Chapter 28

CHAPTER 28

Maddy raises her shot glass high above her head. “Who’s the queen?”

Emily and her eleven other bridesmaids raise their glasses and yell, “Mrs. McSween!”

They all throw back their whiskey shots and cheer. Crammed in a sweaty crowd of similarly wasted people, they’re dancing on a balcony to a live country music band at Honky Tonk Central on Broadway in Nashville. Crowned in a white cowgirl hat bedazzled with sequins, Emily is a vision of country-maiden purity in a white peasant skirt and white tank top under a white denim jacket, Mrs. McSween lettered in rhinestones on the back. Her beloved bridal bitches are all wearing jeans, black shirts, and the same cowgirl hats but in pink.

They started the day with brunch by the pool at the Graduate. Charged with monitoring Maddy, Emily made a point of ordering a virgin Bloody Mary for her sister. But vegetable juice without vodka is some kind of cruel punishment Maddy doesn’t deserve, so she never touched it. She drank iced coffees all day instead. She swam and sunbathed, and Emily reminded her to apply and reapply sunscreen.

While Emily and her girlfriends sat at the pool’s edge, pedicured feet dangling in the water, and reminisced about the boys they dated in high school and college, Maddy watched Taylor Tomlinson’s Look at You Netflix special on her phone. Twice. Taylor Tomlinson is a freakin’ comedy genius. She’s only a few years older than Maddy, and she has bipolar disorder! She is 100 percent living proof that Maddy’s dream is possible and real and not delusional. And on top of that, a quick Google search pulled up Maria Bamford, another hilarious and successful comedian who has bipolar.

With all the comedy research she’s done, she’s dumbfounded that she’s only discovering Taylor Tomlinson and Maria Bamford now. She blames Max. He’s obsessed with all the stand-up dudes whose careers peaked decades before she was even born, and he was always in charge of who they watched on Netflix and YouTube.

That’s interesting. That’s exactly how things went with Adam, too. He always chose the movies they watched, the music they listened to in the car, even the volume. Whenever they ordered pizza, they got pepperoni, even though she hates pepperoni. She told herself it was no big deal; she could just remove the pepperoni, even though they always left behind puddles of grease that she hated. They often stayed late at parties when she was really tired and wanted to go home. She sat in uncomplaining silence in his basement for hours while he and his friends played video games. She had sex even when she was premenstrual and bloated and not into it. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings or make him feel rejected. It was easier to acquiesce than speak up and risk inviting conflict or being labeled “difficult.” No one likes a girl who is difficult. And above all, she had to be liked.

Fuck that. No more Adams. No more Maxes. This is her car now. She’s behind the wheel, and she’s going to go wherever the fuck she wants. Inspired and empowered, Maddy wrote a bunch of new material on dating that felt like gold and tightened her ten for the New York Women in Comedy Festival. She added Maria Bamford, Tiffany Haddish, Iliza Shlesinger, and Ali Wong to her Netflix queue. And she ordered a mushroom pizza for lunch by the pool.

By dinner, Emily was too hammered to care about policing her sister anymore and said nothing when her roommate from Vanderbilt, Tiff, poured margaritas from the giant pitcher on the table and passed a glass without thinking to Maddy. Maddy did not refuse it. After dinner and three margaritas later, they relocated to a high-top upstairs, claimed a space for dancing, and have been drinking only Tennessee whiskey since because “when in Rome.”

A waitress masterfully weaves her way through the crowd of bobbing bodies and greets them with another round of shots.

“To her majesty, the queen!” yells Chelsea, Emily’s friend since elementary school.

“Mrs. McSween!”

Maddy knocks back her shot, slams the glass down on the high-top, and resumes dancing. She flings her hips and arms side to side, her movements big and wild, bouncing to the beat, feeling expansive and free. She shouts out the lyrics, her voice hoarse, getting most of the words wrong as she doesn’t know them, but she doesn’t care. No one does. She laughs at herself and spins around and around. Dizzy, she stumbles into Emily and wraps her in a hug.

