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  Without further adieu, here's this week's chapter.

  Briar Rose

  I woke up beneath an unfamiliar ceiling, but with the all-too-familiar pain of a hangover spiking through my skull. A desote groan fled my throat, and I raked a hand through my hair to find it damp and jutting out every which way like I was some kind of battle anime protagonist.

  The fuck? I finally had girl-hair and I was going to bed wet? That was insane. I wasn’t that much of a girl-fail! Was I? I rubbed my eyes and came away with a hand stained by dark mascara remnants, at which point I thought, Yes, I’m definitely that much of a girl-fail.

  I reluctantly forced myself to sit up, taking in the sight of Kyle sleeping next to me on his stomach (naked, of course- I didn’t know him to sleep any other way) with a pstic crown on his head and a post-it note attached to his back. I peeled the note off the bare skin of my slumbering paramour, and saw it read ‘pick it up at 57th Street Courthouse at 1 PM.’

  “Pick what up?” I murmured, cringing at my voice coming out low. Ugh, concentrating on speaking from the top of my throat was going to be difficult today with this headache.

  “Hm?” Kyle intoned.

  “Oh God, don’t look at me,” I said, doing my best to maintain my girl voice in spite of the pain. I looked around- this was a pretty fancy looking hotel room… Hotel suite, actually. Open air, the bedroom connected to a master bathroom and led to a living room with a plush couch and a psma-screen television and a functional kitchenette. The walls were painted a gorgeous shade of dark blue, the ceiling stark white, va mps dotting the various shelves and surfaces periodically. All the blinds were drawn, which was good, because I was feeling downright vampiric at the thought of sunlight right now. Hopefully I could find a pair of cute sungsses somewhere around here.

  “Are you sure? I’ve seen you in some absolute states,” Kyle pointed out.

  “Are you as hungover as I am?” I asked, still thumbing the post-it note. It was rhetorical, obviously- the beautiful lunkhead didn’t get hangovers.

  “Depends. How hungover are you?”

  “Scale of one to ten? Like a nineteen,” I said.

  “Then I’m actually more hungover than you, because I’m at a twenty-one,” Kyle said.

  “Jesus fuck, what did we do st night?” I said, more to the ceiling than to Kyle.

  He rolled over onto his front, at which point I noticed another sticky-note. This one was attached to Kyle’s cheek for some reason. I took it off of him and read it. “Remember your heritage’? What does that mean? And why is it in my handwriting even though it’s attached to you?”

  “I have no idea, babe. I just know I currently feel like a hot mug of freshly brewed death,” Kyle said, hands covering his face.

  “Is this… Is this actually your first hangover?” I asked.

  “First since high school,” he said.

  “Good God,” I said, stroking his hair piteously. “So, are we doing that movie? Is that the soup du jour?”

  “What movie?”

  “You know, that movie where the guys are hungover in Vegas and have to find their missing friend. It’s like, a dude-bro mystery or whatever,” I said.

  “Not ringing any bells,” Kyle said. “And is this a mystery?”

  “I mean, I’d like to know why I put these post-it notes on you,” I said, pulling the covers off of my sapphire negligee-cd body. What the hell, I’d remembered to put this thing on but didn’t bother taking off my makeup or drying my hair?

  “Seems pretty straightforward to me,” Kyle said, pulling his section of covers off of him too, holding and examining the pstic crown. “We just have to go to this courthouse at 1 PM and we’ll pick up whatever it is.”

  “Oh dammit, did we get Vegas-married?!” I said with my eyes tightly closed.

  “We… Might have gotten Vegas-married,” Kyle said sheepishly.

  “Goddammit!” I said as I swung my legs off of the side of the plush mattress and stepped onto the soft brown carpet. “No- we can’t- not like this!”

  “I’m right there with you, trust me,” Kyle said, scooting out of bed and walking over to hug me, rubbing my shoulders as he engulfed me in his bulk. “I was kinda hoping to invite my family and our friends and… Yeah, not like this.”

