After the last few weeks—hell, the last few months—I’ve been having, Leah’s bachelorette party is a welcome reprieve.
“Your sister is crazy!” Crystal screams in my ear over the loud music. A man wearing a piece of dental floss and what can only be described as a banana hammock has Leah’s friend Suzanne in the air, wrapped around his waist as he simulates thrusting into her. Leah is throwing money at the stripper to give all her friends a lap dance.
It’s all in good fun. Leah is fully clothed in jeans and a silky halter-top. She has on her favorite black Stetson with a veil we taped to the inside. She wanted a Magic Mike–themed bachelorette party so Crystal and Lisa helped me orchestrate tonight’s event.
And from the looks of it, Leah approves.
Despite her outward persona, Leah likes to look but she’d never touch. She says Adam is enough for her. Instead, she’ll spend a week’s salary making sure each of her friends – Jessica, Suzanne and Kimberly - who traveled with her from Cedar Ridge has the time of her life.
“She’s a class act, that one,” I say to Crystal, then back up when I see the naked man is heading my way.
I place my hands up in the air and push the man away from me. “Oh no. No way, no way, no way!” My efforts are in vain as Leah and her friends Suzanne, Kimberly, and Jessica push the stripper toward me.
“Oh, come on, do it for your sister!” Crystal places her hand on my back and pushes me forward into the arms of a very oily, very sweaty man. He is attractive—dark hair and dark eyes. He looks like Eric Bana. Earlier he was dressed in a doctor’s costume and did a performance on stage where he cured one of the bachelorettes by stripping and then dry humping her up and down the stage.
I look over to Lisa for help but she just shakes her head from the corner.
The doctor-slash-stripper has his hands around my waist and I squeal when he slides them around to grab my ass lifting me up so my legs dangle as he whirls me around and slams me onto the bed Leah and her friends are sitting on.
“I’m going to kill you!” I say, with a laugh, when I catch Leah’s eye.
She howls and waves her hands in the air. “Enjoy it Emma!”
I start to smile and laugh at her happiness when the stripper, who was standing on the ground in front of me, leaps from the floor, up in the air and lands on the bed with his knees on each side of my waist and he is straddling me.
Oh, dear God. I hope he doesn’t . . .
Yeah, he is.
The stripper dances and moves up my body, gyrating his pelvis. I raise my hands to cover my face, blocking out the sight of what he’s doing and the awful smell of stale oil and stinky boy that he is dripping all over me.
The girls love every minute of it. Lisa is the only one who looks slightly uncomfortable for my sake. I’m starting to question my judgment of asking my work friends to come out.
I turn my head to the side to avoid the banana hammock from coming anywhere near my face. The stripper sits straight up and I am instantly relieved, thinking the show is over, when he does a mock push-up over my body and then pretends he is penetrating me.
“Okay, that’s enough!”
I push my hand out and shove him away. Rising from the bed, I push past him, ignoring his fake hurt look—puppy-dog eyes, a stuck-out lower lip, and hands over his heart. When Leah pushes a twenty into his G-string, all is forgotten and he moves on to his next victim.
“You’re a good sport.” Lisa pats me on the back and hands me a drink. It’s pink, girly and just what I need.
“Yeah, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Crystal asks, helping me readjust my halter-top. “Aren’t you glad I told you to wear pants!”
I take a sip of my Cosmo and release the straw. “Thank God. I would have died if he did that while I was wearing a skirt!”
“Now that you got that over with, let’s dance!” Crystal beams and the three of us dance to the Calvin Harris song playing. It’s nice having Crystal and Lisa here. Turns out they were in need of a girl’s night.