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One
June
Dr. Brady saw my bra.
And then I set him on fire.
All in all, the whole debacle had been his fault, and after I got over my embarrassment, I was going to make him pay.
I woke up earlier that morning with a glow stick in my ear, and it really didn’t set the mood for me. I sat up, startled, and batted at my ear. In my half-awake haze, I wondered if the cockroaches in our apartment complex had finally mutated off their steady diet of hard seltzer and pot and were there to eat my brains.
“What the fu—”
“Happy Birthday!” A high-pitched voice sang in my ear. Lizzette, my roommate, pulled the glow stick from my ear and waved it in front of my face. “Birthday shots at StellaVibe!”
Lizette—or Liz—had two modes: Party girl with no job, and party girl with a job. At the moment, she was in “no job” mode, and she’d been driving me insane for days. In two weeks, she would leave for Miami to chase after some famous DJ and club hop her way to “DJ Bunny” bliss. All of that was made possible, of course, by her doting parents, who believed Liz was God’s greatest gift to dance clubs everywhere.
I groaned, shoving her away and pulling a face at the glow stick. “Like twenty decibels down, babe. What are you talking about?”
“StellaVibe is hosting aneonshow tonight,” she screeched, her words rapid fire and trilling with her Argentinian American accent. “Can you believe that?On your birthday!” Liz leaped off my full-size mattress and started to beatbox techno music. Poorly.
I groaned, rubbing my eyes with the heels of my palms, and then looked over at the clock. I gasped and threw my cherry blossom print comforter off my legs, stumbling out of bed. “JesusChrist, Liz, I’m like forty-five minutes late! You couldn’t have stabbed my head half an hour earlier?”
“We’re gonna getcrunk,” she continued, dropping it low—again, poorly—and ignoring my distress.
“Not if I get fucking fired,” I snapped.
She sobered, standing. “You really should do something about your potty mouth. It’s going to get you fired.”
I gave her a glare.
“Relax, birthday girl. I got your coffee to-go, your outfit is right here, and I made you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for breakfast.” Lizette smoothed her sleek, black hair away from her face like she’d been awarded the title of Miss Birthday BFF Salt Lake City. Honestly, she had the perfect, perky tits for beauty pageants, so… believable. “And I called your boss to let him know you’re sick today. Which is why you’ll be late. You’re welcome.”
“You didwhat?”I gasped.Oh no. Oh very much no.“Liz, please tell me you’re joking. Brady will see through that.”
“He can’t prove you’renotsick,” she countered with scrunched-up brown eyes.
“He’s a doctor,” I reminded her bluntly. And an ass. Dr. Amos Brady, the Grumpasaurus Rex with a medical license, barely tolerated me as an employee, let alone alyingemployee. I was probably one mistake away from getting fired, and I wasn’t even a bad scheduling operator. I got a little spacey when I had a vision for an art piece I wanted to get home to and work on, but for the most part, I stayed incredibly tolerant of his gruff lectures.
“Okay, okay, I’m joking,” she soothed. “Relax. You think I would call your boss? You make him sound like a terrorist.” She shuddered.
“He is,”I growled, grabbing the outfit she’d laid out on my bed and wiggling my way into it. “And the day you call my boss and tell him I’m sick,” I continued, my voice muffled as I pulled the white lace blouse over my face, “is the day I have to move back in with my parents. Because he’ll fire me.”
“Okay, okay, sorry,” she muttered, staring at her manicured nails. “But you’re still going out tonight, right?”
“If I don’t get fired,” I said, pronouncing each word clearly and spearing her with a wide-eyed look.
“Packed you a lunch, too,” she added.
“Fine. Thank you. I love you and appreciate you. Where are my shoes?”
She held them up with a beauty pageant smile.
I managed to get my wild hair in a messy bun, and three minutes later, I had my lunch bag, backpack, keys, and coffee balanced precariously in my arms as I threw myself into the seat of my clunky silver sedan. It, like my job, was on its last, sputtering legs. But they both had to hang in there because I had no money.
As I sat in traffic with my scalding-hot coffee in one hand and my phone in the other—it was standstill traffic, don’t give me that look—a text pinged in from my mom.
Mom: Happy birthday, beautiful!
