27

I got out of the shower a human popsicle but also back in charge of my raging hormones. All my girly parts were smooth, my legs baby soft. When I was done drying off, I smoothed lotion over my entire body and then stood in front of a fan until it dried down. It was going to take me a while to get used to humidity.

Since it was too early to get dressed, I threw on my bathrobe and checked the inn's day end reports from yesterday. Nothing earth shaking there and no phone calls either. So far, so good.

I was sitting on my bed, watching a Real Housewives marathon when my phone went off.

'Want to do lunch?' Lola asked in our three way chat. It hadn't been that long since I ate, but I was dying to hear about Courtney's date.

'There's a sandwich shop next to the ice cream place right up the street,' I suggested.

'Mmm sammich,' Courtney replied.

'Be there in thirty,' Lola confirmed.

Man, now I have to get dressed only to get dressed again later. Socializing required too much effort. Since it was just Lola and Courtney, I threw on a pair of Christmas leggings and an oversized Warner U sweatshirt. My hair had been air drying and I went ahead and diffused the rest of it, scrunching out any crunch left from my gel. I was just slathering on some last minute chapstick when the girls arrived.

"Wanna walk?" I asked.

"Sure but only because ice cream is involved and my butt's starting a petition for its own zip code," Lola grumbled.

"I fail to see the issue." My ass has had its own weather system since I was sixteen.

We started toward the sandwich shop and I tried to sneak a glance over to Taylor's. It looked like it was closed up tight.

"He's not there," Courtney said, catching me. "He went to some car show."

"Oh, yeah, Chris said something about a bunch of them going," I remembered. "But how did you know that?" Courtney's ears turned red.

"I saw a post on Facebook," Lola mentioned.

"Same," Courtney said quickly.

"Do you all have friends on Facebook that I don't?" I asked, wondering how I missed this information.

"When was the last time you looked at social media?" Lola questioned, her eyebrow raised.

"This morning." It wasn't a lie; Hannah had showed me Brady's post and I had looked at it.

"You looked at your Facebook this morning?" Courtney pushed.

"Okay fine, it wasn't my account, but I did look."

"Wait, were you playing detective? Who were you detecting?" Lola asked giddy at the prospect of drama.

"No one. Hannah just showed me something," I explained.

"Was it something about Brady?" asked Courtney, drawing out the "ee" sound at the end of his name.

"She just showed me a comment he made. It was on the page of the band we are going to see tonight."

"Which band?" Lola and Coutney demanded, whipping out their phones in synchrony.

"Good grief, I don't remember. It had something to do with a bank."

"Bank Note?" Lola showed me her phone.

"Holy Sherlock Holmes Batman, how did you find it so fast?"

"She's got skills," Courtney said, glancing at Lola's phone. "Awe, is that Brady's comment? He can't wait to show you off!"

"Yeah, I don't know how I feel about it, though. I was telling Hannah, this all feels NASCAR fast."

"Well anything is going to feel fast compared to how you dragged out the beginning of your relationship with Kade," Courtney pointed out. Why do people keep bringing this up?

"Seriously," agreed Lola. "Just an FYI, not everyone has Kade's patience. He was still healing from the whole Katy-Chase situation, so it worked out that both of you needed time." I gritted my teeth at the mention of Katy's infidelity with one of Kade's good friends.

"So shoot me for struggling with thinking a good looking older guy had interest in me, the girl whose dates kept asking for her sister's number," I mumbled.

"I never understood that," Lola said, shaking her head. "I love Hannah but you're a complete package. Smart, funny, exotic beauty and you were single."

"Exotic beauty? That's a new one. Is that how we're describing chunky brown people now? I feel like I should be offended."

"Take the compliment!" Courtney shouted all of a sudden. She jumped on my back and I staggered but stayed on my feet. "You are too hard on yourself. As punishment, your quest is to carry the weight of your negativity to the restaurant."

"Get off Gandalf," I groaned but she stayed put.

"Not until you say three nice things about yourself." She squeezed her knees tighter on my hips.

"Fine, hang on." I took off down the sidewalk, Courtney bouncing along. She finally flopped off but refused to let go.

"SAY IT! SAY THREE NICE THINGS!" she yelled while clutching the hood of my sweatshirt, drawing looks from confused bystanders.

"Alright already. I am a good boss, I am smarter than the average bear, and I am not as nutty as my bat shit crazy friend Courtney." I tried to squirm away but she held tight to my hood.

"The last one doesn't count!"

"It should!" I finally managed to wriggle free only to have her pounce again. Lola stood by, hands on her hips.

"I agree," she said. Courtney frowned at her.

"I'll allow it this time, but seriously, I don't want to hear anymore of this negativity from you. You're amazing and you need to own it." She grabbed me and planted a juicy kiss on my cheek.

"I agree with this as well," Lola chimed in before planting her own kiss on my other cheek.

"Can't you two just say 'I love you' like normal people?" I complained.

"No," they answered in unison. Silly me, what was I thinking?

After lunch, the girls treated me to ice cream and we ate it while walking back to my apartment.

"So you're not going to tell us this guy's name?" I asked. Courtney kept the details of her date very vague. We knew he was male, nice, and drove a car. I knew more about my gynecologist.

"I don't want to jinx it," she insisted. "We're going to go out again next week. If it goes well again, I will think about telling you."

"That's bogus," Lola said, licking her spoon.

"If I say three real nice things about myself, will you tell us?" I proposed.

"That's emotional blackmail," Courtney answered. "And I thought the first two things you said were very real."

"I love your optimism," I said, swiping a bite of her ice cream.

"He does too," she said coyly. Lola and I rolled our eyes.

"I just can't believe you guys were out until one and all you did was talk. Can he even get it up?" Lola interrogated. Courtney's face turned as pink as her strawberry ice cream.

"Well, I, I mean, we, and I," she stammered.

"Oh, embarrassed are we? Perhaps we didn't just spend the whole time talking, hmm?" Courtney quickly put a bite of ice cream in her mouth.

"I think you may be on to something, Lola," I teased.

"So, did you gloss over that detail because it's dime roll size? Bent? Smells funny?"

"His penis is just fine!" Courtney blurted out as a guy with a husky walked by. He smirked and kept on walking. "Geez louise, Lola."

"Don't blame that on me. If you had led with that information, we wouldn't be standing here playing twenty questions about your mystery man's meat appendage."

"Uh Lo, we just ate," I said wrinkling my nose.

"Okay forget the gross analogy, let's focus on how far our fair Courtney went last night." We both looked at Courtney, who wore a sheepish look on her face.

"Honestly, we just made out," she confessed.

"Then how do you know he can get it up?" Lola asked skeptically.

"I was sitting on his lap most of the time. It was kind of hard to miss." The pun was not lost on us and we all cracked up.

"I hope you didn't leave a wet spot," Lola said with a wink.

"I was so worried I was going to!" Courtney blurted out. "I was turned on from the second he kissed me. It was like freaking Niagara Falls between my legs."

"That's an excellent problem to have," I assured her.

"Hell yeah it is," Lola agreed, giving her a high five. "If it were the Mojave Desert we'd be worried."

When we arrived back at my apartment, the girls came in and oohed and ahhed over my outfit. Lola made some suggestions for makeup and then they left after a round of hugs. I anxiously began to get ready, blasting my Bad Ass Bitch station on Pandora. My motto for the night was 'Fake it til you make it'. I was applying the last swipe of a deep maroon lipstick when there was a knock at the door. My phone read four o'clock on the money. I took a deep breath and gave myself a last minute pep talk.

Smile, but don't show too many teeth. Laugh, but not too loudly. And above all else, don't leave a wet spot.