For Brittney

· Lauryn Hill

· Pink

· Vegas

“You know this shit isn’t funny, right?” Brian screamed through the tinny speaker of my phone.

I don’t know, I found it just about as funny as I found the fact that he’d been fucking his coworker Janis for the past six months while I was busy planning our upcoming nuptials. Janis was the latest in a long line of indiscretions, but something about her being someone I knew was the proverbial camel’s straw. I’d had enough and snapped—calling on the inspiration of a few of my favorite fictional ladies—Bernadine and Wilhemina. Brian’s prized collection of rare Jordans had been completely destroyed courtesy of “Ex Factor” by Lauryn Hill on repeat, half a bottle of Woodford Reserve and my little brother Jonathan’s paintball gun. My best work was on a twelve-hundred-dollar pair of white on white retro 11s, now a beauteous shade of hot pink.

I giggled, “It actually is, B. Hilarious, in fact, now that I’ve had some time and space to think about it.”

I’d found out about this latest indiscretion hours before I was expected to hop a flight to Vegas with my homegirls for bachelorette shenanigans. At first, I tried canceling, but my best friend Aja wasn’t hearing that. It was Aja who’d come up with the nefarious plot of revenge, actually. I was drowning too deep in Lake Feelings, but when she and JonJon arrived paint gun & bourbon in tow, it didn’t take much for me to snap into revenge mode. It felt really good in the moment and until Brian called me threatening legal action, I had no regrets. The thought of B actually being able to sue me for damage of personal property clearly hadn’t entered any of our minds while we were committing the act. Aja and Jon were trying to ensure that I had a healthy…in their opinion…means of letting go my anger.

“You destroyed ten thousand dollars’ worth of shoes, Cyn.”

“And you destroyed my entire future, so I’d say you’re still in the hole quite a bit, right?”