“See you got yourself set up nice,” she hissed, her eyes set on Jose. “Oh, God,” Rose groaned, tipping her head back in exasperation. “You’re going to be a cliché, aren’t you?” she asked as she lifted her head back up again and looked at Jose and Tabby. “I hate a cliché.”
Wrinkling her nose, Jose gave Rose a small smile and nodded her head. I didn’t see what Tabby did, but I heard her snort loudly.
“How’s it a cliché if I want to warn my cheating boyfriend’s new pussy about his cheating proclivities?” she asked, trying for the world to look like she had good intentions, but I swear this woman didn’t know what those were.
That’s when frustration truly hit me. “Evette, listen, I don’t want to do this. I just want to have a nice meal with my girlfriend and friends. It was over between us a long time ago…”
“Cliché!” Rose sang, lifting Raoul’s glass like she was toasting the two of us. Ignoring her, I continued, “I’m sorry if your feelings were hurt, but it’s done, it’s in the past.”
“And he never did anything wrong,” Rose blurted, then mimed zipping her lips up when I glared at her.
“You’re a dirty, fucking cheater,” Evette hissed, pointing one of her dagger-looking nails at me. “I saw all of it, so I’ll never believe a word you say.” Turning her attention onto Jose she growled, “You’ve had a baby, so you won’t have what it takes to keep him around for long. What makes you think you’re any different? When he’s touching those women, flirting with them…”
“Cliché and deluded,” Rose muttered.
Tabby spoke up just then, stopping Evette from saying anything else to her sister. “Hey, see those nails of yours?” We all looked down to look at the nails in question. They were shaped into sharp points at the tips, painted bright blue, and looked fucking lethal. “Do you break into a sweat when you go to wipe yourself with toilet paper?”
Out of all the things in the world for someone to say, Tabby just had to go and ask that. “Excuse me?”
“Your nails,” Tabby repeated slowly, drawing both words out for as long as she could. “Do you worry about wiping your vagina with toilet paper? Just in case one of them goes through it and you end up cutting your clit off, and all.”
Evette’s mouth opened and closed, like the rest of us at the table, as she took onboard what she’d just been asked. “That’s disgusting,” she snapped, pointing one of the blue weapons at Tabby. “Didn’t your momma ever teach you dignity?”
Shrugging, Tabby leaned into DB’s side, looking as calm as anything. “She sure did, and she taught me to be a lady. I just figured that seeing as how you weren’t one, I didn’t have to put on any airs and graces, so it was okay to ask it.”
I watched as the steam started to build up inside Evette, recognizing the sign from the billion times I’d seen it happen. Before I could advise her to walk away, though, Jose spoke up. “We’ll take it from your response that she’s right, and that your nails are weapons of twat destruction. Good to know!” she raised her glass to Evette and winked. For a second, I thought the hit would be enough for Evette to understand she needed to walk away without causing an even bigger scene than she already was. I was wrong.
The ugliest sneer I’d ever seen, and I’d seen plenty, crossed her face as she looked from Jose down to Liv, then back again. “Honey, I don’t think you’re in a position to say anything to anyone, do you? The whole town thought it was funny you didn’t leave that man of yours a long time ago, like you were just hanging on for scraps. Then you got pregnant, and it still didn’t make sense. Did finding him fucking another woman ruin your plans? It got you plenty pity, but if you’d hung onto him a while longer, you mighta been able to really get something outta people for your suffering.”
I was past fucking done.
Standing up, I leaned in close to her about to tell her to leave, but Tabby got there first.
“That’s the best you can do? Deflect from the shit storm you’ve made yourself by attacking a woman who went through what Jose did and stayed standing?” She got up and walked around the table, DB reaching for her and failing. “Well, newsflash, honey – you just made yourself look even worse.”
“Sure did!” A voice from another diner shouted.
“I’d rather step in sh… shampoo,” someone corrected themselves.
“Team Jose over here.”
“How’s she gonna leave someone when she’s pregnant? Ain’t no censure here for trying to get a marriage to work.”
I appreciated the support, but I had some shit of my own to say.