By the time Friday rolls around, you feel like absolute shit. You ended up doing overtime every day this week after Monday, because rent is due soon and you'd like to have a little extra to treat yourself next check. Usually when this stuff happens and you get in this kind of mood you drag your girls with you to the mall to drop half a check on overpriced underwear. Plus a few drop ins to Cafe 85c; there's a location within walking distance to your place.
You stand in your kitchen, air conditioning on full blast because of the pots of steaming seafood on your stove that you hope won't melt the paint. It's your turn to cook, and you feel a little guilty because you really didn't want to accept Erik's money when he offered it to you earlier in the week. You only idly mentioned your weekend plans as he took you to your parent's house, and he slipped you a few hundred dollar bills as you were getting out of the car.
All your life your parents made you feel weird about accepting money from people, and in your adult life your friends did the same when it came to guys. But at the same time, when have you ever been in a position like this? You eased each other's sexual frustrations and then he gave you money. What does that mean?
You groan, trying your best to mix the seafood sauce according to the youtube video in front of you, because there's too much to think about and it's stressing you out.
Once the sauce is mixed you cover it with foil before whirling around to check on the potatoes steaming in the pot next to the corn on the back burners. It's a lot of food, you have to admit. You were compelled to spend most if not all of Erik's gifted money on seafood down at the fish market because you'd feel weird otherwise having the cash just in your pocket. You gave him your number but he didn't give you his, so your nice gesture of wanting to invite him over for some doesn't matter.
It's probably weird, you think, to invite your hookup over for dinner but after all this is his money that paid for the snow crab legs, shrimp and the lobster tails.
There's a knock on the door just as you finish tossing parsley over everything and you hurry over to it to get a welcome release from your thoughts. Sydney comes in first, waggling a paper bag with Hennesey inside, while Kayla has paper plates. You laugh, because it's obvious which one of your friends is cheap, but you hug them both anyway.
You don't exactly know how Hennesey is going to react with a seafood boil, though.
Your friends waste no time, berating you with requests for details all the while not helping you bring the food over to the coffee table. You ignore them, getting the newspaper all ready to keep juices off your light grey carpet. The plates are all laid out, the reality tv shows are ready to start, and you're starving, but the first bite of shrimp gets cut off quick.
"Well," Kayla says, smacking you with a plastic fork. "What the hell happened?!"
"Yeah!" Sydney goes, licking her fingers already. " Shit this sauce is good."
With a sigh, you rub at your eyes, trying to find the words to actually make the situation seem more interesting past 'we fucked.'
The both of them are smacking loudly on the food, staring at you expectantly so you have no choice but to start talking. "He took me back to his place-"
"And?!" says Kayla.
"He lives in this sweet ass house, but it's like it's so empty. I feel like he's barely in it. And it's really cold-"
Kayla rolls her eyes as you pause to dip a lobster tail in the homemade sauce you poured your blood, sweat, and tears into. "I just went to bed, honestly. Then I woke up to get ready for work, he said he'd take me but he was knocked out so I just took an Uber. He picked me up, we got back to his place, I called you Kayla and then..."
