Chapter 36
* * * *
Amanda had said the bachelorette party would be a bar-hop, but she had only one destination in mind. “Shark Bait!” she cried from the back of the van. Her friends whooped and cheered.
Glancing in the rearview mirror, Tara frowned at the water bottle in her cousin’s hand. That was definitelynot Kool-Aid she was drinking. “Do what now?”
“Shark Bait,” Marlene echoed. She sat in the passenger seat, trying to look forty years younger than she was and failing miserably. “It’s in Anglesea. I’ll show you how to get there.”
Anglesea was part of North Wildwood, though Tara wasn’t too familiar with it. But she followed Marlene’s directions, watching the boardwalk’s lights dwindle in her rearview mirror as they headed away from it. At one point, she muttered, “I don’t see why we can’t hang out on the boards and have fun like we used back in the day.”
“Because the boards are for babies,” Amanda called out amid laughter and jeers. “Big girls drink their fun. Ride or die, bitches!”
Tara shot Marlene a confused look. “Ride or what?”
With a shake of her head and a wave of her hand, Marlene dismissed Amanda. “That’s something she says. The bar’s up ahead on your right.”
Judging from the half-empty parking lot, the place was dead on a Wednesday night, even at the tail end of summer. But Amanda and her friends poured out of the van making more ruckus than most of tourists did up on the boardwalk, so Tara didn’t think things would stay quiet for long. Their party just about filled the bar to capacity. As they streamed inside, heads turned and people smiled to see fifteen women obviously having a great time. Quite a few men nodded or waved, trying to catch someone’s eye.
Tara ignored them all.
Amanda paraded at the front of the group, her bridal veil glowing in the bar’s low lighting. “Drinks for my girls!” she called out. Her friends answered with cheers as they commandeered a couple of tables by the jukebox, and Marlene started feeding dollars into the machine, queuing up music to fill the quiet bar. “I’m getting hitched, bitches!”
A waitress came out from around the bar to take their orders. She made a beeline for Tara, who stood near the group but didn’t sit. With a shake of her head, Tara said, “None for me, thanks.”
“So, when’s the wedding?” the waitress asked, cracking her gum.
“Saturday.” Tara wondered if it would be bad form to wait out in the van.
“Congrats.” Another crack. “You the mother of the bride?”
Tara gave her a horrified look. “What? No.”
The waitress took a step back. “Sorry.”
Suddenly Amanda was there, draping an arm around the waitress’s bare shoulders. “Hey,” she breathed, smiling through the veil, which now hung down over her face. “She’s our driver, so give her…I don’t know, pop or something.”
“I don’t want anything,” Tara clarified. What she wanted was to go back to the house. Or maybe to the boardwalk. That’d be nice. That was sort of her whole reason to come in the first place. She could do the bar scene anywhere, but no one else had a boardwalk like Wildwood did. So why not go there? Was that too much to ask?
“I’mthe bride,” Amanda said with a pout. “Come take myorder first.”
Flashing a smile, the waitress asked, “What can I get for you?”
Amanda didn’t even have to think about it. “Jelly shots all around.”
Tara rolled her eyes. Like any of them needed that
* * * *
It was quarter to eight and Tara sat at a table by herself, nursing a Coke and munching on a bowl of pretzels the waitress had placed in front of her at one point, probably in the hopes of getting her to drink more. Amanda and her friends were crowding the bar’s small square of bare wood paneling that passed as a dance floor, the sloppy drunk-ass bitches. Half were line dancing to the hip hop song blaring from the jukebox while the others…well, Tara wasn’t quite sure what it was exactly they were trying to do.
A pair of bridesmaids were jitterbugging. Another couple appeared to be so far into their booze, they were groping each other up during a slow dance, grabbing butts and boobs and moaning as they rubbed together. Marlene swayed to her own rhythm, eyes closed, grinning foolishly, a bottle of beer in one hand. Amanda led the line dancers, trying to boot scoot to a Pitbull song.