by Tara Sivec
“That’s it? You’re just going to leave him like that?”
“I think my work here is done.”
My dad laughs softly, moving around me to crouch over Sebastian. He curls his lip, narrows his eyes, and growls before standing back up. All of a sudden, my dad’s face lights up with a huge smile as he points down between Sebastian’s legs, where we all see a wet spot forming.
“Yeah, I still got it,” my dad says, puffing out his chest as he walks back over to me and wraps his arms around my shoulder. “Let’s go home, Slugger.”
We all walk out of Sebastian’s hotel room, leaving him lying in the middle of the floor with blood on his face and piss in his pants.
Even though violence is never the answer, I have to admit it feels fucking great to beat the hell out of someone who spent years making your life a living hell.
Chapter 28: Murder House
Much to my father’s disappointment, we said good-bye to him in the lobby of the Hilton and sent him back to work. I’m pretty sure he was higher on adrenaline than I was, and he wouldn’t shut up about all of us going out to celebrate, suggesting we take in an afternoon show at Charming’s.
First of all, there is no way in hell I want to be anywhere near my father at a strip club. Second, there is no way in hell I want to be anywhere near Charming’s in the off chance that Eric might be there. And third, a strip club in the middle of the day? That’s something you can never unsee. Clearly PJ doesn’t employ anything less than the best as far as his dancers go, but the thought of what kind of clientele would be at a strip club at noon in the middle of the week makes me want to stock up on bleach to pour into my eyes.
After my dad trudged off, grumbling about how he thought strippers were supposed to be more fun and he couldn’t believe no one wanted to celebrate the fact that he made Sebastian piss his pants with just a look, we came back to Cindy’s house. I am currently icing my hand and sipping a cold glass of wine on her couch.
Yes, I am slowly sipping a nice, cold glass of Moscato instead of chugging right from the bottle, even though I really, really want to. Cindy told me I was in time-out and not allowed to give Anastasia any more fodder for Snapchat, which means being day-drunk is clearly out.
Now that the adrenaline from kicking Sebastian’s ass and telling him off has left my body, I’m back to feeling blah. I miss Eric. I miss him so much I want to curl up in the fetal position and go back to being unshowered and smelling like regret and desperation while shoveling an entire canister of Pringles in my mouth. My first thought when I walked out of that hotel room was that I couldn’t wait to tell Eric what I did. I even reached for my phone to send him a text—but I couldn’t do that. What kind of a mixed message would that send? I left him and told him it was because he was too much of a distraction. In his mind, I’m supposed to be busy concentrating on the Naughty Princess Club and not on a man. It doesn’t make it any easier that he hasn’t sent me a text himself since that last one, hours ago, with a picture of Derrick’s balls. Not that receiving texts from him has made anything about this easier, but at least they would put a smile on my face for a few minutes. He’s been texting me at least every hour since I left him. This is the longest he’s gone without sending me something, and now I’m starting to wonder if he finally realized there’s nothing he could say to get me to change my mind. If he finally realized I’m not worth all this trouble and begging—and that thought breaks my heart into a million pieces all over again.
Being responsible and trying to do the right thing sucks goat balls. And not yoga goat balls because those were tiny pygmy goats with tiny pygmy goat balls. It sucks massive, freak-of-nature, mountain goat balls.
“We need to figure out a way to trip her up during the board meeting. Make her admit what she did,” Cindy suggests.
I continue staring into my glass of wine while Belle and Cindy sit together on the love seat across from me, trying to come up with ideas for the board meeting.
“She’ll never fall for any trick we could come up with,” I tell them with a sigh. “She’s a bitch, but she’s smart. I’m telling you guys, we need to just go in there with all of our stats and figures, give them the facts, get our approval, and go.”
