Page 2 of Just What She Needed

She kicked off the sandals with the same violent gesture she'd use to dislodge a snake from her leg and gathered them up with the offending dress. Holding them out in front of her as if they were covered in fresh manure, she stalked into the bathroom and dropped them into the trash receptacle. Ha. So much for Dowdy Grandma Office Wear. Of course, they were still good clothes, and someone would undoubtedly be grateful to have them. Rhett stopped in the act of reaching for the discarded garments. If she retrieved them, they’d go right back into the closet. And if they went into the closet, she’d end up wearing them again, ugly or not. She knew herself all too well. With a decisive motion, she ripped a length of toilet paper off the roll and blew her nose into it. Standing over the flowered plastic trash can, she dropped the used tissue on top of the clothes. There. That made them officially garbage. Now she wouldn’t be tempted to ever wear that particular outfit again.

Back in front of the closet, she pondered her choices. There wasn’t much there other than the row of ugly work clothes. It disheartened her even more since it emphasized how boring her life was. Work, home, work, home. That was it. There were no fun clothes for weekend jaunts to interesting places, no fancy clothes, no casual dinner clothes, and nothing even remotely pretty to make her feel good.

Her gaze lifted to the top shelf where she spied a fold of denim peeping from under the extra quilt she kept for cold nights. She extracted the jeans, still festooned with the tags they had come with. Lilith had given them to her for Christmas, but she’d never worn them. In fact, she’d never tried them on. When she saw the Neiman-Marcus tags, she cringed. The jeans probably cost the earth, only to be shoved into the top of the closet and then forgotten.

Rhett shook out the denim and pulled on the jeans. She approached the full-length mirror on the back of the bedroom door sideways, as if to take her image by surprise. The jeans hugged her body more than her other clothes did, and if that put all her flaws on display then a preemptive peek into the mirror would be best.

Through narrowed eyes she checked out the side view. Her mouth dropped open in astonishment, and she faced her reflection head on. Well, hot damn. These things looked nice. No, they looked great. Her thighs actually came across as slender, and her legs appeared ten miles long. Smiling in delight, Rhett turned around and looked over her shoulder to take in the rear view. Double hot damn! There was her ass, and a nice ass it was, too. What kind of jeans were these, anyway? She pulled out the store tag attached to the waistband and peered down at the name. Rhett shrugged. She didn’t know who or what 7 For All Mankind was, but if they could make a pair of jeans that gave her shapely thighs and an honest-to-goodness ass, they were okay by her.

With a little extra swagger in her walk, she went to the dresser and opened the bottom drawer, the repository for all the clothes kept for sentimental reasons but never worn. After a bit of digging, she came up with the T-shirt she loved more than anything else she owned. It might have been twenty years old, but it still retained most of its deep cobalt blue color, and the name of the band jumped out in clear, shocking red. Illicit, Rhett's favorite band, the band whose music rocked her soul, the band with the lead singer who set her fantasies on fire and led her dreams into delicious, naughty directions for the past twenty-five years. Her current mood of Fuck-It was perfect for an Illicit T-shirt.

She pulled it on and returned to the mirror. The blue cotton was a tad snug over her breasts, and the bottom of the shirt barely reached the waistband of her jeans. All in all, though, not bad. A fashion photo shoot didn’t appear to be on today’s schedule, and besides, everyone thought she was at work.

Work. Reaction set in, and she sat on the edge of the bed before her shaking knees dumped her to the floor. What the hell had she done? Quitting a job without having another lined up went against the way she was raised. It was irresponsible, and no one had had reason to attach that description to Rhett in years. Her mother made sure both her girls knew and practiced responsibility and drilled into them from an early age the value of hard work. Everything Rhett did that morning flew in the face of those teachings.

The thought of her mother made her blanch. The minute Bettina Vandergriff found out what her daughter had done, she was sure to utter the phrase Rhett dreaded hearing.

“You’re just like your father.”

