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"You have her address, right?"
"Um, yeah, of course," I said, not really listening.
"Great! The party is at seven tomorrow night. We are all meeting there at six to get ready."
"I'll be there," I said, forcing a smile.
"Awesome."
And just like that, she was gone, like ninja into the mist. It was weird how some people could do that. Almost as if they had a superpower. Not me. I always seemed to try to slink off awkwardly.
I finished my shopping and loaded the trunk of my car. No sooner did I get the last bag in than an SUV zipped by, splashing me all up the back with water and mud from a puddle made by a surprise spring rain.
The sky had been clear and blue when I left that morning, which is why I hadn't even considered bringing my umbrella. Proving once again what my grandma had always said. April was not to be trusted. Though I had always assumed she had meant April Flannigan, the fallen-away Catholic schoolgirl turned atheist who lived up the street from us.
I took off my splattered jacket and held it over my head as I closed the trunk and leapt into the driver's seat. Once I was safe in the confines of the car, I tossed the jacket
into the back and started up, putting the heater on full blast.
Waiting a few minutes for the car to warm up and the traffic to pass, everyone else apparently also having chosen that exact moment to leave, I turned out of the parking lot and smack into rush hour traffic.
I turned on the radio to distract me while I waited. Some sadist had decided to put on "Maybe This Time" from Cabaret. I was singing along by the end of it, my mascara starting to run. And not just from the rain trickling down from my drenched hair.
The time flew by faster than I thought it might. Twenty-four hours seemed like a lot at the time. I got out of class at four, which gave me exactly two hours to get a gift for Kristen before the appointed time.
Not that the timing was the biggest issue involved with the task. My bank account had never been huge and had gotten rather smaller ever since I had quit the receptionist job and gone back to school to train as a massage therapist. I also had no idea what to get her. I hadn't seen Kristen in years other than the other night, and didn't really know her ever-evolving tastes.
My only clue was the utter lack of change in terms of her home decor. The wine would have to be of a commercial, Australian extraction which should be good enough. The real challenge was going to be the gift. Especially considering the massive collection of friends she had accumulated since our parting. All of whom presumably knew her as well or better than I did.
The wine was easy to get and wasn't as much as I had expected it to cost. The sales assistant had taken pity on me and applied her staff discount. I hadn't planned on telling her the whole story. It just sort of came out when she asked about the occasion.
Well, most of the story did, anyway.
I skipped over a lot of the sex, leaving that mostly to the imagination, but she seemed to get the picture. She looked to be in her mid thirties and had likely had a situation or two like that I her own life.
I put the bottle in the trunk just in case I was pulled over. It was the only way to absolutely prove that I hadn't been drinking while driving, the perfectly intact cork apparently not being proof enough.
I rattled my already sleepy brain, trying to come up with something that I could get Kristen that she would like but that would also be original. I thought of some new sexy underwear.
It certainly would have been a surprise, though I didn't know her size and the really good stuff was well outside my meagre finances. I had looked for some online once just out of curiosity. Just to see. It had been a short-lived experiment.
Then I thought of a new sex toy but figured that someone else would likely thought of that. One of her cool, detached friends with no shame when it came to sex. There seemed to be a lot of it going around.
With a slight pang of shame for a different reason, I did what I used to do in high school when I needed an original, interesting gift that wouldn’t make it so that I would have to eat Ramen for the next month. I went to the thrift store.
I reminded myself of how the pastor from my family’s church had once explained it, that there was a difference between thrifty and cheap. Cheap was having the money and not wanting to spend it.
