“I’m gonna head upstairs,” I yelled, my mouth as close to her ear as I could manage without swallowing her chandelier earrings. I gathered my chips and turned to Megan, the bit of a girl to my left, her platinum curls bouncing excitedly at some aspect of this gamble that we didn’t understand. My feet were on fire, four hours in a-size-too-small-but-they-were-on-sale heels taking their toll in the most painful way possible. I gazed longingly at the stool holding up the cigarette-smoking female to my right.

There was a bump of bodies behind me, and the curve of the table cut into my still-gorged-on-seafood stomach. Not in that loud place, with Tammy’s hand digging into my shoulders, her fresh manicure biting imprints into my sunburned skin. I belonged on my front porch, sunning my toes on the railing, a sweet tea next to me, a magazine on my lap, Sugarland on the radio. Chelsea’s big day was two weeks away, so there we were, in Nassau, bachelorette-partying our country asses off. McCrory, Chelsea’s father and the king of the Atlanta carwash market. Six of us split between three rooms, the four hundred dollar nightly rate generously taken care of by Mr. We were at a craps table, a game that none of us understood, yet the Asians to our right were grinning and gesturing like we were hitting the mother lode, so we blew on dice and moved markers, and our chip stack continued to grow.Ĭhelsea. Flip-flops shared space with sequins and diamonds, the crowd a mix of sandy tourists and high rollers, eighteen-year-old spring breakers polka-dotting the mix with their wide eyes and slurred steps, the alcohol hitting their virgin systems hard. I didn’t belong here-not in a loud casino, smoke curling up the walls, disappearing into discreet vents. (adj.) close-fitting, especially uncomfortably so.

Tight by alessandra torre