My Pussy for Rent

Part 1

I flipped that cheap, business card sized advertisement over and over again with my free hand. The thumb of my other one had been hovering the call button on my phone for the last 10 minutes. Should I? Or shouldn't I?

I sighed. Why was it so hard for me, a mature (enough) woman, to make this kind of decision for myself? I didn't know. I mean, I was on vacation, for fuck's sake. And the intention of this vacation was to let myself be... free and open and all that shit my best friend Sue wanted me to be.

"Look, Freen," she sat me down a week ago. "I really hate seeing you like this. You need to loosen up. I know why you're drowning yourself with work, and I want you to stop. Mourn another way," a pause. "Feel."

I snapped, of course, because that was the only thing I could do at the moment. "Feel what, Sue? Tell me, feel what? I'm sorry if my way of mourning is not up to your standards but this is how I deal!"

"You've spent the last year staying awake, plowing through documents like some corporate zombie, which, you and I both know that that is not you," she took a step forward and I, backward, crossing my arms in defense. "You don't sleep, you don't eat, and don't think I can't tell you've dropped a dress size, Freen."

"Yeah, well," I rolled my eyes. "Beauty is pain, princess."

"I think you emphasized too much on the pain part, Freen," she said softly, genuinely and full of concern that it was becoming really hard for me to keep my tears at bay. I swayed a bit because a part of me really wanted to crumble down and just be vulnerable for once.

But then of course she had to open her big, yet undoubtedly very pretty, mouth again.

"I mean it's not like Nicole's dead or something," she flailed her arms up in the air — apparently frustrated with my stubbornness. "She wasn't even a good girlfriend to you, Freen!"

"Don't you dare! We were perfectly fine!"

"Oh yeah?" Sue challenged me and took another step forward.

I took one as well. "Yeah!"

"Then why did you spend more than half of your relationship coming home crying? Why do you insist on protecting her when she was the one who cheated on you? I can count, with just my left hand, the number of times she came to your amateur night singing gigs — oh, hold on, I can actually count that with just one finger! And guess what, I'm giving her the middle one because dammit, Freen, you're my best friend and nobody gets to treat you that way!"

There was a long pause before I finally relented and slumped into the couch. I held my face with both my hands — not because I was crying, but because I was frustrated with myself. I knew Sue was right. In fact, I've always known about it for a long time. I, myself, couldn't figure out why I gave a million chances to Nicole when I knew perfectly well that she didn't deserve them.

"Listen," Sue sat down next to me. "Take some days off and come with me to Vegas next week. I'm gonna be busy with business meetings during the first couple of days, but we can have fun once the clock strikes 5 on that third day — plus we get to stay the weekend. We can stay at our condo, and I'm gonna be paying for your plane tickets, too. What do you say?"

I huffed in response. Vegas did sound very nice.

"Come on, Freen," Sue nudged my shoulder with hers. "It'll be like old times. You and me, painting the town red? But like... without the literal paint this time."

I chuckled. "We did have a lot of fun with that can of red paint."

"Jacob was so maaaaad..." she reminisced, and we both laughed at our former highschool's newspaper reporter.