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always the tight-laced respectable one, rolled her eyes.
    “Stel. It’s barely noon. Margaritas ?”
    Stella smiled and shrugged.
    “Come on Mel! Live a little. Besides, by the time we’re done here, it’ll be three or four. Happy hour baby!”
    “Alright fine.”
    Mel reluctantly agreed, making her way over to a set of picnic tables with Stella in tow. She began unwrapping hotdog packages, lining the uncooked dogs on the burners of a grill.
    “Just promise you won’t get shitfaced,” she added.
    “We don’t need another repeat of last time.”
    The last time being three weeks ago. Stella had taken Mel out for a drink to celebrate the fact that they had both had their cherries popped. It seemed like kind of a morbid thing to celebrate, but then again, Stella had never really been what one would call normal.
    One drink quickly turned to four and before Stella knew what was happening, a very annoyed Mel was holding her hair back as she puked into the bar toilet.
    Yeah. It definitely wasn’t her finest hour.
    Mel shot Stella a knowing glare as she took a seat at one of the picnic tables and began laying buns on paper plates. Stella sat down to help her and sighed.
    “Pinky promise.”
    She offered Mel her pinky finger. Mel rolled her eyes and snickered, taking hold of it with her own. Stella pulled away and gave her a playful nudge.
    “C’mon Mellie, lighten up.”
    She held an uncooked dog up to her mouth and mimicked a blowjob with it. Mel laughed and began to relax. At the catcall of Dice, she begrudgingly scrambled to her feet and made her way over to the pack of sweaty bikers awaiting more beer.
    It never ceased to amaze Stella how quickly they could guzzle it down. Mel instructed her to bring an extra cooler over and she did as she was told, dragging it behind herself in the grass.
    “You’re such an ass,” Stella overheard Mel say to Maddox.
    She tried to listen in on the conversation without seeming obvious but her hearing was strained, so she took a step closer and began to act distracted with handing out beers.
    “Careful,” Mel warned Maddox underneath her breath.
    “I think you forget that my daddy is one of the founders of your club. Touch me again Maddox, kidding or not, and I won’t just tell him. I’ll tell Scarlett too.”
    Maddox chuckled and cracked his knuckles.
    “Scarlett?” he shot back.
    “What’s she going to do?”
    Scarlett was Maddox’s old lady and the mother of his two children, Clementine, age five, and Stevie, age eight. The two weren’t married but that didn’t make Scarlett any less Maddox’s property. Not that Maddox behaved much like a married man himself.
    Mel tensed her jaw and pulled her wrist from Maddox’s grasp.
    “I don’t know,” she replied evenly.
    “But we can find out, if that’s what you would like to happen.”
    Mel looked around to make sure no one else was within earshot. She didn’t seem to notice Stella.
    “Look, I said it’s over and I meant it.”
    “Just please, respect that.”
    Just when the conversation started to get really intense, Kade pushed through a pack of men and intervened. Other than Stella, he was the only one who knew what had been going on between Mel and Maddox. He was, after all, Maddox’s lifelong best friend.
    “Everything alright here?” he questioned with his signature grin.
    Mel crossed her arms over her chest and was quick to respond.
    “Yes.”
    She stood up straighter and collected herself, reaching into the cooler and handing both Maddox and Kade a beer.
    “Maddox was just thirsty. Right Maddox?”
    Maddox snickered and lit a smoke.
    “Right.”
    Maddox had a way with women. He made them feel special and beautiful and wanted but only when it was most convenient for him. Every other time, he was a jerk. This was one of those times.
    “You get back to me when you’ve grown up,” he called out to Mel over his shoulder. He followed Kade over to where the rest of the SOW were hanging with their ladies