“Sweet tea, my ass! Does anyone have a knife?” Tiffany asked, standing up.
“Wait!” I exclaimed, foreseeing suturing in my future. I turned to Rose. “Do you have a hair straightener?”
Puzzled expression in place, Rose hesitated. “I do, but . . .” she eyed my already straightened hair, “Why?”
“I’m going to use it to open the bottle.”
* * *
“Nothing’s happening.”
“You gotta give it time to warm up, Leah.”
“That’s what she said.”
Snickering sounded from behind me as I rotated Rose’s straightener around the neck of the wine bottle. Something I’d been doing for the last thirty seconds. We were all crammed into Rose’s half bath: Rose and Leah beside me, Tiffany, Margo, and Eliza craning their heads around from behind us, all of our eyes glued to the cork. As the straightener’s plates slowly heated the glass, the gas from the bottle should expand and push the cork up and out of the bottle.
At least, that’s the theory.
Forty-five seconds in and still nothing. I was just a weirdo holding a straightener to a wine bottle.
Maybe this wasn’t a great idea. They were going to kick me out of this club before I was even a member.
“I think I see something! Oh, wait. No, nothing yet,” someone murmured from behind me.
“Do ya know how long it’s supposed to take, sugar?” Rose whispered as I continued patiently holding the straightener to the bottle.
I shrugged. “I think only a minute.”
“Maybe you need to rub it.”
“It’s not a genie, Tiffany,” a different voice mumbled, followed by a cackle that I think was Margo’s.
“Or a dick.”Thatwas said loudly in my ear by my best friend.
“Y’all are assholes,” Tiffany grumbled.
I bit back a laugh, loving the banter of these women.
“Look!” Rose’s shout quieted all of us as the cork suddenly jerked. Then after a few more seconds the cork wiggled up and out of the bottle followed by shouts and claps and whoops and I think even a “Well I’ll be!”.
Putting the straightener down, I grinned from ear to ear and held up the now cork-less bottle victoriously, which only made them cheer louder.
Maybe I was going to fit in here after all.
* * *
Two hours and three bottles of wine later, we were spread out in Rose’s living room, a large rotating Disney tree beside us, discussing something I never thought I’d discuss with other people before: romance novels. For the first half hour, we talked about the book we read which was hands down, the best slow burn I’d ever read.
“I wasn’t expecting to like it so much,” I admitted. “I never thought I’d like a slow burn that much.”
“Mariana Zapata is the queen of the slow burn. ReadWait for Itnext. I’ll do a buddy read with you,” Eliza offered.
Rose, who was sitting next to me, grabbed my hand. “Wait for Itis one of my favorites! Can I read it with y’all? It’s high time for a re-read.”
It was after this that Margo asked the question if you could take three book boyfriends to an island with you, who would you take and why? Everything kind of went off the rails from there, wherein we talked about anything and everything books in the most enthusiastic, tangential, talk over one another without anyone getting angry kind of way.
“Have any of you read anything by Lady Jane?” Tiffany asked. She was on the floor across from me, sitting in front of Margo who was braiding her hair.