  I leaned into him, putting my hand over his where it covered my shoulder. “Plus, we’re probably not ready for… You know, THAT, just yet.”

  “Probably not, no,” Kyle said. “Though I will point out that we already live together and love each other, so if we are, then… Well it could be worse. Could be better, but still.”

  “Fair point,” I said, turning around to face him. Even hungover I still thought he was beautiful, which I suppose was a pretty good sign it was true love after all. My eyes flickered down to sample the goods- I mean hey, if he was my husband now, I might as well offer appraisal. At which point I noticed something else. “Hey, uh, what’s that?”

  “Um… Morning wood?” Kyle said, eyebrow elevated.

  “No, attached to the morning wood. There’s another note!”

  “Okay, maybe there is a mystery here,” Kyle acquiesced.

  Not for the first time, I reached for his dick, but instead of gripping it I just pulled the note off of him. He grunted in pain as the removal tore out several pubes.

  I winced in empathetic pain. “Sorry!”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay, I’ll be fine,” he said, sitting back down on the bed and rubbing at the spot. I tried not to get too distracted by the sight of it and instead focused on the note.

  “This isn’t my handwriting,” I said.

  “Yeah, it’s mine,” Kyle said, chin on my shoulder as we read it together. “‘Remember st night down to every detail. It represents a turning point in the epic saga of you and Briar’s love.’”

  “Thank you for reading that,” I said. “I wouldn’t have been able to decipher your chicken-scratch elsewise.”

  He responded by lightly biting my shoulder.

  “Ow!” I said, deliberately exaggerating the microscopic amount of pain. “Okay, I’m sorry, God.”

  “You better be,” Kyle said, picking me up. Bastard was always being sexy when I made fun of him- I’d find it infuriating if it didn’t make me incredibly horny. “Come on, let’s hose off in the shower, eat some greasy hangover breakfast, and get to work sleuthing.”

  “So you admit there is a mystery here!” I said, thumbing his nose.

  “Evidently so, even if I, unfortunately, can guess what the answer to it all is,” he said as he carried me to the bathroom, sitting me down on the sink and pulling off my nightgown.

  I sighed. “Look, whatever it is, it was clearly important. And if your reminder that you put in the one pce I guess you knew one of us would check is any indicator, it’s something worth remembering. So let’s just retrace our steps and see if we can pin this down before we go to the courthouse in… What time is it, anyway?”

  Kyle turned his head back to the bedroom, where a digital clock sat on the cedar nightstand. “7 AM.”

  “God, we’re probably the only people in the whole city who are even awake right now,” I whined.

  “Probably,” he said, pnting a sloppy kiss on my sloppy face before we climbed into the shower together.

  Both of us were a bit too hungover to get frisky, so we settled for washing each other’s hair and backs. Kyle also shaved my legs and washed my feet for me, which…

  Uh…

  Yeah, I unlocked a new fetish. I will not eborate further on that.

  ANYWAY, I tried my best to recount the path that had led us here to Sin City. After the baseball game (and after we told Sarah where, exactly, she could shove it), we’d gone to Bar Here and gotten drinks with Lisa and Rachel. Lisa and I had a long overdue introduction and spent most of the night talking about capital G Gender while Rachel and Kyle got into something Kyle referred to as a Lift Off with beer kegs. Then we’d all gone back to Kyle and I’s pce, took edibles, and watched Wizard of Oz while Lisa expined how trans the books got once the sequels introduced Dorothy’s girlfriend.

  After that…

  “Hey, Kyle?” I asked as I toweled off my hair and applied toner and moisturizer to my face. “Lisa and Rachel came with us to Vegas, right?”

  “Hm? Yeah. They said they could only stay the weekend, but once you offered to cover the hotel costs for them they agreed it could be a fun couples trip,” Kyle said, stepping into a pair of jeans. “Why?”

  “Just… Trying to keep track of the events up until now,” I said, tying my hair back into a loose ponytail. God, it was so nice to be able to do that. “Some things are fuzzy for me because of the hangover and also because we were all high when we made our travel pns- why did we decide on Vegas for the first leg of our vacation?”

