Get Over It

by Nikki Carter

  At the mention of the blog, I really want to snap on Mystique. If Dreya’s on there tomorrow, I can guess who made it happen. No one can convince me that Mystique didn’t give that report about Bethany.

  “You think I don’t know it!” I say. “That’s why I always act like I have some sense out in public. Dreya doesn’t care, though.”

  “She should. That’s why Epsilon wants to drop her. She doesn’t have any class.”

  I give Mystique a tight-lipped, straight face. “You know that’s not why they’re dropping her, Mystique. Don’t do that.”

  “Whatever do you mean, Sunday?” Mystique blinks her eyes so rapidly that I think those fake eyelashes are going to get tangled.

  “They’re dropping her at your request.”

  “I don’t have that much power, sweetheart. If she was making them money, and they could trust that she’s not going to crash and burn on drugs or alcohol, they would tell me to go kick rocks with flip-flops.”

  “That sounds painful,” I say, changing the subject.

  “What?”

  “Kicking rocks with flip-flops.”

  Mystique bursts into laughter. “It’s an expression, nut!”

  Dreya pushes past my father and sees me sitting on our sectional, which is right across the room from the door. Her face twists so violently that I’m sure, in that moment, her head would spontaneously combust if you held a match to it.

  “Oh, I don’t believe Sunday and Mystique are up in there and you’re trying to keep me out?”

  My dad places a hand on Dreya’s shoulder when she tries to walk past him. I could’ve told her that wasn’t going to work. One of the few things I remember about my father is that he is very, very strong. She’s about to get her feelings hurt.

  Next thing you know, Evan is whispering something to my dad. Something changes hands and then Dreya and Evan walk in. I almost thought she would leave. Dreya is not the type to like being denied access to a club.

  She walks across the floor looking beyond angry. Her face is flushed and she absentmindedly places a hand on her stomach. I keep forgetting that she’s pregnant, and obviously she does too. She needs to calm all that hollering down while she’s carrying my little cousin. She’s got a miniature Tolliver on board. That’s important business.

  I watch Evan’s lack of attention to Dreya in stark contrast to Zac’s catering to Mystique. I am convinced that Evan doesn’t really love my cousin at all, but that he wants her to resurrect his dying career. He acts like we need him, but it’s very readily apparent that he needs us. Now more than ever before, with Big D stealing a portion of his market share.

  “Come on, Mystique,” Zac says. “Let’s go sit with Big D and his security. I don’t want to fool with Evan tonight.”

  “Seriously?” Mystique says. “We’re going to look like we’re running from them.”

  “I don’t care. You’re pregnant. We don’t need to have any mishaps that would cause me to spend the rest of my life in prison.”

  “Okay, baby.” Mystique kisses me again, and lets Zac lead her over to Big D’s special area.

  “They can’t even speak?” Dreya says loudly as she approaches our sectional. Dreya plops down next to me on the couch. Sam finally sits down too, on the other side of me.

  “It’s your turn tonight, huh?” Dreya says to Sam.

  “Ha ha. Very funny, Drama.”

  Evan looks very irritated, but he sits down on the edge of the sectional. “I wonder how Big D forgot to put us on his guest list.”

  “I know, right!” Dreya says. “If it wasn’t for us, he wouldn’t even have any of this shine, so he and his old jiggly Jell-O-stomach-having tail can get to stepping.”

  That was a low, low blow. She didn’t have to rank on Big D’s weight. He can’t help it if he’s big. Okay . . . he probably can, but that’s not fair to laugh at him. He doesn’t bother anybody like that. You’ll never hear Big D clowning somebody.

  “You can’t talk about my friend like that, Dreya,” I say. “Big D is the reason you have all this. If he wasn’t doing any work that day we went over there, we would’ve never gotten into the industry at all.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah! Y’all get on my nerves. Evan is the one trying to take y’all to the next level, and y’all up in here sweating D like he’s going to be able to do anything Evan can’t do.”

  “He’s trying to steal my artists back,” Evan says. “But you have an iron-clad contract, Sunday. You do know that, right?”

