What Happens in Vegas...

PRETTY DRINKS WILL KILL YA

ATHENA’S POV

“You have better got a good reason for calling me out here,” I said as I settled down on the opposite side of the booth from my two best friends. They were ogling me like I had just walked out of a spaceship with a talking racoon strapped to my head.

“You left the hotel room looking like that?” Miranda shrieked aghast. I took a weak once over at my hotel-robe-and-bunny-slippers-ensemble and shrugged. “How on earth did they let you in?”

“I’m a hotel guest which means I’m paying them already. I’m pretty sure they can afford to excuse my dressing.”

“You look like shit, Atty.” I was certain he was right. With the fact that I hadn’t brushed my hair since our flight landed two days ago and that I haven’t showered or brushed my teeth or even done anything remotely resembling personal hygiene since we got to Vegas, I was sure my best friend was just being gracious by saying I looked like shit. Still, stating the obvious like that while I was at my lowest was totally a dickish move to make and I didn’t appreciate it one bit.

I gave Jonas a flat look.

“Did you guys call me down here to insult me? If that’s it, I’ll be going back up now.”

“No, no, no,” Miranda said, grabbing on to my hand. “Please, sit. It’s important.”

She and her cousin exchanged looks before she said, “You know Jo has an audition tomorrow, right?”

My best friend, Jonas Parker, has had this huge dream of becoming a world-famous actor ever since he met Ryan Gosling at the airport back when we were in high school. He felt like he’d have much better luck in meeting Emma Stone if he became an actor rather than through his one-second glance at Ryan that day. It seemed like a befitting dream for a highschooler who was popular among both male and female students and also a thespian of his capacity. Still, you’d think that after almost ten years of chasing the spotlight and not getting anything better than a commercial for a cream that magically excises bunions he’d have given up by now.

“What about his audition?” I asked with as much enthusiasm as an elderly on life support.

“Atty.” Jonas grabbed my hand. “You know how important acting is to me and you know how badly I want this role. I can feel it, Atty, this is the one for me. My breakthrough role, the one that’s going to put me on the map.”

“You said the same thing about your other auditions and they all flopped.” I didn’t mean to sound so nasty and bitter, but I wasn’t in the mood to be happy or pleasant. Nursing a broken heart took a lot out of you and I was saving up all that strength to cry upstairs instead of listen to these two relatives spew their nonsense.

“Yeah, I know, but I am certain of this one, Atty. Trust me, what I need now is a romcom to complement my dashing boy-next-door looks and charisma and this movie is sure to be it.” He pointed at a piece of paper that was sitting on the table.

“What do you want me to do?” Miranda took over then.

“Jo is a fabulous actor, no doubt, but he’s been having trouble getting into the role of Sean, the male lead, and I think it’s because he doesn’t have a partner to read his lines with.”

“What about you?”

“I suck at acting, you know that. Right now, method acting will do him a much better service than just me casually reading the lines and we both know that you’re a better actor than either of us here. You weren’t the captain of the drama club for nothing. He doesn’t just need someone to read the lines to him, he needs someone who would…who would feel the emotions along side him and make his character come to live.”

“And you thought a person who is mourning a lost relationship to be the best to play the role of a girl desperately in love?” They both kept mute.

“I’m going back up.”

Again, my hand was pulled back by Miranda while she screamed, “Athena wait!”

“Miranda, I’m really not in the mood right now. I have a headache and I just to see if I can drown it in a tub of Greek yoghurt. The only reason why I agreed to come here with you guys in the first place was because you said I’d stay in the hotel room all day long if I wanted and the thought of not having to clean up after myself was very appealing.”

“Athena, I’m going to be honest with you girl, you stink. Your clothes stink, your breath stink, your hair is greasy and leaves dangerous stains on the pillowcases and bedsheets and it looks like a bird’s nest during a hurricane. You haven’t changed out of these clothes since we got here and you’re wearing mismatched bunny slippers, Athena. Mine and his.” She pointed at her cousin who was looking at me with worry and I looked down at the slippers I had on. Sure enough, one was green and the other was a light shade of red not to mention they weren’t even on the right feet.

