4th & Girl

Hell, if you’d asked me right then, I would’ve said Cam was a certified motivational speaker and should take that shit on the road. Oprah, Ellen, TED, the whole fucking shebang.

Clearly, we’d been heavy into the beer and liquor, and it’d be a minor miracle if I made it out of this without a monster fucking hangover tomorrow morning.

But for now, though, I was apparently only suffering from poor judgment.

Sean clicked the final button, and just like that, sent my romantic search into the ether of the internet.

“I’m telling you,” he said, just as he and Cam high-fived. “If you can’t find this girl with a post like this on Reddit, you can’t find her.”

I nodded my agreement, timid as it was, and recited the title of the post as it stared back at me.

Help me find the girl who spilled my pee: A desperate plea

I wasn’t sure if it was the best idea I’d ever heard or something I’d wholeheartedly regret once the alcohol had found its way out of my system.

But hell, with the way both Cam and Sean had appeared fucking certain of the Reddit game plan since I’d explained the whole mystery girl situation, I couldn’t muster any negative emotions toward my big, anonymous debut into online threads.

I mean, who knows, maybe I’ll actually find her?

At five minutes till eight, I pulled into the parking lot of a building that read Marty’s Craft Supplies. It matched Mable’s rundown of the job in both address and description, so I figured I’d found the right place and hopped out of my car to walk inside.

Truthfully, I couldn’t say I’d always been that successful in finding my new jobs on the first shot. I’d walked into the wrong place and argued with employees about how they should have been expecting me, been late thanks to driving in circles, and asked questionable things at a massage place I’d stumbled into while looking for the doggy day spa where I’d been hired to fill in as the shampoo specialist while one of the employees was on maternity leave.

I wasn’t always an airhead, but if you’ve ever heard about people with book smarts lacking in common sense, I was a good piece of real-life substantiation.

Just before I grasped my hand around the handle of the front door, an elderly woman standing off to the side called my name and startled me. “Gemma?” she asked. “Gemma Holden?”

I nodded, too dumbfounded to do anything else, and stepped away from the door hesitantly. I loved the elderly, especially sweet strangers who wanted to strike up a conversation, but I was so close to being on time for once. I didn’t need Aunt Bea to ruin it.

“Well, aren’t you a pretty little thing,” she said and eyed me up and down. “Christ, what I’d do to have my tits that perky again.”

The pint-sized woman appeared to be in her late seventies, hell, maybe even eighties, and her clothes displayed the most outlandish colors I’d ever seen on someone over the age of fifteen.

Neon pink clashed with glowing yellow, and what would have otherwise been simple nude flats were embellished with enough jewels to make Edward from Twilight look dim in the light of the sun.

Even her lipstick was the brightest shade of pink I’d ever seen.

Truthfully, I thought they’d stopped selling that shade around the time Madonna started speaking in an English accent in the nineties for no apparent reason, but evidently, I’d been dead wrong.

Finally, it fully registered that I’d never seen this lady in my life, yet she seemed to know me. Maybe it was the owner? Just getting some fresh air outside the store?

“Are you Marty?” I asked, and a raspy laugh escaped her throat.

“Oh no, honey,” she said. “I’d rather play bingo with the old church bitches in my neighborhood than sell damn craft supplies like Marty.”

Old church bitches. I wasn’t sure whether to crack up laughing or feel bad for the Bible-beating broads. Whoever she was, she was funny. Still, I was on a clock, and my new job was waiting. I couldn’t risk losing out on thirty bucks an hour just to stand around and shoot the shit with one of the Golden Girls.

“So, uh, if you’re not Marty, then…?”

“I’m Alma,” she said and held out her hand to shake mine. “Your new boss.”

Okay. Had I accidentally done drugs this morning? Because I was officially confused.

“My new boss?” I asked and glanced between her and the store. “But…I was told to come to this address. To this store, in fact…” I paused and looked up at the store sign again just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.

Marty’s Craft Supplies stood out clear as day.

“Yeah, well, it was the only way I could get that old hag Mable to send me some help,” she said, as if it actually explained the confusion.