
"I know you guys went through a lot in high school, but you are seriously so overdramatic." Kate observed. It had been one of her only contributions to our conversation otherwise. Hanna's parents had insisted if Kate wasn't to be in the wedding party, she was at least to be invited to the bachelorette party.
"She has a point, Em." Spencer stated, ignoring Kate. She glanced at my expression and rolled her eyes at my expression. "It'll be fine." She added. Her tone was a combination of exasperation and comfort. Aria started to shift a bit in her seat and then looked up at the door, wide-eyed. I turned my head and saw Alison hesitantly standing there, a giant gift bag in one hand and a bottle of champagne in another. She was wearing a short, pink dress with heels. "Break Free" by Ariana Grande was blaring through the sound system. I wondered if she had heard us arguing about her moments earlier.
"Congratulations. Thanks for having me." Alison said, hugging Hanna and giving her the gift. She put the bottle of champagne in the fridge before grabbing herself some pink drink and sitting down next to me.
"Hey Emily." She said, deliberately making eye contact with me. I couldn't figure out what she was feeling about this situation. So I decided to presume civil, but to keep my guard up anyway. We had been fine in the previous months, but this was a bit more intense than just passing each other on the street. Because we weren't just two people sitting here; we were exes with history. Not only our history, but how it related to our current relationships.
But we had to pretend, for an evening dedicated to celebrating sexual freedom and flirtation, that we were just two people. Two friends even.
"Hey Alison. How are you?" I offered, trying to ease the tension I felt. Or at least get the conversation going again. Crystal blue eyes met mine again, and I thought I detected a hint of a smile.
"I'm doing alright for myself. And you?" Again she seemed genuinely interested. So I tried not to question the situation.
"Good." We held each other's eyes a beat longer before turning towards the rest of the girls.
"Let's start opening gifts, shall we?" Spencer asked in a way that didn't invite disagreement with her suggestion.
Many lingerie sets and fake penis gifts later, Spencer corralled us into a limo to take us to a male revue. Hanna was already pretty wasted, but she somehow managed to walk across the back of the moving limo to sit next to me.
"Emily! Emily!"
"You don't have to shout I'm right here." Although over the musical stylings of Pitbull and Flo Rida, the yelling was helping me hear her.
"I know this show isn't your thing if you know what I mean." She winked for emphasis, doing it in slow motion to make sure I saw. I looked up and realized I wouldn't get much help from Spencer or Aria; both were getting pretty tipsy themselves. "But don't worry, because I made a special accommodation for you."
"What is that supposed to mean…" Then I realized what she was implying. "God Hanna I don't need a stripper."
"None of us need strippers per se, we just want them. That's the point!" Spencer said, smirking at her reasoning. Yep she was definitely drunk as well.
I pulled my phone out my purse and began finally texting Paige.
Emily: Among other things, I want you to know Hanna hired a female performer especially for me at the male revue we are going to.
I sent it, wondering at once if I should have said anything. What if it really bothered Paige? I didn't have to wait for long. It was less than a minute till my phone vibrated in my hand.
Paige: LOL well she certainly is trying to be accommodating. I will say it seems you guys are winning at night out; we just started a game of poker. There is talk of shooting cans in the forest. Lots of testosterone over here.
I looked over and saw Alison, who was in some sort of conversation with Kate. I returned to looking at my phone, trying to savor my window of opportunity to discuss the evening's events with Paige.
Me: Another thing…Alison is here. I had no idea till I got to the party that Hanna had invited her.
My phone stayed still.
"Less thinking, more drinking Emily." Aria said solemnly, handing me a bedazzled flask.
"Et tu, Brute?" I asked before taking a swig. After a few moments I texted Paige asking if she was upset.
Paige: Of course not.
Then:
Paige: I love you. I trust you.
A wave of relief washed over me.
Emily: I love you too. So much.
I put my phone away and took another, long swig of my drink. I was going to need it for the rest of the night.
I was over Alison. I was. But no matter how over your ex you think you are, it is a different test to watch them get grinded on by a dancer. And enjoy it. We were one of at least nine bachelorette parties at the male revue. Drinks were flowing freely and very in-shape men were dancing for dollars. The others were eagerly indulging in this rite of passage, but this was the first dance Alison had accepted.
It always bothered me was my inability to know what Alison was thinking or feeling. Her expressions were so masked; unlike mine which told her in heartbeat what I was thinking or feeling at any given moment. Alison looked over as the dancer dipped down to kiss her calf. I must have been wearing my mixed emotions on my face. She looked stricken, and gently pushed his shoulder away to shoo him. None of the girls seemed to notice Alison stopped actively participating after that. Probably because they were too busy participating.
