“Jesus. That’s bad. I mean, it’s not like they’re not going to give it to you if you don’t show, are they?”
“I could call, but it makes me sound totally irresponsible. Also, the whole left side of my face is frozen because I just got a filling done. It was brutal. I think they stabbed me with the needle eight times before it finally went numb.”
“That bitch.”
I’m not sure if Sadie means the tooth or the dentist. Both might apply.
“Tell me something, so I don’t freak out. I also have no AC, which means I might literally be on the verge of a meltdown.”
“No! No meltdowns!” Sadie is a unique person. That’s probably why we’re best friends. We met in college. I might have been immediately enthralled by her mermaid hair and quirky sense of fashion, including the biggest cat-eye glasses I had ever seen.
She was probably looking for a polar opposite—normal, boring, grounded—sort of friend. But guess what, she ended up picking me.
“Okay. Okay. Something funny? I don’t know anything funny!” Sadie whines.
“You always know something funny.” I curl my fists around the wheel and stare at the horn. It’s so close. I could just…just lean on it a little. Just a little. As if my rabid thoughts have the power to change the world, the traffic moves a few inches.
“Ummm. Well…I don’t know about funny, but I could tell you something pathetic. Would that work?”
“Pathetic is often funny,” I replied.
“Thanks. Not when it comes to my love life.”
Oh lord. Sadie is the unluckiest person around when it comes to the tragic old love life. Well, unless you’re counting me. I don’t really consider myself unlucky because I can’t be unlucky or lucky when I don’t have one at all. Zero from zero is still zero.
“Okay, I’m sorry in advance because I will probably get amused by it. It’s either that or run my car into the car in front of me so hard that it sends me hurtling through the air, rolls me another half-mile, and ejects me through the windshield, right into the office’s reception area. Except I’d emerge miraculously unharmed. Because stunt doubles and all that.”
“You’re insane.”
“I know. I’m going insane from this traffic. And because I’m going to miss my promotion. Also, my face looks like a misshapen gourd.”
“Aren’t gourds always misshapen? Did you grow some warts I don’t know about?”
I bite down on a lip I still can’t feel because it’s so numb before grunting. “Just tell me what happened last night.”
Sadie sighs. “Well, funny you mentioned gourds. But it has nothing to do with gourds—just vegetables. I went on a date with this guy. I know, I know, on a Sunday night. What normal person goes out on a date on Sunday night?”
“People who don’t keep nine to five office hours.”
“Yeah, that would be me. Well, long story short, this guy was shit. Like, not a nice rainbow poo or a cute brown ice cream emoji shit, but an actual shitty shit. It was terrible. He had to drive me home, so I was trapped and at his mercy. He drove by a grocery store, and since I was out of vegetables at home, I thought I might as well ask him if he could stop so I didn’t have to go out again the next day and make a pointless trip.”
“How romantic.”
“I know. Anyway, he did stop. But he came in with me, which was annoying. I was picking out a cucumber and some carrots, and that’s all I had in my basket when he made a joke.”
“About you being a vegetarian or something?” Sadie wasn’t. That girl could chomp the hind end off of a cow. I’ve never met someone so tiny—she’s barely five feet tall and like eighty pounds—who can eat like a seven-foot lumberjack.
“No. About using…well…”
“No! He did not make a joke about vegetable sex!”
“He did.”
“Nooooooo!”
“Yes.”
The car in front of me moves up another inch. And another. And another. Finally, something gives way up ahead, and we’re actually driving at a rate faster than I can walk. I see my chance and turn off on a side street to take an alternate route. I tear my way down there, my car’s ancient four-banger of an engine screaming in protest.
“Sadie, I gotta go,” I yell over the wind rushing in through my open window, which feels deliciously tingly against my overheated, sweaty skin. “I’m finally moving!’
“Thank everything that’s not cucumbers and carrots. Phone me later when you hear about your promotion.”
“When and not if?”
“I know you’re going to get it.”
“Okay. Love you, veggie diddler.”
Sadie laughs hysterically into the phone. “Love you too, weirdo.”
I make it to the office with all of two minutes to spare. I swerve my car into my parking spot and run like hecking heck through the front doors of the massive glass building. I race past our stunned receptionist, Linda, and keep going, all in my three-inch spike heels, not-so-crisp black pants, wilted blouse, damp flat hair, and swollen face. I race past my office, take a hard right down the hall, and fling open the door to the smaller boardroom where we do one-on-one or small meetings.