Rock Bottom Girl(104)

“Fucking fantastic,” she said enthusiastically.

“Ladies.”

“Uh-oh,” Vicky stage-whispered.

Amie Jo stood in the doorway, arms crossed. She tapped her disco ball nails in a staccato rhythm on her biceps.

“Sorry about the dripping,” I said, looking down at my bare feet and wondering where the hell my shoes had gotten to.

“A word, Marley?” she said.

“Sure.”

“You’re in trouble,” Vicky sang as I followed Amie Jo to the back staircase.

“Upstairs, please,” Amie Jo said without looking back to see if I was following her.

“Don’t let her murder you and roll you up in a rug,” Vicky called after us.

I trudged up the carpeted stairs, trying not to rain pool water over everything. I wondered if Amie Jo was leading me up here to lock me in a wrapping paper closet/dungeon. Wait. Scratch that. She probably had a wrapping paper room, and with Christmas just around the corner, she wouldn’t want to have to clean up the blood spatter.

Amie Jo paused in front of French doors and opened them with a flourish. I followed her inside and found myself in the mastery-est master suite in the history of the designation. The white carpet was so thick I sank in up to my ankles. The walls were wallpapered silver with delicate threads of gold woven into the silky texture. There was a sitting area with snow-white armchairs and a modern glass side table. The bed…

Holy mother of God. The bed.

It was NBA-player-orgy sized.

White upholstered headboard. Silver duvet. Approximately three hundred throw pillows in silvers, grays, and golds. I wanted to jump on it and see how many times I could roll before I got from one side to the other. I guessed at least nine.

“Wow.”

I must have said it out loud because Amie Jo popped her head out of the door on the far side of the room.

“Here,” she said, holding out a plastic bag to me and crossing the fifty yards of polar bear carpet.

I accepted the bag. My first guess was rattlesnake. My second guess was vibrator. I wasn’t sure why Amie Jo would give me a used vibrator in a plastic bag. But I was a little drunk, so I wasn’t too hard on myself.

Peeking inside, I discovered I was wrong on both counts. “My clothes,” I said, pulling out the yoga pants and sweatshirt I’d lent her after the Donkey Shit Incident.

“Thank you for letting me borrow them. I had them dry-cleaned for you,” she said, interlacing her fingers in front of her. She looked uncomfortable, like being nice to me was so foreign she didn’t know how to do it.

I wondered if old, over-washed clothes like these yoga pants could disintegrate from dry cleaning.

“Thank you.”

“You can change in here so you don’t destroy my house with pool water,” Amie Jo sniffed. We had officially moved past the polite part of the evening.

“Okay,” I said lamely.

She started for the door.

“Thanks, Amie Jo,” I called after her.

“You’re welcome. Try not to touch anything.” She closed the door, and I was left alone in the Arctic beauty of her master suite. The temptation to touch something was strong. But I was an adult. An inebriated one. But still. I could control myself.

My leg brushed against the white fur throw at the bottom of the bed. I wondered if it was polar bear and if Amie Jo had killed it herself.

I ducked into the closet to change and got distracted by the fifty-two pairs of stilettos neatly organized one shoe facing forward, one shoe facing back. Travis’s belt rack held over a dozen brown and black belts. The closet, which was larger than my childhood bedroom, was organized with a militant precision. Cashmere in every color of the rainbow was neatly stacked on shelves. Jeans, an entire corner of them, hung so straight they had to be starched.

Raucous laughter wafted up from the first floor through the ventilation system, reminding me there was a party going on. I changed quickly, losing my balance as I wiggled into my yoga pants and tipping over into Travis’s dress shirt museum.

“Damn it!” I took half a dozen perfectly pressed Oxfords with me as I crashed to the thick carpet.

“Everything all right in there?”

I froze in my puddle of monogrammed shirt sleeves. Travis Hostetter stood in the closet doorway looking pretty and preppy.

“I was just changing. Into my own clothes. Not yours,” I said quickly, trying to stand back up and only succeeding in ripping two more shirts from their hangers.

Travis entered the closet and helped me to my feet.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said when I bent to collect the massacred wardrobe.

“I can hang it all back up,” I insisted.

“Marley, relax. They’re just shirts.”

I was more nervous around Travis than I was Amie Jo. His wife was predictable with her aggressive meanness. Travis, on the other hand, a boy I’d wounded deeply in high school, was an unknown.

It might have been the Fireball swimming through my veins, but I was hit with a sudden clarity. I owed this man an apology. Even if he didn’t need to hear it, I needed to say it.

I plucked my dripping dress off of the carpet and stood in front of the sodden puddle and cleared my throat. “Travis, I owe you an apology. Several actually. It’s always bothered me how I ended things with you. I want you to know that I’m sorry for hurting you, and I hope you’ll consider forgiving me.” Booze brave, I blurted out the words.