Nineteen
Unfortunately for Portia, Sherry Comey’s booze didn’t wear off as fast as expected. I woke up two days later, starving and wondering for at least five minutes where the hell I actually was. It was like I’d come out of a coma and lost the last ten years of my life.
“What the fuck?” I whispered to myself. I looked around the room wildly, my breath coming in deep gasps. I was about to start screaming when I recognized my dresser. My breathing began to calm down, and I collapsed back onto the pillows as my mind raced to piece together the events of what I initially thought were the last 8 hours.
I lay there for a moment and things came back in bits and pieces. Grace was annoyed with us. Katie thought she was a judge. Helen probably violated her husband when she got home and Sterling… I swallowed hard. I’d walked out of Sterling’s house after telling him I’d never see him again.
Sherry Comey was a diabolical soul. Maybe if we hadn’t drank quite so much, we could have had fun without tipping over the edge into straight up crazy.
My stomach growled the song of its people. I didn’t feel bad but I was starving. Ravenous, in fact. Why in the hell was I so hungry?
I found my way out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen. I made a big ass pot of coffee which I planned to consume in its entirety and rummaged through the fridge for something. Anything.
The doorbell rang.
“Go away!” I yelled at the door. Food was first on the agenda.
“Oh thank the gods! You’re alive!” came the voice from outside the door.
“Helen?”
“Katie and Grace, too.” There was a pause. “Do you have food?”
A snort escaped me. I wiped my hands off and went to answer the door.
A bark of laughter escaped Grace before she slapped her hands over her mouth. I stared in stark disbelief at Katie and Helen.
“You two look like shit,” I said.
Helen’s hair stood up on one side and mascara was smeared halfway down her face. Katie’s hair was even worse. Her usually shiny, straight hair was matted up on one side so far it stuck out of the side of her head several inches. Lipstick was smeared so far down her face, her chin was red.
“Pot meet kettle,” Helen grumbled and shoved her way in.
I frowned and paused to look at myself in the mirror before I shut the door.
“Holy shit,” I muttered.
There was a dent in my face from the edge of the pillow. My makeup had strayed into places it was never meant to be and my nose was swollen for some weird reason. I turned wild eyes to the women.
“What in the hell happened last night?”
“Wellll,” Grace said as she wandered into my kitchen. “Not last night. The night before, actually.”
“The… what?”
“Yeah,” Helen said, her voice grim. “That shit took us down for two full days. Can you imagine? Hank thought I was dead.”
“I woke up and Martin had the entire Roma family standing over me holding vigil. They were holding candles and staring at me all freaky when I woke up. It took me ten minutes to stop screaming.”
A laugh burbled up within me and once it came out, I couldn’t stop myself. Seconds later, Katie and Helen joined in. Grace stared at us, shook her head, and started cracking eggs into a bowl.
“You bitches are crazy,” she muttered.
We couldn’t even respond for a minute. Helen, holding her side, finally gasped out, “If you wouldn’t have been pregnant, your ass would have been right there with us, probably trying to touch everyone just so you could tell them how they’d die.”
“Not true,” she said, but a small smile touched the edge of her lips.
“Did I grant any wishes?” Katie said in a small voice.