Page 28 of Best Woman

“Daytona, you know I can fully see your asshole, right?” I’m a little hungover from last night and five o’clock seems way too early to be looking up my friend’s sphincter. I haven’t even had a cocktail yet.

That’s why I’ve enlisted her help directly rather than calling for a confab to pick my bachelorette party outfit.

Kyle is very opinionated and sexy but knows nothing about women’s fashion.

River is really only interested in women aesthetically and their advice would be more about showing off their taste than my body.

Daytona will make sure I achieve my goal tonight, which is very simple: looking hot.

Hot enough to blend in with a group of cis women drinking out of penis straws, hot enough to catch Kim’s attention…

and maybe, just maybe, hot enough to keep her arm tight around my waist and her eyes on me all night.

“What do we think of these boots? They’re…interesting.” The boots in question are Margiela, with a tabi split-toe.

Daytona peers down at me between her legs. “You’d better leave those hoof shoes in Florida where they belong. Didn’t River pack you a good pair of fuck-me pumps?”

I drop to my knees and search through my suitcase, pulling out Agent Provocateur lingerie (aspirational), Spanx (practical), and granny panties (realistic). “It seems like River packed me enough underwear for the wedding and my brother’s honeymoon, which I’m definitely not invited on.”

“You have to miss out on whatever Sandals Resort they’re going to? Tragic.”

“They’re spending a week in Italy. Positano, I think. It was a gift from her parents. What about these?” I ask, holding up a pair of Gucci sneakers. “I could do a whole hypebeast moment.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Aha!” I yell, unearthing a pair of Balenciaga knife heels from underneath a pair of leather pants River insisted would be good for “lounging around.” I hold them up to the phone, which is propped up against a lamp on the nightstand.

Daytona is gliding a razor up one buttery leg.

“Do these work?” She peers at me between her thighs, purses her lips, and gives the barest Miranda Priestly nod of sartorial approval.

“Yes. Wear the leather pants, you have the thighs for them.” It’s one of the nicest things she’s ever said to me.

“What’s on the agenda for tonight?” she asks. “Are you girls popping Molly and getting lap dances from gay dudes? Kind of right up your alley.”

“It’s somehow sadder than that,” I counter, wriggling into the pants one leg at a time, wishing I’d thought to bring my own coconut oil, or maybe a tub of Crisco.

“We’re going to one of those pottery studios where they get you so drunk on cabernet you think adult pottery is actually fun, followed by a private midnight screening of The Wedding Singer to satisfy Rachel’s childhood crush on Adam Sandler. ”

“Is she gonna be like, fingering herself in the theater?”

“Please never talk about my future sister-in-law’s vagina again. It’s been haunting me all week.” I’d been keeping the group updated with blow-by-blow recaps, including my audition to be Rachel’s new gynecologist. “How’s Atlanta?”

“Same old. The show last night was good. I did a Barbra suite and cleaned up in tips, although someone spilled poppers on them. I got high trying to count earlier.”

“Does someone mean you?”

“I refuse to dignify that with a response. Unrelatedly, when we’re both back in New York let’s swing by the Leather Man so I can pick up a new bottle.”

“Why are their poppers so fucking good?”

“They’re probably organic. Farm-to-table alkyl nitrites.” Daytona moves on to the next leg. “Or maybe there’s a little meth in them. How’re things going with your big lesbo crush?”

“Oh god, I’m like in love with her. It’s worse than when I was fourteen and obsessed with our rabbi.

I got really into Judaism for the summer so I could come to his house and ask questions about the Torah, but I just ended up hooking up with his daughter and never going to temple again because it was so awkward.

” I pause, trying to figure out which side of my shiny Chloé top is the front.

“Oh god, what if Esther is at the wedding?”

“Esther is kind of a sickening name. So it’s going well?”

“As well as can be expected, I guess. But who knows, it could all go ass over tits tonight. I mean, I’m preparing to spend an evening with a bunch of cis women who are probably going to go completely silent when I join them in the bathroom to touch up my makeup and check under the stall door to see if I still piss standing up. ”

“At least you were fucking invited, girl. At least your family wants you around. At least they aren’t chasing you into the town square with pitchforks like you’re fucking Frankenstein.

” There’s a current of anger and resentment in her voice, and I remember that not all of us have families we can go home to.