“I know you’re hurting and that you don’t feel like living, but I need you to snap out of it. You deserve better than Patrick who smelled like garlic and only showered once in three days because he felt like the planet would be much better if he did that. You deserve better than Patrick who ghosts you occasionally to live up in the mountains cause of some bullshit hippie convention he comes across every fortnight. You deserve better than Patrick who proposed to you with an arcade ring and then proceeded to cheat on you with his cousin—and it doesn’t matter if they’re distant or not, Mirabella was his cousin and he had sex with her at your engagement party that you paid for!

“If it were any other time, Athena, I’d let you wallow in self-pity and waste away in that expensive ass suite, but not this time, not when the person being grieved is Patrick Freaking Sanley. You deserve better than Patrick. You deserve better than Seamus, in fact, you deserve better than Duke!”

I was feeling a little elated by her little speech, despite the fact that her mentioning that Patrick cheated on me with his cousin did cause me to have a momentary seizure, but at the mention of Duke, I was back to feeling like shit.

“You just had to mention Duke, didn’t you?” Jonas said glaring disapprovingly at his cousin.

“Well, I had to let her know. I’m certain she still thinks he was the one.”

“I do not!” I countered hotly. I could feel my face getting warm at that but I ignored it and hoped that Miranda would do the same too. She did.

“You deserve better than all those ass holes you’ve dated, Athena. You know what you deserve?” She snatched the paper from the table. “You deserve a Sean…Mendez?” Her eyes narrowed as she struggled to read the name on the script. “Sean Mendez?”

“It’s Mendel,” Jonas corrected.

“You deserve a Sean Mendel, who has loved you from the day he laid eyes on you back in elementary school. You deserve to be with a guy like him who would abandon his big city career and move back to the village to support your career as a…whittler?” She turned to face Jonas, paper dangling from her hand. “Andrea’s a whittler? She graduated top of her class in Oxford and she chose to use her degree for whittling? Who the hell wrote this script?” Jonas shrugged.

“It’s a romcom. She likes the simple life the country gives her and she decided to do what she liked doing the most which I guess is whittling.” Miranda rolled her eyes.

“Whatever. Despite the fact that your career choices wouldn’t be pleasing, you deserve to be a woman who is loved and valued by a man like Sean Mendel and the best way for you to be that girl tonight is by becoming Andrea…   Goo,” she finished flatly. Her face looked slightly fed up as she stared at the name on the paper. To be honest, I was enjoying her little exasperations.

“I don’t think a white person can play an Asian person. It’s called whitewashing, Miranda.” She gave me a fake smile and said, “It’s for practice, Athena.”

“Atty,” Jonas called softly. “Please, do this table read with me. Don’t go back upstairs.” His brown eyes looked sad and pleading, but it wasn’t for his sake. He wanted me to stay for my sake, so that I wouldn’t end up wallowing in self-pity and wasting away in that expensive ass suite.

“Where’s the alcohol?” I asked as I picked up the paper. Miranda stared blankly at me.

“What?”

“Where’s the alcohol, Miranda? If I’m going to do this, I have to have a little bit of that stuff in me. I can’t function without it.”

“Honey, how about instead of alcohol I get you a mint and a hairbrush?” I glared at her.

“One glass of something strong coming right up.” She disappeared almost immediately.

I used the time that Miranda was away to glance over the script. It was three pages, probably what was given to everyone to practice for the audition. The first page had the characters’ description on it. Andrea Goo, a 27-year-old who lives in a farm house with her demented grandfather and 10-year-old niece. She is best friends with Sean Mendel, but due to his moving to the big city with his girl friend and deciding to settle there even after they broke up, they lost contact for a while until a disaster at the company he worked forced him to find his way home back.

“Tada,” Miranda sang excitedly as she placed three glasses of pretty looking drinks on our table.

“These look amazing,” I mused. It was the first time I was being amused and impressed by something since my breakup with Patrick. Quickly, I reached for the purple drink and succeeded in downing half the content of the glass before Miranda unceremoniously yanked it away from me, spilling some on my robe.