I can see it written all over Belle and Cindy’s faces that they absolutely do not agree with me, but what else can we do? Maybe we can figure something out after the board meeting and we secure our approval, but for right now, we need to play by Ursula’s rules. We’re already losing money this week, since I had to cancel all of our party bookings until we get the business license. We were able to do business temporarily without the license because our town has a minimum amount of money a business needs to make before a license is required. We never expected to go over that amount so quickly, and we got a letter after the denial saying that we’re forbidden from operating at this time. I’m not about to jeopardize the entire business just because I want to take Ursula down, which could backfire in our faces.
The doorbell rings, saving me from having to explain to the girls once again why we shouldn’t be wasting time trying to figure out a way to make Ursula pay for what she’s done. Cindy leaves the room to answer the door, coming back a few minutes later with a small white box with a red satin bow on it. She hands it to me.
I look at her questioningly, and she just shrugs.
“No clue. A courier just dropped it off and said it was for you.”
Setting my wine glass and bag of ice on the table in front of me, I carefully untie the bow and remove the lid from the box to find a key sitting inside on a bed of cotton. Pulling the key out, I find a business card under it with just an address on it, along with the number 150.
“What is that? Who’s it from?” Belle asks, getting up from the love seat to walk over to me.
“I have no idea. It’s just an address,” I tell her, flipping the card over to find it blank on the back and pulling the cotton out of the box, but nothing indicates who sent it or what it’s for.
“Oooooh, a scavenger hunt!” Belle says excitedly. “Did you know the largest scavenger hunt that made it into the Guinness world records had more than three thousand participants, and it was in celebration of Canada’s 150th anniversary? Participants attempted to complete 150 tasks throughout the city of Ottawa, including specialized trivia stations, posting more than thirty-one thousand images to Instagram with the hashtag find150. Oh, my God! Look! It has the number 150 on the card. Maybe someone invited you to celebrate Canada. Yeah, Canada!”
I shake my head at her and push up from the couch.
“Having a Canadian fiancé has gone to your head, Belle. I’m pretty sure Canada didn’t randomly invite me to celebrate their history.”
“Well, I could use a break. Who’s up for a road trip?” Cindy asks, taking the card from my hand as I twist the silver key between my fingers.
“This is ridiculous. We’re just going to go to some random address on a card when we have no idea where it is or what the key is for? What if a serial killer sent it and he’s luring us to his murder house?” I ask.
“PJ gave me a Taser to keep in my purse and it’s fully charged,” Cindy states, grabbing her purse from the love seat and pulling out her car keys.
“And you just punched a guy in the face and kicked him in the balls,” Belle adds. “Vincent’s been teaching me some self-defense moves recently. We’ll be fine.”
“Has he really been teaching you self-defense moves, or have you guys just been wrestling naked?” I ask, my heart cracking a little bit, wishing I could do some naked wrestling with Eric right now.
“Whatever. You don’t know my life. Vincent is freakishly strong. I’ve got to use a lot of muscle power to flip him over and ride him like Seabiscuit,” Belle argues.
“Fine. Let’s go. At least a murder house will be a nice distraction,” I sigh, grabbing my purse from the couch as we all head out of the house to what will most likely be our gruesome and untimely deaths.
* * *
“See? Not a mur
der house,” Cindy states happily when her GPS tells us we’ve arrived at our destination. We drive through the parking lot until we see the number 150, and she stops the car.
“Oh, no. I’m sure there’s nothing creepy or sinister about a storage facility,” I mutter, looking up at the metal garage door we’re parked in front of. “Police have never raided one of these things to find random body parts in ziplock bags and coolers full of organs.”
Cindy shuts off the engine. We all get out of her car and slowly walk up to the garage door, which has a padlock down by the ground, keeping it closed.
A loud, electrical crackling sound makes me jump and I turn around to find Cindy firing up her Taser.
“Just being prepared. I’m sure it’s fine. Unlock it,” she tells me, spreading her legs and holding her arm out, aiming the Taser right at the door.
With a roll of my eyes, I squat down and stick the key in the padlock, surprised when it turns easily and the lock opens right up. I don’t know why, but I thought for sure this would turn out to be some kind of a joke or something. That we’d get all the way out here and the key wouldn’t work on whatever it was for. Removing the padlock from the metal hook, I set it on the ground, and Belle comes up next to me, helping me grab the handle to pull the garage door up and open.
