At the Stroke of Midnight (Naughty Princess Club 1)

“I knew he wasn’t coming home after that first week,” she whispers, her eyes filling with tears. “Were we not good enough for him?”

I quickly wrap my arm around her shoulder and pull her against me, kissing the top of her head.

“Oh, baby, no. This has nothing to do with us not being good enough and everything to do with him and his own issues,” I tell her softly as I start to rock us from side to side. “It’s not our fault he wasn’t happy. It’s not our fault he left. I was a good wife. No. I was a great wife. I gave him a good life and a beautiful, smart, amazing daughter, and for whatever reason, it wasn’t enough. That’s on him, not us.”

Every revelation like this I make lately feels like another weight is being lifted off my shoulders. I’ve been drowning in guilt, wondering what I’d done wrong, since the day I walked through my front door and found divorce papers sitting on the table in the foyer. I finally get it. I didn’t do anything wrong. I did everything right. Maybe I am too uptight, but it’s what he wanted from me. I didn’t need everything to be perfect. I just wanted to be happy. It’s been a really long time since I’ve felt anything even remotely close to happiness. And I’m realizing now that all I did was trade a two-bedroom trailer for a four-thousand-square-foot home and a bunch of sparkly things. I was still miserable, and I still hated everything about my life, aside from my daughter.

Until today. When I let go of my inhabitations and danced on a stripper pole.

“Dad’s a lying sack of shit,” Anastasia mutters with a sniffle, pulling her head off my shoulder and wiping away her tears.

“Okay, I know we’re being open and honest, but still . . . language,” I remind her.

“You might feel better if you say it,” she tells me, bumping her shoulder against mine.

“You sound like Ariel,” I sigh.

“I like her. She’s a tough bit—” I give her a look before she’s able to finish. “—um, person. But she’s cool. I like it that you’re friends with her. You need more cool friends like that, instead of the stuck-up snobs on this street.”

“I’m a stuck-up snob on this street,” I remind her, even though I’m trying really hard not to be.

Anastasia shakes her head, pushing herself up from the bed.

“No you’re not. I mean, you were. A little bit. But there’s hope for you yet, Mom. Stick with me, and I’ll have you eating the souls of your enemies in no time.”

She laughs as I reach back, grab a pillow and chuck it at her. She swats it away as she walks backward to the door.

“Are we okay?” I ask her when she pauses in the doorway.

“Yeah. We’re okay.”

“Do I still have to call you Asia?”

“Nah. That was so last week,” she replies with a smile.

“I promise I won’t keep anything from you going forward. And you know you can talk to me about anything, right? I mean that. Anything at all. Things are going to be a little . . . out of sorts for a while, but I’m going to fix everything. I have a plan, and I don’t want you to worry.”

She nods, giving me a small smile before disappearing around the corner. Leaning back on my hands, I start to slide them out against the bed to lie down when she suddenly pops her head back in the doorway.

“Oh, and if you are thinking about becoming a stripper, you should totally go for it. You’ve got a killer bod under all those prissy suits you wear. Those men would make it rain if you were on stage!”

“ANASTASIA!” I shout with a shocked laugh, grabbing another pillow and whipping it at the doorway.

“Just pick better music. Hanson sucks!” she adds with a smile, quickly ducking back into the hallway, the sound of her laughter bouncing off the walls as she walks to her bedroom.

I chuckle to myself and shake my head as I lie down on my back and stare up at the ceiling. Grabbing my phone from next to me, I hit play on the song I paused when Anastasia came in the room.

“We’re going to be okay,” I whisper to myself, smiling and bobbing my head when I hear the upbeat, happy sounds of a couple of amazing young musicians singing “MMMBop.” “I’m going to be a stripper, and my thirteen-year-old daughter approves. It’s fine. Everything is fine, and this is completely normal.”

Chapter 10: Stripper Glitter Boobs

I stare at the dirty dinner dishes in the sink with absolutely no energy or desire to rinse them off and put them in the dishwasher, but my exhausted body still moves closer to the sink, and I turn on the faucet. Even though our dinners went from filet mignon with lobster tail and fresh asparagus to ramen noodles and grilled cheese, and there aren’t all that many dishes, I’ve been programmed to clean up everything immediately after dinner. Put everything in its place, wipe down the counters until they shine, push the chairs back in under the table so they’re evenly spaced apart, and leave the kitchen sparkling clean. No matter how hard I try, I can’t get my mother-in-law’s annoying voice out of my head, telling me a wife should always make sure she keeps a good house for her husband.