Page 8 of The Wedding

Jamie obliged, but not before giving Monique a hard look. “Are you doing okay?”

“I am fine. Or at least I’ll be fine.”

“You want some alcohol?” That was how everyone else dealt with flying.

Monique shook her head. “That sounds dreadful. I’ll save the partying for later.”

Jamie couldn’t help but keep staring at her friend as she refilled the glass of water. Nor could she help staring at the other women on the plane, all attached to their phones that had no service or falling asleep in plush leather chairs. Jamie supposed she should be getting her beauty sleep for that night.

Everyone’s going to be dead tomorrow.Jamie counted on it. She wanted to go shopping in Miami, and that would be easiest to do if everyone was passed out in hotel rooms. With or without new girlfriends, from the sounds of things.

“Holy crap, did you see that woman’s tits?”

“I’m too busy staring at that chick’s ass.”

“Can’t we look at both?”

The party had barely started at one of Miami’s most exclusive outdoor clubs. Right on the beach. Under a sea of stars – if they could be seen, anyway. Live Cuban music played far away on a stage, but the acoustics were so good that the party experienced it half a world away.

That wasn’t what everyone was excited about, however. No, that would be the nearly-naked servers who carried drinks to tables full of horny queer women on vacation.

Jamie would have never thought to bring Monique to a place like this for her bachelorette party. She seemed too refined for what basically amounted to Hooters.

“If I were sober, I would let that one ram me.”

“You just like her because she’s blond!” Gwenyth shouted above the music and the rabble of other partiers. “And you’re… you are… blond!”

“What the fuck are you two talking about?”

Gwenyth’s face was plastered to their large table. She had three empty glasses in front of her.

Monique had yet to touch any of the stuff. Jamie had one drink so far and decided to break it up with the best Shirley Temple she ever tasted. Monique, meanwhile, traded alcohol for sugar in the form of one Coke after another. Jamie offered a sip of her drink more than once, but Monique said her stomach was still upset from the flight.

“Mine too!” Jamie told her about her problems from the previous week. “Maybe I just wanna party!”

Monique shrugged. “Maybe that’s my problem. My girls threw me a surprise bachelorette party on Tuesday. There was a lot of alcohol, but they like any excuse to get toasted.”

“What time is it?” Someone asked.

“Time to get fucking wasted and laid.”

“Someone is single over here.”

Charlotte slammed down her second margarita of the night. “I want another one of these and I want it now. I want it from that woman with the gauges. And I want to eat her pussy.”

“Calm down, honey, most of these women are probably straight.”

“How would you know?”

“How would I know if someone is gay?”

Someone lit a cigarette. Next thing Jamie knew, it was passed around the table like a town pony. At first, Jamie thought it was something else. But no, that was definitely tobacco she smelled. Veryniceand very expensive tobacco. Etta served it to some of her guests, although she never smoked it forherself.

Everyone at the table took a drag. Everyone except for Monique and her partner in being boring, Jamie.

“Ah, fuck.” Kathleen coughed hard enough to make her friend tipsily smack her on the back. “I haven’t smoked since college.”

“But you have sucked face, right?” Charlotte asked, yanking the cigarette from Kathleen. Someone had a one-track mind.