FEBRUARY 1-6
926 Words
By the time they’d finished dissecting Jo’s promotion, the lawsuit that had done it for her, and who she was going to tackle next, they’d worked their way through most of the bottle of champagne, the clams, a Dungeness Crab Seafood Cocktail, some Coconut Tiger Prawns, and a mountainous pile of onion rings that none of their waistlines would appreciate in the morning.
Cassidy decided to just splurge and took a big piece of the focaccia bread and dipped it in the olive oil and garlic.
“What ‘bout you, Cassidy? Tell us the wonders of your week.” Jo’s voice had slipped out of power lawyer, back into Vassar casual. It took a lot of wine to do that.
“Yeah, what ‘bout you? Something more exciting than the man with two first names, puh-lease. He is just such a total drip.” Perrin mocked Jo’s slip but everyone was too tipsy to care.
Jack James, the man with two first names. He was handsome, polite, sometimes lover, and a useless jerk.
“Seconds.”
“What’s that?”
“Sick of ‘em.”
“She’s shhick of ‘em.” Perrin was now mocking her.
Her mind wasn’t connecting the bits and pieces together. But somewhere or other the thought did have sense of purpose even if she was too drunk to see it.
“No more sad second-raters for this girl.”
Jo grew quiet. One very drunken night in their dorm room, Cassidy had confessed to how much she hated being second to both of them. Perrin with all her flash and confidence, Jo with her perfect grades and steady boyfriend.
“No more thankless thirds either, huh?” Perrin purred pleasantly.
Cassidy started to giggle at the alliteration in her head. Perrin purring pleasantly through a pursed pucker.
“Thankfully through with the, uh, thoughtless thirds,” Cassidy acknowledged.
Jo cracked a smile but suppressed it quickly, but not before Cassidy caught her.
“And those sad, sad sloppy seconds.” Perrin started nodding, then kept doing so as if she’d forgotten she’d started. Her hair swooshed back and forth in a mesmerizing pattern of diagonal stripes.
It sounded even worse put that way. Cassidy glanced at Jo, but she shook her head ever so slightly. She’d never told her about Cassidy’s complaints, Perrin was just on a roll.
“And those f*****g fourths. Even I don’t want those,” Perrin continued.
“I’m done with them all,” Cassidy declared. “I’m better than that.”
Perrin jutted out her chin, “Damn straight, girlfriend. So what now? Fancy frolicsome firsts?”
“Damn straight!” she shot back. “Nothing but the best for Cassidy Knowles from now on.”
Jo raised her flute, and Perrin her third Cosmo.
“To Cassidy’s fun firsts.”
“To Cassidy.” Jo nodded to her so she’d know that Jo had meant to end it there.
Perrin slowly scanned about the room, then abruptly turned and leaned in so close that Cassidy could smell the Triple Sec, lime, and cranberry on her breath.
“So, what’s the news? What are we drinking to again?” Her eyes were squinted as she tried to remember.
“No sad seconds,” Jo reminded her quietly.
“That’s not news. That’s just about f*****g time. I want the news.”
Cassidy considered as well as the champagne would allow her. News. News. News. There must be something. She still hadn’t told them about the lighthouses. But she didn’t want to, not yet anyway. It was still too close to losing her father.
What was the topic?
No settling any more—that was it.
“I broke it off with Mr. Jack James.”
“Thank God above and Satan below,” Perrin clapped her hands together and looked to the ceiling. “He was such a waste of your time.”
Jo was waiting. Waiting and watching.
“When?” Jo’s soft question barely penetrated Cassidy’s whirling thoughts.
It took her three tries to finally slip her flute back into the vase. It kept moving around the table.
“Um,” she laughed and it partly came out as a sob. She covered her face with her hands for a moment feeling the burning flush on her cheeks. A quick wipe at her eyes and she sat up straight, slapped her hands down on her thighs.
“About a dozen seconds ago.” That laughing sob came out again. She tried to refill the flute and her hands were so unsteady she ended up pouring the champagne into the vase instead. She set the bottle down hard enough that for a moment she was afraid she’d broken the glass table.
Jo handed her own flute over and Cassidy knocked it back. The bubbles burning the back of her throat.
“Why now?”
“What’s today?” She waved her hand at them, at the restaurant.
“The fourteenth,” Jo blinked hard to focus on her watch. “Still.”
“Valentine’s Day,” Perrin offered.
“Right. And where is the man with two first names? Where is Jack James?”
“Where?” Perrin asked caught up in the question.
“I don’t know. But he certainly isn’t here. Probably doesn’t know what day it is. Handsome, pleasant, and totally lost in his own world.”
“Bor-ring!” Perrin declared around a hiccup. She tucked the long side of her hair behind one ear. She took one of Cassidy’s hands and held it tightly. In that instant, the flashy designer was gone and one of her best friends sat beside her.
“Cass. He was never even a flatu-, ‘scuse me, flatulent fifth. You are so much better than hi-im.” That hiccup launched her hair from behind her ear and over half her face again.
Cassidy nodded. She knew she was better. She just didn’t feel that way whenever she was with him. She always felt…grateful. Whether it was his doing or hers, it didn’t matter; it was too sad for words.
Tears started to flow and she couldn’t stop them. It wasn’t sadness, not for casting off the man with two first names. A bit of it was for thinking so little of herself in the first place. A big chunk of it was plain and simple relief.
“I am so done with sec-onds.” Now she had the hiccups.
Perrin answered with a another hic-nod-hair swirl.
Jo burst out laughing. A rare event in itself.
And totally infectious.
They leaned together as the tears, laughter, and hiccups flowed between them.
- Writer