  “Uh… Because your sister Juniper is in town for a circus show, and you wanted to come out to her before the rest of your family could sway her,” Kyle said.

  I snapped my fingers, which was a mistake given that it drove the proverbial spike deeper into my brain. And Kyle’s, based on how he winced. “Sorry. Uh… Okay, so, we flew out here on Saturday morning with Rachel and Lisa. We presumably went to see her performance st night.”

  “We definitely did. My memory cuts off after we left the hotel bar and went to the circus, though,” Kyle said as I grabbed my foundation and makeup brushes, then started working the powder onto my face in the vanity mirror. “We’re just going downstairs- you know you don’t need to…”

  He stopped when I gave him a withering look. “I want to.”

  “Right,” he nodded. “Sorry.”

  “Better,” I said, pointing my brush at him. I went back to blending the powder over my visage. “Mine cuts off before that- I don’t even remember going to the hotel bar.”

  “Okay. Then what’s the st thing you do remember?”

  I haphazardly navigated the mist-ridden hallways of the byrinth, reaching my metaphorical hands out for anything resembling a memory. A few wisps, echoes of slurred words and stumbling motions, came to me gradually as I finished putting on my foundation, until finally, I found something: “I remember meeting going to see Juniper at rehearsal.”

  18 Hours Earlier

  The circus was alive and well beneath the massive red canopy tent. No animals- I’d been reading up on modern circuses on the flight over, and evidently some stuff had changed. Not that I had any frame of reference- this was the first time I’d ever been to one. Still, I had to admit the circur center with its high-wires and rings and nets and a rge gss pool of water in the center was pretty spectacur! Clowns ran about doing pratfalls, strongmen lifted massive weights, knife-throwers did target practice, and a ringmaster rehearsed a monologue while reading off of index cards. And on top of it all, situated on a stupidly high bance beam positioned over the pool, propping herself up with only one hand, was my sister, Juniper.

  Juniper was the third-youngest of my family, thirty-three years old but looking much younger. She was five-foot-six, with light brown hair worn in a short pixie cut without bangs and the same brown eyes as our mother. She was all springy muscle, cultivated through years of gymnastics training. She could have easily gone to college on a schorship, possibly even looked into becoming an Olympian if she’d wanted to. But she had one dream and one dream only, ever since we were kids: the three-ring circus. Mom hadn’t approved, naturally, but when your eighteen year old daughter runs away from home to become a trapeze artist/acrobat, there wasn’t much you could legally do about it.

  She’d left only a few months after Dad passed. Told me the whole thing had made her realize life was short and trying to deny what you really wanted out of it could only ever lead to tragedy. I wish I’d listened to her sooner on that one.

  “Hey, sis!” I called out to her, standing directly beneath her, holding Kyle’s hand.

  “Za?” her familiar soprano called out to me from above. She had the highest voice I’d ever heard- God, I was jealous of that.

  She backflipped off the high-wire and tumbled a few feet down, only to be caught by a flying trapeze artist who slowed her descent before she flipped over again. The process was repeated thrice-over until Juniper, cd in her silver sequined unitard and bright red lipstick and dark eyeshadow, nded and somersaulted towards me. She stood before me, tilting her head to the side, looking me up and down. “Br-”

  “Rose,” I cut her off. “It’s Rose now.”

  “Rose,” she said, eyes wide, smile wider, hands on her cheeks. “Eeeeeeeee!!!!”

  “You’re, uh, you’re okay with-”

  She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed me tight before I could finish. “I knew it I knew it I knew it!!!”

  “Yeah, lotta that going around tely,” I said with an awkward ugh.

  She pulled out of the hug, squeezing my cheeks and beaming at me. “You look so pretty! How long have you been-”

  “Technically about four and a half months,” I said.

  “Technically?” she said.

  “It’s a long story,” Kyle finally said.