“I love you, Em!”

“I love you, too! I’m so glad you’re here!”

“I gotta go pee!”

“Okay!”

Maddy winds her way to the ladies’ room. She swings open the door and is greeted by the sight of a girl reflected in the mirror over the sink snorting something through a rolled-up dollar off an ace of hearts playing card. The girl looks up, and they lock eyes through the mirror.

“Sorry,” says Maddy.

“No worries. You want a bump?”

The girl turns around. Her braided pigtails are the color of apricots, and her beautiful round face is dusted with freckles like confectionary sugar on a cake. She’s wearing a black sports bra, a sheer pink tutu over the waist of her distressed jeans, and black Doc Martens. The right side of her abdomen and both arms are covered in tattoos, all flowers. A lone bumblebee hovers on her neck just under her earlobe.

“Sure.”

The beautiful flower-fairy girl offers the rolled-up dollar to Maddy. She’s done edibles and smoked weed, so she’s been high before, but nothing hard-core. She holds the rolled bill in her hand and, as she’s seen in movies, pinches her free nostril, leans over the card still held by the fairy girl, and inhales the narrow line of white powder.

She sniffs and blinks and rubs her nose. Her eyes go wide, and she gasps. The explosions inside her are immediate and massive, detonated deep in her core, tearing through her, hot liquid energy blasting out of her heart, fires everywhere.

“Oh my God,” Maddy says.

The girl laughs. “Come on, let’s go dance!”

She grabs Maddy by the hand and leads her out to the balcony not far from Emily and her girlfriends. They do-si-do and twirl each other and skip and spin, knocking into people and laughing their asses off. Maddy jumps and whips her head, sweating, breathless and buoyant and exquisitely alive. She sings at the top of her lungs without fear of judgment and laughs, her singular wild voice a wave in the club’s ocean of sounds.

Smooshed up against the beautiful fairy girl, Maddy touches the bumblebee tattoo on her neck with her fingers and is surprised that it feels like smooth skin and not fuzzy like a bee. She’s standing so close, she can feel the fairy girl’s breath on her mouth, and then, without knowing who initiated, she and the fairy girl are kissing. Another series of explosions roll through her, this time like party confetti shot out of a cannon, and she’s effervescent, fizzing with joy and desire.

“Wanna get out of here?” the fairy girl yells. “A bunch of us are going to Tootsies!”

“Yeah! I just have to tell my sister!”

“Meet you outside!”

Maddy snakes her way over to Emily and the bachelorettes.

“Let’s go somewhere else!” yells Maddy.

“Where?” asks Chelsea.

“Two Bees!”

“Where?”

“Who cares? The next place!”

“I feel good and settled here,” says Emily.

“We can go back to the hotel bar?” offers one of the girls.

“We’ve been to the hotel bar!” says Maddy. “Let’s go somewhere new!”

“I like it here,” says Emily.

“Yeah, let’s stay here,” says Tiff.

God, they’re boring. Hanging out with them suddenly feels like watching sludge drip through a clogged sewage drain. Even the band she was dancing her ass off to moments ago now sounds tedious and slow. How can they stand it?

“This band SUCKS!” shouts Maddy.

“I like them!” Chelsea says. She spins and rocks her hips. A dude with a big brass buckle on his dark-blue jeans and a coffee-brown cowboy hat saddles her from behind, swinging his hips in sync with hers. Chelsea squeals, loving it, and sways deeper.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” says Emily.

Three of the girls accompany her.

“I’m gonna get a water!” Maddy yells as loud as she can to Chelsea right next to her.

Chelsea smiles and nods as she dances.

Maddy walks away, never looking back as she makes her escape.

Out on the street, she looks everywhere for the fairy girl but can’t find her. She pulls out her phone and searches for Two Bees in Nashville but nothing comes up. It has to be nearby. She’ll find it.

