Always the Bridesmaid

by Whitney Lyles

  Cate could hear the sound of coins jingling, slot machines buzzing, and the beeping sounds of victory from the casino around the corner.

  “We have lots planned,” Val said as she led Cate through the busy hotel. “Cocktails . . . tanning poolside all day. Then we’re off to strip clubs!”

  Cate had never been to a strip club before. She knew that women took it all off. She wondered if men wore their birthday suits, too. Did they dance around with their wangs swinging and dangling in all directions?

  When they reached the hotel room, one of Val’s friends was waiting with a Long Island for Cate.

  “Why don’t you sip on that while you change into your swimsuit?” Val said. “We’ll meet you by the pool.” She left a key on the nightstand.

  Cate admired the room before changing into her bathing suit. The bathroom was approximately the size of her kitchen in Pacific Beach. Everything was polished and new. The marble floors and counters shined. The towels were neatly folded and stacked. She picked up a bar of glycerin soap and inhaled its sweet rainwater scent.

  She opened the curtains to a sprawling view of the Mandalay Bay water park below. The pool was practically a small ocean. Eager to get in the water, she left the view to change into her bathing suit.

  When she arrived at the pool, the girls had already staked out an entire corner of the wave park. Val had saved Cate a lounge chair.

  Feeling self-conscious, Cate removed her shorts and tank top. She’d never tanned well. Her fair skin didn’t tolerate a lot of exposure. She felt like a glowing albino next to all of Val’s friends, who looked as if they had grown up along the French Riviera and had never experienced a bad sunburn in their bronzed lives.

  Val handed her a bottle of fifteen-proof sunblock. “You’re going to fry,” she said, letting her eyes wander over Cate’s body. “You’ll need this.”

  Cate lathered the front of her body in sunblock, especially her face and chest.

  “Val, would you mind putting this on my back?” She handed Val the bottle. “I’ll put it on your back, too, if you want.”

  Val smiled. “Oh. That’s okay. I don’t wear sunscreen. But I’ll do yours.” She took the bottle from Cate, squirted a generous portion of lotion into her hands, and spread it all over Cate’s back. When she was finished, she patted her on the shoulders. “You’re all set, sweetie.”

  A cocktail waitress wearing butt-tight shorts and high pumps came around the corner. “How are you guys doin’?” she asked.

  “We’ll need another round of Long Islands. Thanks,” Val said.

  Cate could already feel beads of sweat forming around her hairline, and decided to take a dip in the pool. She waded into the cold water. Waves splashed over her shoulders. It was just like the beach. There was even sand. She cooled off in the water until her hands became pruned and a teenager trying to body surf nearly plowed into her.

  A cocktail waitress was passing out a fresh round of Long Islands when she returned to her lounge chair.

  “Thanks.” Cate took a cocktail. Her hair was dripping, and a few droplets of water plopped into her drink when she took a sip.

  “Just charge everything to the room,” Val signed a receipt for drinks. “I want everyone to have a good time this weekend.”

  A blonde wearing pink-tinted pilot’s sunglasses and a shimmery bikini sat down on an empty lounge chair next to Cate. “Hi. I’m Loni.” She had a Southern drawl.

  Cate introduced herself as they shook hands.

  “That’s a cute suit,” Val said.

  Loni turned to Val. “Thanks. But I shaved my bikini line this mornin’, and now I’ve got razor burn that looks like herpes.”

  “Oh! Me, too!” another girl said. “It looks like I have an STD.”

  “That’s why I don’t shave anymore,” Val said. “I get waxed. The Playboy wax, actually.”

  “Waxing gives me ingrown hairs,” Loni remarked. “I could spend hours pickin’ out those hairs with a needle.”

  “Doesn’t that hurt?” Cate asked. The thought of hair being ripped or picked from any part of her body was unbearable.

  Val shook her head. “Are you kidding? I love it. Jim loves it, too. My esthetician waxes everything off. I tip her ten bucks every time.”

  “How is Jim?” Cate asked.

  “Great! He’s having his bachelor party this weekend, too.”

  “He’s such a wonderful guy,” Loni added. “A real catch. Val is one lucky gal.”

  “He’ll make a great first husband,” Val said.