“Easy there, Athena. You’d have to be sober and conscious to a table read effectively. You’ll have a chance to drink the purple one when we finish. This is the emotional climax. You two have been best friends for years and after just getting back together, Sean is getting ready to leave. The only thing that would make him stay is a single word from you, Andrea. Begin.”

I wiped my bottom lip and forced my angry eyes away from Miranda to focus on the script in front of me.

Jonas got into character immediately.

“You’ve been my best friend for so long that I don’t remember what life looked like before you,” I began.

“That’s because your life was a disaster before me.” He paused a little then said, “But that’s okay because my life was also a disaster before I met you.” I couldn’t tell if the half smile he gave me was from Sean of Jonas himself, but like always, it made me feel better. The lines in the script sat a little too close to home. It’s true that my life was a disaster before Jonas crashed into it when we sophomores, which was why, I guess, reading these lines felt natural.

“How am I supposed to call you now? What am I supposed to call you?”

“Call me whatever you want, as long as you’re still calling me ten years from now.” I shook my head.

“What if everything changes? What if we stop being us? I can’t risk that, Sean. I just got you back, I can’t lose you when I’m not certain things will still be okay with us a few years from now.”

Jonas grabbed my hand from across the table. From the corner of my eye, I could see Miranda recording this.

“We’ll figure it out, Andrea, like we always do. There’s absolutely nothing that would make me rethink us being together, ever. I want this, I want you, Andrea, only you.”

“Even when I’m annoying?” He smiled coyly.

“You’re always annoying.” Somehow, that felt like he was directing it at me, Athena, not Andrea. I laughed. “But I’m going to love you still.” He shuffled around his seat and pulled out a piece of paper.

“Marry me, Andrea.”

“Is that a real marriage license?” I, Athena, asked.

“No, it’s a prop that Miranda got for me. She said that it’ll make the whole scene feel real if I had it with me when I did the proposal.”

Apparently, Sean was already intent on marrying Andrea that night and he was just bluffing about leaving. He had the marriage license ready and everything. A bit cheesy but I guess some knucklehead girl out there would find this sort of shit romantic.

I had half the mind to say no to his proposal. In all honesty, it would have been because I was jealous of the way this fictional character named Andrea the Whittler was proposed to. Compared to my drunk arcade fiasco that only popped up because he tripped on his untied shoelace while holding up the stupid ring and by the time I realized it wasn’t in fact a proposal I had already screamed yes like a desperate little minx, Andrea’s proposal was much better than mine. She had someone who loved her and wanted to marry her immediately whereas I was stuck stinking up the whole place with all manners of odor coming from me because of an incestuous little piece of shit.

Damn Patrick Sanley.

“I’ll marry you, Sean.” Miranda let out a loud yelp that startled us both.

“Oh my God,” she squealed excitedly. “Okay. Okay.” Her one hand was still holding her phone up in our direction while the other rummaged her purse for something. Emerging triumphantly with a ballpen, she handed it over to Sean, I mean Jonas.

“What?” he asked, taking it from her.

“Sign the license with it.”

“We’re done with the scene,” I said. “It’s time for my drink.”

“No, you’re not. It says here that he brings in an officiant to say all that marriage stuff and then they sign the license. I’ll be the officiant.”

“Do we have to do this though?” Jonas asked. He sounded unsure about the whole thing. I personally thought we aced that scene and that this wedding bit wouldn’t even be in the auditions.

“Yes, method acting, guys. We’re taking it all the way.” She cleared her throat. “Do you…take…to be your lawfully wedded wife…” She muttered our names or rather, the names of the characters—I think—for some reason. I couldn’t be bothered by Miranda’s antics now. The purple drink in front of me was calling my name and I needed to get this over and done with.

When we both said ‘I do’ and Miranda made us sign the license despite it being fake and she yelped like a banshee and hugged us, we were now finally able to enjoy our drinks.

“Congratulations you two,” she said with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. “Welcome to the world of the married.”