The One About Friends
...On The Road...with Beer!
I’ve been noodling about with some old projects and thought I’d share this one. It’s the start of a book that, if you watched the recent season of The White Lotus and were:
confused
angry
annoyed, or
gratified by the honest 3-female-friend-dynamic of Jaclyn, Kate, and Laurie then you might find this intriguing.
NOT Jaclyn, Kate & Laurie but more how I picture MY characters, Emily, Ali & Hannah…
If you’d rather read stuff about booze from me, may I suggest the following recent ‘Stacks you might have missed:
Brief history of women in beer
or my personal favorite: Hangovers, PLUS
On the other hand if you’re interested in a little fresh, unfiltered which is to say unedited so just be calm about it, Liz fiction about a road trip with three women, a bunch of beer, and an electric SUV….read on…Depending on how this is received, I may just serialize this sucker via random Substacks. Who knows?
Don’t be shy…tell me what you think if you love it. If not, well, tell me anyway.
Range Anxiety
Too skinny woman in trendy sunglasses pretending to charge her EV….
(property of Liz Crowe, author. Don’t be a dick. Just read and don’t steal, ok?)
Prologue
Having a small group of female friends is kind of like having pets.
Some of them require constant input: daily reassurance that they're your favorite, via treats or manicure dates after hot yoga followed by gossipy coffee klatches. Others you can throw food into a bowl and ignore for a week and be dead certain that when you need them, they'll come running from whatever they've been doing, eager to lick your face or drink an obscure beer you found and pretend to enjoy it. Or wipe your tears when you finally figure out that your husband's leaving you for a cuter version of what you used to be, back when you were fun. A fact that both animal and human knew already, but kept to themselves.
I was blessed with both types of friends. In retrospect, taking them both, together, on a three-week road trip through Michigan to drink at as many breweries as I could find to celebrate my divorce might not have been a great plan. But it seemed like it at the time.
Chapter One
Friends
“I have a truly shitty idea and I need you to talk me out of it.”
Ali jammed the phone between her ear and shoulder as she shooed her dogs into the back of the station wagon–style SUV, reminding herself that she owned a set of Bluetooth earbuds that she’d lost within thirty-six hours of buying them.
“Oh? Why? Shitty ideas are my favorite kind.”
“I know. But I also know you’re the only one who can talk me out of it.” She slid in behind the wheel, sending up a puff of dust and dog hair. “Shut up, please,” she requested, in vain, as the animals set off a cacophony of barking to get her to open the windows.
“Please tell me that your shitty idea is to get yet another dog. That, I will gladly talk you out of.”
“Hang on a sec.” Ali hit the buttons so the dogs could shove their slobbery faces out each window and cranked the AC. Something her almost-ex-husband would have chided her for, she realized as she turned it up even higher. “God, it reeks in here.”
“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” her friend Hannah said, her voice deadly serious. “Anything else you need to point out that I already know?”
Ali heard a telltale pouring sound through the line. “Are you drinking already?”
“Yeah? So?”
“It’s only three o’clock.”
“Please refer to my previous comment, as you kindly fuck off.”
“Want me to come over?”
“I guess you’re gonna have to, if I’m talking you out of something shitty.”
Ali sighed and pulled onto Washtenaw Avenue, headed home from the vet’s office. “I’ll drop these guys off first.”
“Fine,” Hannah said in her precursor to being pissed off tone.
“What’s wrong? Or can I probably guess?”
“Two chances, and the first one doesn’t count.”
“Is he home,” Ali asked. Not naming him since they both knew to whom she was referring.
“Of course not. He just left for India, or maybe China. Who the fuck knows? Or cares?” Ali heard more liquid splashing into a glass.
“Hurry up then, will ya?”
“Yeah, okay, but I was the one who called you first, remember? My crisis beats yours.”
“Whatever. Bring some edibles.” With that, the line went dead.
“High maintenance much?” Ali muttered as she pulled into the driveway. She sat a moment, listening to the dogs slobber and snuffle behind her, recalling the days when she’d jump out of the car and run for the door, eager to see what David had made for dinner, or what surprise or another he’d planned for their bedroom later that night.
“Stop it, loser,” she berated herself. “Get out of the car, take the damn dogs in, grab the edibles, and get over to Hannah’s house.”
To-do list constructed, she followed through on it all, making sure both animals had done their business and she’d cleaned it up before jumping back into the now boiling hot car and pointing it east, toward her friend’s obnoxious, over-the-top McMansion suburban neighborhood. Wondering as always why she felt so compelled to do Hannah’s bidding, she brushed it aside, recalling that they had made peace with the lopsided nature of their friendship long ago. And that, frankly, she needed Hannah’s company. Her friend’s no-nonsense, profanity-laden style of comfort and potential justice for the world’s many wrongs was just what the proverbial doctor ordered for this particularly awful day.
Ali arrived at her friend’s straight up mansion, one that more or less matched the others on the street but for a few minor elevation details, and got out slowly, curious about exactly what she’d find inside. As she clutched the jar of weed gummies she’d promised to bring, her entire body itched with desire to get back behind the wheel and hightail it away. To go home, the bar—okay, not the bar—anywhere but here.