  The other girls burst into laughter.

  “I’m just kidding,” Val said. “I swear. I’m kidding. I love him. We did just sign a very rewarding prenup though! Let’s just say that I won’t ever have to worry, but he will! Ha!”

  More laughter.

  Cate sipped on her cocktail, listening to the girls suggest remedies for razor burn and ingrown hairs.

  “Rub exfoliating scrub over all the ingrown hairs. It makes them pop out,” one girl suggested.

  “Don’t use dull razors if you don’t want razor burn. If you use a dull razor, you may as well scrape a pair of scissors over your coochie,” another said.

  “I’d like to go to a good sex shop while I’m here,” Nikki said, looking up from the latest issue of Cosmo. “I just read an article on vibrators, and I think I want one.”

  “I love mine,” Loni added. “It’s waterproof. I can take it the tub with me if I want.”

  “That’s what we’ll do!” Val announced. “We’ll all buy vibrators while we’re here. As a party favor.”

  Cate had never considered purchasing a vibrator. Even if she ever did think of buying one, she’d be scared shitless that someone would find it. A stark vision of herself dying in a car wreck, her parents stumbling across the thing while they cleaned out her apartment flashed through her mind.

  The combination of heat and liquor was draining. Instead of feeling buzzed, she felt fatigued. The sun smothered all her energy. Two Long Islands later, she began to feel tired. They were still talking about vibrators when she drifted into a deep sleep.

  It was quiet when she awoke, and afternoon clouds had cast a shadow over the pool.

  She sat up. Most of the girls were gone.

  “You’ve been sleeping for a long time,” Loni said. “Some of the other girls went upstairs to get ready.”

  Cate felt as if she’d just rolled off a barbecue. She pulled back the side of her triangle top and suddenly felt wide-awake. The striking contrast of her red chest next to her white boob was frightening. “I’m fried.”

  “Yeah. You are pretty red.” Loni noticed, too.

  When she returned to the suite, Val was blow-drying her hair. “Hello sleepy hea . . .” her voice trailed off. “Wow. You got some color today.”

  Cate looked at herself in the mirror. “Oh my God,” she mumbled. She was as bright as an explosion. Her face was beet red, and her chest was so flaming that it scared her to look at herself.

  “Didn’t you put on more sunscreen, you dingbat?” Val asked.

  “I fell asleep.” Cate glanced at Val. She didn’t have a red mark on her body, and she hadn’t even worn sunscreen. She was the type of girl that soaked up countless hours of sun during the summer and hit tanning beds on a daily basis during the winter. Her deeply tanned skin could withstand hours of harsh sun exposure.

  After Cate showered, it only became worse. Her skin was crimson.

  When Nikki came in to borrow the blow dryer, she looked startled. “You’ve got it bad, girl. That is the worst sunburn I have ever seen in my entire life. That looks painful. And, what . . . oh my God. Who the hell put lotion on your back?”

  Cate turned around to examine herself in the mirror. At first she couldn’t figure out what was all over her back. It looked like white blotches and patches. Then she noticed the distinct shape of handprints and random little finger streaks. The places where Val had successfully applied lotion were white and formed the shape of her hands. Th
e rest of her back was flaming red.

  “Cate! I am so sorry. I had no idea. I thought I was doing a good job.” Val looked as if she were going to cry.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Cate said. I’ll just die of skin cancer by the time I’m thirty, but no worries. “It’s no big deal. No one will see my back anyway.”

  “Remind me to never let Val put lotion on my back,” Nikki said.

  It hurt when Cate lifted her arms. It hurt when she put clothes on her body. And, worst of all, when she had rolled over while sleeping on the lounge chair her bikini had hiked up her butt. Her ass was burned beyond recognition. It hurt to sit down.

  Before they left for the strip club, Val’s friends came over with a huge bag of goodies for the night. Among the party favors was a crown for Val. It was adorned with small, plastic penises that protruded from the headband. The girls draped a blazing, hot pink Bachelorette banner over Val’s chest.

  “I am not wearing a bra or underwear, and I am ready to go!” Val announced in her red tube top and black miniskirt.

  Cate noticed that every single one of Val’s friends sported nice golden tans. Cate looked like she was from Wisconsin.

