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Back We're All in This Together Save as PDF
Chapters (46)
  1. Cover
  2. Other Titles
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. Friday
  7. ONE
  8. TWO
  9. THREE
  10. FOUR
  11. Saturday
  12. FIVE
  13. SIX
  14. SEVEN
  15. EIGHT
  16. NINE
  17. TEN
  18. Sunday
  19. ELEVEN
  20. TWELVE
  21. THIRTEEN
  22. FOURTEEN
  23. FIFTEEN
  24. SIXTEEN
  25. SEVENTEEN
  26. EIGHTEEN
  27. NINETEEN
  28. TWENTY
  29. TWENTY-ONE
  30. TWENTY-TWO
  31. TWENTY-THREE
  32. TWENTY-FOUR
  33. TWENTY-FIVE
  34. Monday
  35. TWENTY-SIX
  36. TWENTY-SEVEN
  37. TWENTY-EIGHT
  38. TWENTY-NINE
  39. THIRTY
  40. THIRTY-ONE
  41. THIRTY-TWO
  42. THIRTY-THREE
  43. THIRTY-FOUR
  44. THIRTY-FIVE
  45. EPILOGUE
  46. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It was Jenna’s birthday, or at least it had been Jenna’s birthday on the previous Tuesday, but now that they were adults with jobs and kids and shit, they couldn’t just go out and party any old night of the week. So they saved up their hairspray and the money from their tip jars and went out Friday night, seven of them wobbling on too-tall heels in too-tight skirts, outfits they never would have worn back in the day, pre-kids, pre-divorces, pre–credit card debt, when all they needed to be sexy was a baby tee and some strawberry-scented lip gloss. Nicki might have only been twenty-six, but stuffed into her Spanx, with her eyeliner stretched out to her temples, she felt more like forty-six. She hoped she didn’t look as desperate as she felt, standing at the bar at Scuttlebutts, waving a twenty discreetly for the benefit of the bored bartender, who ignored her as if she was just some middle-aged mom with a bad haircut whose idea of a good time was two wine coolers and being in bed before ten. The whole thing made Nicki’s head hurt.

As she made her way back to the table balancing a tray of tequila shots, she bumped into Dallas. Really, Dallas bumped into her, while walking backwards through the bar with his arms thrown up in the air, yelling something to one of his bros across the room who was making rude gestures with a test-tube shooter. She didn’t even know it was him until they were both on the floor, dripping with tequila, lemon wedges scattered between them, the salt shaker uncapped and overturned on Dallas’s chest.

“Watch where you’re fucking going!” Nicki yelled, driving her heel into Dallas’s side.

“Fuck, Nicki,” Dallas groaned.

Nicki sat up, waving off a couple of outstretched hands from the crowd of amused onlookers. She found one shot glass that was still three-quarters full of tequila, hoisted herself up onto all fours, and crawled across the floor to Dallas, then leaned over and licked at the pile of salt on his T-shirt with a catlike flick of her tongue. Then she sat back on her heels, downed the shot, and dropped the glass onto Dallas’s chest with a thud that made him curl back in on himself, salt spilling onto the floor. “You owe me thirty-seven-fifty,” she said. “Plus tip.”