“She’s more, I don’t know, vampire than actual friend. You know that, right?” The voice of her other friend Emily rang in her memory banks. “She takes, then she tosses you aside until she needs your attention again. That’s not what real friends do.”
“I know,” Ali said out loud, today, something like a dozen years and what felt like eight lifetimes after Emily had opined about Ali’s shiny new college buddy, Hannah. It was the last bad thing she ever said about her, Ali knew. Dragging negative commentary out of Emily Branch was akin to pulling horse teeth—while the horse was running.
Ali sighed, squared her shoulders and headed for the looming wooden front door—something Hannah had ordered specifically of her builder so her version of the ticky-tacky on the hillside would resemble the castle keep. She stood, staring up at them, marveling once again at how utterly out of place they seemed here in Midwest suburbia with their curved top, dark wood panels and giant metal loop in the middle. She grabbed this and whammed it against the wood a few times and was about to do it again because it felt damn good when they swung open, revealing her friend.
Ali smiled, but she knew it didn’t reach beyond her lips. Hannah Victor was in full battle dress: sloppy sweatpants with her kids’ high school name up the side of one leg, college T-shirt, the large M faded in a hipster way that can only come from many washings—or a special order at the alumni store. Her feet were bare, toenails gelled a light blue-green, her long black hair yanked back in a messy yet somehow fetching bun.
“You know what I hate about you?” she said as she waited, deciding whether she actually wanted to enter into Hannah’s ongoing marital drama.
“That I look great even when I’m having a breakdown? That my fingernails are impeccably polished even as I use them to scrub out the million toilets in this fucking ugly house? That I—”
“It’s your extreme modesty.” Ali shoved the edibles at Hannah’s chest and brushed by her. The air was redolent of bleach and floor cleaner, as usual. When Hannah got upset, she turned into a veritable white tornado, cleaning, folding clothes, ironing, you name it. Never mind she had a whole army of staff at her disposal to do all of that, a couple of whom were sitting on the back deck, smoking and looking nervous.
Ali turned, crossed her arms and glared at the other woman, who stood, her mouth hanging open, her indeed perfect fingers clutching the pot stash. “Or no, actually, it’s your constant ability to turn my worst day into something all about you.” Tears burned the backs of her eyes.
“What happened?” Hannah opened her arms. Ali let herself be held a few seconds before the tears clogged her throat and she let them flow. “What the hell, Ali? Talk to me.”
Hannah tucked the edibles jar under her arm and led Ali to her kitchen, which took up the entire back of the first floor of her house. “Come on, sit.” She guided Ali into one of the tall ornate bar chairs at her granite counter, took out a stemless wineglass that matched her own and held up the half-empty bottle.
Ali shook her head and swiped at her drippy nose.
“Oh right, hang on, let me check.” After perusing the contents of her husband’s beer fridge in the mud-slash-laundry room next to the four-car garage, Hannah returned bearing four different brown bottles.
Ali watched, amused despite her agony as Hannah lined up the options in front of her.
“Okay, so there’s this one, which is…oh hell, I don’t know. Just pick one.”
Ali touched the bottle bearing the label of a hard-to-find porter. Leave it to Matt Victor, she thought as Hannah popped the lid. He would be the guy with a fridge full of rare beers. He was a collector, after all. He’d collected his first masterpiece when he’d been dumbstruck, or so he claimed, by the sight of Hannah sitting in his MBA-level accounting class at Michigan. Never mind that he’d continued to collect women after bestowing her with the long-sought M.R.S. degree and whisked her out of school and out to the West Coast, six months shy of her receiving her graduate degree. They’d returned to the glorious midwest in triumph, or so it would seem, refurbishing an abandoned auto plant to create a showy launch for his new EV car, the Victor, natch. Never mind the damn things weren’t being made there. But that was another story.
“Glass?” She pointed to the cabinet behind Hannah.
“Oh, right. You’re one of those.” Hannah grabbed a clear pint glass and put it next to the open beer bottle.
“One of those people who drinks beer the proper way, you mean? Of course that’s what you mean.” She poured the dark liquid down the side of the glass, righting it at the exact perfect moment to create the exact perfect amount of foam.
“God, I hate myself,” Ali said. Tears poured down her cheeks again as she held the pint glass in one shaking hand. “I fucking hate myself.”
Hannah held up her now refilled wineglass. “Welcome to my club. We don’t have T-shirts but we do have fun meetings.” They clinked, and sipped. Or rather, Hannah sipped. Ali downed half her liquid in one long gulp. “Well then, I think we can name you our official social director,” Hannah muttered around the rim of her glass.
“Fuck you,” Ali said before finishing off her drink and plunking the empty pint glass so hard on the rock countertop she was afraid for a hot second that it would shatter in her hand. Part of her wished it would—pain and blood and mess would distract her from her current state of mental disarray. But the glass mocked her, holding firm, the gentle lacing of foam on the sides a reminder of everything she’d done wrong, everything she’d given up, to pursue someone else’s dream.