The door catches on the chains in the ceiling and easily slides the rest of the way up when it gets above our heads. As soon as the storage locker is wide open and the sunlight from outside illuminates the dark interior, my throat immediately clogs with emotion and my eyes fill with tears.
“Damn. I was kind of hoping for a man in a mask holding a chain saw. I’ve never gotten to use this Taser on a real person before,” Cindy complains as I take a tentative step inside the room, my heart thundering in my chest.
“That would have been fun. Especially if Ariel’s dad were with us. Most Tasers unleash fifty thousand volts of electricity, which make the muscles in your body twitch and convulse uncontrollably, oftentimes making the person soil themselves. Mr. Triton would have gotten a kick out watching another person piss his pants today,” Belle says with a laugh.
I barely hear what they’re saying as I look around the room and the first tear falls down my cheek.
“My stuff,” I mutter with a choked voice, looking around at everything that used to take up every inch of my home.
“Are you sure it’s yours? I thought this stuff was all sold at auction a few weeks ago. It would have been sold piece by piece to hundreds of different people, right? There’s no way one person could have bought the entire lot,” Cindy says, coming up to stand next to me.
All I can do is nod as I take it all in. I realize that to most people it would just look like a bunch of jun. And who’s to know if it’s all mine or just a shit ton of other antiques someone stuffed into this storage locker? But I would recognize my antiques anywhere. I looked at them every day. I touched them every day. I spent hours and hours researching every single grandfather clock, salt and pepper shaker, tea set, china set, painting, side table, curio cabinet, jewelry box, and every other odd and end that currently takes up every bit of space in this storage locker. I know my things when I see them.
My tears are falling so fast now that I can barely see the white porcelain Haviland Limoges water pitcher with hand-painted pink and gold flowers that dated back to the 1800s, and that used to sit next to the sink in my master bathroom, as I gently pick it up and cradle it to my chest.
“Hey, there’s a note over here with your name on it,” Belle says, pulling my awestruck gaze from everything in the room to her as she moves past me and squeezes between the Victorian chair that sat by my front door and the curio cabinet from my living room, which still holds all of my antique salt and pepper shakers.
She opens the glass doors to the curio cabinet, thengrabs a white piece of paper folded in half that was sitting on the middle shelf and hands it to me. Swiping the tears from my cheeks, I take it from her hand, still cradling the water picture to my chest, and flip it open.
When I see the scribbled note, I can’t stop the tortured cry that flies out of my mouth, the tears falling so fast now that I’m not sure I’ll ever stop crying.
Cindy comes up behind me and reads the note out loud, over my shoulder.
You never should have lost something so important to you, so I’m returning all of these things to their rightful owner. One of the many amazing things about you is that you appreciate beautiful and extraordinary things that other, incredibly stupid, assholish people might not find valuable. Kind of like me. You’re the rarest antique I’ve ever seen, and I want to spend the rest of my life making sure you know how perfectly imperfect and extraordinary you are. And no, that’s not a dig on you being old. Wait. Maybe it is. If I call you old, will you get pissed off enough to come home? Love, Eric.
God damn it.
“Shit. Now I’m crying,” Belle complains, sniffling as she wipes her fingers under her eyes.
Cindy wraps her arms around my shoulders and chest from behind and squeezes me tightly to her as I stand staring at the note in my hand.
“What do you want to do?” she asks softly.
Still clutching tightly to the note, I wipe my nose with the back of my hand.
I know what I want to do. I want to get in Cindy’s car and have her break every speed limit to get me to the boat docks. I want to tell Eric everything that happened and what kind of a horrible person his mother is and beg him to forgive me for leaving him. But I can’t do that. I have to be strong. There are only a few more days until the board meeting. I can be strong for a few more days. I have to do whatever it takes to save the Naughty Princess Club, even if that means denying my heart what it wants the most.