  “And while everyone was getting ready,” Loni said, “Nikki and I went to a sex shop and purchased lipstick vibrators for everyone!” They passed out the treats. The vibrators really did look exactly like a tube of lipstick. The sound of little motors filled the room as each girl turned hers on.

  “You can carry it in your purse and no one will ever know the difference,” Nikki said.

  Cate thought of her unsuspecting mother borrowing lipstick.

  The first thing Cate saw when she entered Olympic Gardens was a vagina, shaved to complete baldness. Startled, she turned her head in the opposite direction and faced a pair of huge, bare boobs, their pink nipples coming at her like blaring headlights. They were everywhere, inescapable.

  “What are we doing here?” Cate yelled over Britney Spear’s “Slave 4 U.” “I thought we were going to a male strip club.”

  Val grabbed her arm. “C’mon. We have to go upstairs!” Her penis crown was crooked.

  They weaved in and out of naked dancers until they approached a staircase. Two men wearing Speedos and lace-up boots of the military variety met them at the top. One of the men hooked his arm around Val’s elbow. “You must be the bachelorette.”

  “Yes!” she squealed, dreamy eyed.

  The other linked arms with Cate. “You got some sun today,” he said in a way that didn’t offend her when she looked at his biceps. “Allow me to escort you to a table.”

  Cate could only recall seeing a similar physique when Brad Pitt starred in Thelma and Louise. Bare-chested men, toned, muscular, tan—everywhere. Tight buns and sinewy thighs, hairless chests and backs as smooth and firm as glass greeted her at every corner. Was it rude to stare at someone’s butt?

  She felt slightly self-conscious, being that she’d never received attention from men who probably posed for the covers of romance novels. However, their personable smiles cast away any discomfort she felt and instead made her feel as if she had just walked into a room full of long-lost friends, all of them hot.

  “Would you like to buy the bachelorette a lap dance?” he asked as he led her toward a table. She had an urge to reach out and press his pecs.

  “Uh . . . a lap dance?” She hadn’t thought about it and wasn’t even sure what a lap dance entailed. “Sure.”

  “They’re twenty dollars, and we can bring her onstage if you’d like.”

  “Okay.” Cate bought Val two lap dances, picking the strippers as if she were ordering two tank tops in her favorite colors from the J. Crew catalog. She wondered what Paul would think if he could see her right now, or what her mother would say about all this. For a moment she thought of herself as Miss Padgett the kindergarten teacher, buying lap dances in the summer and singing nursery rhymes in the fall.

  A waiter wearing nothing but a bow tie and G-string took their drink orders.

  The strip club wasn’t as raunchy as Cate had imagined. There were no runaway wangs flying around. The dancers kept their Speedos on. An announcer introduced each stripper before he performed. It was like a play, a stage production, with half-naked men skipping all over the place.

  Except for a few, most of the men were gorgeous. There were a couple that looked as if they had done too many steroids and there was one that was plain cheesy. Cate was willing to bet that he was the tackiest male performer in the state of Nevada. And that was saying a lot. One, she was too poor to be making bets. Two, Nevada was the reigning palace of tacky.

  His dyed platinum hair hung over his shoulders like dried-out hay. When he spun around beneath the spotlights, his mane was almost as green as his fluorescent G-string. He was fake tanned to the point of appearing orange. To complete his entire image, he wore a pair of cowboy boots, his calves sticking out from the shoes like a pair of Popsicle sticks. He reminded Cate of someone out of a bad eighties metal band who hadn’t realized that the eighties as well as the nineties had passed. Val called him Cheesedick.

  “I dare someone to get a dance from Cheesedick!” She said. All of her friends laughed.

  Looking at Val, one would think she had just broken up with someone rather than had recently been engaged. She acted hungry, and devoured every minute of the attention she received from the dancers, practically licking her lips with pleasure. She could hardly sit still, squirming in her seat as she anticipated each lap dance.