“David is…he’s…he wants a divorce. And he wants me out of the company, as in, no longer involved. As in, you know, unemployed, I guess.” She lifted her gaze from the empty glass to meet Hannah’s eyes. They were glittering with anger, but her expression was not quite as surprised as Ali would have hoped. Her heart raced in shock. “You…knew already.” She didn’t frame it as a question.
Hannah sighed and walked around to join Ali in the bar chairs. “I knew he was fucking that realtor chick, yeah. Hell, hon, even sweet innocent Emily figured that one out.”
“I don’t understand.” Ali found herself mentally flipping through her memories. An activity she’d been engaged in more or less nonstop since the afternoon before, when David had broken the news to her, during the evening rush at their super-successful beer bar, pulling her away from the throng right when she was hitting her stride, her favorite part of the night.
“You guys didn’t tell me?” Fury rose in her chest, clogged her throat and nearly blinded her. Hannah grabbed her arm as Ali tried to jump down from the chair and pace, or punch her friend in her smug, medically enhanced face. “You fucking knew?” She heard her voice rising, getting squeaky and hysterical.
Hannah sipped her wine, keeping her be-ringed hand on Ali’s arm. “I wanted to. Emily talked me out of it.” Ali stared at her friend until her face went blurry thanks to yet another onslaught of crying. “Now, let’s talk about this shitty idea because if it involves kneecapping the sexy realtor slut and or cutting off David’s no-doubt impressive dick, I am all in and I can bring an expensive set of knives.” She raised one dark eyebrow as she sipped again, her hand warm and firm against Ali’s forearm.
Laughter bubbled up from somewhere inside Ali and burst out of her, sending spit flying. She yanked her arm out from under Hannah’s grip, which was the death knell for that stubborn pint glass. It skittered across the raised counter and hit the tiled floor with a satisfying crash. “Oh fuck,” Ali said, barely able to breathe around the giggles that wouldn’t let go. “Oh dear,” she managed, pointing to an impressive shard below her chair. “That’s all you’ll need for David. Just that little piece of glass. Hand to God, the man is below average. I must have spent half my married energy telling him that it didn’t matter. Oh…oh…shit.”
Hannah’s upper lip raised, then she smiled, then she too burst into laughter. “And you put up with his bossy, know-it-all BS all these years in spite of that? Impressive,” she said as she wiped her streaming eyes and handed Ali a tissue to do the same. “I’d never do that. I mean, Matt’s a class-A, womanizing asshole but at least his dick is huge.”
“Really?” Ali dabbed her face, hiccupping in the wake of her outburst. Then it hit her, again, square in the guts and she doubled over, trying not to puke up the rare beer, even though it would serve Big Dick Asshole Matt Victor right. “Oh God. Oh shit. Hannah…I can’t… I mean what am gonna do now?”
Hannah patted her back as she stayed doubled over, staring down at the prisms of light thrown by the late-afternoon sun on the mess of glass below her. “You’re gonna live your life, Ali. That’s what. Now about this shitty idea?”
“I don’t know. Never mind.”
“Don’t be stupid. Tell me already.”
Ali sat up, her whole body shaking with fear, anger and sadness so raw and visceral she could taste it on the back of her tongue, like biting on metal. “I want to take a road trip.”
Hannah raised that oh-so-expressive eyebrow again, sending a thrill of irritation down Ali’s spine. “Go on…”
Ali took a deep breath. “I want to drive around Michigan and visit all the breweries David used to go to, you know, without me.”
“You mean all those fun trips he took while you ran that stupid bar.”
“It’s not a stupid bar,” Ali muttered into her glass.
“My bad. While you were working your ass off, I meant. Keeping his business afloat and profitable?”
“Yeah, those.”
“You know I don’t like beer. It makes me gassy.”
“I just want…I mean, I need…I…oh fuck, never mind.”
“Wanna know a secret?” Hannah leaned in so close, Ali smelled the wine on her breath.
“Not really,” Ali admitted, realizing this would be the moment that her vampire friend turned the whole thing around to herself.
“I have keys to the SUV.” She reached down and opened a drawer and pulled out a strange-looking thing that sort of resembled a key fob. It was emblazoned with the stylized V that Ali had seen more and more on the road as the electric cars Hannah’s husband’s company made became more popular—among a certain set of well-heeled clientele.
“So?”
“So? So! So we shall take this epic trip. I will even taste some beer, flirt with some hot bartenders, and we will do it all in the Dirk Diggler of electric crossover vehicles.” She slapped the fob into Ali’s hand.
“Dirk Diggler?” Ali turned the fob over a few times, marveling at it and at Hannah’s luck at landing a guy like Matt Victor.
“Yeah, you know, the porn star in that movie with the huge schlong. I think Mark Wahlberg plays him.”
“Jesus, what is it with you and dicks?”
Hannah shrugged. Which sent Ali straight into a fresh paroxysm of giggles.
thanks for reading…Tell your friends! Share! it’s free…..
xoxo
Liz