Like a Best Friend | ✓

chapter twelve

I have my feet in the sand and a pina colada in my hand. Life is good. After how busy yesterday was, we decided to have a chill day today and so far that has meant sleeping in until ten thirty, brunch at eleven thirty, and lounging by the pool since then. The heat isn't so bad today, hovering around seventy-eight, so we can actually enjoying lying out in the sun without having to constantly roll into the water to cool off, like seals flopping into the sea.

Las Vegas is kind of like the airport. The concept of time doesn't exist here. Nobody cares what hour you start drinking, the hotels and casinos as bright lit at three p.m. as they are at three in the morning, and I'm getting used to this life. We had mimosas with brunch and we've been sipping on pina coladas and strawberry daiquiris since midday, and I am deliciously tipsy. Which is probably a bad idea when combined with sun and heat, but I don't care.

"Fliss, look!" Kitty is clacking towards me in her flip-flops, her hips swinging and her breasts swaying in another riskily small bikini. All eyes are on her. She is a sight to behold, the mint green of her bathing suit popping against her gloriously tanned skin after a week under the Nevada sun. I catch my ogling and mentally scold myself. She is your best friend, Felicity. Knock it off.

"What am I looking at?" My prescription sunglasses are a shade too dark to make out what she's holding but without them, she's a blur.

"I went to get a couple more drinks from the bar over there and this dude was like, let me get that for you, darling, and I told him I'm actually here on my honeymoon with my brand new wife and I was fully prepared to be grossed out, but look!" She gets closer and I see she's holding four cocktails, each one a different color. "He said congratulations and told us to have a great stay and he bought us these. How nice is that?" She sets the four drinks on the table next to our daybed and flops onto it. "He also told me to tell my wife that she's a very lucky woman."

Kitty has really latched onto the fake honeymoon thing and combined with what Sally said before I came out here, it's doing things to my head. Things I wasn't expecting. It could be the alcohol talking, and that's about to get worse. Except I don't think the drinks are very strong. Mostly fruit juice and ice and a single measure of vodka or gin, if that. They're fucking delicious, though.

"Thank you, mystery man," I say, tapping my drink against Kitty's and sucking on the straw. "I am a very lucky woman."

"I also overheard a guy on the phone talking about how his wife isn't feeling well so they won't be able to join the sunset tour to Seven Magic Mountains. So I asked him about it, and the poor schmuck gave me their tickets. Just gave 'em to me." A couple of tickets appear in her hand out of thin air. God knows where she was keeping them. "I should wear this more often. I'm getting a lot of free shit today."

I sit up and push my sunglasses into my hair, squinting against the sun to look at Kitty. "A tour? Today?"

"Just a little one," she says. "Apparently it's this outdoor art installation, like, twenty miles away, straight down South Las Vegas Boulevard. The hotel puts on tours and the bartender said the sunset ones sell out super fast and we should definitely go. We have to be outside the front of the hotel at five."

I check my phone. It's three now. Dinner at the Strat is booked for seven thirty. "Okay, awesome, sounds like a plan. I'm still gonna drink these, though."

"Oh, absolutely, of fucking course," Kitty says with a laugh. "Free drinks by the pool followed by a free sunset art tour? This is shaping up to be a pretty great day." She lies down next to me and uses her straw to mash up the chunks of ice in her cup, slurping loudly. I hold out my phone to take a selfie of us on our luxury lounger with our fruity drinks and our tipsy smiles, and I send it straight to Campbell Soup with the caption vegas is awesome!!!