Someone yanked my hands away. "Shhhtop blocking your face, how am I sssuppposed to take incriminating pictures?" Mandy squealed in laughter. Son of a bitch! Beads of sweat burst out across my upper lip and chest, a gush of fiery waves tumbled and rolled low in my stomach. My pulse raced, heart thudding in my chest. Oh, my God, I would just die if anyone saw pictures of this.

The music pounded faster. Confetti-like neon lights drew out a strange, erotic, almost primal feeling along my skin. Jack P. Hammer spun around me, hands grasping my shoulders, squeezing, kneading, and looked into my eyes. Brown…his eyes were brown. Sexy brown eyes that slowly crawled up and down my body unapologetically. One of those indecent looks that made you feel like you were the only woman in the room…a wolf and his prey. I melted into a wet puddle of stripper goo. That's probably the reason why strip club floors feel so sticky; the women melt from the heat, just liquefy from the sexiness and end up stuck under a stranger's heels. It doesn't seem like the worst way to go, actually.

Arching one eyebrow, he cocked his head to the side and slid his lips along my jaw, my neck. Oh, my God, were strippers supposed to do that? Where the heck were all my bridesmaids? My hands squeezed down hard on the arms of the chair. The band of my engagement ring clinked against the wood as I tried to gulp in air. It felt as if I was stealing a deep breath, someone else's, and I ended up coughing out a bunch of nervous giggles. Around us, the crowd went wild. I was completely flushed, drunker than I'd ever been, and there was a gorgeous man licking my face. And neck. And, oh God, he can't do that, can he?

Mandy's flushed face was next to mine instantly. "This guy is soooooo hawt. Do you see him?" He's freaking slathering his man stuff all over me, how could I not see him? Drunk as hell, she couldn't focus on my eyes and her forehead knocked hard against mine. Suddenly, a loud slap erupted from behind her, causing her eyes to bulge out in shock…giant brown and white ringed saucers. Her lips burst into a perfectly shaped O. "Ohmyfreakingword! He just shhhhpanked me."

We slid off the chair in a heap of giggles, Mr. Hammer crawling on top of us, mock humping our laughing faces. This was all Mandy's fault. I blame everything on Mandy—taking me to a shabby little strip club and getting a face full of humping junk all night.

Mandy was a wild one.

If anything ever happens, everyone just looks to Mandy; she's always the one guilty of something. Everyone has one crazy friend like her; the one you really shouldn't take out in public, because when you do, someone is getting arrested. Although, at that particular moment, it was me thrusting a fistful of sticky dollar bills in a strange man's G-string thingy. This morning I would have never said my night would end like this.

The women in the crowded bar, all of them my friends, began screaming and clapping when the stripper grabbed onto my hand with its fistful of money and started grinding into it. Oh Lord, I didn't know they came in that size! My stomach muscles ached from giggling so much. Even my cheeks hurt from the constant laughter. My bones felt rubbery and numb.

All this insanity was because I was supposed to get married in three weeks. The thought made me smile and giggle more.

"Do you want a private dance?" the stripper's deep voice whispered into my ear, his lips warm and wet. Two strong hands slid up the back of my neck, the rest of his body gliding all around me so fast my drunken brain couldn't keep up with it. "Come to the VIP room with me, baby girl," he groaned, thrusting against me, "I got what you need."

This just got weird.

I laughed nervously, my voice struggling with my brain. Okay then, I think it's time to head on outta here, back to the hotel.

"Yessssh!" Mandy squealed, pointing a drunken, crooked finger at me. "He's got what you need," her eyes blinked spastically and her eyebrows arched up high. She completed the look with duck-shaped lips. "You get yourself in that Very Important People room and ride yourself a Hammer. Ish on me." She stumbled back, laughing.

“Nope. Not me. Not going to happen. No way.”

"Yessshhh. You have to go and get the Hammer; it's all good. Go. Now. Shoo, shoo," Mandy slurred, shoving me towards the back rooms. Mr. Hammer grabbed onto my hand and pulled, leading me through the crowd and into a dark corner with a red glowing hallway attached to it. It looked like the gates of Hell.

The room spun around me, the thump-thump-thump of the music vibrating through the floor. I leaned back and yanked my hands away from him. It was easy to slide through the sweaty grip. "Um, no thank you," I yelped, breaking into a fit of nervous giggles. I couldn't do it. I couldn't go in a back room with a strange man three weeks before I was supposed to get married. Was he crazy? I backed away carefully onto the middle of the dance floor, my stilettos wobbly stilts underneath me. Disappointment flashed across Mr. Hammer's face.

I just couldn't do it.

Then I was airborne, hanging upside down, hair dangling towards the dirty floor while two new strippers mock-pose my body in various sexual positions so far from anything I had ever remotely imagined could be sexual positions.

From there, I watched as the Hammer pounded against another bride-to-be, who within the first five minutes, happily skipped towards the back VIP room with him. Wow.

Just wow. That took guts and probably a crap load of douche. And, probably a medicine cabinet of antibiotics and creams a few days from now, but who was I to judge.

An hour later, the limo my bridesmaids rented for me dropped me off in front of my apartment, completely forgetting the plan was to go back to our hotel room at the Marriott downtown. I tumbled out of the car, sprawled out on the grass, my Buy me a shot, I'm tying the knot! T-shirt wrapped around my head, a white cotton bra out for all my neighbors to see. Not that anyone would look, because at the same moment, Mandy was completely topless, her full bare torso jutting out of the sunroof of the limo. And she was bouncing.

Laughing, I crawled across my wet lawn and fell against my front door. My fingers fumbled with the keys as I waved goodbye to the back of the limo as it sped down the street.

I might have fallen asleep for a few moments, but when I finally remembered how to use a lock mechanism correctly with my questionable slippery key (when in doubt, slowly get on your knees, give it a little blow, and firmly push it in), I walked (okay crawled) inside to all the lights in my apartment on.

Every single luminescent bulb in the apartment: on.

So even though I was in the most inebriated state I'd ever been in my life, I clearly saw one of the top contributors for InTrend Magazine, Sophia Willington, having sex with Trager the Mailroom Guy, smack dab in the middle of my living room. Sex being a questionable word for the act I stumbled upon. She was riding him like a racehorse. My drunken brain could not wrap itself around the fact that thee Sophia Willington was in my apartment with Trager the Mailroom Guy. That's what we called him too—everybody who worked at the damn magazine—Trager the Mailroom Guy.

Who incidentally, was supposed to be marrying me in three fucking weeks.

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Lexa

“You won’t ever have to regret your mistakes if you don’t choose to make ‘em.” @Kavon #Whoops