Especially in a place called Cooters where every horn dog from here to Johnsonville goes to ladies’ night ’cuz the drafts are only a dollar. If someone doesn’t watch her, they’ll eat our innocent Em alive. You dropped the ball, Dixie Davis. Next time, you have to pull your shift and take my shift, too.”
Em gave her friends a sour face, tucking her hair behind her ears. “I’m plenty of adult sittin’ right here, I’ll have you know. I don’t need a babysitter, and I’m not so innocent. And if I want to have four drinks, I will. Maybe I’ll have five,” she said defiantly.
She deserved five. It had been a long two months since the finalization of her divorce. Seven total if you counted the time since she’d found out Clifton was an infidel who wanted to wear women’s clothing and live in Atlanta as Trixie LeMieux.
Most of the pain of that discovery had passed. That Clifton hadn’t even given her the chance to understand that part of him still stung. She’d always prided herself on being open to new things, despite the fact that she was born and raised in a town stuck somewhere in the 1950s.
Cross-dressing hadn’t ever entered her mind when she’d been thinking about what the word open meant, but who’s to say she wouldn’t have adjusted? Clifton just never gave her the chance to say one way or the other. He’d just left.
And now, here she was, single at thirty-six with an eight-year-old and a five-year-old to raise with little help from her ex-husband. His embarrassment after an incident in town, where his secret was publicly and cruelly revealed by none other than Louella Palmer, had kept him from coming to see the boys as often as they needed seeing by their daddy.
Dixie stretched her arms upward with a yawn of her perfectly glossed, pink lips. “Fine. Next girls’ night out, I’ll take two shifts. Now, what do you say we get you home, Em?”
Em shook her off, reaching for more wine. She could drink as much wine as she liked, her internal rebel coaxed. “Stop appeasin’ me, Dixie. I’m a grown woman, and I don’t want to go home to my lonely, empty house right now. Gareth and Clifton Junior are spendin’ the weekend at Mama’s, so I’m a free bird. Just like Lynyrd Skynyrd says.”
Dixie gave her a pointed look—one you’d give a willful preschooler. “You know what they say about idle hands and the devil.”
“As Satan’s closest confidante, I’m sure you’ve heard all the gossip,” Em shot back, squeezing her friend’s arm with a giggle.
When they’d been forced into the race for the phone-sex contest Landon set forth with Em as mediator, leaving them in each other’s company more often than not, she’d used Dixie’s former cruelties full force as a way to continually poke her with what she now lovingly referred to as a “gentle Em reminder.” Nowadays, since they’d become so close, she did it with love, but she still did it.
“I thought we were past my mean girl and well into forgiveness. Will you ever run out of nails for my coffin?” Dixie inquired with gooey sweetness.
“Lucky Judson’s Hardware store has aisles’ and aisles’ worth. How’s never suit you?” Em shot back with a lopsided grin.
LaDawn burst out laughing, the sound rich and deep. She flicked a purple-painted nail at Em. “Phew! You are all ’bout your sass these days, aren’t you, Miss Emmaline? Every time I turn around you’re assertin’ yourself in one way or another. You’re all breathin’ fire at us at the drop of a hat lately.”
Marybell nodded, reaching into a bag of Cheetos Dixie had produced from her deep desk drawer. “Oh, yes, ma’am, she is. If you look at her cross-eyed, flames come right out of her cute little mouth,” she said on a giggle, tweaking Em’s lower lip.
It was true. She’d become a little testy in this quest to show anyone within earshot she was no longer Emmaline Without A Spine. Some would even say she’d gone overboard. Nonetheless, she protested. “Bah! They do not.”
Dixie popped a Cheeto in her mouth, licking her fingers. “Do so. If I simply say the word no, even if it’s when you’re askin’ me if I’d like another glass of sweet tea, you jump right down my throat. You’re always barking orders at us like we wouldn’t listen to you if you didn’t holler them with that stern teacher voice you’ve adopted. Reminds me of old Mrs. Beauchamp. Remember her from third grade?”
Marybell nodded her agreement, her eyes, heavy with dark makeup, playful. “Next thing you know, she’ll show up with a ruler and crack our hands to get her point across.”
Em rolled her eyes at them. Admittedly, as of late, she had a case of the “I will be heard” syndrome. The one where everything she said had to be full throttle or she was convinced she wouldn’t be taken seriously. It would just take some time to find her balance. Toning her stern teacher’s voice down would probably be a good place to start.
“Uh-huh,” LaDawn confirmed, patting Marybell on the back. “You know what, I take back my protestin’ from earlier. Some days, the way you’ve been orderin’ us all around, maybe we should just let you take all the calls and we’ll all go shop for shoes, seein’ as you seem to know how to do it better.”
That sudden need to prove herself, the one she’d just reminded herself was on the warpath, the one that was completely unwarranted and absolutely unnecessary, reared its badly mannered head—again. “I bet I could answer your calls—all of ’em.” She rolled her neck in the “wanna go ’round?” way LaDawn did. “I know all the dirty words because I hear Miss LaDawn here say them like she’s recitin’ her prayers before bedtime, all day long.”
Em’s defensive answer sparked the competitive streak in LaDawn. She sat upright and pointed to the wine bottle. “You just stop talkin’ crazy from over there and have another glass of wine. You would faint dead if you had to pretend to spank some man with my special spatula and scream, ‘You dirty, dirty boy!’ You know it, and so does everyone else sittin’ here.”
Dixie held up a hand, leaning forward and putting it between the two women with a look of admonishment. “Girls, how quickly we forget I’ve banned all forms of competition. Em, you stop riling the caged beast, and both of you play nicely with each other.”
“You only banned them because you can’t resist them, Dixie,” Em taunted, knowing full well she was again poking her friend for her former habit of turning everything from pie eating to merely breathing into a death match.
Dixie narrowed her eyes in Em’s direction, her husky voice raspy when she said, “You’re baiting me, Em.”
Em nodded, throwing her a smug smile, though it was full of love. “If I had a worm, I’d dangle it in your face.”
“I still say you couldn’t do it,” LaDawn coaxed with a sly grin, twisting her hair and tying it up with a rubber band she always kept around her slender wrist. “You couldn’t even answer one phone call and say the P word without callin’ out forgiveness from on high. We’ll all be home and in our beds in no time flat before you get ’round to it. I’d bet next week’s girls’ night drinks on it.”
Dixie held up a finger, her eyes flashing warning signals at LaDawn. “In Em’s condition, she’ll end up meeting some crazy killer for chicken and waffles at Madge’s. Stop goading her, LaDawn.”
“Oh, really?” Em challenged, using her hands to push off the desk’s top and stick her face in LaDawn’s. She balanced herself on her waist, teetering. “You’re on, Latex Lady!”
Dropping
