Good Men Are Like Unicorns

Chapter 1:9: The Purple Unicorn

Regina

I had to pull myself together and make it through a long work week before I had a chance to get together with my friends. Our Saturday afternoon meetups at the Purple Unicorn Ladies Club was practically a sacred ritual.

The club, which was owned by my friend Dallas, was located just across the tracks in what some people considered the shady side of town, but it was a high-end classy joint with a full bar, a Mexicana grill, and an in-house bean to bar chocolate maker. And at night, there were male dancers to entertain the almost exclusively female clientele.

But at 2:00pm, the place was pretty quiet, and I slid into our reserved circle-shaped booth in the corner. Patti was already there, her short, hair spiked and dyed an alarming shade of blue which clashed perfectly with her bright yellow sundress. To Patti’s left was Adelee. She looked like she was dressed for an afternoon tea at a gardening club, complete with a cardigan and pleated slacks. Her brown shoulder length hair was tucked back behind her ears as she played with a glass of wine that she hadn’t actually sipped from.

On the other side of Adie sat Malia. Her black curls were clipped up on top of her head with a demure silver clip, and she looked like she’d just stepped out of Forbes in her sleek pantsuit and fitted trousers.

Dallas came dancing up to the table, her wild, artificial red curls bouncing around a face that was a little too round. She was wearing a silver, sparkly top and faux leather pants.

At least I hoped they were faux.

She grinned at us and used her hip to push me over and make room for herself in the booth. Her leather pants made a funny sound as they slid across the vinyl, almost like a fart. “What on earth? You all look like you’ve showed up for a funeral. Where’s Grace?”

“Here! I’m here!” Grace panted breathlessly as she hurried across the bar, and planted her full-figured bottom on the other side of Malia. “Sorry I’m late, one of the twins threw up this morning…”

Grace was working as a nanny for a family that had not one, but two sets of identical twins.

Dallas motioned to one of the waiters that was idling by the bar. The waiter was tall, handsome, and wore the Purple Unicorn’s official uniform of a deep, purple lace-up pirate’s shirt, tight black trousers, and a gold sash. The shirt was, of course, unlaced to the max, showing a decent amount of his blond chest hair. He obviously knew that tips grew exponentially with s*x appeal.

“Hello ladies,” He flashed a sexy grin, and then honed in on the three of us that did not already have drinks in front of us. “What can I get you today?”

“Gin and tonic,” Dallas said without pause.

“I’ll have a cola,” Grace said with a grimace, “I’m on duty tonight.”

I opened my mouth to order one of my favorite fruity drinks, maybe a strawberry daiquiri this time, and then snapped it closed again. Hadn’t I learned my lesson last weekend? “I’ll take some sparkling water,” I said dully. “That expensive Italian one.”

Dallas gave me an incredulous look. “Girl, what is wrong with you?”

Even though I was surrounded by my best friends in the world, I found it difficult to open my mouth and tell them my shameful story. I sank down a little lower in the vinyl booth and dropped my chin. But no worries, Patti was more than happy to speak on my behalf.

“She met up with her ex at the conference,” Patti said, sounding much too cheerful about it.

“Wait, what?” Adelee sat up a little straighter, “Which ex? You don’t mean, the ex?”

When I didn’t immediately answer, Dallas’s long-nailed fingers grabbed my arm. “The ex? You mean the hot cowboy ex?”

“You’ve never even seen him,” I scoffed, neither confirming nor denying that Patti was referring to Japheth, or that he was, indeed, a hot cowboy.

“Besides the point,” Dallas waved her hand, “Patti says he’s fine, and her word is enough for me!”

I groaned and nodded miserably. I didn’t really want to talk about it, but at the same time, I needed to talk to someone. Or, five someones. These ladies weren’t just my friends, they were also my unofficial therapists, counselors, and shoulders to cry on. They had nursed me through every breakup I’d had over the last few years.

“Oh my God, what was that like?” Malia asked, her voice low with sympathy.

“What did he say?” Grace squeaked.

“More importantly, how did he look?” Dallas asked, pinching my arm a little. “Is he still hot? Or did he grow a beer belly and a receding hairline? We need details, woman!”

Immediately a vision of Japheth flashed through my imagination. His bronzed muscles were, if anything, larger and firmer. The dark hair that fell over his forehead was still thick and soft. That chiseled jaw was still firm, and in perennial need of a shave. I sighed and admitted reluctantly. “He still looks good. Too good.”

“So! How did it happen? What did you say? What did he say?” Dallas wiggled her penciled eyebrows, “Were there sparks?”

I felt my face growing hot, and was momentarily rescued when the pirate waiter returned with our drinks. He set down a cup of ice and a glass bottle of sparkling mineral water in front of me, before he served Dallas and Grace. “You could say that,” I mumbled, when the waiter returned to the baro

“Regina!” Adelee gasped, “Please don’t tell me you…” Adie was much too repressed to actually say the words out loud, but Dallas had no such restrictions.

“You f.ucked him?! You f.ucked your ex husband?”

I squeezed my eyes shut tight. It sounded even worse when Dallas said it out loud. I would have told her to hush and keep her voice down, but we were the only patrons on that side of the bar, and I had virtually no secrets from these ladies. “I..I don’t even know how it happened.”

“Well, I can tell you–” Dallas started, but Malia cut her off with the next mortifying question.

“How was it?”

I rolled the glass bottle between my hands and stared at it so that I wouldn’t have to meet any of the inquisitive stares around the table. “It was…okay.”

“Liar!” Dallas proclaimed triumphantly.

I sighed and looked up, “Alright, it was fantastic. It was really...good.”

“Did you get the O?”

I lifted two fingers in the air, which immediately caused Dallas hoot and jump off the seat. “I knew it! So the old flame is still burning hot!”

I groaned and put my head down on the table. “But I don’t want it to burn hot. It was supposed to be burned out a long time ago.”

Patti reached out a hand and patted me sympathetically on the back. “You can’t really control how you feel, Reggie,” she pointed out. I knew that she had a very dark past with her baby-daddy, one that she rarely talked about. So she probably knew something about having feelings for the wrong person.

“Wait, I don’t understand,” Grace stirred her straw around in her glass of soda. “If the spark is still there, and the s*x was so great…why did you divorce the sexy cowboy in the first place?”

I groaned and lifted my head. I ignored the glass of ice and took a gulp of the bubbly water straight out of the glass, as though that was going to bring me any relief. As though I was downing a fifth of whisky instead of some bougie bubble water.

It was really hard to explain to these women how my marriage had gone so terribly wrong. I thumped the glass bottle back on the table and rubbed my forehead. A million reasons danced through my memories, each one so small and insignificant by itself, but when added together, it was the soul-crushing, identity sucking, love-destroying reality of my young marriage.

“Because…” I said, a little too loudly. “He bought me an apron for my birthday!”