But his girls were in the truck and their food was there too. It was getting late and we all needed to eat.

So I rolled up on my toes, but before I kissed him, I whispered, “Do me a favor and text me when you get back safe and you’re settled in.”

“Would do that anyway, babe.”

I smiled at him.

He gave me an eye-smile back and a squeeze and dipped his head to lay a hard, deep, short kiss on me.

When it was over, he let me go and I walked him to the door.

He was through it when he turned back to me and ordered, “I’m not here, boys are on duty, but arm the alarm anyway. Hear?”

I tried not to give him an annoyed look. “I always do.”

“Good,” he muttered, leaned in, lifting a hand to curl around the side of my neck and touched his mouth to mine.

He then walked away.

I wanted to give Zadie the relief of seeing the back of me (for the night) but I didn’t think that was the right thing to do. Further, I needed both the girls to know how much their father meant to me. I also wanted them to know I wanted them to mean something to me.

So I stood in the door and waved as Logan turned around.

I saw him do a chin lift. I saw Cleo (now in the front seat) give me a short return wave.

I also saw Zadie ignore me entirely.

They disappeared and I closed and locked the door and armed the alarm.

Then I turned to my house, my beautiful, perfect, empty house that was glowing charmingly with lamps lit here and there.

It suddenly didn’t seem so perfect.

On that thought, Poem came running in, Chief chasing her. They were on a direct trajectory to slamming into the back of the couch and they tried to put the brakes on, skidded and slid until they hit the rug where they rolled and disappeared under the couch.

Slowly I smiled.

Then I burst out laughing, grabbed my burrito, and went to the cupboard with my wineglasses to pour myself some wine.

*  *  *

The next evening, I paid the taxi driver and hurried into Club to meet the girls.

I was late.

I was late due to relaxing far too long in the bath (because I needed to) and dealing with two kittens who had no clue what a bath was but who thought it was something they wanted to try (Chief) or something that was akin to torture and wanted me to stop doing immediately (Poem).

So for ten minutes the bath wasn’t relaxing since Chief took repeated but failed flying leaps in order to join me in it and Poem scuttled up and down the side, staring at me with her sad eyes, opening and closing her little kitty mouth in silent, terrified mews.

Now I was here to meet the girls and I wanted to be out all dressed up in an LBD like I wanted someone to drill a hole in my head.

The day had been bad.

No, not bad.

It had been comedy movie bad where you sit comfortably in your seat at the theater and laugh at someone else’s string of misfortune, happy that shit never happens in real life bad.

I threw open the door to the restaurant, spying the girls who were all dolled up in different but wondrous ways I would normally take a moment to admire. They were in the bar area at two high-top tables pulled together.

I didn’t admire them.

I just headed in their direction because that direction meant sisterhood and booze.

As I headed their way, I did notice that Claire was not with them. She was at the bar, openly chatting up a hot guy.

Not a surprise.

Fortune smiled on me for the first time that day when I ran into a waitress just as I made it to the table.

“I don’t know if this is your table,” I told her. “But swear to God, you’ll get a huge tip if you bring me a shot of chilled Ketel. No, three. And stat.”

The waitress nodded as Elvira called out, “And bring her a cosmo!”

I moved to one of two available seats, hiked my ass up on it, shrugged off my coat to hang on the back of my stool, and dumped my clutch on the table.

“Holy hell, you look awesome and awful at the same time,” Dot, across the table from me, declared.

I did look awesome. I lost myself in creating big hair and nighttime drama makeup, something I hadn’t done in so long, I wasn’t sure I’d ever done it.

Another reason I was late.

I looked to her. “Tina Fey may make my day funny if you were to write a movie about it. But in real life, it was anything but funny.”

“Oh no,” Tyra said.

My eyes went to her, noting distractedly that all the women weren’t dressed to the nines. They were dressed straight to the twelves. In fact, Elvira looked professionally coiffed. And Kellie, an equal opportunity partier, be it in a bar at a fancy restaurant or a biker hangout that had only one word to describe it—seedy—looked fabulous.

“You were with High’s girls today,” Tyra finished.

“I was,” I confirmed. “For lunch and a movie. This being the longest lunch known to man and the longest period of time spent with two female tweenies since time began.”

“I don’t get it,” Lanie, sitting beside me, said. “High’s girls are sweet.”

“Cleo is sweet,” I told her. “Zadie wants her mom and dad back together and therefore she’s not so sweet.”

“Ah,” Lanie murmured.

“What happened?” Veronica, sitting next to Dot, asked.

“Hmm... let’s see,” I began. “There was the moment when they picked me up and Logan had to use the bathroom before we went so he left me alone with the girls. This was when Cleo happily reacquainted herself with my new kittens and Zadie told me right to my face that cats were stupid and people who had them were even more stupid, not to mention, cat ladies were lame. She said this even though just the night before, before she remembered she was supposed to hate me, she’d fallen in love with the kittens on sight.”

“That ain’t so bad,” Elvira noted.

I looked to her. “Then there was the time when we were walking through the mall to get to the theater and Zadie and I were removed from her dad and sister and she told me that old ladies shouldn’t dress like I dressed, my clothes were too young, and I looked like a wannabe. There was also the time when we bought snacks for the movie and she noted her mother would never eat what I chose and that’s why her mother has a killer bod and I’m fat.”

“Yikes,” Tabby muttered.

“You aren’t fat,” Kellie snapped.

“What did High say about all this?” Tyra asked.

“Since she purposefully dumped her Sprite so it would hit my lap the night before,” I started, and all eyes at the table got big, “she learned and waited for times when Logan couldn’t hear and she did her best to do it when her sister couldn’t either.”

“Sticks and stones,” Elvira declared. “Girl, you gotta be tougher than that.”

I again looked to her. “Zadie sat across from me at lunch and kicked me the entire time. She got me in the shins so often, both are black and blue, and that is no joke.”

I held my leg out to the side, where Carissa was sitting. I had sheer black thigh-highs on but the bruises still could be seen.

“Holy cow, that is no joke,” she muttered in horror.

I kept on with my tales of woe.

“I was sitting next to Logan so I couldn’t adjust too much or he’d notice so I tucked my calves under the chair. That was when she kicked my knees.”

“Oh my God,” Kellie fumed. “What a brat!”

Absolutely.

It hurt to say but all evidence was pointing at the fact that it wasn’t that Zadie could be a brat.

She just was one.

“Not to mention,” I kept going, “any time she could get away with it, she gave me a look that told me she was plotting my murder. She sneezed into her hand once and immediately touched me, making it look like she was being nice but really rubbing her snot on the sleeve of a blouse. A blouse that’s dry clean only. And twice she gave me the finger.”