She walks down Broadway, flying high above her feet, the air thick with weed and barbecue, country twang spilling out from every bar she passes. The street is a parade of people, everyone drunk and stoned, but none of them the fairy girl. A red neon sign over the door of a bar on the next corner grabs her attention. F UNNY B ONES . A comedy club. Like a siren’s call that she’s powerless to resist, she forgets all about Two Bees and the fairy girl and zips inside.

She pays the cover, orders a shot of whiskey, and spots a seat at an empty table to the right of the center, two rows back. The show has already started, and she’s surprised the comic onstage isn’t giving her shit for being late as she makes her way to her seat.

The guy onstage is about thirty, dressed in a white T-shirt and jeans, cowboy boots and hat. How original. He’s not funny. She downs her shot, savoring the burn, hoping he improves, but the guy’s a hack. This is a tragic waste of time. She leans over to the couple sitting at the table next to her.

“This guy sucks.”

“Shhh,” someone scolds her.

“Seriously, the open mics in New York are way better than this hick hack.”

“Hey, Pinkie,” says the comedian, looking at Maddy. She touches the brim of her pink cowgirl hat. “Yeah you. Am I interrupting your conversation?”

“I was just saying how much you suck!” she yells for all to hear.

“Oh, okay, you think you can do better?”

“Definitely!”

Amused and certain she’ll decline his dare, he tips the mic toward her. Maddy pops out of her seat, hops up onstage, and grabs the mic out of his hand.

“Thank you.”

The comedian moves to the side in disbelief. She scans the crowd. A few couples, mostly groups of guys. They all think she’s just some dumb drunk girl off the street. Boy, are they in for a surprise!

She decides to go with her newest material. It would be unfair to humiliate this hick hack with bits from her tight five. That would be like Serena Williams trying her hardest in a match against a middle schooler new to tennis. She smiles, anticipating how badass it’s going to be to slay in Nashville without even trying.

“You know it couldn’t have been a woman who chose the eggplant emoji to represent a penis. It had to be a dude. One word for you. Girth . I’m just keepin’ it real. The last guy I dated was an asparagus. Then there was Baby Carrot. Basically, I’ve been on a diet of chopped salad.”

“I got a fuckin’ eggplant for you, right here!” yells a guy in a trucker hat, sitting with a group of friends in the back.

“You kiss your sister with that mouth?” Maddy asks.

“Show us your tits!” someone else yells.

“Sit down, bitch!” yells another guy.

“Fuck you!” she fires back.

“Get off the stage!”

The hick hack steps forward, his palm extended flat, asking for the mic back, his smug face enjoying her defeat.

“You assholes wouldn’t know funny if it drove off in your trailer.”

She extends her arm and drops the mic onto the floor. Laughing to herself, because that was so badass, she struts off the stage and leaves the club.

Back out on Broadway, she passes what seems to be the same bar over and over. She wishes there were something else to do in Nashville.

Wait.

Taylor Swift lives in Nashville.

O. M. G.

Why can’t she remember where Taylor lives? She tries googling it on her phone, but the page won’t load. She tries again and again, but the blue bar just hangs there, stuck halfway across the screen.

She screams in frustration. Several heads spin in her direction, but no one stops. She can barely restrain herself from hurling her useless phone to the ground.

She enters the next honky-tonk she sees. She weaves her way toward the bar but can’t reach it. She’s about three people deep, more filling in behind her, unwillingly pressed up against the guy in front of her. She taps on his shoulder.

“Hey, are you a local?”

“Yeah.”

“You know where Taylor Swift lives?”

“Sure.”

Holy shit, that was easy . Her heart backflips.

“Where?”

“The Adelicia, it’s—”

“Oh my God, that’s right! Thank you!”

She throws her arms around him and plants a quick but unrestrained kiss on his mouth. His face reads shocked and then very pleased.

“But she’s not there. She’s on tour.”

Damn, that’s right! Her Eras Tour.

That’s why she was drawn to that issue of POP magazine. Taylor tried to tell her. She wants Maddy to open for her! Now it all makes sense!

But can comedians open for singers? She’s not sure if that’s ever been done before. Even better! She’ll be the first! She’s got to get out of here. She turns to leave.

