Chapter Two - Maddie
I pull up to Annie’s house—wait. I guess it’s not Annie’s house anymore, is it? It’s my house. Or no. Because I don’t really think I live here. Do I?
I laugh kinda loud as I turn Evan’s Tesla off in the driveway. I mean, of course this is my place. I’ve lived here for almost six months. But now that Annie’s gone and Tyler and I are together…
I get out and go inside. There’s music coming from the back yard and I can see Caroline and Diane sitting under the old palapa wearing sunglasses. Diane is swirling a pink umbrella around inside her fruity pink drink, while Caroline talks and stabs a toothpick into some red grapes on the plate in front of her.
I open the sliding door and exit the house. “Hey,” I say, closing the door behind me. It’s not really cold outside, but it’s not exactly warm either, so it’s curious that they’re out here. But then again, not really. They spend a lot of time outside when they’re not working. I imagine if I had their job, I would too. “What’s going on?” I ask.
“For fuck’s sake!” Caroline says, standing up and rushing over to me. She pulls me into a hug and squeezes me tight. “We’ve been worried sick about you, Maddie.”
Diane is up now too, her sunglasses low down on the bridge of her nose as she looks at me through thick, fake eyelashes. Which suddenly makes me think of Raquel and the other girls at Pete’s. Which makes me remember that Pete’s is gone. That Pete is gone. And I’ll probably never see those girls again.
God. How things have changed. I feel equal parts sad and happy about the change. Because on the one hand, I feel like I’m out of the rut I was in. And on the other… I feel like I gave up a lot to get here.
Caroline holds me out at arm’s length, looking me over like I need a good looking-over. “You’re OK? You were in Monaco?”
Monaco? “Uh, yeah, I’m fine. How’d you know I was in... Monaco?”
Diane huffs some air, which blows her hair up around her eyes, and then points to the table under the palapa and says, “Sit down and have a drink with us.”
I relent. Not because I want to have a drink with them—I really just want to grab some clothes and go back to Evan and Robert’s place and get back into bed with Tyler. I know if I’m gone too long he’ll get antsy and that’s not a good thing. He might decide he’s recovered and start doing something stupid like… I dunno. Take your pick of things Tyler could be doing that he shouldn’t be doing. It’s highly unlikely he’s in bed right now.
“Just one,” I say to Diane. But she’s already walking into the house to blend up something cool and fruity for me.
“How’s Tyler?” Caroline asks. “Diane said he was pretty upset when she saw him. Are you guys OK? Is everything...?”
I open my mouth to answer, then stop, because my answer was going to be about the state of his bruised—not broken—ribs. But I catch myself just in time. “Oh, yeah, he’s fine. We’re fine,” I say instead.
“You don’t seem convinced,” Diane says, returning, plopping down next to Caroline and sliding a strawberry daiquiri towards me. She eyes me. “What’s really going on? We haven’t seen you in I don’t know how long.” She sips her own drink.
“It’s not that we’re prying,” Caroline says. “It’s that, well… We’re lonely.”
Diane huffs out another breath of air, once again blowing her bangs away from her eyes. Her sunglasses are on top of her head now, so I can see her better.
I realize she might’ve been crying.
“Are you guys OK?” I ask, suddenly feeling awful for not asking about them first.
“Perfect,” Diane quips back. “I mean we’re just great. We lost one of our best friends, and now we’re about to lose another one. What could be better than that?”
Best friend? Another one? Does she mean me?
I just stare at them for a few seconds, trying to wrap my head around this new development. They are friends, I decide. They took me in when I had nowhere to go. They accepted me and made me feel welcome. And yeah, some of that was just practicality. They had an empty room, I had rent money. But we’re more than that. Aren’t we?
“I know you’re a loner,” Diane says, wiping her eyes. She’s crying for sure now, but not like sobs or anything. Just tears. “I get it. You’re a survivor. And you don’t need anyone. You built your life around self-reliance. But we’re pack people, ya know? Caroline and me. And now Annie’s gone and you’re… you’re gonna leave us too, aren’t you?”
“No,” I say automatically. But I regret it immediately. Because yes. I am.
“Are you done stripping?” Caroline asks.
I nod, inhale deeply, then let the breath out slowly. “Yeah, I’m done. I don’t know what I’m gonna do next but… Pete’s, ya know? It was... I can’t explain it, I guess. But it was necessary and now…”
“And now you’re moving on,” Diane finishes. Her tears have been wiped away, her stoic exterior back in place.
I nod. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“We’re happy for you,” Caroline says. “And for Annie too. I mean, who the hell wants their best friends to be stuck wasting their only lives as whores, right?”