  I nod slowly. “The only one who can make my contract null and void is Epsilon records.”

  Evan gives me a strange look as if I meant something other than what I said. It’s the truth. Epsilon can cancel my contract. They have a list of infractions and mistakes I can make that would cause me to be unceremoniously dropped.

  “Have they talked to you at Epsilon? Are they telling you that they’re cancelling your contract?”

  I shake my head. “No. I’m just saying that I know what my contract says. I’m going to school for entertainment law, remember?”

  “That’s right. You’re trying to be a lawyer on top of being a pop star. You’re gonna go into the Guinness Book of World Records.”

  “Right!” Dreya says. “As the one who messed up a record deal trying to hit some books.”

  Okay, they are about to get on my nerves. I was here chilling with Sam, enjoying our time together and here they are being haters and general party poopers. I’m not feeling this right now.

  “Don’t you guys have some people to see?” I ask.

  “You want us to move around?” Evan says. “You’re the boss now?”

  Sam says, “We’re just trying to have a good time, man, and y’all over here on something else. Why did y’all even come if this is how you were gonna be?”

  “We wanted to party too until they tried to keep us out of VIP,” Dreya says. “Normally, we wouldn’t have stayed, but there’s no way I’m getting kicked out of a party when they let Mystique in. No way. Unh-uh.”

  “Well, you decided to stay, so stop ruining the party for everybody else. I’m for real,” Sam says.

  “Nobody tells my wife what to do,” Evan says.

  “Oh, good grief!” I yell. “Stop flexing on each other. Evan, you need to get a glass of Moscato or something and chill out.”

  “I sure wish I could have some,” Dreya says. “This baby is stealing all my fun.”

  “Our baby. And don’t you even think about drinking anything, Dreya,” Evan says.

  “Okay, dang!” Dreya huffs and puffs for a second and gives up. She knows better, and she wants this baby to be happy and healthy as much as if not more than Evan.

  “Are you even listening to the music, Evan? What do you think about Dilly’s tracks?” Sam asks.

  Evan pretends to just now be hearing the music. Every few beats or so, he nods as if he’s hearing something that he has to figure out. He’s so full of it. I can’t stand him sometimes.

  “The track is tight,” Evan says. “I’m assuming that’s your work. But Dilly’s voice needs some work. He sounds like a youngster.”

  “He is a youngster,” Sam says. “His audience is youngsters.”

  Evan shrugs. “You asked me what I think, and I told you.”

  “Sunday, you ready to go and say congratulations to Big D?” Sam asks.

  Even though Big D’s group of admirers has not thinned out at all, I can see that Sam is not feeling this negative vibe that Evan and Dreya are throwing off. I hate that we’re leaving them at our seat. I picked a good spot when we walked up in this club.

  Sam takes my arm and pulls me quickly away from them. “Your dad is an awful bouncer,” he says.

  “I know. Isn’t he supposed to keep the riffraff out?”

  “Right.”

  When Sam and I approach, the crowd starts to open up a little to give us a path to Big D. He stands up when he sees me and pulls me into a big embrace. “It took you long enough to get over here,” he
says. “You over there acting all brand new.”

  I laugh out loud. “You had all your peeps surrounding you, so I just was gonna wait until you got off your throne.”

  Sam gives Big D a fist bump. “Congratulations, man. This is only the tip of the iceberg. We are on a takeover mission, ya heard!”

  Big D glances over in Dreya and Evan’s direction. “Everything cool over there?”

  “Man . . .”

  “Why did you leave them off the guest list, though?” I ask. “If I was Evan, I’d probably be a little bit pissed too.”

  “I honestly thought he wouldn’t show up. Lawrence is planning to come through, so I just thought that Evan would make himself scarce.”

  Suddenly, there’s a commotion on the other side of VIP. I’m afraid to look, thinking it might be Dreya making a fool of herself again.

  Then it happens. The smell hits my nose. And my stomach lurches. It smells like a pile of funky open baby diapers at high noon.

  Gamma Girls are scrambling left and right and running toward the entrance of the VIP area.

  “What is that stench?” Big D asks.