  “Oh? And whom might you be, mystery man?”

  “Juniper, this is my boyfriend, Kyle,” I said, gesturing to him.

  “Kyle, Kyle, why does that sound familiar?” Juniper said, tapping her chin with her index finger. She was simply always on (and always had been), and honestly I’d missed her sheer energy and enthusiasm.

  “Probably because we’ve been living together for five years,” I said wryly.

  “And they were roommates!” Juniper expined, fists pumping into the air.

  “Indeed,” Kyle said, pulling me close. “It’s nice to meet you, Juniper.”

  “Likewise, Kyle,” Juniper said, bowing and flourishing her hand. “You best be taking good care of my baby sister- I’ve spent years waiting for this egg to hatch!”

  “I mean, hey, so have I,” Kyle said.

  “Yeah, but I’ve been waiting longer,” Juniper said.

  “It’s not a competition,” I rolled my eyes.

  “Yes it is,” Juniper said.

  “Everything is a competition,” Kyle said, practically aghast.

  “Well if it is, then I win,” I ughed.

  “Dammit, she’s right,” Kyle said.

  Juniper just gave me another hug. “So, who else knows?”

  “Ruth and Nathan and their kids,” I said. “And, uh, Sarah, as well.”

  Juniper’s jaw dropped. “And, uh, how is she?”

  “Same as ever.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Arguably worse,” Kyle grimaced.

  “Wait, how do you-”

  “It’s yet another long story,” he sighed.

  “The point is, she knows, which realistically means Mom knows by now, too,” I said.

  “Mia and Veronica?”

  “No idea,” I shook my head. “When was the st time you spoke to either of them, anyway?”

  “Uh… Like a year ago, maybe? Mia is doing some corporate gobbledygook in Lichtenstein, and I think Veronica and her husband were in Buenos Aires, st I checked,” Juniper said. “You know me: I’m not the best at keeping in touch. I’m… How did my high school boyfriend describe me? Flighty?”

  “Scatterbrained,” I said. “And then you broke up with him as soon as he said that.”

  “Oh yeah,” Juniper said. Then she shrugged and said, “No great loss, though. I traded way up.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yee,” she said, nodding her head rapidly. “See that guy there?”

  She pointed at a strongman in the process of dead-lifting what looked like a four-hundred pound set. He was a tall bck man with a shaved head and a bushy mustache, wearing nothing but red trunks. And he was SHREDDED.

  I blinked rapidly, then turned to my sister and smiled. “Good for you!”

  “I know, right?!”

  We high-fived, and the sound echoed throughout the tent.

  “Babe,” the strongman called out while holding the bar over his head, “Are you objectifying me again?”

  “Mmmmaaaayyyyybbbbbeeee,” Juniper blushed and shook her head back and forth.

  “You know the rules, love,” he said.

  Juniper defted, arms limp at her sides as she walked over to the strongman. He took her in his arms, and she went ft as he dead-lifted her repeatedly.

  “This is my youngest sister, by the way,” Juniper said.

  “Rose,” I said. “And this is my boyfriend, Kyle.”

  “Charmed,” Kyle said, clearly trying not to burst out ughing at the whole dispy.

  “A pleasure,” the strongman said while holding my sister over his head. “I’m Goliath.”

  Kyle finally broke and ughed. “That your real name?”

  “It’s my legal name,” Goliath grinned. “Goliath Jones, man of muscle-mystery. State of Nevada makes it real easy to do that, especially if you were born here, like I was.”

  “And like you were, Rosie!” Juniper excimed.

  “Um… What?” I said. “I wasn’t born here, I was born in Boston.”

  “Oh, right, Mom told you that as part of her propaganda,” Juniper said as her man finally set her down. “Yeah, that’s bullshit.”

  “It is?”

  “Big time bullshit, baby sister,” Juniper said with a cheeky grin. “You know how our birthdays are only a few days apart?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, for my third birthday, I wanted to go see a real circus show in Vegas, and Dad eventually got Mom to break down and let it happen. Mom, being Mom-”

  “A bitchy control freak?” Goliath said.

