The Rom-Commers(88)

Guess we’d been on speaker. And in the long, disconnected silence that followed, I wondered if I’d ever forgive her.

Even with family—people you’re presumably trapped with for life—there are deal-breakers. I’d loved Sylvie all her life unconditionally. But I guess there were some conditions I hadn’t thought of. Because I never could have even imagined her saying what she just said.

But she’d said it. She spoke my worst fear about my life out loud.

And now I wanted to punish her by never speaking to her again.

I let that stand as my tentative plan: We were done—forever.

But I also gave myself permission to recant. Because yes, cutting Sylvie off forever would punish her. But it would punish me, too.

I was mulling that over when the driver hit the brakes so hard that my phone flew off my lap and smacked the seat back in front of me—and then we came to a full stop on the highway. A full stop at the start of what looked like miles and miles of traffic ahead.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Looks like some traffic,” he said.

“I see that,” I said. “But what’s causing it?”

“Not sure,” he said.

“Don’t you have…” I started, but then I wasn’t sure what he might have. “A walkie-talkie or something?”

“A walkie-talkie?” he asked, giving me a look in the mirror.

“Or—some way to get the inside scoop?”

He shook his head as we both looked at all the red, glowing brake lights. “This is the only scoop I’ve got.”

“Is there—some way around it?”

The driver scratched his ear. “Probably not.”

“Can we drive on the shoulder or something?”

“That’s illegal,” he said, like Case closed.

“I have to get to the airport,” I said. “Urgently. My flight takes off in less than an hour.”

He sucked in a judgmental hiss. “That’s really cutting it close.”

“Yes,” I said, like I know. “I have an emergency. A medical emergency.”

Why was I explaining all this? He was just as powerless as I was.

“It’ll probably clear up soon,” the driver said then, like that might cheer me up.

But it didn’t.

We made it to the airport with twenty minutes until takeoff, and my flight was already boarding. I got my boarding pass, checked the suitcase, and took off running at a full sprint, dragging my squealing carry-on behind me, for the TSA line.

When I got there, the first line—to show your ID—wasn’t too bad. But the second line—to get scanned—was worse than the freeway traffic. An infinite number of miserable people and squirming children, coughing and staring into dead space in a purgatory-like queue that seemed to fold endlessly in on itself like an Escher drawing.

I’d never make it.

But what else was there to do? I got in line.

And then I took off my shoes. Like being five seconds ahead of the game might make the difference.

And then I waited in line to wait in the next line.

I craned my neck around the endless room for someone who looked official—someone human I could talk to. Someone who might—bless them—solve all, or even any, of my problems.

But in this giant, overflowing room of people, no one seemed human, somehow.

My hope was eclipsing.

I was going to miss this flight. And then not get home until late tonight. And by then—and I hated myself for even having this thought—it might be too late.

I was panting—hyperventilating, really. How long was a breath supposed to be? Five-point-five seconds? I couldn’t even make it to one.

My father might be dying—and that was the only thing that mattered.

But all around that one solitary horror was a cacophony of other losses: I was bruised where I’d hit the pool water, I was hungover, I was still wearing Charlie’s sweatshirt. I was alone in a feedlot of soulless travelers with a broken bag and no chance to make my flight. I’d broken my contract with Charlie, and given up all the money I’d worked so hard for, not to mention any chance I had of reaching my potential. My baby sister whom I’d sacrificed everything for had just said the meanest thing anyone had ever said to me, besides myself, and I was so incandescently angry that I couldn’t imagine ever feeling anything but anger again. And I was still cringing in shame at the memory of begging my writing hero and desperate crush to take me to bed … and receiving the hardest of hard passes.

That’s when the tears came.

Are tears supposed to make things better?

Because these definitely made things worse.

People started turning around to look at me. Children started pointing. A teenager lifted her phone and took a video. And no one offered to help.

Not that there was any help to offer.

This was the real world. This wasn’t some Richard Scarry picture book of police dogs riding motorcycles. Mister Rogers wasn’t going to step out from behind a kiosk with his zippered cardigan and help me out.

I already knew how this would end.

I’d miss my flight. No one would care. And all that perky, chirpy, optimism-themed nonsense I’d always clung to would come back to bite me in my contemptibly naive ass.