#TripleX (31 page)

I shrug, “Don’t know for sure. I do know that they frown upon letting pigs in the hot tubs,” I admit, as Christine giggles.

“Hey Chris, what’re these?” I asked, holding up four glow sticks, a fake moustache, and a tube of Bengay that were laying on our suite’s coffee table. They were definitely not there before my two-hour champagne bubble bath.

“Ummm… don’t be mad, okay?”

Glaring at her, “Any sentence that starts with ‘don’t be mad’ usually ends with the other person getting mad… so tell me.”

“Can we just call them ‘souvenirs’ and leave it at that?” Christine asked, grinning guiltily.

“Spill it,” I ordered, plopping down on the couch in my giant white fluffy robe and slippers.

“I had to take something. I mean; it was Colleen Hoover’s room. I just had to swipe
something
,” Christine admitted.

“And this… this… junk is what you chose?” I asked, looking at the used tube of Bengay. Colleen probably needed Bengay to soothe her aching muscles after carrying in all of her books that she undoubtedly would sell out of at the signing.

“I didn’t want to go
through
her stuff, and it was just on the counter in the bathroom,” she confessed.

“
That’s
why you went to the bathroom—ya damn klepto,” I mumbled, shaking my head. “And you think I’m the nutjob? Your house must be missing some mirrors; you’re a crazy-ass who can’t see what’s right in front of you,” I said, sipping cucumber water. Who knew I’d ever like cucumber water? Amazing what a little change and a lot of confidence can do. “But I digress. You’re as whacked as they come, but I really do need to thank you.”

“Thank me? For what?” She sat on the adjacent couch, curling her legs under her.

“Everything. This. Our trip. The fact that a ‘one size fits all’ robe finally wraps around me—and actually closes,” I confided, honestly.

“So—you think that everything that happened on this trip is because of me?” Christine asked, cautiously.

“Absolutely. Without a doubt. If it weren’t for you, then I’d be sitting at home writing lesson plans for next year, eating ice cream until it seeped out of my pores,” I confirmed.

“And the change in you… is… is… because of me?”

“Oh my God—100% because of you. I owe it
all
to you,” I smiled, pulling my robe tightly around me.

“That’s precisely what I was afraid of,” Christine whispered.

Twitter: Someone needs to punch me in the face repeatedly if I ever mention anything referring to Brazil. And breakfast should always be wine. #HomeWrecker #WaxThis #Baldilocks #WritingSexScenes

Everything that happened on this trip was because of me.
Everything
. She said so. She absolutely positively believed I was the reason, the cause, the catalyst for her to cheat on a loving, decent man.

I was a home wrecker.

Christine Home Wrecker Zolendz
.

Someone should write one of those God-awful country songs about what a horrible friend I was. I was finding myself on this trip, but it was costing my friend her marriage. The guilt tore at my gut, and tears stung painfully in my eyes.

Shoving the soft plush hotel pillows over my face, I cried for the rest of the night. Snot-nosed, guilt-ridden crying, because I was the reason her marriage was going to end. So what could a friend possibly do to make up for screwing up someone’s life so badly?

I called in for a total spa day.

As soon as we woke that next morning, we were pampered with mimosas and a decadent tropical fruit breakfast. Massages, manicures, pedicures, and some sort of mud bath and cucumber crap to soften our skin. Seaweed detox, hot stone full body massages and some sort of herbal relaxation capsule. All the relaxing girlie stuff that Angelisa loved. And I barely tolerated, but Hell, it was the least, the very least, I could do.

Then they led us into the
waxing room
.

This was a bit of virgin territory for me, so I was a moderately concerned, but the massages and all the cucumber-mud-seaweed crap had relaxed me into a melty mess of soft liquidy bones, so I said what the Hell and followed behind Angelisa into a soft white room with creamy white leather couches to sit on.