“Caroline,” I start. But I have nothing for that. She’s right. No one chooses to sell their body if they don’t have to. I need to say something kind to my friends. Because that’s what they are. Maybe we’re not your classic girl gang, but we’re in this together.
At least we were. Before Annie left town to find her happily ever after. Before I found my long-lost soulmate and he ended up being a bazillionaire. Which makes my current situation kind of fairytale too, doesn’t it?
If I wasn’t sitting next to two thoroughly distressed women, I’d laugh out loud at that. Because after all the pain, and the fear, and the anger, and the failure—I found something good. And it had nothing to do with anything but luck.
Diane and Caroline didn’t get the good luck. They’re still here, in exactly the same place they were. Stuck. Two college-educated women selling sex to make ends meet.
It’s not fair.
But when has life ever been fair?
There’s several moments of awkward silence. “So,” I say, trying to fill the empty space. “What do you guys have planned for the future?”
“If you move out, then I guess our future involves looking for a second new roommate.” Diane says this without hiding her animosity.
Old Maddie would be irritated with her for projecting her failures into my happiness, but I’m not Old Maddie. So I sympathize. “Look, you guys, you’re not stuck, OK? Stuck is a state of mind.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Diane says, taking a long sip of her drink.
I take a sip of mine, then almost choke from the rum. “That’s strong,” I say, eyes watering and throat burning.
“Not strong enough if you ask me,” Diane mutters back.
“Stuck isn’t a state of mind,” Caroline says. “It’s just reality, Maddie. And don’t mind Diane, she’s just upset because we feel like… like every time things start going good something happens to derail us, ya know?”
Boy, can I ever relate.
“And it’s not like we’re unhappy for you and Annie. You two deserve happiness.”
“We all deserve happiness,” I say.
“Yeah,” Diane says. “But we don’t all get lucky and find it, do we?”
“Look,” I say, and now it’s my turn to blow out a huff of breath. “You both have degrees, for Christ’s sake. What did you major in?”
“Economics,” Caroline says. “Both of us. But the market fell and job opportunities weren’t good and—”
“And now things are better!” I say brightly.
“Sure,” Diane says. “But we’ve spent the last few years as fucking prostitutes trying to pay off student loans. Uh, no one is going to be hiring us as financial advisors now.”
She’s right. Once you make a mistake like prostitution, it stays with you. Maybe not forever, but every bad decision digs you a little bit deeper into the hole. You gotta claw your way back up with a vengeance to have any hope of getting a second chance. It’s not what human resources is looking for when picking job candidates.
“Why did you guys go with that anyway?” I ask, probably not cautiously enough.
Diane glares at me. “Asks the stripper.” Yeah. That’s pretty fucking fair.
“There’s always a way.” I sigh. “You just need to be creative.”
“Like you?” Diane says, getting up and walking away. Then she calls over her shoulder, “Good luck, Maddie. I really mean that,” as she goes inside.
“Sorry,” Caroline says. “She’s just… down these days. She’ll come out of it. She always does.”
Yeah. What choice does she have, right? Give up or keep fighting. That’s all there is to life. And Diane is right. I was creative. I mean, I had a new idea practically every week. But none of them paid off. Not even the drone, even though it was a good idea in the end. I’ve failed at every creative venture I tried. Tyler’s the one who found fortune, not me. I’m just a tagalong.
“Well,” I say, getting up. “I gotta grab some clothes and stuff and get back to Tyler before he does something dumb.”
Caroline laughs as she gets up too. She hugs me tight and says, “Don’t be a stranger, OK? I’m gonna miss you more than you think.”
I smile at her. Sweet, sweet Caroline. I wish I could make everything perfect for her. But I can’t. So I don’t even try. “I promise,” I say. “I won’t.”
Back in my bedroom—which is actually neat since Tyler picked it up one day weeks ago and I haven’t had time to mess it all up again—I pack. At first I only pack a few outfits to get me through the week, but the thought of coming back here every few days just to get more clothes changes my mind.
I don’t want to be a stranger, but I don’t want to be here either.
So I pack up all my clothes that don’t have Scarlett written on them. I take down the few photos I had tacked to a bulletin board. Scotty and me. Us and the parents when we were kids. One of me and Annie from college, which I stole from her, because I have no pictures of myself during that time. And a few of all four of us—me, Caroline, Diane, and Annie—taking selfies during rare moments of happiness right after I moved in.
An hour later my room looks… cold. Impersonal. Ready for the next tenant who comes through here.
I’m not moving out.
I tell myself this over and over again.
But I am moving on.