Page 88 of Born to be Wilder

I had built a life on knowing exactly who I was.

I was being asked to step forward into a version of myself I couldn’t picture yet.

Three sets of footsteps from behind punctuated the sounds around me.

“Alice.” Doris’s hand immediately found my arm. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You sure? You ran out of there pretty fast,” Sylvie said.

“Yes. I’m fine. Just needed some air. The incense was getting to me.”

She held my gaze and didn’t argue, which meant she didn’t believe me and had decided to let me have it anyway. Sylvie always knew when to push and when to simply stand close.

“I’m—” I stopped and looked back at the street. The band was closer now, the trumpet so bright and ridiculous and alive that it was almost offensive. I felt the tightness in my throat that I had been successfully avoiding for several weeks and had no interest in giving an inch to right now, not here, not in the middle of Bourbon Street on a Friday afternoon when I had specifically come to New Orleans to feel something other than afraid.

I squared my shoulders.

“I want a martini,” I said. “Vodka. Very cold. Very dry. I am done with sweet things for the rest of the day and possibly the rest of the week, and I would like someone to find me one immediately.”

Nobody moved for a half second.

I saw the look pass between them. The desire to press me to talk about my feelings. But as they had since I’d dropped my diagnosis, they ignored their own needs and respected mine.

Then Marge pointed down the block. “We’re in New Orleans. There’s a bar within forty feet of us anywhere we go.”

I knew what I’d done to them this past week—making them carry their fear in silence, forcing them to process their grief on mute while I decided how and when we’d face this.

It wasn’t fair. I knew that.

They needed to talk about it, cry about it, research it, plan for it. That was how they processed hard things.

It killed me, nearly drowned me in guilt to deny them their own feelings, but I just… couldn’t process those.

Not yet.

Maybe that made me selfish. Maybe it made me cruel. But it was the only way I knew how to stay standing while my world fell apart. I’d make it up to them later—after I decided, after I knew what came next. For now, I needed them to protect me by staying exactly where I’d put them: close enough to catch me, far enough away that they couldn’t see me shatter.

“As the captain,” I said, “I am ordering a martini. Now.”

“Aye, Captain!” Marge saluted me, then grabbed my hand and pulled me forward into the crowd. Doris took my other arm, and Sylvie fell in close beside us.

I held on to Marge’s hand and let myself be pulled. Pulled away from the fortune teller. Pulled away from my decision. Pulled away from it all for just a little longer.

Chapter Eighteen

Two martinis later, and with my emotions properly secured deep inside me where they belonged, we had emerged from the bar and were back in the fray of Bourbon Street. It looked different in the dark. Bright with street lights instead of sunshine, and the energy had risen when the sun had set.

“Watch your flank, Doris! Eyes up, Sylvie! This crowd is a pickpocket’s buffet and we are the prime rib!” Marge’s voice barked over a blast of trombone, her hand clamped firmly over the neon-orange tactical pouch strapped to her chest. “This thing is made of slash-proof Kevlar. You want to stow your valuables in here?”

Sylvie didn’t even look over. “The last time we entrusted our valuables to your ‘theft-proof’ bag, Marge, it ended up at the bottom of a river in Mexico. We had to sleep overnight in a jungle, then sneak across the border to get back into the States after you lost our passports. I’ll take my chances with the pickpockets.”

“Fine.” Marge huffed, dodging a woman in a tutu made of cocktail umbrellas. “But when a little orphan named Oliver slips past you and absconds with your life savings, don’t come crying to me. I’ll be sitting here with my slash-proof fortress, laughing.”

The energy of the French Quarter on a Friday night was intoxicating. It was a kaleidoscope of glitter, sweat, and the heavy, sweet scent of fried dough. We were swept into the current of Bourbon Street, a river of people who seemed to vibrate at a higher frequency than the rest of the world.

“But that… She’s… He’s…” Doris pointed, then thought better of pointing, then covered her eyes, then spread her fingers and looked through them. “This is obscene! And there are so many of them. Where did they all come from? Don’t they have parents? Mothers?”