Stabbing the two rounded soft boiled eggs floating in my ramen broth was making me feel a bit better, not that I was overly upset to begin with. I didn’t let people like Howard spoil my day, in fact it made me feel an indescribable amount of joy to think that he was still probably ranting and raving over his cold sandwich that was probably spitefully made and spit in by his wife.

“He really said that?” Joannie asked with a look of horror. She had barely touched her steaming bowl of tonkotsu despite the fact it was quite obvious that she still had a raging hangover and was starving.

“Mhmm,” I replied while slurping, “he seriously implied that I have slept with every one of my teammates except for him.”

Joannie let out a loud laugh that drew annoyed glares from the couple at the table next to us. They were a young yuppie couple who had so far spent more time taking pictures of their ramen than actually enjoying it. Brand names of dubious French origin were plastered over their clothing and both of them were wearing more gold jewelry than seemed reasonable for a meal at the equivalent of a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that hid their hygiene rating among a bunch of other posters on the front window. Our working class lunch banter was interrupting their social media photo shoot of a quirky, undiscovered ramen spot from going viral.

“Patsy is going to scream. This is the kind of thing that HR reps have nightmares over, there’s going to be so much damage control that needs to be done.”

Joannie roomed with Patsy, one of the HR bots who wasn’t totally devoid of human emotion and rational thinking. They had been roommates since they were randomly matched up in college and had stuck together ever since. Joannie got a lot of shit for it by everyone who worked the floor, we just didn’t tend to trust anyone who willingly went into human resources, they all claimed to be for worker’s rights while simultaneously slipping under the boss’ desks for a post lunch suck. They were almost always firmly on the side of the company and willing to screw over employees as often as it took to keep their name high on the list for their next promotion. Patsy was okay, she seemed to have gone into it for the right reasons and wanted to actually help workers where she could, even if she did stay quiet on a lot of things that would make me throw a fit.

“And it was all on video?”

“I think so, Andy pulled out his phone pretty much at the start and eventually a couple of the other guys did too.”

“Oh wow.” Joannie shook her head in disbelief. “I am going to have to stick close to where you guys are working this afternoon, I’m sure you’re going to get a visit from some higher up before you clock out for the day.”

“Glad I can be the entertainment for the afternoon, but you’re forgetting that you still owe me the story for what your entertainment was for last night.”

Joannie’s face went red and she became suddenly very interested in stirring her soup. “Umm well, about that…”

“You know I’m not going to let this go,” I said with a grin.

“Of course not,” she said with a playfully dramatic sigh, “you can’t let a girl have her secrets.”

“Not when they’re juicy.”

“Okay, okay, so… do you know anything about um… spicy clubs?” She dropped her voice to a whisper and glanced to the couple next to us to make sure they weren’t obviously listening in.

“Spicy?” I asked, feigning ignorance.

“Yes, um, you ,know what that means.” Her face was turning an even deeper shade of scarlet.

“Maybe, but maybe I don’t, explain?” I couldn’t keep the mischievous giggle from my voice, Joannie could joke all day with brash sexual innuendo, but the moment it became real she got all sorts of flustered.

“Alright, alright, I’m going to get you back for this though,” she hissed, “it was a club where people find other people to uh… randomly hook up with.”

“So a normal bar?”

“Gah no, you’re doing this on purpose. Not like chat up a random person and take back to your place, but more like go into a back room at the club, do what you want to do, then come back out to the bar and find someone else.”

“You naughty girl.”

“Look it wasn’t my idea to go!” She was a whole new deep shade of red that I had no idea a person could achieve. “I got suckered into it because Patsy’s friend wanted to check it out badly and didn’t want to go alone and if she had to go, she was going to make me go too.”

“I distinctly remember you saying this morning that you got drunk trying to work up the courage to join in the fun.”

“I’m no prude, you know that.” Joannie stealthily peered around us, checking that no one was eavesdropping into the conversation. “It was just way kinkier than I was expecting, you have to wear a mask of some sort before you enter the club and everyone kept theirs on so you don’t know who anyone is.”

“A bunch of mystery sexual encounters with no strings attached?”

“Not unless you wanted to give out your name or number or something, apparently it’s just find someone you click with, have sex, go back to the bar and find someone else.”

Without thinking I crossed my legs and adjusted how I was sitting.

“You pervert,” Joannie giggled with a sly grin, “I should have known you’d like that idea.”

“My foot just fell asleep!” It was mostly truth, though I couldn’t ignore the growing warmth between my legs and distinct feeling of blood rushing further south.

“Uh huh, well then I don’t suppose you’d want to come with me again tonight.” She winked at me and nudged me knowingly with her foot underneath the table, though her face was still very flushed. “I think it could be a lot of fun if I can work up the courage, it’s been a while since I last had a hook up, probably a few months now.”

