Eventually, we make it back to my tiny one-bedroom apartment. I kick off my shoes in the corner and Cheryl does a trust-fall onto the couch.
Bruce spreads out his sports coat on the beige carpeted floor, then lies on top of it, sighing.
“Oh! Oh,” Cheryl yells, reaching into her blouse to pull a balled-up napkin out of her bra, “Look what I got! Mountain Man’s number!”
“Mountain Man?” Bruce asks.
“The bartender.” She breathes out, then mumbles, “Gonna climb him like a mountain.” Cher’s an avid climber in her spare time. “He can sink his crampon into me anytime . . .”
Her voice drifts off and I think she’s fallen asleep. Until Bruce rips the beige throw pillow out from under her head.
“Hey! What the hell, dude? I need that pillow.”
“You have the couch, Cheryl. If you get the couch, I get the pillow,” Bruce grumbles.
“I can’t lie flat after drinking. My acid reflux will burn a hole in my chest.”
And this is how you know you’re old.
“You have selective acid reflux,” Bruce argues. “You only bring it up when you want something.”
“Screw you, Brucey.”
Cheryl and Bruce are like a cat and a dog that have been raised in the same house.
“Settle down, children. I have extra pillows and blankets in the closet.”
When things are good, it’s easy to forget Murphy’s Law—anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. But that’s when you need to remember it most. Because Murphy’s Law is like a quiet snake in the grass at a picnic. When your back is turned, when you’re not expecting it . . . that’s when it reaches up and sinks its fangs into your left ass cheek.
As I step towards the hall, my phone rings. I try to fish it out of my messy purse, but the little bastard’s hiding, so I end up having to dump my whole bag out, pelting Bruce with rogue Tic Tacs as they bounce off the coffee table.
I peer at the screen and see the smiling face of my big sister staring back at me, with my adorable nieces surrounding her, sticking their tongues out. I took the picture last Thanksgiving at Lake Tahoe—where my parents, my sister, and I rented a cabin for the holiday.
It doesn’t occur to me that she’s calling me at two in the morning. I just answer.
“Hey, Colleen! What’s—”
Her words come out in a rush. And I think . . . I think she’s crying. Which is weird, because—there’s no crying in Colleen. My big sister is rock solid. Badass. She gave birth to three children au natural . . . nothing rattles her.
Only, right now, something definitely has.
“Col, slow down, I can’t understand you . . .”
Between my drunkeness and her hiccups—I can barely make out her words.
“Mom . . . Dad . . . car a-acc-accident.”
Ohmygod. Oh. My. God.
I turn to Bruce and Cher, instantly stone-cold sober—any thought of my promotion dissipating from my mind like mist in the morning light. There’s only one thought, one focus.
“I have to go home.”
Chapter Three
Callie
It turns out, Colleen wasn’t crying.
She was laughing.
And twelve hours later, while I’m standing in the harsh, white, sunlit hallway, outside my parents’ room on the sixth floor of Lakeside Memorial Hospital . . . she’s still chuckling.
“Their legs?” I ask the doctor, hoping I heard her wrong. “They broke their legs?”
I didn’t hear wrong.
“That’s correct.” Dr. Zheng tiredly pushes back her dark hair and adjusts her glasses. “One leg each.”
My sister snorts into her hands behind me, sounding like a horny goose.
“I want them to stay in the hospital another day or two for observation, however, given their ages, your parents are in surprisingly good health.”
Yeah. It’s their vices that keep them young.
My parents sent Colleen and me to Catholic school, but that’s not why we were “good girls” growing up. That was because nothing your parents do can ever be cool. It’s why some behaviors skip a generation. If your parents have tattoos, tattoos are not cool. If they have long hair, crew cuts are way cooler. If they dress in tied-off, midriff-exposing tops and skin-tight jeans, nuns become your fashion icons.
My parents’ heydays were the ’70s Disco balls and bell-bottom pants, Woodstock and psychedelic drugs—they ate that stuff up with a spoon . . . literally. And in their minds, it’s still the ’70s—it will always be the ’70s. Lung cancer? It’s a conspiracy from the money-hungry medical establishment—go ahead, light up another menthol. Liver disease? It only strikes the weak—pour me another whiskey sour. Monogamy? It’s unnatural—where’s the next key party? Yeah, before me and my sister came to be, our parents were swingers.
At least, please, for the love of God, let it be “were.”
I push that line of thought right out of my head and focus on what Dr. Zheng is saying.