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I RESOLVE TO HAVE BETTER FRIENDS
Michelle
“What doyou mean you’re not coming?” I ask as I reel my suitcase through Miami’s international terminal.
My friend, Carla, hums on the other end of the call. I swerve to avoid a couple with a baby who’ve stopped directly in the lane of traffic—the New Yorker in me says, “Hey, get the fuck outta the way!” but thankfully, I don’t say it out loud.
“Carla, what is going on? It’s an all-inclusive paid trip to a tropical island resort. There’s a wrong answer here. Get your ass in a taxi, stat.”
“It’s just that, well…you just broke up with Jeremy— ”
“Douche-nozzle,” I say automatically. A mother with a toddler walking the other way glares at me. Why are there so many kids here? Or is this just my brain and frequency bias?
“See, that’s the thing, Michelle. I was already hesitant about joining you because you’re angry, and I didn’t really want a vacation where I would have to listen to you bitch and moan about Jeremy while I sip a pina colada on the beach.”
“I wasn’t going to bitch the whole time,” I mutter.
“But now I’m supposed to be your nurse too? That’s not what I signed up for.”
“It’s not like I planned this,” I say. A sign catches my eye, and I realize I’ve passed my gate. “The pills were supposed to be delivered last week, but there was a mix-up about where they were delivered—”
“I know,” my soon-to-be-ex friend cuts me off. “It’s not your fault, but I still don’t want to come with you.”
“At least you could have told me sooner, and then I could have found someone else to come with me,” I grouse.
“Who? Who are you going to find last-minute that doesn’t have plans over New Year’s Eve? You don’t have that many friends.”
I don’t have that many friends because I moved to Dallas to be with Jeremy, leaving everyone I knew behind in New York. When we broke up, I moved and got a new—and better—job bartending in Deep Ellum, a trendy neighborhood in Dallas. All of my “new friends” were really just Jeremy’s friends.
“No, you’re right. I don’t. And now I have one less. Screw you, Carla, and enjoy your fucking holiday.”
I pull the phone away from my ear and attempt to hang up, but with the beach bag over my shoulder, purse straps in one hand, and the rolling luggage in my other hand, I can’t reach. I weave through the waiting area at my gate, looking for an open seat, and wonder why Carla hasn’t hung up yet. I hold the phone to my ear and hear background noise. Great. Neither of us has hung up the phone.
I’m trying to reach far enough to tap the big red button, my tongue poking out of my mouth in concentration, when it happens.
My bag snags on the toes of the snoring elderly man. I stumble, my phone and beach bag go flying, my purse slides down my arm, and my knee whacks into someone else’s luggage.
“Son of a—” I cut myself off before I get more angry-mom glares directed my way.
My beach bag has strewn its contents down the aisle, which includes tampons, pads, and…
There are two pill bottles in that bag. One of them tumbles out and dramatically rolls down the aisle.
I practically leap over three sets of luggage and a small child to get to it, but I’m too slow. While most people barely glance up from their phones, one guy—my age, cute in an adorkable way—reaches down to pick up the pill bottle resting against his shoe.
“Here’s your…” he glances down at the label and frowns.
“That’s mine.” I snatch it away from him and busy myself with picking up the pads and tampons, purposefully not looking at this guy.
Why do they have to put feminine hygiene products in the noisiest wrappers ever? I stack the pads—the heavy flow ones, might I add, so they’re as thick as the mass-market paperback that landed next to a toddler playing on the floor—and they crinkle with every move I make.
Great. Everyone in a thirty-foot radius can hear the sounds of period supplies.
“Hey,” the guy says. This time he’s holding out the straps of my beach bag, and inside I can see that he’s gathered up most of the tampons.
And with a start, I realize that I vaguely recognize him. He was on my flight over from Dallas. He’s got a bit of scruff, glasses, and a floppy boy-band haircut that sixteen-year-old me would have swooned over. Thankfully twenty-seven-year-old me is too busy turning into a tomato to swoon.