A handful of soft-spoken white clad women tiptoed around the room and handed us glasses of white wine. The taste of sweet fruit burst in my mouth at the first sip, and I swore a purr rolled out of my mouth. Next to me, Angelisa hummed in response. Yet, somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind was a free-floating thought that in a moment one of the angelically dressed tiptoeing creatures would be calling my name into one of the small cubicle shaped rooms and would soon know more about my vagina than my gynecologist and my ex-husband put together. (I’d begun to refer to him as my ‘ex-husband’ to get my go-get-‘em game face on.)

Now, don’t get me wrong; I don’t grow my own jungle in the nether regions of Zolendzland. I thought I did what most women did, you know, stand in the shower, one leg up leaning heavily on the edge of the bathtub carefully holding some girly named pastel razor against my skin, hoping to not end up on the nightly news in one of those horribly tragic, yet bizarre death-by-shaving stories. I always gambled being one of those news headlines instead of facing the utter embarrassment of visiting a wax salon.

I mean, come on, there’s just something a bit off to me about willingly waving your ass in the air in front of some stranger’s face and holding your own butt cheeks open for the said stranger to layer your skin with hot wax to forcefully yank out your hair. It was the sort of situation that always ended up in badly retold horror stories. I tried not to think much about the process. Seriously, we all knew my imagination tended to run away with me, and I’d rather not die of an anxiety attack naked with my butt waving in the air. It was bad enough I was beginning to feel a little nervous, complete with the trembling of the limbs and fluttering of the belly.

“Ms. Zolendz? Ms. Stone? Right this way please,” a soft voice cooed from one of the back rooms. “Your waxing rooms are ready for you.” I gulped back the rest of my glass of wine and grabbed another from one of the trays. If the bottle were around, I would have swiped the whole thing. Maybe I did have a few kleptomaniac tendencies.

How hard could this be? I’ve had two C-sections, an ablation, a hysterectomy, and a root canal. This should be cake
. At least that was what my thoughts were at the bottom of the second glass of wine.

What looked like two Victoria’s Secret models came out from the back and escorted Angelisa and me into our separate waxing
closets
. My supermodel looked barely twenty years old with soft, creamy, stupid, non-wrinkled skin and was dressed in a silky white toga-like thing. My steps faltered; the scenario just had
wrong
written all over it. How the Hell did someone my age continuously get into these kinds of positions? Positions! Ha.

“Hi, my name is Lindsey,” the girl said, handing me yet another glass of white wine with a dainty little hand.

A small helpless groan escaped past my lips.

“Is this your first time?” she inquired, sweetly.

“Uh huh,” I said, cringing and sipping at the wine. Okay, I gulped. Sue me, I was about to get my hoo-ha ripped to shreds; I was a wee bit nervous.

Lindsey then proceeded to explain the horror of the waxing process to me. Before she could even finish saying how she’d remove the most sensitive areas first there was a loud buzzing in my ears, and my heart was palpitating.

Black dots formed in my vision, and the room spun around me. I was immediately disrobed and placed in the most inappropriate position, which caused me to bust out in the most obnoxious round of giggles I’d ever partaken in.

Next door, I could just about hear Angelisa’s whispers, “What the Hell are you doing in there? Aren’t you getting waxed? You should
not
be giggling in there!” Her words were followed by a “hush hush” from her waxer.

“Okay,” Lindsey spoke softly. “I’m going to begin with your most sensitive area first. Here we go.” Then, there was a pause.

A long pause.

Lindsey did nothing. I waited. Still nothing.

Then—

“SONOFAMOTHERHUMPINGCOCKSUCKINGMONKEY’SBITCHASSUNCLE!” The words tore out of my vocal chords uncontrollably. I was blinded by a white-hot thunderbolt of sheer fiery pain. Lucifer-licking Lindsey tsked and spread on some more hot wax. There was no time to brace myself, no way of escaping the small wax chamber of doom without getting tangled in the long strips of hot wax that seemed to be strangely laying on every surface in the little wax chamber in wait to bite into my poor skin.

“BITCH!” I screamed. Her eyes narrowed in my direction. Her face remained expressionless with just a small tug of curled up lip. More wax was poured.
Breathe. I had to keep breathing
. There were just so many spots swimming in front of my eyes.
I had to fight to remain conscious or this evil waxing witch might tear out every single strand of loose hair she found across my body
.