  When I don’t see Piper in the flood of Gamma Girls, alarm bells go off in my mind. I pull myself away from Big D’s rapidly thinning crowd and do the unthinkable. I go in the direction of the stench.

  “Oh my God!” is the only thing I can say when I see Piper crumpled up on the floor. Her dress is stained an unfriendly shade of brown. Yes . . . that’s exactly what’s happened. She’s lost control of her bowels right in the middle of the crowd.

  In other words, she’s pooped herself.

  Hope and Gia beat me over to her, but Hope can’t take the smell. She runs off as soon as she sees that Piper is okay. But I can’t tell if she’s okay or not. She looks like she doesn’t even know what’s happened.

  Kevin rushes up next to me. “How much did she drink?”

  “I have no idea, but we have only been here an hour! How can she have deteriorated this quickly?”

  “Do we help her? It’s disgusting,” Kevin says. “And this is also, by the way, not hot.”

  Gia comes over to us shaking her head. “Do they have a shower in here or something? She cannot get in the car like that. She is completely . . . soiled.”

  “How did this happen?” Kevin asks. “Does alcohol do that to people?”

  “It wasn’t just alcohol. Hope said that she overheard Peony saying that they’d done something to her drink.”

  “Those dirty mean girls. I cannot stand them,” I say. “Hopefully after this, Piper is going to run far, far away from this sorority.”

  “But can we get to the after part first? Right now, she has completely ended Big D’s party,” Kevin says. “The only people still here are too hammered to even notice that it stinks to high heaven, and us.”

  Dilly’s older sister LaKeisha storms over to us. “Can you get your drunk friend up out of here?”

  “How? She can’t ride in my car smelling like that,” I say.

  LaKeisha sighs. “Ugh. Bring her stinking self down the back way, and we can get her cleaned up. Bryce can’t have another underage drinking incident on his hands.”

  We help Piper up the best we can without getting her mess all over us, and pretty much drag her behind LaKeisha.

  “Why do I feel so moist?” Piper asks with a giggle that sounds like a snort. “I think I peed on myself, Gia.”

  Gia rolls her eyes, but doesn’t respond to her. Instead she looks at me and says, “At least she’s too drunk to be embarrassed.”

  “She will be later,” I say. I can’t think of how mortified she’s going to be when she finds out what has happened to her. If I was her, I’d want revenge.

  LaKeisha leads us into an oversized bedroom with an adjoining bath. Who in the heck needs a bedroom in a club? I know that Bryce is up to all type of freaky stuff back here with groupies. I can’t even imagine what germs are on that circular bed. I mean, who even has a circular bed? That seems like something straight out of the eighties.

  LaKeisha flings the door to the bathroom open. “Try not to make a mess. There are some big trash bags under the sink. Just throw her clothes away.”

  “What about towels?” I ask.

  LaKeisha shakes her head and frowns. “Ugh. Use the white ones in the linen cabinet and then put them in the trash too. The Dumpster is out back. You all can use the exit off this room if you’re too embarrassed to walk back through the club.”

  “What would I be embarrassed for?” I ask. “My friend and I aren’t the same people.”

  “Maybe not, but trust and believe when this gets on the Internet tomorrow, you will be mentioned in the story.”

  “Okay, then, thanks, LaKeisha,” Gia says when she sees me start to get irritated. “We appreciate your help. I’ll have Piper send you a thank you card later.”

  “Don’t bother. Just don’t bring her up in the club anymore. Minors who drink liquor are banned from the club.”

  Gia helps Piper into the shower and she strips out of her clothes. Luckily, whatever they put in her drink made the poop come out liquid. We just turn on the shower and wash the crud and funk down the drain. I don’t know if that was the sanitary thing to do, but I’m sure LaKeisha will have the place cleaned.

  Kevin puts a hole in the top of one of the plastic bags and uses it as a poncho. He takes another bag, and with it scoops up the dirty clothes from the floor of the shower and double bags them in two trash bags. He gags a couple times but he’s able to get the mess outside and into the Dumpster.

  “What is she going to put on?” Gia asks from the bathroom.

