Page 1 of Something Tangled Something True (Rosa Ranch #1)
HOPE IS A GOOD brEAKFAST BUT A POOR SUPPER
“ Levanta ese culo ya! ” Mayte shouts, waking me from my unnecessarily short nap. She’s crammed a million activities into a single day—not to mention the several minutes when I feared for my life white water rafting—and she won’t allow me the pleasure of an hour-long nap?
I can’t help but groan. “Just five more minutes,” I plead with her, but it’s futile.
“Nope. We only have one night to do this right, and you’ve already wasted an hour of it sleeping. Get your perky ass up and get ready.”
I drag myself out of bed, and Mayte proceeds to spend the next hour and a half doing my makeup and hair, dressing me up like a doll. Considering I’ve been left in the dark about this entire kidnapping—I mean, bachelorette party —Mayte had to pack for me.
Once we're all ready, I'm ushered into the living room, where Mayte and Karmella spent their dedicated nap time decorating the archway in our BnB.
“Aww, this looks super cute. Thank you, guys,” I tell them, my eyes welling with tears at the time and thought they put into this weekend.
“Stop crying and come stand over here for a picture,” Mayte tells me, setting her phone up on a plant she grabbed from the porch to use as a tripod.
I stand with all my favorite women under a giant banner that reads, “Miss to Mrs With All My Bitches.”
“Okay, just one more!” Yanet yells at us, running from her phone to jump into the photo. She fluffs her hair before shooting a wide grin at the camera. A blinding flash goes off, and a honk comes from outside.
“Our ride is here,” Mayte declares, leading us outside and into the car after double-checking the license plate, making the poor guy show her his ID, and then checking every door latch to ensure the child safety locks aren’t on.
Better safe than sorry. Though this behavior has definitely become more apparent since she had my niece.
We pile into the SUV, the backs of my thighs sticking to the leather seats, my friends and I stuck like sardines in a tin. Our driver has a nineties hits radio station playing low enough that we're able to continue talking.
We arrive at the club, a tall building in the middle of a strip of similar ones. There's a rooftop terrace I can see from the street, and a line of people wraps around the corner.
We make our way to the back of the line, my feet aching in my strappy red heels as we wade through the crowd.
Half an hour passes, with Ewelina repeatedly telling Karmella to quit bitching, and my fiancé has called so many times Mayte threatened to toss my phone under the wheel of the next moving car she sees before we finally approach the bouncer.
He lets us in without a hassle, and we're admitted for free thanks to my bride’s sash.
“The wait was worth it, eh?” Mayte asks, wriggling her dark brows at me as we make our way into a multilevel club, Latin music on one floor, rap and R he only nods his chin in the direction of the largest strip club I’ve ever seen.
“Ooh, can you drop us off there?” Johanna asks, and he nods.
Once we pull up, our driver tells us, “They close late, and it can be hard to find a ride at this hour. I don’t want you ladies getting stranded, so take my number and call me if you need a ride. I have an early drop-off at the airport, but I’ll get you when I’m done.”
“Oh my gosh, thank you so much. That’s really thoughtful!” Karmella tells him, jotting down his number before we head inside. We pay the cashier for general admission, which, strangely, comes with tickets to a buffet.
“ Aseré , this is the best brunch buffet I’ve ever seen in my life!” Karmella shouts over the music, her brown eyes bright. We make our way to the end of the buffet, where men in penguin tuxedos serve every breakfast item under the sun.
“It’s weird, isn’t it? At a strip club?” Yanet asks, but she grabs a plate anyway.
“And they don’t have alcohol. They stopped serving at 2 a.m. like the clubs,” Mayte grumbles beside me.
“Maybe that’s why they offer brunch. Keeps people here longer, and maybe it decreases the rate of drunk drivers if people wait around and eat before they leave,” Ewelina chimes in.
“That’s a good point,” Johanna says, pointing at the bacon for the man to pile onto her plate.
We all take seats in the black velvet chairs at the front of the stage.
The dancers are dragging themselves through the motions, one of them spinning around the pole with her eyes barely open.
It’s a stark contrast to her rhinestone hot-pink bikini and holographic heels, but it’s late, and I’m just impressed they’re still moving at all.
We throw money at them anyway, enjoying our brunch.
A woman a few seats down from us catches my attention. The man with her gently rubs circles on the back of her arm, his eyes focused on her rather than the group of men in suits crowded around him at their round table.
I’m close enough to hear him whisper, “It’s okay, baby. We can go home. Tonight was a lot.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t want to get in the way of your job.”
So it’s a work outing? I’m all too familiar with those .
“Your comfort is so much more important. Come on, let’s get you home,” he tells her, pressing a kiss to her temple and standing to announce their departure. A couple of the guys he’s with make comments about him being “pussy whipped”, but he brushes them off.
I guess that’s what it’s like to care more about your partner than you do about your career and the lowlifes you work with.
Too bad I wouldn’t know anything about that.
And there it is again , that sour feeling in the pit of my stomach telling me something's just not right.
A hand rests on my thigh, fingers curling, giving me a tight squeeze. “Hey, loca . Everything okay?” Mayte asks me quietly.
I clench my eyes tightly shut and shake my head, finally ready to say what’s on my mind, but a new song plays overhead, this one louder than the rest, and several dancers make their way out onto the stage.
Karmella, Johanna, Ewelina, and Yanet are in the front row now, dancing and cheering on the ladies trying to make a living.
I can’t help but smile. These women, no matter the physical distance between us, have always supported my goals.
It never mattered how hard my body has tried to squash my dreams or how difficult opening my own studio has proven to be.
They’ve always been in the background, cheering me on the same way they are the exhausted women on stage.
It pulls my mind back to the present, and I can no longer get the words I had prepared to say out of my mouth.
Instead, I shake myself out and give her a small smile I’m certain is anything but reassuring.
Mayte nods, turning her attention back to the dancers.
I’ve officially made my decision.