Page 4 of When You Left Me Speechless

My sister laughs and rolls her eyes at her plea. “I promised David we could hang out at home tonight. Him, Karma, and I have a game night planned.”

“You’re seriously going to ditch me for your husband and your cat?” I pout.

“You know one day you will meet someone and you’ll ditch me for him,” she laughs. “You two go and have fun. We can regroup another day if we need to. I’ll let you know as soon as I talk to Beth.”

“It’s gonna work out,Pop, I promise,” Lacey says as we walk into our apartment. “Let’s stop talking about it for now and focus on cheering you up, okay?”

I let out a groan and shuffle toward her closet. “Goodness, how the hell do you know where anything is?”

She laughs. “Just because my closet isn’t color-coded doesn’t mean it’s not organized.” We fall to our knees and start digging through the mountain of clothes on her closet floor.

“I mean, nothing is organized about this closet. It’s one big pile of clothes,” I giggle.

“I know where everything is, so it’s organized to me.”

“Yeah, complete organized chaos. You really should let me in here. I told you I would help you get it looking like mine.”

“But, then, I wouldn’t know where anything is,” she counters. She grabs a blue mini dress from the pile and shrieks, “Oh my god, let’s doRomy and Michelle’s High School Reunion. You have a pink mini-dress, right?”

I run across the apartment to my closet and grab the dress from the exact spot I would expect it to be. She wasn’t lying when she said my closet is color-coded. A row of pink bleeds into red, followed by orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple items. The few black and white items I own are in the very back.

I put on the pink dress, and it fits perfectly. The fabric ever so slightly sparkles, a feather detail wraps around the strapless neckline, and a small slit reveals even more of my left thigh. I skip back to her room, and we squeal with excitement. We find a few final accessories and put on our chunkiest platform heels. I put my hair half up and help Lacey part her blonde hair straight down the middle. We quickly make two name tags to complete the look. Forsomething we randomly pulled together, it’s pretty damn close to the movie, minus my dark hair and freckles.

I finish applying lip gloss, and we head to the parking lot to wait for our Uber. My mind drifts back to my predicament for the first time since we returned to the apartment. Panic and guilt consume me. I take a deep breath and hold it for a few seconds before releasing it. “I’m nervous the girl at Pecan Grove won’t call Olive, and I’ll be screwed. Maybe this is a bad idea. I should stay home and search for a place to take me.”

She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “Nope. We aren’t doing that tonight. I meant what I said earlier. We will deal with it tomorrow. Tonight is about getting your mind off of it, maybe find a cute distraction.” She winks at me and nudges me with her elbow. “If I hear you talking about it again, I’m making you take shots until you forget about it completely.”

I do my best to push the feeling to the back of my mind. She pushes me towards the car, and we climb in.

CHAPTER 3: BACK TO THE 90S

LOGAN

“What the hell is going on?” Tanner asks, looking around the packed bar. Balloons cover the ceiling, and nineties decorations cover the walls. He is on my left, and to my right stand two men dressed in brightly colored orange and blue tuxedos. We are standing in a sea of neon, and I can barely move.

“No fucking clue, man, but it’s nuts in here,” I yell over the nineties rap blaring through the speakers. Bodies bang into us as people move about the space. I take another long sip of my beer and try to catch the score of the college basketball game on the TV in front of me.

“How was your date with that hot chick you met at the tournament?” my best friend asks.

“It was a disaster.” I let out a laugh. “The whole date, she only wanted to compare our pickleball stats.” I shake my head. “I’ve had some bad dates recently, but that one might have taken the cake as the worst.”

“So, you didn’t bang her?”

I almost spit my beer down the back of a guy dressed as Hulk Hogan. “No,” I say flatly.

“But her tits.” He leans back like he might faint at the thought of them.

I shake my head and tip my beer up, savoring the taste of it before swallowing hard. I squeeze the bottle a little tighter.

“You need to loosen up, man. When was the last time you brought a girl home with no strings attached?” he asks.

I think about this for a minute and draw a long sip. “Probably before Sutton.”

He slaps me across the back and throws his head back with a laugh. “Dude, that was a year ago. We need to get you laid. What about one of them?” He gestures toward a group of women dressed like the Spice Girls.

“I’m good.”

“Come on, we're here, might as well make the most of it. Let me help you with this.”

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