  I look through the dresser drawers and find a folded-up Baby Phat track suit. It probably belongs to one of Bryce’s hoes. I hold it up to my nose and it smells like Tide and dryer sheets, so obviously someone has washed it. It might be a little too big for Piper, but it’ll have to do.

  When I step back into the bathroom with the outfit, Gia is basically standing in the shower with Piper.

  “What are you doing? You’re getting all wet up!”

  “She can’t stand up, and I need to help her get it all off her so we can go home.”

  Not only is Gia standing in the shower in her clothes, but she’s splashing water all over the place. I take a long, hard look at the shower head.

  “Gia, get out of the shower and let her sit down. The shower head detaches. We can just spray it over her like a water hose.”

  Gia steps out of the shower/Jacuzzi tub, and lets Piper fall to her side.

  Then she starts laughing. “You know, this heffa is going to cry for days when we tell her about this.”

  “And we can’t not tell her, right?”

  “We’ve got to tell her. Oh my goodness!”

  Kevin bursts back into the bathroom and then covers his eyes when he sees Piper exposed. “Will y’all cover her up? Why’d y’all stop using the shower curtain?”

  “Oh, Kevin, please! This might be the one exception where God knows you can’t be looking at her with any kind of lust in your eyes. He’ll forgive you. Just look away, right now.”

  He storms out of the bathroom angrily, which makes us laugh more. There is a knock on the bedroom door. “Go answer that, Kevin,” I say. “It’s probably LaKeisha, coming to harass us again.”

  But it’s not LaKeisha at the door. It’s Sam and Hope.

  Hope rushes into the bathroom. “Is she okay?”

  “Yeah, no thanks to you!” Gia says.

  “Gia, you know I have a weak stomach. That’s not even my thing trying to help somebody in that kind of situation. I think I might have to give my babies to a nanny when they poop in their diapers.”

  Gia nods and laughs. “I know you have a weak stomach, Hope. You don’t have to explain it to me.”

  Out in the bedroom, Sam says, “Do y’all three think you can handle it from here? I want to get Sunday out of here. It’s getting a bit rowdy upstairs.”

  “Well, what about the rest of us?�
�� Hope asks as she steps out of the bathroom.

  “Kevin will protect you, right, Kevin?”

  “Yeah, sure I will.” Kevin says, not sounding the least bit convinced that he should be helping a bunch of stupid girls that got him into this mess.

  Hope says, “Ricky is still up there trying to help Big D and them get the crowd calmed down. Do you want him to drive, Sunday? Or do you want Kevin to drive?”

  I toss Kevin my keys. “You drive, Kev. I’ll see y’all back at the house.”

  “Okay,” Gia says. “See you shortly.”

  Sam leads me out of the back of the club and into his car, a new black, drop-top Benz. Sam doesn’t have any problem buying nice things with his money, but I happen to know that he’s not blowing it. Besides planning to purchase property, he got an investment broker just like me.

  “Sam, was it really getting rowdy up there or did you just want to leave?”

  “Well, it was getting a little hot up in there. LaKeisha had a cleaning crew up in there and one of them splashed bleach on a girl’s dress as she was going past. Of course the girl went bananas. Zac tried to say something to her and she bucked up against him like she was about to hit him. Of course, she was removed from VIP, but pretty much everyone is leaving the VIP. The smell won’t die fast enough, no matter how much bleach and air freshener they spray. It’s in the air for now, until they can open up the club and get a fresh breeze.”

  “Okay, ’cause Gia was looking at me crazy because I abandoned her with stinky.”

  “Oh, no. It wasn’t safe for you up there. Big D is all kinds of mad, too.”

  “I’m sure. Piper is going to have a lot of apologizing to do next week.”

  “How does someone even apologize for that?”

  Sam says, “She can write a letter. Dear Bryce and LaKeisha. I am so sorry that I couldn’t hold my bowels. Please forgive me. And let me get back in the VIP.”

  “Oh, we were told that she’s not being let back into the club, ever. LaKeisha says underage drinkers are not allowed.”

  “I think I can convince her otherwise, but probably not the Gamma Girls. Most of them clearly knew what was up, but they ran out without alerting other people.”