  Her first lap dance was given by a Spanish man with biceps bigger than her thighs and deep-set eyes crowned with bushy eyebrows. He hovered over Val, his washboard stomach coming within inches of her chest. When he moved his hands up her thighs, Val tossed her head back and giggled. Her penis crown fell to the floor. Nikki was about to retrieve it when a stripper wearing a camouflage Speedo skipped over and swiped it from the ground. The military man ran his fingers through Val’s hair, massaging her scalp, before returning the crown to her head.

  Cate noticed that Val’s bare butt was exposed for all of Olympic Gardens to see. For a moment she debated hopping on stage and pulling Val’s skirt back down. She changed her mind when Val took the strippers’ hands into her own and placed them on her bare ass.

  Cate couldn’t help but wonder what kind of damage a camera could cause for Val. What if someone took pictures, and they accidentally ended up in Jim’s hands?

  Val had barely taken a seat when the announcer said, “Next up is Billy dancing for the bachelorette, Valerie.” Val cheered when she heard her name for the fourth time. Billy, a well-endowed cowboy, wearing chaps and a G-string, took Val by the hand and led her on stage.

  He spent a minute or two twirling around her. Then he took her knees, moved them apart, and began to dance inside her legs. Val looked as if she were in heaven when he began to rub her inner thighs. Cate watched as Val’s fingers latched on to each of Billy’s tight butt cheeks.

  It was hard to keep from wondering what Jim would think if he witnessed his bride exchanging pelvic thrusts with a male stripper. What came next made Cate’s hair stand on end.

  “And next up,” the announcer beamed, “is a dance for one of Valerie’s bridesmaids, Cate Padgett.”

  Gin and tonic sprayed from between her teeth when she heard her name. Hoots and squeals came from the other bridesmaids. “Get up here, Caaaaate!” Val cheered as she wrapped her legs around Billy’s waist.

  Her body became immobile, and she could feel her cheeks growing hot. Chrissy and Nikki grabbed each of her arms. Then Kimberly and Loni hoisted her up to stage level before Michelle gave her a swift kick in the ass, sending Cate sprawling onto the stage. She was saved from falling flat on her face by her private dancer, a yummy blond with a fire-engine red Speedo. Okay, maybe it wasn’t so bad.

  He placed her in a chair facing Val, who gave her a mischievous wink. Cate sat upright, back straight, legs closed, and ankles crossed. When the next song began, she expected to see the fire-red
pelvis thrusting within inches of her nose. Instead, a fluorescent green G-string came spinning toward her like an out-of-control Frisbee. The last thing she saw before Cheesedick began attempting to work his magic was the horrified expression on Val’s face.

  She thought she heard Val scream, “That’s not the one we ordered!” over the music.

  “Hi, cutie,” he whispered in her hair. “I’m Brett. What’s your name?”

  “Uh . . . er . . . ummm . . . Cate?”

  “Relax, Cate,” he said as he ran his fingers through her hair. He looked at her playfully. His teeth were bleached.

  She glanced at the other girls out of the corner of her eye. Nikki was shaking her head, furiously mouthing, “We didn’t order Cheesedick ! There’s been a mistake!”

  Chrissy was screaming at the man who took orders for lap dances, waving her arms around like a madwoman, and Loni was on her cell phone, pacing around the stage.

  Brett lightly touched Cate’s chin and turned her to face him. “You look preoccupied,” he said in a playful, boudoir type of way.

  He moved his pelvis in circles like a belly dancer, occasionally giving his head a kinky little toss, sending his chlorine-colored hair over his shoulders. Cate noticed that his whole body was shaved—legs, chest, and arms—and she sensed that . . . his area was bald as well. He parted her thighs, and she wanted to clench them shut but she also didn’t want to be a poor sport.

  He hovered over her, his bare chest coming within inches of her nose. She inhaled musky cologne. His chest felt the same way her legs had the last time she went two days without shaving. “I know you’re nervous, darling. I won’t do anything to embarrass you,” he whispered.

  It’s a little late for that, she thought.

  “Looks like you got a little sun today,” he said before he did a little spin in his cowboy boots. “You know what will really help?” He turned around, still thrusting his crotch back and forth, snapping his fingers.

  She was curious and figured with his tan he was probably an expert in skin care. “What?”

  “Apply tons of lotion, of course. But keep your lotion in the refrigerator. The cool lotion will feel great on your burned body.”