Myles Vandergriff had been the polar opposite of responsible. No one would attach that term to a man who ran off and abandoned his family when Rhett was seven and her sister Melanie was ten. Left to raise her daughters alone, Bettina turned into a hard, no-nonsense woman, vocal in her criticism of any deviation from her personal rules of acceptable behavior. Or maybe she'd always been that way. Rhett couldn’t remember her mother as anything other than a woman who worked her fingers to the bone as a waitress at the Claiborne Grill and ruled her house with an iron fist. All of it was done with a sense of martyrdom that even little Rhett was able to comprehend. And the worst thing Rhett or Mel could do was to behave in a way their mother deemed just like their father.

Nothing stung worse than having her behavior compared to that of a man who hadn’t bothered to contact his children since he disappeared from their lives. Rhett had spent her life trying to escape the taint of her father’s blood, but now she’d gone and done something truly Myles-worthy. The last time she’d done anything deemed just like her father was when she allowed the best-looking wide receiver to ever play football at Claiborne High School to impregnate her just before senior year. It took almost twenty years to live that one down. Now she’d given her mother and the rest of the town twenty more years worth of ammunition.

All of a sudden, moving to Dallas and becoming a high-priced call girl sounded like the best idea she’d ever had.

2

Rock is so much fun. That's what it's all about—filling up the chest cavities and empty kneecaps and elbows.—Jimi Hendrix

A sea of writhing, twisting bodies covered the main floor, and moved rhythmically to the hard, driving beat provided by the band onstage. Rhett stood at the railing of one of the balconies at the hottest nightclub in Dallas and wondered again just what the hell she was doing there.

“Here, Mom.” Lilith had to yell to be heard over the band. “Have another Cosmo.” She pressed a cold cocktail glass into Rhett’s hand before she turned back to the stage, her hips moving in time to the music.

If there was a more disgusting combination than oranges and cranberries, Rhett couldn’t imagine what it might be. She glanced around for a place to set the pale pink concoction, but apparently this club didn’t believe in tables. When they first came in, she spotted one or two on the main floor, but they had been occupied by people who looked far too young to be out at a nightclub. Then Lilith and Mel dragged her up to a balcony, and they’d been standing on their feet for close to two hours while the worst band in the history of the world performed for people too drunk and/or stoned to realize how much the music sucked.

She kept her mouth shut about it, though. This excursion was Lilith and Mel’s way of celebrating Rhett leaving her horrible job, and she didn’t want to burst their bubble. Why they thought this type of evening would be enjoyable to her was another matter. The last time she was in a nightclub was when Todd took her to Fort Worth for her twenty-first birthday. It was also the last time she’d been drunk, so she didn’t recall a lot about that particular club other than the fact that they served a strong So-Co and Coke.

Her right eye was pierced by a sudden burst of light reflecting off Mel’s gold-sequined top. As she sent an irritated glance in that direction, she noticed Mel’s hands were empty as she gyrated to the overly synthesized music. Rhett grabbed one of the flailing appendages and put her unwanted drink into it.

“Here, Mel. Have another Cosmo.”

Without pausing in her dance moves, Mel poured half the contents down her throat. Rhett shook her head and sighed. Why couldn’t she loosen and up and have a good time like that? Maybe because of the way she was dressed.

Since entering the club, Rhett either felt she was wearing too much or not enough, depending on who she looked at. But the amount of clothing she had on wasn’t the problem. Compared to Lilith and Mel, and pretty much everyone else at the nightclub, Rhett was sure she came across like someone’s boring maiden aunt brought along to act as the Designated Driver.

Rhett looked at her daughter, beautiful in a short black dress and red wedge sandals, and then at Mel who, besides her glittering top, wore a pair of black leggings and leopard-print suede flats. And here Rhett stood, attired in the jeans Lilith gave her for Christmas, and a blue and green paisley top with cap sleeves and an unflattering hemline. And white thong sandals. Yeah, boy, she was dressed to par-tay.

The sounds from the stage came to an abrupt halt, and amid the cheers from the throng on the floor, the band announced it was taking a break. Rhett’s relief at the relative silence was short-lived as the disc jockey cranked up another headache-inducing tune.

“Awesome.” Lilith turned to her, eyes shining. “Aren’t they great? I’ve been waiting forever to see them live.”

“Absolutely.” Rhett tried to muster up some enthusiasm. “They’re really ... energetic.”

“What?”

“Energetic!”

Lilith laughed and shook her head, her fashionable blonde bob swinging around her ears. “Mom, you’re too much.”