AllFreeNovel
Share Us
ChapterOne
ADDISON
One of my earliest childhood memories was of being in an airport on my way to Hawaii for a family vacation. I was five years old, holding my mother’s hand and watching my father drag a suitcase and duffle bag ahead of us as we ran through the terminal at the pace of a herd of turtles.
Spoiler alert. We didn’t make the flight.
But more than the annoyance of missing the plane, the hassle of having to rebook, my mother’s tears, and arriving a day later than planned, it was what she’d said that stuck with me all these years later.
“I swear, Addison, if it wasn’t for your bad luck, you’d have no luck at all.”
Shitty to say to a five-year-old, but in fairness to her, it had indeed been my fault we’d been late. In my attempt to haul my own suitcase out to the car, I’d taken a tumble down the porch stairs and had required an unexpected trip to the ER for stitches, thereby setting into motion the series of events which led to the missed flight.
In the end, we’d enjoyed a decent vacation, but the trauma of getting blamed for almost ruining it had sat in my psyche like stone. Bad luck was cast as my unshakeable shadow.
So it should come as no surprise nineteen years later, I’d be running late for another flight. My first Uber had cancelled, I’d been two pounds over on my suitcase and thus needed to shove shoes into my already stuffed carry-on, and I was now sweating as I frantically ran to my gate.
At least it was a short hop from the John Wayne Airport in California back home to Las Vegas.
Home. How strange to think of Sin City as home after spending every minute but the past three months of my life in my parents’ house in Newport Beach. I would’ve moved out sooner, but with median rent in the area at twenty-five hundred dollars a month, it wasn’t easy to become independent. So when my cousin Malorie offered to split her rent in Vegas with me, I jumped at the chance, having recently quit my job.
Although barely into my grand adventure, I’d flown home for my father’s sixty-fifth birthday party. I could’ve driven the four hours, but everyone knew the highway between Vegas and Southern California could be brutal if there was even one fender bender along the way.
Of course, my mother pointed out to me no less than six times that if I’d still lived at home instead of partaking in my “irresponsible escapade”—my mom’s words, not mine—I wouldn’t have needed to travel at all.
To say they were unhappy with my life choices was an understatement.
What else was new? To my father, who was a well-respected oral surgeon, and my mother, who was a professor, having their only child drop out of college and move to Vegas wasn’t something they bragged about to their affluent friends.
But I refused to feel guilty for finally doing the adult thing and trying my hand at independence.
Unfortunately, my quest had already started with bad luck. My first job as a cocktail waitress lasted exactly three nights, when a patron grabbed my ass, and I dumped a tray of mojitos over his head. Evidently retaliation was in the “do not do” column of waitressing.
After that fiasco, I’d worked an entire month at a casino as a hostess. But the combination of late nights and cigarette smoke—who knew there were so many smokers still in the world?—and I’d had enough. There were plenty of other jobs out there, but I needed to find the right fit. And a non-shitty boss. I’d had my fill of those in my short stint of jobs, along with the one I’d quit in California, and I refused to deal with another one.
With two interviews lined up this week, I hoped one would pan out. In any case, I wasn’t giving up.
After arriving at the gate, I was happy to see they’d just started boarding. Thank goodness. I stepped inside the cabin and found overhead space above 12C before taking my aisle seat. Because I was waiting on the other two in my row, I didn’t bother to buckle up, knowing I’d have to rise to let them in. People piled into the plane, most of them looking ready to hit the casinos directly upon landing. Didn’t matter if it was a Sunday evening. Vegas was a twenty-four-seven party.
I quickly sent a text to my cousin telling her I was on my way, and I’d see her later. Luckily, our apartment, a garden-style walk-up on the third floor, was only three miles away from the airport and an easy Uber ride.
“Excuse me, I’m in this row,” came a woman’s voice.
I glanced up to see a quintessential OC girl hovering over me. Maybe it wasn’t fair to stereotype, but after growing up the opposite of blond-haired, blue-eyed, tan, and thin, it was difficult not to.
Especially when she couldn’t seem to grasp the concept of needing to be more than two inches away from me if she wanted me to get up.
“Sure. Mind stepping back so I can get out?”
She rolled her eyes as if I’d imposed but finally moved so I could get up. She then flopped into the row with too many bags to fit under the seat in front of her. Whatever, wasn’t my issue. Until I sat down again and heard her say, “I need to put my bag up in the overhead.”
A dozen remarks rose to the tip of my tongue, starting with, “why the hell couldn’t you have done that before you sat down?” but I kept them to myself. It was a short trip, and I’d listen to music and ignore my airplane-etiquette-challenged neighbor.
But instead of waiting for me to get entirely out of the way, she swung her hefty bag up and hit my forehead in the process.
“Ouch.”
“Oops,” she said, without much of an apology in her tone.