“You’re right,” I murmur, feeling awkward and uncomfortable in my bra and my stupid leather pants, complaining about my family drama to someone whose only real family is…

well, Kyle, River, and me. My heart clenches in my chest again, and I miss Daytona fiercely, wishing I could bury my face in her long mane of hair and breathe in its summery strawberry scent.

I always ask what shampoo she uses to get it to smell like that and every time she smirks and shakes her head.

“Women need their secrets, honey.” Daytona is a woman built of secrets, fashioned out of pain and fury and an unbridled hunger for life on her own terms.

“It’s OK,” she tells me, unusually tender. “Everything’s gonna be OK, honey.”

“I love you,” I tell her, because I do, and you should tell the people you love that you love them as often as you can.

“I know,” she says, smiling. “Take off the bra, it’s doing nothing for you.”

Mom comes home from work right after I hang up with Daytona, and we have a quiet dinner with Randy and Brody—Brian is at an oboe lesson. I didn’t even know he played.

“Interesting outfit,” Mom says as I’m checking my lipstick in the mirror by the front door. The guard gate had just called—Kim would be here any minute to pick me up, which she offered after Rachel extended the last-minute invitation. Obviously, I said yes.

“Thanks.” My bangs aren’t doing what I want them to, and I try running my fingers through them a few times before sighing in defeat.

“Let me,” Mom says, turning me toward her and licking her hand, bringing it to my cowlick.

“Mom, gross.” But in reality, I’m preening under her attention. I let her fuss with my hair for a moment before drawing back to admire her handiwork.

“Perfect.” Her eyes move down to my chest. Her lips purse, but she’s learned her lesson.

A car honks from outside.

“Have fun. Bring me home a vase for the collection.” Mom has a display case dedicated to her children’s artistic endeavors, which includes some of Brody and Brian’s most terrifyingly bloody early work—we went through red crayons quickly when they were little—and a teapot I painted to look like Mrs. Potts from Beauty and the Beast who could make it to the final four on Drag Race .

A few minutes later, I’m buckled into the front seat of Kim’s rental, admiring the way her legs look wrapped in perfectly faded vintage Levi’s and imagining how much better they’d look wrapped around me .

Her hand rests between us and it would be so easy to lace my fingers through hers, but I won’t, despite the look she gave me when she saw my leather pants, which I’ll generously call smoldering .

I didn’t know people could smolder outside of Gothic literature and the Xena/Gabrielle fan fiction I wrote in middle school, but Kim Cameron somehow manages it.

“Do you know a lot of the other bridesmaids?” I ask over the Portishead playing from Kim’s phone—hot and great taste in music.

“A few, from college. But Rachel and I were never really part of the same group of friends, just friends with each other. They’re all nice, but…intense.”

“Rachel does seem to have a type when it comes to friends,” I acknowledge, “and it’s…more Rachels.”

She shoots me a look. “Are you calling me a Rachel?”

“You’re about as far from a Rachel as it’s possible to be. You’re”—I wave my hands, hoping the perfect descriptor will magically appear—“a Kim Cameron.”

A laugh. “I’ll take it.”

That makes two of us.

In no time at all, Kim is opening my door in yet another strip mall parking lot as a burning-ozone sunset lights up the palm trees across the horizon.

She walks behind me and, when I turn to make some joke about the name of our destination—Kiln Me Softly—her guilty eyes snap up from where they have been, dare I say it, ogling my leather-clad ass.

I somehow manage not to punch the air in triumph and settle for a knowing smirk.

But this is Kim Cameron, so all she does is gaze back at me, unbothered, and place a hand at my back to guide me through the door.

The touch lights something up inside me, and I can feel the static electricity crackling between us.

Oh, it’s on.

“Kimmy!” shrieks a gorgeous blonde surrounded by five nearly identical white women, all looking like they just finished a round of pumpkin spice lattes.

“Kimmy?” I mutter into Kim’s ear.

“She will be dealt with.”

Hugs are exchanged alongside names, none of which I have any plan to keep track of.

Instead, I decide to give them numbers: Rachel 2, in the miniskirt, greeted us.

Rachel 3 is wearing a hat so wide brimmed that no one can get closer than two feet from her.

Rachel 4 has lips so freshly filled with Juvéderm the bruises are peeking through her matte lipstick.

Rachel 5 has glasses and really is also named Rachel and seems nice, greeting Kim with a long, sweet hug.

Rachel 6 looks like a real bitch, if I’m being honest, giving me a smile so forced she looks constipated.