“Wait!” yells the local dude. “Come back! Can I get you a drink?”

“Nah, I’m good!” she yells over her shoulder.

Maddy steps out of the bar and googles Taylor Swift Eras Tour . This time, the window opens in a hurry. A sign. She’ll be in Houston, Texas, tomorrow night. Maddy checks the time. It feels late because they’ve been partying all day, but it’s still early, not even six o’clock. She bets she can still get on a flight tonight.

Her phone pings, a text from Emily.

EB

EMILY BANKS

Where r u

I can’t find u

JESUS u left the club??!!

I see where u r

STAY THERE

We’re coming

Maddy’s heart slams into her chest. She swipes to the Find My app on her phone, her finger quivering with adrenaline, and stops sharing her location with Emily and her mother. She pumps a victorious fist to the sky and breathes in sweet, untraceable freedom.

But she has to hurry if she’s going to catch a flight. And she can’t get caught. She dips into the first ATM she spots and withdraws all thirteen hundred dollars from her bank account.

Thirteen.

Taylor’s lucky number.

Another sign.

She’s never held this much cash in her hands, and the wad is too fat to fit into her tiny cross-body bag. As she hastily stuffs the front and back pockets of her jeans with twenties, she glances up and over her shoulder. The guy in line behind her is dumbstruck, his wide eyes glued to the show.

Shit. He’s a witness. He could follow her. He could tell them.

“Hey, dollface, you lookin’ to party?” he asks.

She bolts out of the vestibule and runs like hell for several blocks before finally stopping in front of a Walgreens. Bent over at the waist with the heels of her hands on her thighs, sweating and heaving, she lifts her head enough to look back up the street. She doesn’t see the ATM guy anywhere.

Standing tall now, hands on her hips, she’s recovered, no longer out of breath, but her heart is still beating way too fast, still running from something. It knows they’re coming for her. But how? Sweat drips down her chest and collects in a pool at the bottom of her bra. She wiggles her cotton shirt beneath the wire, mopping it up. Her boobs are tender to the touch, swollen with hormone, signaling the imminent arrival of her period.

Of course. They can’t find her through the Find My app, but they can still track her. Thank God she’s one step ahead of them.

She ducks into the Walgreens. She finds nail scissors and Band-Aids and pays for them in cash. Then she walks into the nearest honky-tonk and winds her way to the ladies’ room.

Her phone pings.

EB

EMILY BANKS

Fuck!! Maddy!!!

Where did u go now???

OMG u stopped sharing ur location

MADDY!!!

Mom’s going to kill me

Her heart ticking like a time bomb, she steps into a stall, latches the metal door shut, closes the toilet lid, and sits down. She opens the package of nail scissors and extends her left arm. She palpates the skin on the inside of her bicep and finds the almost imperceptible bump in the shape of a matchstick, the subcutaneous arm bar that is, at this very moment, releasing a hormonal tracking signal into her racing bloodstream.

She takes a brave breath, aims the virgin point of the nail scissors, and begins digging the motherfucker out.

Bandaged and back outside, she hurries down the street, searching for somewhere she can hail a cab.

EB

EMILY BANKS

Looked everywhere and can’t find u

Going back to hotel

PLEASE be there

M

MADDY

I won’t be there

Don’t worry

ALL GOOD!!!

EB

EMILY BANKS

Pls Maddy where r u???

M

MADDY

Can’t say cuz you’ll tell mom

EB

EMILY BANKS

I won’t

Promise

M

MADDY

Hahaha I know you all too well

EB

EMILY BANKS

PLEASE!!

M

MADDY

Peace out Mrs McSween

She slides her phone into her cross-body bag as it continues to ping. She’d hoped to stop at the hotel to grab her stuff, especially her notebook, but she clearly can’t now. There’s no going back. On the corner of Rep. John Lewis Way and Broadway, in front of Tootsies Orchid Lounge, she flags a cab and jumps in.

“Anti-Hero” is playing on the radio. Boom. Another sign from Taylor. She grins.

“Nashville airport please.”