“Yep, just as I thought! You may be short but you have great legs and with just enough heel your legs look long and perfect.” Harper doted.

“Can we not talk about my height? I actually love being short thank you very much!”

“Uh huh, Em tell me something. Can you reach the top shelf of your kitchen cabinets or do you need to still use a chair like a six year old kid?” Harper was mocking me now.

I stayed silent for a few seconds, “Oh shut up and help me get out of this so we can check out.” She laughed at me because she knew she had made her point.

Sarah had been surprisingly quiet during our time in the store. Huh… I wonder if that’d had anything to do with Harper. She placed my new dress in a hanging bag and rang it up along with the shoes. I gasped—like really loudly. “Seventeen hundred dollars?!”

Harper grabbed my upper arm with her hand and gave it a harsh squeeze. “Fucking A Emilyn! Would you just give the woman your American Express? Your husband makes millions, it’s about time you start spending it.”

Sarah took the card with a look on her face that said she was wondering if it would be declined. Of course it wasn’t, and she very happily handed me my receipt and called a perky goodbye as Harper and I left the store.

“See now, that wasn’t so bad spending dick bags money, was it?” Harper asked me as she climbed into her car.

“It’s not that it is ‘so bad’, it’s just that I don’t see the reason behind spending money like that. The dress is beautiful yes, but I may only wear it one other time after tonight. West works hard for that money and I don’t want to spend his hard earned cash.” I said as we made our way back towards my parent’s house.

“For starters, if you ever say his money again, I’m taking you to a psych ward to be evaluated. Emmy you’ve been married to him for eight years now, so his money is your money. That’s the way marriage should be. And if you so much as tell me that Weston requires you to speak to him about how you spend that money, I am flying there tonight to pluck every single one of his pubes from his balls and then I’ll slowly castrate him. And again, you just wait until everyone sees you tonight in that dress. Especially Finley.”

“Okay can you just tell me how it is that you ever get a man to let their testicles near you when you paint such a vivid picture? And I didn’t buy this dress to impress Finley. I bought it because it fit me nicely.” I hoped that if I kept telling myself that Finn hadn’t crossed my mind when I bought that dress, I may just start to believe it. “And for the record, Weston has never asked me to tell him where I spend money or how much I spent. He’s said from the beginning that everything he had was mine.”

“Well then I guess his hairy balls are safe for tonight then!” We pulled up to my parents’ house and started unloading my purchases.

I started laughing, “How did I become friends with such a violent person?”

“Luck I guess,” she shrugged her shoulders. “Time to beautify ourselves!”

Harper and I were dressed to impress. In addition to my new dress and heels, I had a black clutch that held a tube of clear gloss and mascara. My hair was half up, and the back had a little puff to it with a pretty black sparkle barrette. The rest of my hair cascaded down my back in waves. I felt pretty glamorous.

Harper had on a black silk dress that went to the floor. It hugged every inch of her body and draped in the front so she had to be careful how she moved or else we’d be having a wardrobe malfunction. She had her hair pulled up in an elegant, loose bun and she’d shaded her eyelids in a smoky black that made her green eyes pop.

We were definitely ready to go. Stepping out of Harper’s car, a young man—who I assumed was the valet driver—approached us with wide eyes. He gave Harper long once over when she handed him the keys along with a generous tip. I saw her wink at him when he handed her the parking ticket and she thanked him in a low purr.

Stepping inside the hotel lobby I giggled at Harper. “Easy Killer, that kid can’t have been more than twenty years old.”

“Mmmhmmm, and I bet his stamina is fantastic too.”

“Oh good, so you like the little kiddies now too?”

“Have you ever slept with someone that’s a few years younger than you Em?”

“You know I’ve only ever been with Finley and Weston.”

She sighed disapprovingly. “Well, let me tell you, it is worth it. They can go for hours.” Harper thought that I should have shopped around a bit before I settled with West. But I’d never been that kind of girl.

As we approached the banquet room there were two tables set up outside the door. The tables were manned by three people that I immediately recognized as the cheerleading triplets Susan, Aubrey, and Cassie. They weren’t really triplets but Harper and I had called them that because they were always together, dressed the same, and finished each other’s sentences. These were the girls that gave Harper the hardest time in school. They were what we considered the ‘popular crowd’. The ones who only dated the football players and wore designer clothes. Apparently Harper hadn’t been good enough to socialize with them because of her secondhand clothes, and because she hadn’t lived in the nicest part of town. I thought the real reason they hadn’t liked her was because they knew Kyler was interested in her and he was the only football player that wouldn’t give them the time of day. It pissed them off that someone they thought was beneath them was being noticed. That was until I came along and got Finn’s attention. Then they turned their venomous stares and words on me. They were cruel in the worst ways teenage girls could be.

Once in gym class, Aubrey had taken a picture on her cell of Harper naked in the shower; she’d been bending over to get a bottle of shampoo. Aubrey sent it to every single person in her contact list. They then forwarded it to everyone they knew and so on and so forth, until everyone in the school had it. Guys were saying nasty, vulgar things to her because of the position she was in. They said she was bending over and begging for it. Aubrey told everyone that Harper had asked for her picture to be taken. Harper was so mortified that she stayed home from school for a whole week because of it. As much as I’d tried to convince her that the rumors had died down, it eventually took for Kyler to go over to her house and speak to her before she would listen. Harper wouldn’t tell me what Kyler had said to get her to come back to school, but she did and nobody bothered her about it. I had no doubt that Kyler threatened anybody who dared to say something about the picture. The girls toned it down after that, but they still found ways to make our lives hell.

Despite the lessened cruelty, I remained a target of their hounding. They were always there in my ear, making me feel like I wasn’t good enough—or pretty enough—to be with someone like Finn. After time, they didn’t even have to be there telling me these things, because I told myself the damaging words.

As we walked to the table I could see that Cassie had nudged Susan and bumped elbows with Aubrey. The three of them watched us with their perfect little smirks until we got up to the table. None of us said anything right away because we were doing what all women do; sizing each other up. I decided to be the one to break the ice.

“Hi Cassie, Susan, Aubrey. It’s nice to see you all.” I gave them the most genuine smile I could muster.

I heard Harper snort next to me. “Yeah I can see that time has been real nice to you all.” Her sarcasm couldn’t have been more obvious.

Susan was pregnant with her third child. She had married a bank manager and I’d heard that he was known to run around on her. By the looks of things she’d put on a bit more than just pregnancy weight. Aubrey was a heavy smoker and her persistent tanning made her look like she was in her fifties not twenties. She had an on-again/off-again boyfriend Gabe, who worked at the car shop in town. Cassie used to have thick beautiful golden locks but time hadn’t done her any favors. Her hair was now sparse and brittle and she was in the middle of her second divorce.