Slay Alive

Chapter 1

one

“What’ll you have, girlie?”

The gray-haired grizzled bartender blows a cloud of smoke in my face and gives me an expectant look. The smoke made my eyes water but it was really working for me considering it was camouflage for my tears. Four hours ago, instead of getting on one knee in the middle of the restaurant my boyfriend brought me to for our sixth anniversary, he’d broken up with me over a platter of buttered snails.

“They’re Escargot, Bonnie. I swear. You should know this by now.”

I’d come to the Prickly Possum right after I’d gotten up in the middle of Preston’s “it’s not you, it’s me” speech to get shit-faced and cry into my beer where no one I knew would ever see me. So far I’d managed to knock back enough drinks to keep pace with the bachelorette party tearing it up at the bar with me.

“No snails!” I explode as I dab at my tears with a crinkled cocktail napkin and sniffle. “I don’t want to eat snails!” I tell the bartender, which got me another cloud of smoke and a gravelly uh-huh.

A minute later a beer was plunked down in front of me. Definitely not snails. I nod my tearful thanks and start in on the beer while I replayed the dinner from hell in my memory. I’d been so stupid thinking it was the perfect night. I’d worn my best dress, a sparkly pink number that fluttered when I twirled in the mirror. My hair was up and curled the way I knew Preston liked it. I’d done what I thought he would like, just like I always did.

Oh god. I’d twisted myself into an idiot pretzel for a man that would never think I was good enough for him.

“You’re just not serious enough, Bon-Bon. I need a serious woman. I’m going places and what are you doing? Making jewelry and for what?”

Preston was a lawyer. It’d been hot… at first. The whole competency boner thing with him being good with words and not afraid to take charge. Besides, the man could wear a suit within an inch of its life. I like to think Preston had found my whole starving artist and living by the seat of my pants thing hot, too. He had to have, right? Even if he did somewhere in the six years we were together, he’d stopped finding me charming if tonight was anything to go by. I guess it wasn’t cute to say you had three roommates when you were twenty-seven. I work on chugging my beer and start weighing the pros on double-fisting beers until the bar shuts down when a woman sits down on a stool next to me.

“Hey, you okay, sweetie?” A platinum-haired woman asks me with a concerned look. She’s wearing a crown and a white sparkly sash with the words Bride-to-Be in shiny gold lamé marking her as the woman of the hour.

I nod tearfully and drain my beer with a burp. “My-I-I got broken up with and you look really hot. I'm so-o-o happy for you .” I barely manage to get out the last few words because it’s hard for me to talk without crying but whatever. I’m not well.

Her pretty face scrunches in a frown and she shakes her head. “Oh, honey! Aren’t you the sweetest? You don’t need that man, right girls?” she asks and the women and men in her party let out a magical chorus of “fuck men” and “you’re a goddess, queen.” Their supportive words are truly the song of my heart that I didn’t know I needed to hear right now.

She turns and looks at the bartender. “Can I get another one for my friend?” she asks.

The bartender gives me a look like he thinks he should have cut me off a beer ago but when she slaps a twenty down on the bar he shrugs and drops two cocktails in front of us.

“I’m drinking Cosmos! Now you are too! isn’t that so cool?” she asks me as she raises her glass up in the air.

I was only drinking beers because I didn’t know how I was going to pay for the trunk show I was going to next weekend, since my budget didn’t include getting properly wasted after getting dumped.

I clink my cocktail glass with the bride and give her a watery smile. “Cosmos are perfect! Thank you.”

“Oh and before I forget, here.” She supports me in the purest and most joyful way drunk girls always support each other and plucks her tiara off and places it on my head with a bright smile. “This is for you so magic knows where to find you.”

My tiara slides to the side and into my eyes. I shove it back into my hair with a happy sob. “You’re like my fairy godmother, you know that?”

She laughs and the sound is happy and free. She sounds the way I did when I thought I was getting proposed to this morning. I’d left my house with a hop in my step after booking the week long gem and jewelry trunk show a town over. It was the most exclusive showcase in the area and I’d never been able to get in, but this time I did. It made everything feel different. I’d felt invincible that morning and my roommates could see it too, telling me my dress made my boobs look fantastic. I’d felt fantastic, until Preston had bulldozed me with his bullshit.

“I’m going to Boston to join one of the country’s best firms. You’re not-well, you’re not the kind of woman I’m looking to move forward with at that level, Bon-Bon.”

“He thinks just because he’s moving to Boston he’s so special. Fuck Boston! I don’t even know why it matters if I’m serious enough for Boston. What if Boston isn’t serious enough for me? He’s the one that calls me Bon-Bon for Christ’s Sake. I hate that name!”

“You know what? I’m from Boston,” the bride tells me and I sway on my stool, worried that I might have just put my foot in my mouth talking shit about her home but before I can apologize she keeps talking. “And you’re right! Boston isn’t serious enough for you. I know you and you're like a whole lot of seriousness. We hate Boston!” The bride-to-be raises her beer up in the air. “Don’t we, everybody?”

“Fuck Boston!” The bar explodes in support and I never in my life have felt more loved than in that moment in the Prickly Possum.

“This place is the best place in the world, you know that, right?” I ask the bartender, who’s pouring shots and puffing his cigarette out of the corner of his mouth for all he’s worth. I don’t get an answer from the bartender but he does turn a blind eye when my new best friend, the Bride, hands me a jello shot and shouts “bottoms up” at the top of her lungs.

Never one to disobey a bride, I take the jello shot and then promptly need to puke.

