One day you're happy, and the next, a freak accident exposes your boyfriend's dirty little secrets in the worst possible way.
I lost the man I loved, my trust in people, and my home in less than one afternoon.
At least I know that I've pushed past...
"Your jam is Tubthumping by, Chumbawamba?" Rebecca snorted, looking up from her laptop.
To celebrate two days of living together, and our first trip to the grocery store as temporary roommates, we were getting tipsy.
"Yeah!" I punched the air with my fist and started to sing along. "I get knocked down, but I get up again! You ain't ever gonna keep me down! I get knocked down-"
Every move made my boobs jostle around like flouncy water balloons. They'd been freed from their bra prison for an inebriated night of singing (badly) to breakup ballads and lady-power-anthems (and random songs about English soccer teams, apparently).
Most likely, there was going to be some crying too, but I was trying to save that for later.
"OK," Rebecca straightened up from her desk to stumble toward me on her flowery pullout couch. "Maybe no more peppermint schnapps for you."
"No!" I yowled, hugging the bottle like a newborn babe. "It's my favorite. It tastes like drinking candy canes!"
"Pretty soon you're going to be puking peppermint patties," she warned me as she plopped down next to me with her own box of cheap merlot. "Don't worry, chica, I'll hold your hair for you."
"Thank you," I scrunched up my face to bat my lashes at her.
"For getting you drunk?" Rebecca asked, raising one brow with a sexy carefree laugh. "Or holding your hair later? Or letting you crash on my couch?"
"For everything," I answered. "Just, thank you."
"No problem!" Rebecca nudged me with her shoulder, which pushed me over completely. "Us girls have to look out for one another. It's hard enough out there without us having to go through it all alone!"
"Ugh," I didn't bother sitting up as Rebecca's words rolled over me. "I'm alone."
My face crumpled into the sobs I'd been repressing for the past hour.
"No, you're not," she replied, leaning over my chest to catch my eye. "You've got me, and probably lots of other friends, right?"
"This might come as a surprise, but I'm kind of an introvert," I covered a burp in a dangerous hiccup laced with acidic bile. "I'm not good with people, or large crowds, or most public social situations."
Rebecca was laughing too hard to reply, but she pushed a lock of my sweaty hair out of my face to tuck it behind my ear.
"You? Never!" She managed to chuckle while trying to make a serious face.
"What's that supposed to mean?" I lifted my head enough to give her the stink eye.
Since my vision was beginning to blur at the edges, I turned my face to try my hairy eyeball from another angle.
"It means," Rebecca plucked the bottle clasped to my chest out of my hands. "I've worked with you for two years and I've never once seen you attend a single work function or holiday party unless forced."
"I told you!" I wined. "I'm shy!"
"You have won eleven international awards for your work," she kept going to emphasize her point. "And every time there's a ceremony, you pretend to have mono so you didn't have to go to the conference or get on stage."
"I always send a very nice thank you email," I argued drunkenly.
"So, you're shy," Rebecca said, sliding in her socks over the scuffed hardwood floor toward her tiny kitchen. She carefully replaced the schnapps in a cupboard over the fridge, which I definitely couldn't reach. "My point is, that doesn't mean you're alone."
I nodded to myself at her deep wisdom. Rebecca poured me a huge glass of water before joining me on her couch again.
"Besides, good riddance to bad sex," she declared.
"Wait, what?" My jaw dropped open. "Why would you say that? Who told you that?"
"You did!" Rebecca howled with laughter. "Last year at the Christmas party, remember? You told me that you had the sixth-best orgasm of your life that afternoon."
"I said that?"
"You did," she bobbed her entire upper body, bouncing the curls knotted at the top of her head with a kerchief. "I remember because I asked you how many you'd had in your short-ass lifetime, and you said six. It made me so sad for you."
"I do not remember that!"
"To be fair, you told me after your fourth mug of tequila-nog."
"Oh, yeah!" I exhaled. "Tequila-nog was the worst! Why did I keep drinking it?"
"I don't know, it looked curdled," Rebecca had tears rolling down her cheek while I did my best to hide my shock.
I genuinely did not recall telling her that little detail about my sex life with Elijah. It was accurate, but it wasn't like me to spill such personal details. Stupid clotted Tequila-nog.
So, I'm shy and I can't hold my liquor. Good thing I was newly single. Those qualities were going to come in really handy if I dated ever again.
"Look, chica," she got serious again. "Count yourself lucky. Only six orgasms? No woman should have to suffer through boring sex for that long. It's such a waste when a hot guy is bad in the sack."
"I'll have you know," I sniffed, feigning indignity. "We got the count officially up to eight."
"So, you were only having, on average, two orgasms a year with that man?" Rebecca pulled me up to look at her. "What are you a bear? Were you hibernating in between sexy sessions?"
"We had plenty of sex," I shrugged. "I guess it wasn't as good as I thought-"
"Don't do that," Rebecca warned me in a harsh tone. "This breakup wasn't your fault. I wasn't there and I don't know your relationship. Maybe you two fought all the time and your split was inevitable. Maybe you were deliriously happy and this came outta left field. All I know is that when someone cheats, it has nothing to do with their partner. Elijah cheated because he made poor decisions, not you."
All I could do was clench my jaw shut to keep from blubbering like an idiot. Rebecca's empowering words had sliced through my armor, cutting down to the bare bones of the matter. What a shame it took a major breakup to realize that I had such an amazing friend in my coworker.
It also sounded like Rebecca knew a thing or two about getting cheated on. I promised myself that I was going to try and remember to ask her about that later when I was sober.
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chapter word count: 1,081
total word count: 12,453
If you're not familiar with Tubthumping, you're not going to be able to un-hear this (also, why does it look like it's supposed to be an angsty Puddle of Mud video?!):
