Disclaimer: No minors are depicted in the following. All just good clean fun among consenting adults. Copyright belongs to the author.
When the check arrived, CarolAnn pulled the little vinyl folder toward her and opened it. It took a great effort on her part not to gasp out loud.
She had known the total might be high. She and DeeDee, her friend from the bank, had ordered margaritas, and then two more when those margaritas had appeared on the table. Four then, she tried to think, then definitely two more. Okay, maybe two more beyond that. And then these two sitting on the hightop table between them, would make, she did some befuddled math. Oh holy shit, ten.
And the food, too. Potato skins, chicken fingers, chimichangas, nachos. Garbage food. All that crap rolled greasily on her stomach.
She was looking at the check in disbelief. Two hundred and eighty-seven dollars.
"Hey, honey," DeeDee said, "you okay?"
CarolAnn realized that her eyes were probably wide open and staring. She laughed a fake laugh and leaned back into her uncomfortable chair. "Oh, yep," she said. "Sure."
"Fuck," DeeDee said, "I am fucking hammered." She lifted her margarita in a toast to CarolAnn and took a sip from it. "Any swinging dick comes over here, I am," she paused for emphasis, "ALL HIS."
But of course, no swinging dicks were coming over here. They were at a corner table in this bullshit chain restaurant. There was no one here. A couple of weary old regulars at the bar.
CarolAnn and DeeDee were the kind of girls who naturally bonded together. Into their thirties now, voluptuous bordering on chubby, but hiding it successfully with artful layering of clothing and a perky, frisky attitude, as girls do. They both had round faces with eyes just a bit close-set, DeeDee's green, CarolAnn's brown. CarolAnn's hair was a pert brown bob that framed her face; DeeDee's a poofy mass of tinted blonde curls. Again, natural work companions.
"I'm right here," DeeDee said raising her glass to the bar and then taking another sip. "Let's see some dick." She was just kidding around though, no one but CarolAnn could hear her.
They had had a tough day at the bank. CarolAnn and DeeDee were tellers, and somehow there was some kind of alert on the business news about a shortfall in assets. So they had been confronted with a stream of angry customers withdrawing their money.
"I need someone to pull my hair and fuck my ass," DeeDee said, again not so loud that anyone else could hear it. Not that any of the tired old guys at the bar were in any position to take her up on it.
CarolAnn was doing the math. How had they spent so much in this shitty franchise restaurant? She had one credit card that, maybe, could take this charge without being declined. Maybe.
"Hey," she said with false cheer, "let me get this." She extracted her over-extended credit card from her wallet and placed it on the table. "You can just Venmo me or whatever."
"When I get obliterated like this," DeeDee said, "I just love it up the ass." She sipped her margarita again. "You ever get that way?"
No one anywhere had ever been up CarolAnn's ass. It was hard enough to meet guys that would just come out for a second date. She raised her margarita glass and then put it back down. Her stomach was rebelling.
"Baby, are you okay?" DeeDee said.
CarolAnn could feel sweat breaking out on her forehead. "Oh, yeah," she said.
DeeDee pulled the check toward herself and looked at it. "Look at us," she said, "two whores slamming drinks and no guys to pick up the tab."
CarolAnn smiled uneasily. She didn't think of herself as a whore. But DeeDee was basically her best friend in the world. "No," she said, "no worries. I got it."
"Fuck it," DeeDee said, "I got it. How much cash do you have?" She took another slug of her margarita, nearly finishing it, and started looking around.
What could she possibly have in her wallet? Twenty dollars? "Oh no," she said, "let's just put it on the card."
DeeDee slapped her purse on the table and started rooting through it. "I'd suck any dick in this bar, and these weirdos don't even know it." She raised her hand, summoning their bored waitress. "Two more," she said.
"Oh my god," CarolAnn said, "I can't."
"Yeah, you can. Buck up, princess." DeeDee was pulling a wad of bills from her purse. She started peeling hundreds off of it, while CarolAnn watched in increasing amazement. One, two, three. DeeDee looked up at CarolAnn. "You got, like, forty?"
CarolAnn laughed out loud, a sharp bark of a laugh. "I think I have twenty."
"No sweat." DeeDee threw another hundred on the table. "What I wouldn't do for cock, right now."
All of this was making CarolAnn distinctly uncomfortable. But at the same time, she couldn't help but wonder where all of this money was coming from. That roll of bills, it looked like, well, thousands of dollars. She and DeeDee were bank tellers, making eighteen dollars an hour. She hoped she wasn't going to lose her best friend. CarolAnn didn't have a lot of friends.
She picked up her margarita. Just as she did so, the waitress brought two more to the table.
"Oh boy," CarolAnn said. "Thanks."
"Sure thing," the waitress said, smirking at her. It was amazing to CarolAnn how these young kids got jobs with all the tattoos they had.
DeeDee had already finished her margarita. She picked up the new one. "You ever do two guys at the same time?" she said.
Oh my goodness, CarolAnn thought, remembering one particularly depressing episode in college. "Oh," she said, "you know, not that often."
DeeDee laughed out loud. "I bet."
There followed a silence that lengthened until CarolAnn couldn't help but interrupt it. "You, umm, you sure carry a lot of cash around."
"I guess," DeeDee said.
Another silence. DeeDee was content to sip her margarita.
CarolAnn sipped hers too, bolstering her courage to ask the next question.
"Do you have some kind of side hustle?"
DeeDee emptied her glass and set it down. "You gonna drink that?" she said, indicating the new margarita in front of CarolAnn.
CarolAnn stared at DeeDee in open amazement. "Oh, no," she said.
DeeDee picked up the new margarita. "Porn," she said.
"No, really," CarolAnn said, unable to help herself. "What."
"Actually," DeeDee said, "I'm the Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island."
CarolAnn returned her stare, blinking. The two of them were not porn girls, not even close.
"Porn," DeeDee said again.
CarolAnn gasped. "Oh my god! Like, what? OnlyFans?"