Page 6 of Forbidden Surrogate

"Good," Angela says. "So am I. Let's get to know each other, Delphine... What do you do for work?"

We talk about my job in IT at the library, which Angela claims to find very interesting. Angela says that she’s an artist, but she doesn’t specify what kind and strangely dodges the question whenever I ask. Her brother eventually leaves his dark table and orders his own drink before he disappears back to his table in the corner of the bar. A woman with huge boobs and a low-cut top comes up to his table with a beer and he shoos her away before she can sit down. So he mustreallywant to be alone.

I don’t think about him much after he orders and disappears into the background because Angela keeps entertaining me with stories from her days at dance school and how much she hates being back in Buffalo, which is definitely relatable.

I am fully on the Buffalo hate train since this is thesecondguy I’ve been with that fucked one of my friends. I’m thirty-four. I can’t be dealing with this bullshit for too much longer. My eggs are going to mutate and stage an uprising against my childlessness right along with my mother, who is way too desperate for a grandchild in this economy.

“Listen,” Angela says after a long-winded story about the last dance project she worked on before an accident she had. “I’m a yapper. I talk too much. Let me get you a whiskey shot and we’ll dance it out before I bore you to death. You can dance, right? Not to be racist but–”

“I can dance.”

‘Not to be racist, but’ is not a sentence I want to allow any white person time to finish. Just go on ahead and be quiet instead of tripping over landmines. It’s the best way to keep the peace.

“Rachel!” Angela shrieks at an unnecessarily high volume.

Whiskey shots materialize in front of us. Angela locks eyes with me and then hands me a whiskey shot.

“To our new friendship.”

I smile and meet her gleaming gaze with as much enthusiasm as I can muster. She seems… nicer than anyone I’ve met in the while.

“Hell yeah, girl,” I reply, smiling and taking comfort in the universe’s ability to provide. Just when you’re down about a man, the universe reminds you that female friends will always be there for you and never let you down the same way a man will. The shot burns.

WOO!

The whiskey fires its way down my throat with painful slowness. Damn, the top shelf whiskey reallyisbetter because even the burn feels better than the cheap shit.

But maybe it just tastes so good because it’s the last thing I remember from the bar that night.

Chapter Three

Luigi

“Come here,” Angela slurs through her words like the drunkest white girl at a sorority open house. I came here to drown my sorrows, not babysit my grown ass sister who insists on acting like a child whenever she comes within shouting distance of a bartender. I consumed arespectableamount of alcohol, especially after the mess last night. I don’t have time for this.

She’s been gone for the past half hour while this bar crowds up with some of the most disturbingly crude women Buffalo has to offer. I don’t like fake blondes and I don’t like women who leave the house with their tits hanging out looking for sex. I’m only at the bar because of dad’s orders to watch Angela and the crazy shit he said during his visit earlier…

When Angela finally re-emerges from her drunk girl disappearing act, she’s more annoying than usual.

“Can you hurry up and come here?” she snaps at me, like I’m the one who spent the last thirty minutes holed up in a bathroom snorting coke – or whatever the hell she got up to.

“What?”

“There’s a surprise in the back of your Suburban,” she sings. I don’t like surprises, especially not when they’re coming from myyounger sister. The biggest surprise here is that I didn’t abandon her at this goddamn club and get some sleep at the penthouse.

Does dad really need answers about why she can’t find a man to marry her?

“What surprise?” I grunt. “Is it vomit?”

“No, stupid. It’s a solution toallyour problems.”

We get close to my Suburban. I peer in through the tinted window and see… rolled up blankets.

“That’s it? Where did you steal those?”

“Surprise!” Angela says before breaking off into maniacal, drunken laughter. This woman is thirty years old and can’t hold her liquor for shit.

“I’m taking you home.”

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