I wobble to my feet, barely managing to stick the landing off the stool after getting a helping hand from the Bride.

“Where are you going?” she asks. “Do you need help getting home?”

I shake my head. “I’m not going home. I just-I’m going to be sick.” I gag and cover my mouth with my hands to stop the sick rising like the fucking noonday tide in my belly. “I have to go!” I run for the bathroom or in the direction I hope is the bathroom. I’ve never been to the Prickly Possum before so it’s anyone’s guess where I’m fleeing.

“Wait!” The Bride yells but I keep going. I have to. I’m going to vomit all over her and her bridal bachelorette party. The ultimate betrayal after they’d been so supportive. I won’t do them dirty like that. I run faster, bumping into people in my quest for the bathroom and almost sob from relief when I see the door up ahead.

One final burst of speed has me hurtling out of the loud smoky bar to hurl straight onto the sidewalk. I throw up right in front of a kissing couple and burst into tears at ruining such a romantic moment. I’m a monster.

“I-I’m so-sorry,” I apologize through my tears and the woman holds her hands up and takes a step towards me.

“Hey, it’s okay, can we help-”

I cut her off when another wave of sickness hits me and I lose the stupid snails I choked down for Preston right on my best shoes. The woman and her lover hightail it out of there while my stomach ejects every last thing I had at my fancy break up dinner. When I’m finally rid of the cursed shelled bastards I sag against the brick wall of the Prickly Possum and take in a deep breath.

“I’ll never eat another snail for as long as I live,” I whisper to the night. The door opens and the sound of laughter and music spills out as someone steps out onto the sidewalk with me.

“Hey, there you are!” It’s the Bride wearing a big smile. She looks relieved that she’s found me. What a supportive Queen. “I got worried when you ran off alone.”

“I got sick,” I tell her and point at my destroyed shoes. When I move, I can feel my dinner squelching between my toes. It’s enough to make me light-headed so I get it when the Bride gags at the sight of my ruined pumps.

“Oh, that’s…well,” she pauses to dry heave but keeps going like the champ she is, “that will come right out with some club soda, right?”

I don’t know what club soda is but I nod anyway as I lean over and brace my hands on my knees. I think I’m about to throw up again. We’re both quiet for a second. Me because I’m concentrating on making it through the next second because I just got hit with a case of the spins… but the Bride? I don’t know why she’s silent. When I lift my heavy head to look at her I see her shifting from foot to foot with a frown on her perfect face. Her bachelorette sash flutters and sparkles in the evening breeze.

“Do you know who I am?” she asks softly.

“You’re the Bride?” I ask, because isn’t she? What does she mean? I’m too drunk for this line of questioning.

“No, I’m Rhiannon,” she says with a sigh and there’s a sense of finality to her words, like she’s decided on something. She takes a step closer, careful to stay out of my puke puddle. “I brought you another drink, Bonnie.” She holds up a cocktail glass for me.

I fend her off with a pathetic sway of my hand. “No more drinks. I can’t survive it.”

“You need this one. You threw up your last one.”

“Rhiannon.” I whimper when she brings the glass up in front of me. “I can’t.”

“Trust me. Bonnie, look at me.” I look at Rhiannon and swallow hard. I never told her my name. The thought sobers me up enough to straighten up and look at Rhiannon properly. She’s the same beautiful and bubbly Bride-to-Be that I met in the bar but there’s something different to her now. An edge that wasn’t there before. When she smiles at me, it’s not as kind as I thought it was before. It’s urgent. Like a plea.

She gives the drink in her hand a little shake. “You need this drink.”

The glass in her hand swirls. A pink light glows from the liquid and I swear there’s a glittery shine to the liquid when it catches the neon light of the Prickly Possum’s sign. It’s like the drink is moving all on its own.

“W-what is that for?” I whisper while I watch the pink drink shift and swirl in the glass Rhiannon’s holds.

“It’s for love,” she says softly. “True love.”

I blink. That word. Love. Love is the only thing I’ve ever dreamed of. The big all consuming love that drives people to insanity in order to be with the one they’ve given their heart to. A love like that starts wars, divides kingdoms. It’s the stuff of dating simulator games.

That kind of love is what I want. But that love doesn’t exist in real life.

“True love is inside of you,” Rhiannon says softly. Tears prick my eyes. She sounds sad. I don’t want my friend to be sad so I take the glass from her. Maybe she means self-love? What else could be inside of me?

“I want true love,” I tell her.

Rhiannon’s big blue eyes sparkle when I say that. “Drink your fill of love then. It’s here, Bonnie,” she says pointing to me. “Take the gift of true love and be full.”

“My stomach?” I ask worriedly when I see her finger pointing right at my sour stomach. On cue, my stomach gurgles and I wince. I don’t think I’ll be able to hold down the drink. I lift the glass to my lips but not before warning her. “We’re playing with fire, Rhia.”

She laughs and the sound reminds me of bells chiming, of birds singing. “Rhia. I like that.”

I tip the drink back. It's sweet on my tongue, like sugar and strawberries and surprisingly it doesn’t come right back up once I finish it.

My stomach feels more settled now that I downed the whole thing. I sigh in relief and hold the glass out to Rhia. “Was there electrolytes in that because…wow….” my voice trails off because there’s no one on the sidewalk with me anymore. Inside the Prickly Possum the music still blares and laughter spills out into the night when a man hurries out and past me but Rhia is gone.

“Hello?” I call out into the night but no answer comes but the wind whistling by as it kicks up leaves. “Rhia?”

I wait for Rhia for another minute before I stumble home because I’m still drunk as a skunk.