Page 38 of Sweet as Sin (Bad Habit 1)
But when the doorbell finally rang, that wasn’t what Fate had in store for me at all.
“Oh, Kath-er-ine! Door for you!”
Grace, sitting cross-legged on the living room floor with her fourth margarita in hand and the red boa now tied around her waist because it kept shedding feathers into her drink, sang out the moment the doorbell chimed. When I groaned, she and Chloe fell into a fit of giggles.
“You are the worst best friends ever.”
I was lying on the couch with my feet over the arm, gorging myself on rocky road. I dumped the near-empty ice cream container on the coffee table and stood. I adjusted my own boa, fluffed my hair, and took a few wobbly steps toward the
door, girding my mental loins for what awaited me on the other side.
“Wait!”
Chloe climbed to her feet. Literally. She had to use the edge of the coffee table as a prop. It took several sloppy attempts before she finally made it upright, grinning like a loon, looking ready for the gay pride parade in her cowgirl pajamas and rainbow boa.
We’d all had quite a few drinks. Margaritas, champagne, and possibly one or two shots of tequila at the end of The Notebook, when Allie and Noah die together in bed in the old folks’ home, and I cried so hard snot ran down my face.
That goddamn movie gets me every time.
Chloe linked her arm through mine. “Grace, c’mere! Get her other arm.”
Grace stood and did as she was told. I began to worry. “Support on both sides? Please tell me this isn’t going to be so bad I’ll faint.”
In answer, Chloe hiccupped. She was still grinning madly, a wild glint in her eyes.
I looked at the closed front door. “Are there, like, a hundred strippers waiting on my front porch right now?”
Grace stared at me with a straight face. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m sure there’s a hundred horny strippers. Who are into foot bondage. And what one of my clients refers to as ‘wet work.’”
I stared at her. “Do I really need to ask?”
“Peeing on his partner.”
I formed some very exotic mental images in the few moments it took the three of us to stagger from the living room to the front door.
With a grand flourish, Chloe swung wide the door. And there they were, standing proudly abreast in my front yard: an eleven-piece mariachi band, complete with giant hats, tight pants, pointy cowboy boots, and more machismo than a gang of Spanish bullfighters.
They were flanked by a pair of massive floral arrangements in urns. The grass they stood on—all the grass in the yard, as a matter of fact—was carpeted in lavender rose petals, inches thick. From the branches of the two gnarled willow trees near the sidewalk swayed hundreds of votive candles, casting flickering light over everything. Dozens of lavender hydrangea plants had been placed along the little white fence that ran the perimeter of the yard, lending to it a Martha Stewart garden party chic.
And the brick walk from the sidewalk to the front door was lined with glass bud vases. In each was a single, perfect lavender rose.
The mariachis launched into an enthusiastic rendition of “La Canción del Mariachi,” a song I recognized as the one Antonio Banderas strummed on his guitar in the movie Desperado.
The movie Nico and I had watched the other day at my house.
The movie I had declared “totally romantic.”
I turned to Chloe. She was beaming like she’d swallowed the sun. I tried to think clearly through the alcohol fog in my brain. “Chloe?”
She nodded enthusiastically.
“What is this?”
“It’s your birthday present! From . . . ” She gestured wildly to the sky, as if indicating God. “Guess who?”
I had a pretty good idea.
On my other side, Grace was confused. “Wait. So these are the strippers?”