Wax. Rip.

“YOULIKETHIS!YOUSTUPIDTORTUROUSWHORE!” The evil witch paused for a brief second, then triumphantly held a wax covered strip stuck with my hair right in front of my face, taunting me.

From next door, Angelisa’s screams where louder, albeit a bit more incomprehensible than mine. “GRRRASSSHITFUCKACAT!”

Lucifer-licking Lindsey continued her torture. Wax. Rip. “STUPIDCUNTRIPPINGBITCH!” I screamed. I wanted to pour hot wax in her wide open eyes!

“FUCKINGUGLYSKINNYVAGINATEARINGBITCH!” Angelisa shrieked next door.

Wax. Rip. “HOLYMOTHEROFSHITBALLSFUCKINGBITCH!” I screeched, clenching my teeth. “I’ll pour this shit on your tongue and rip it right out,” I threatened as Lucifer-licking Lindsey just hummed as she worked.

“COCKSUCKERBITCHFACESTUPIDHEAD!” Angelisa roared.

It went on like that for what felt like hours. I desperately tried to focus all my thoughts on breathing and not kicking Lucifer-licking Lindsey in the neck and stuffing hot wax down her throat.

When it was done, I had never felt more violated in my life. I was freaking
bald
. Like a newborn baby bald.
How was this supposed to be sexy?

I could barely walk out of the spa. “It feels like someone took a bat to my vagina.”

“It goes away in a few minutes,” Ang said as she swiped two more glasses of wine from the waiting area. I wanted to grab the glasses of wine from her and pour them down my underwear to ease the burning, singeing feeling that was radiating from my freshly fried hoo-ha.

“The crappy part is now I feel like a prepubescent girl,” I said, downing the glass of whine she handed to me in one enormous gulp.

My knees began to tingle. I was still such a lightweight.

We walked out of the spa as another group of middle-aged women were walking in all excited, giggling about getting waxed
down there
. Meanwhile, my eyes were still tearing, and I was half drunk and walking like a cowboy. I wanted to warn them. I wanted to protest for innocent vaginas everywhere.

Then Skye Jordan walked in and Angelisa and I forgot all about our burning, raw vags and went into full fangirl mode, complete with high-pitched squeals and Angelisa asking if she could pet her hair. Skye looked at Ang and shook her head vehemently. As if anyone would ever allow some stranger to pet her?

Trying to be cool and compose myself, I warned her about getting a Brazilian wax. Skye smiled shyly, and said, “I had one last week, so I wouldn’t be walking funny at the signing tomorrow.”

“The signing tomorrow?” Angelisa questioned.

“Yes, aren’t you both authors?” Skye asked, looking back and forth between us.

Ang and I nodded, speechlessly.

“I thought so. You’re both so funny. You should write a book together,” she complimented and walked through the spa door.

“Holy shit,” I marveled. “Skye Jordan—THE Skye Jordan knows us.”

“Holy shit is right! Skye Jordan! Do you think the Renegades are real, because if so, I’d love to meet the guy she based Wes off of?” Angelisa asked, staring at the door like she could will Skye to come back through it.

“Sometimes, I wonder about you,” I said, shaking my head. “You morph between being so normal and then immediately turn into some bumbling idiot.”

“Oh I do, do I?” Ang said, angrily. “Man, you’ve been such a treat these past few days.

I didn’t want to get into it with her, but I did want her to know that I still had some serious issues and misgivings about her recent choices. She and I needed to clear the air and stop ignoring the giant white elephant in the room. But then, my phone started buzzing in my bag, and we all know how short my attention span is when I hear things that make cool noises.

And vibrate.

“Bare Bottom MacLadyParts Incorporated. Baldilocks speaking,” I answered the phone.

“Do I even want to know why you’re answering your phone like that?” Jake’s deep voice barked into the phone.

“No. No, you definitely do not want to know anything about any of that,” I sighed, even though he was the one to put the idea into my head when he was explaining to me some of the things that guys liked sexually. There just wasn’t any way I could possibly tell him that I actually took his advice.