“I don’t give a shit if the sun’s still up. I need to get white-girl wasted,” I tell them, pulling out of Cindy’s hold as I walk back to her car, still carrying the note and the water pitcher.
Chapter 29: Pick the Penis Out of Her Hair
“I feel so scandalous being here right now. I’m so glad you guys invited me!” Vanessa tells us as she stares with wide, innocent eyes at the dancer up on stage.
“Shut up and drink your froufrou champagne cocktail,” I mutter, tossing back my shot of tequila and slamming the glass back down on the table.
Ladies and gentleman, we have now entered the angry drunk portion of our evening. Please return your tray tables and seat backs to the upright position and prepare for a crash landing.
“Fuck, I’m sorry. I am a buzzkill and total bitch tonight. It’s not you, it’s me,” I tell Vanessa, glancing nervously over my shoulder to the bar area of a packed Charming’s, still afraid Eric is going to show up.
Yes, I’m at Charming’s, and yes, Cindy and Belle convinced me to send Vanessa a Facebook message and invite her out with us tonight. Cindy promised me that Eric was out of town on business all day and wouldn’t be coming to the club. And considering I told Sebastian I had a lawyer friend, I figured getting to know Vanessa a little better would probably come in handy. I really didn’t expect to completely adore the skinny bitch, but there you have it.
“It’s fine,” Vanessa reassures me, taking a sip of her champagne and cranberry juice. “I was a bitch when I first met you as well, and it was completely uncalled for. You have every reason to be in a bad mood, and I don’t blame you at all.”
As soon as Vanessa joined us at the table we’d commandeered right next to the bar—far enough from the stage that we could still see the dancers but quiet enough for conversation—she apologized for how she behaved when we first met at Eric’s mom’s house. Ursula had given her some bullshit story about how her son was dating someone who was only after his money, didn’t care about him at all, and was just using him to advance her business. Vanessa said within ten seconds of seeing Eric and me together, she knew Ursula had fed her a bunch of lies and realized she’d been played. Hearing her tell us how she’s never seen Eric look at anyone the way he looked at me that day, and how he w
ouldn’t shut up about how amazing I was when they went outside to fix her car, should have made me start crying and snotting all over the place, but after all the crying I did this afternoon at the storage locker and on the way back to Cindy’s house, I’m all cried out. Now I’m just pissed. Pissed that I was forced to give up a guy who looked at me the way I look at tacos.
“So, what do you think about Ariel’s divorce? Can she get it taken care of fast?” Cindy asks.
Vanessa slides the folder we handed her a little while ago back across the table. True to his word, Sebastian had dropped off a cashier’s check at Cindy’s house while we were at the storage facility, with an extra ten grand tacked on to it, as well as a copy of the divorce paperwork that he actually signed this time, and a notarized copy dated today proving it had been officially filed.
I guess he hadn’t been lying through his teeth when he said he’d found himself a wealthy fiancée. Hopefully she has a brain in her head and realizes what a dipshit he is before the wedding, otherwise she deserves that asshole and they can live happily ever after as brainless man and wife.
“Definitely. It’s pretty cut and dried. It typically takes sixty days to be processed, but I’ll call the judge tomorrow and see if we can get a rush on it, considering the circumstances. My family is friends with his, and I went to elementary school with his daughter, so it shouldn’t be a problem,” Vanessa explains.
“Can I just say, it’s really freaking me out seeing you two sitting next to each other,” Belle states, looking back and forth between Vanessa and me.
“The fuck are you talking about?” I mutter, waving our server over and ordering another round of tequila shots and another dumbass champagne cocktail for Vanessa.
“I know, it’s weird, right? Now I know why Ursula asked me to brunch and thought I could entice Eric,” Vanessa laughs.
“The term doppelgänger was coined in 1796 by German writer Johann Paul Richter. According to German folklore, a doppelgänger is a look-alike or double of a living person, often referred to as someone’s evil twin,” Belle recites. “We just need to figure out which one of you is the evil one.”