Daddy Declan must be laying some serious pipe to have turned this stone cold savage into such a sweetheart.
Lucky bitch.
6
Riley
I should’ve known it was going to be really bad when Sloane called up for booze.
A new hot Irishman arrived with a pitcher of skinny margaritas sweetened with monk fruit and infused with the juice of limes and jalape?os grown from the garden outside. The glasses were rimmed with a fine dusting of pink Himalayan sea salt and garnished with a spiral curl of lime peel so long and perfectly formed, it must’ve taken extreme concentration and probably like ten tries to get it right.
Because yeah, that’s totally something one does.
The hot Irishman also brought warm tortilla chips and a delicious pineapple-mango salsa he said he made himself.
I was highly dubious of the claim and told him so. Imagine my surprise when he whipped out his cell phone and showed me a video as proof.
“Where do you find these guys?” I asked Sloane when he left.
She waved me off like I was being silly. “It’s a gift. Now go sit in the chair I put in front of the sink in the bathroom and be quiet. I’ll need to concentrate while I work.”
Red flag number two: she needed to “concentrate.” The last time that happened, a hole was ripped in the space-time continuum that still hasn’t been repaired.
But I was starving, and the salsa was delicious, so I was an obedient subject and allowed her to paint some kind of foul-smelling goop onto my head that I wrongly assumed was deep conditioner. I sat as docile as a lamb as she washed, cut, and styled my hair, urging me to drink another of the tasty margaritas every so often.
When she finally spun me around in the chair to face the mirror, I saw why she was trying to get me drunk.
I cried in horror, “What the fuck have you done?”
She actually had the nerve to say smugly, “Saved you from that tragedy you called a hairstyle. You’re welcome.”
Then she sauntered out of the bathroom, leaving me to have my mental breakdown all by myself.
“I am not wearing that.”
“Just put it on. You’ll thank me later.”
I stare indignantly at the tiny scrap of fabric Sloane is trying to pass off as the dress I should wear out to dinner. I’ve blown my nose into tissues with more substance than that.
“I’ll thank you to stop trying to make me look like a sex worker. You’ve already done enough damage with the platinum catastrophe on top of my head.”
“Are you kidding? Your hair is amazing!”
I say acidly, “Yes, if it’s three o’clock in the morning, and I’m working in a Reno cabaret as a Marilyn Monroe impersonator old enough to have gone on tour with Frank Sinatra, and everyone in the audience is sight impaired or drunk, it’s amazing. But in this dimension of reality, it’s not.”
Ignoring me, she turns to rummage deeper into the vault she calls a closet. “Do you still wear a size six shoe?”
I roll my eyes to the ceiling. “No. I wear a twelve now. I have this weird disease that causes massive foot growth.”
Ignoring my sarcasm, she says, “Good. These will go perfectly with the dress.”
She turns and tosses a pair of high heels at me. I refuse to catch them, so they bounce off my stomach and land onto the carpet near my feet. Next, she throws the dress. It lands on top of my head and hangs down in front of my face like a veil.
A miniscule, see-through veil with abdominal cutouts.
Sloane breezes past me out of the closet. “When you’re dressed, I’ll do your makeup.”
Seething, I yank the dress off my head and stare at it. I could literally fold it up and put it into the pocket of my sweats.
Honestly, how does she expect me to wear this thing? I might as well just put on a thong and some pasties and call it a day!
Sloane calls from the other room, “Hurry up, Smalls, I’m hungry!”
I mutter, “Oh, now it’s an emergency because she’s hungry. The queen is hungry, y’all! Everybody giddyap!”
“I can hear you in there.”
I holler over my shoulder, “How do you even fit into this thing? You couldn’t get one of your boobs into it, much less that booty!”
“There’s this interesting material called spandex. It’s highly stretchable. You would’ve heard of it before if you hadn’t been busy hoarding all that cotton fleece. Now get dressed, or I’ll lock you in that closet without dinner.”
I close my eyes and heave a sigh. Should’ve brought less candy and more drugs.