“You need me there for that?” I gave her a salacious look and cheekily hooked my thumb under the collar of my jumpsuit to pull down the fabric to expose the skin of my neck. “I knew it.”

“As moral support, yes.” She returned my wink and leaned closer. “Between you and me, Patsy is as straight-laced as they come. She but on a brave face and let her friend talk her into going out, but she came up with an excuse and left after not even half an hour, didn’t even want to try to be adventurous and have fun.”

“You just think I’m a slut.”

“If you let yourself get out of your apartment for the night I know you are. You just let yourself settle into a bad relationship right out of college and then settle into a slump once it ended.”

My lips curled into a frown and I stabbed a bit more at at the poached eggs, mangling one of them until it popped open and spilled yolk into the remaining broth. “Yeah, that’s true I suppose.”

Joannie let out a deep sigh and lightly smacked herself in the side of the head. “That was really insensitive of me, I can’t believe I just blurted that out like that. I know it’s a sore subject and did it anyway, ugh, it must be this hangover. Forgive me?”

At the tail end of my failed attempt at college I had met Jason, a tall, dark haired man with a voice that could charm the panties off of any woman he met. We had met at the typical drunken college party and when I had gotten myself completely smashed to work up the nerve to make a move on him, he carried me to the taxi, got me home, and slept on the couch of my apartment to make sure I was okay in the morning. He had been a perfect gentleman that night and it had cemented my attraction to him and I threw myself into a relationship with him. It had seemed like a fairy tale with flowers every week, regular Friday night dates that always ended up with us still awake and exhausted on Saturday morning, and he had been the type to open up doors, hold my hand through scary movies, and treat me like the only girl in the world. Two years into the relationship we had yet to move in or live together, which in hindsight should have been a red flag, but he proposed and it seemed natural at that point to just wait until we got married to combine everything.

It turned out that while I was being romanced every Friday night, his other girlfriend had been getting the same treatment every Saturday night. He didn’t even have the decency to say anything until after they were already about to be married the next day and he decided it was time to “let me down gently” about how he had to be a one woman man now. When I was, rightfully, enraged he had the gall to act blindsided at my anger and just kept talking about how he just wanted to see which of us he actually wanted to spend his life with and how he could have seen life with me being great, but his other girl just had slightly better chemistry. Once I stormed out of the coffee shop he had decided to break the news to me in, so cliché, the rest of the day was a blur. I could remember making it tearless long enough to make it to a liqueur store and buying the biggest bottle of vodka in a plastic bottle I could find. I gained consciousness again three days later, found several texts on my phone from the douche asking for his jacket back that he had left at my apartment, found the strength in me to go back out for another barrel of vodka and used a splash of it to help me burn the coat on the sidewalk outside the building so I could take a picture of it and text it to him as a reply. I’m sure the asshole used that photo to justify that I was just crazy and he’s the one who dodged a bullet.

“Christa?”

“Oh, sorry,” I said with an unconvincing laugh, “no don’t worry about it. It’s in the past, I’m over it.”

“Then come out with me tonight, let me pay for your drinks as an apology for being thick enough to bring up that shit show.”

I wanted to make up an excuse and stay home, I generally didn’t feel up to going anywhere anymore social, but I doubly wasn’t feeling like partying now. I knew he was a jerk, he was a user and just wanted me for a good time and strung me along so he could have his cake and eat it to, but I had really, truly loved him. He was the sun to my moon, it felt like he had completed me in a way that no one else ever had before. Losing him had ripped a huge whole in not only my heart, but also my ego and confidence, not to even mention the complete destruction of my sense of who to trust.

“Please?” Her lips were drawn into a slight pout and she turned her head to the side with a look of concern. “I worry about you sometimes and now I’m going to doubly worry about you now that I’ve been an absolute idiot and brought up bad memories.”

“Sure,” I agreed, though I didn’t know why I was agreeing when I really didn’t want to go. “Bring a credit card with lots of space on it though, I’m going to max it out with drinks.”

“You got it,” she said. She reached across the table and put her hand on top of mine. “I really am sorry, you have permission to bring up any of my bad breakups at the worst time now.”

“Really, it’s fine.” I gave her a half-smile and blew her a kiss. “I can never stay mad at you.”

“Good, well let’s get back to work before we’re docked fifteen minutes for being late.” She tipped her bowl up to her mouth and drank down the rest of her broth and then shoveled the remaining bit of her side of rice into her mouth. She was famous for waiting until the last minute of lunch to stuff everything she should have been eating the whole time into her gullet then complaining for the rest of the afternoon that her stomach was upset.

Glancing down to my remaining lunch, I decided I wasn’t very hungry anymore and stood up instead. “Alright, remember to stay close enough to be able to run over when you see anyone come talk to me, I’m sure this is bound to be good. I can’t wait to see how hard the bosses are going to try to grovel to me to get me not to file a complain or sue.”