As Ginuwine's "Pony" finished up, the familiar start of Warrant's "Cherry Pie" began as the one and only female addition to the cast came out on stage with some of the guys. Some of the many women in the audience whooped, which was assurance that I wasn't the only one the female performer had been sicced on.
"OVER HERE!" Aria waved a dollar in the air to signal the woman's attention. Spencer began stuffing dollars in various parts of my outfit; the top of my dress and another at the bottom where the hem stopped just above my knee.
"Handsy much, Spencer?" I asked indignantly. She just laughed and shrugged. The dancer snatched the dollar from Aria as Aria pointed at me. She was tall and blond, her legs and arms displaying a muscularity that told me she must weight train in her free time. She was pretty but looked exactly like a straight girl just doing her job.
"You seem tense honey. I'll take good care of you no worries." She purred in my ear before straddling me and dropping down hard to grind against my lap. She breathed on my neck, moaning before snatching the dollar from the top of my dress. Then she did what I could only construe as a back flip from the sitting position, staying firmly seated in my lap while bending backward till her hands touched the floor. She wiggled against me as the rest of the group went nuts clapping and laughing.
Except Alison.
"Excuse me." She said loudly over the music and the shouts, pushing away from her chair and walking towards the restroom.
The dancer then pulled herself back up by contracting her abs and whispered in my ear that it seemed my girlfriend was jealous.
"Oh no she's not my girlfriend." I assured, but it was in vain as she dropped to the ground, rubbing my legs before grabbing the other dollar Spencer had carefully placed. She then winked and walked away to the next group.
"Welcome to the dark side Em." Hanna said, grinning.
"Where'd Ali go?" Aria asked, looking around.
"I've got this." I muttered, standing up to go to the restroom. My legs felt like jelly. Even if the idea of getting the dance was weird, it was hard to not have a physical reaction.
I braced myself, walking past the bar and walls of mirrors to open the bathroom door. Alison was peering in the mirror, reapplying her lip gloss. She looked over then back to her reflection.
"Hey." She said, her voice a little thicker than usual.
"Hey. Are you okay?" I asked, folding my arms as I tried to analyze her expression.
"Of course. Why wouldn't I be?" She said, shrugging at her own reflection before turning and trying to walk past me to the door.
"It hurts me too Ali. It wasn't easy to move on from you." She stopped. I turned to face her. She had her back to me, still looking at the exit.
But slowly, very slowly, her shoulders drooped and she turned to face me. Her eyes betrayed her vulnerability.
"Same. Even though I knew I was with you on borrowed time…it still hurt to see you go back to her." She looked tired and forlorn, but just as she finished talking it was like something else went off in her head. She met my eyes and smiled a bit. "But I still don't regret being with you Em. I really loved you." She emphasized every word in her last statement, and with the alcohol in me, making my ears buzz, it was hard to tell if she said love or loved.
"Ali…you deserve to be happy." I said, not sure how to convey all my mixed emotions about her. Before I chickened out or thought better of it, I wrapped my arms around her. She was stiff at first, but then relaxed into the hug. And it didn't seem like closure. Closure felt like a graduation ceremony or finally laughing after a crying jag with your head still buzzing from the tears. But it was the beginning of closure. It felt right.
I gave her shoulders one last squeeze before pulling away and gesturing towards the exit.
"So Lucas huh?" I offered the question as an olive leaf. A big grin broke across Alison's face. It struck me that most people had probably never seen her smile a real, sincere smile about something that made her happy.
"I could probably explain it better over a few more drinks…but yes."
The rest of the night went smooth. Even Kate was in relatively good spirits once we got to the club. We all grabbed even more drinks we didn't need and danced till the place closed down. And when we all went back to Hanna's place to crash, it felt exactly like it used to feel a long time ago. Maybe even better.
The Next Day.
"Okay I brought the Chinese…" Paige called up the stairs. I groaned in response. Chinese had felt like a good idea when she texted me earlier that afternoon, but now that the sun was finally starting to dip beyond the horizon the idea of heavy food made me queasy again.
"Oh Em." Paige said, smirking a bit at my misfortune. She sat the bag of food down and came over to kiss me softly on the forehead. "Uh hey I brought you some Gatorade too."
"How are you not hungover?" I asked, taking a tentative sip from the bottle.
She shrugged. "I had enough wild nights. We sipped whiskey but I don't think any of us got wasted. Unlike you ladies, I might add." She winked, before starting to pull out food and sort it on the floor for us to eat, cross-legged.
"Thanks for bringing this food." I said, trying to pull myself together to at least eat some. But before I lifted up the chopsticks, I leaned forward and kissed Paige slowly, letting my tongue brush against her bottom lip.
"What was that for?"
"Being you." I responded.