Page 89 of The Better Bride

We all drop to the floor as gunfire begins to spray outside the room. I press my face into the nylon carpet and squeeze my eyes tight.

“Who’re they shooting at?”

“I don’t care!” Percy yells. “I’m not sticking around to find out!”

A bullet zooms overhead, flying through the door and hitting the window. The glass bursts into a bunch of fragments, and Sammi’s eyes light up with an idea.

“Guys! The bedsheets!”

We get on our feet, crouching as the four of us strip off every inch of fabric from the bed. Even the cushion covers aren’t safe, as we twist the ivory fabric and begin to fashion it into the rope as Sammi reviews her plan with us one more time.

“There’s a half roof just below the bedroom window, we’ll climb down to that and wave for help from a passerby.”

We have about seven feet of makeshift “rope” once we’re finished. The end of our rope is tied around the foot of the bed, and I really hope that it’s long enough to get us to the roof safely.

“How’re we going to break—”

Becky’s caught off mid-sentence as Sammi wastes no time in kicking at the bullet hole in the window. The glass pane shatters into countless tiny pieces, and she throws the rope over the side.

“Maybe Mysti should go first,” Sammi so helpfully suggests.

“Why, are you a chicken?” I shoot back.

“It’s not my murderous ex-husband who’s waiting just outside the door.”

“Touché.”

I climb out over the edge of the window, clinging onto the cotton-blend rope until my knuckles are white, and head down to the roof below. The bed shifts half-way through my descent and I let out a little scream, but I reach the roof’s landing in one piece.

The girls all follow me down, leaving the carnage of our hotel suite behind us.

“You know,” Becky says as we’re waving to people in the street below, “the last time I saw that many muscular bald men in a room, they started fucking.”

I look at her, pausing for a minute, and raise an eyebrow.

“What the fuck? This isn’t the time to be thinking about a big gay orgy, Becky!”

But then I see Percy’s eyes go wide and her jaw drop slack.

“Actually…” she says, stunned. “Now that you mention it…Holy shit. I remember why we came to Vegas last night.”