The party was wretched...Alison should have known better than to try to bring a date, knowing that Byron would work & abuse her all night just like they were on set. But Kelly was such a sweetheart, bringing her home & making her chocolate, letting her sleep with her in her nice new bed, Alison dreams of the ways she'll make this crappy evening up to her during this brief time she'll have free before 'The Sandman' starts production.

They sleep until late in the morning & Alison wakes up ravenous. "Let's go to breakfast," she says as soon as she opens her eyes, but Kelly offers to make breakfast herself instead. "My ex used to brag about my omelettes to his friends," she says with a shy giggle & rushes down to the kitchen. Alison follows her, hungrily watching Kelly's every move as she prepares breakfast. Kelly's omelette is indeed worth bragging about, and Alison can't help but think as she feasts her eyes on Kelly's very sexy lingerie, that her husband probably bragged about a lot more than her eggs. "You must have been quite the little wifey," she observes, her tongue always too quick for her mind to catch...she knows even before she finishes the sentence that it was a very stupid & ill-considered thing to say.

"Are you insulting me?" Kelly asks, her voice joining the chorus of ex-girlfriends in Alison's head, "Mean. Hurtful. Insulting. Cynical. Using. Bitch." Every one of them right, too, & Alison knows it. She didn't use to care, there were always new girls to take over when the old girls couldn't take it anymore, but Alison is starting to care now that she's decided she wants to have one girl to keep around full time. Alison's never tried to keep a girlfriend, and maybe she won't be able to if she doesn't learn how this game is played. "I'm sorry, Kelly, I didn't mean..." she starts to say, but having never really apologized for anything in her life, she's not really sure how to go about it

Kelly's phone rings & Alison thinks for a moment she is off the hook, until she sees the way Kelly's shoulders sag, and she winces as though expecting some horrible news. She lets her machine pick it up & a loud hungover jerk with a New England accent thick as chowdah starts yelling into the phone, demanding Kelly pick up, calling her filthy names: clearly, the ex-husband. Alison listens to this jackoff talking at Kelly like she were crap & Alison hears Byron ordering her around, and she hears herself too, saying very much the same things in the same tone to her ex-girlfriends (though Alison never does it on an answering machine..she's always in your face for this kind of thing). What comes around, goes around, she thinks, feeling a little sick to her stomach.

"Why don't you ask him what kind of 'wifey' I was," Kelly says to her, her voice like ice as she picks up her plate & brings it to the dishwasher.

Alison thinks this might be a good time to leave...but she checks herself. If she walks out now, she's giving up & going back to her lonely shoebox to wait for the next shoot to start. She can't expect this to be easy. "Pick the hell up, bitch," the jerk keeps up his rant, and Alison, anger knotting her stomach, picks up the phone. Kelly gasps as though Alison really meant to ask him his opinion of Kelly's wifey-ness, but Alison just can't think with him yelling & she intends to shut him up the only way she knows how. She doesn't remember exactly what she said, something about shoving the phone somewhere...the important thing was she terrified him and when she hung up on him, he didn't call back.

"I'm sorry," Kelly sighs as her head falls against Alison's shoulder, "He doesn't usually..." Alison doesn't let her finish, "Don't apologize for him, don't ever apologize for anyone," she says sternly, and then softens her tone "and I'm the one who is supposed to be apologizing to you, because I'm such a bitch," she says, "You just look so hot, baby, and you cook so good.....I'm sorry, Kelly, what I said was stupid..." Not exactly an award winning apology, Alison thinks she'll have to do better next time, or better yet, keep her tongue too busy with other things, so she has no chance of saying really stupid shit like that wifey comment. Next time, the ex-jerk might not call in time to make Alison look good by comparison.

NEXT