  “I like you already,” Kyle said.

  “Thanks, guy!” Goliath said with a thumbs-up.

  Juniper continued, “Mom and everyone wound up coming along, even though she wasn’t supposed to be traveling, and wound up going into bor while we were here. You were almost a whole month early!”

  “I was?” I said, eyes widening.

  “Yeppers!” Juniper said, poking me on the forehead. “You were born right here in Sin City, going on thirty-one years erstwhile, a month before you were scheduled to make your grand debut!”

  “Holy shit,” I said. “Is that why I’m so-”

  “Tiny?” Juniper said.

  “Dainty?” Goliath said.

  “Beautifully petite?” Kyle beamed.

  “I was gonna say skinny and girly-looking, but yeah, all that!” I smiled.

  “I mean, Dad’s genetics definitely helped,” Juniper said. “You basically look like an estrogen-drenched version of him.”

  “Huh,” I said. Things were finally starting to make sense.

  “So, y’all coming to the show tonight?” Juniper said eagerly.

  “If we can get tickets, absolutely,” I said.

  “Oh, I can take care of that!” Juniper said. “How would you feel about front row seats?”

  “That sounds amazing!” I said.

  “Eeeee!” Juniper squealed, hugging me again. “I’m so excited- none of my sisters have ever come to one of my shows before!”

  “Really?” I asked, still in her embrace. “Not even Ruth?”

  “She’s always wanted to, but getting pregnant with twins right out of college kinda put the kibosh on travel pns, and, well, you know. She’s a small business owner. It takes up a lot of her time,” Juniper said in a way that made it seem like she was trying very hard not to be upset.

  “Well, I’m gd I was able to be the first one to correct that oversight,” I said, squeezing her tight.

  “Me too,” Juniper said. She pulled away, then said, “I gotta get back to rehearsal, but I’ll tell my manager to set aside two seats right up front for y’all! See you at eight!”

  “Can’t wait!” I said.

  Now

  Kyle and I sat at a round table in a mostly-empty breakfast hall in our hotel room. My pte was piled high with fruit and pastries and delicious, delicious sausage, while Kyle was currently working through his third of five loaded breakfast burritos. We also had an entire pitcher of Columbian coffee sitting between us. I was already on my third cup.

  I smmed back the contents of my mug and then thumped the porcein basin on the table. The window blinds were not drawn, so Kyle and I were seated next to each other at the table with our backs to the sun. “And that’s the st thing I remember from yesterday.”

  “Okay,” Kyle said after he finished inhaling his burrito. God, I’d never seen him eat that fast. He was not accustomed to this whole hangover thing at all. “I remember all that too. And then after that, we came back to the hotel and-”

  “Tried out a bunch of different freaky positions?” I guessed.

  “Yeah, actually,” he said.

  “Oh, dammit! I can’t remember that! I wanna remember all that!”

  “Well, I can walk you through the highlights ter,” he said, giving me his Look.

  “Fair enough, but I expect you to be very thorough.”

  “I think I can arrange that.”

  “Good man,” I said, patting his cheek.

  “Then after we got done fucking like rabbits, we came down to the bar for drinks with-”

  “Hey, party people,” Rachel said, walking up arm in arm with Lisa. “That was some night st night, huh?”

  “Uh… Unfortunately we have to take your word on that,” I said.

  “Oh shit,” Lisa said as she and Rachel sat down across from us. “You guys got bckout drunk, huh?”

  “So it would seem,” Kyle said. “We’re trying to retrace our steps. The st thing I remember is us having drinks at the hotel bar with you two. Do you guys know what happened after that?”

  “Well, you two went to the circus while Rachel and I hit the casino,” Lisa said.

  “But, uh, we may have an audio-visual to assist you in recovering your memories,” Rachel said, chuckling as she pulled something up on her phone.

  “Oh God,” I said. “What did we do?”

  Kyle squeezed my hand. “Let’s find out.”