Page 2 of The Fast Lane
I use the word “help” loosely. Mom’s special brand involved racing to my side, uncontrollable tears, strong words for whomever dared threaten her child, more tears, taking down badge numbers and making it clear she’d be calling to talk to someone’s boss. That was all before she’d insist on taking me back to her house and suffocating me for the rest of the day.
Nope. Not calling Mom.
“No, no. Let’s not do that. I’ll find someone to quick bring me the key.” I tapped a finger on my lips.
Ellie would be busy with the lunch rush. Frankie worked nights and was likely dead asleep. Not that he was a great option since he wouldn’t be able to resist ratting me out; Mom would know eleven seconds after I hung up.
I peered at Mario, who peered back with a dark raised eyebrow. “Any time now, Alicia.”
“Alright, alright,” I grumbled, and hastily scrolled through the contacts on my phone. This is why I prepared for these things in advance.
Most of the time my best friend, Mae, was my backup plan and my backup plan’s backup plan. But she was out of town visiting her fiancé’s family; a big inconvenience for me. A year ago, I would have called Cal, my oldest brother, but he’d since taken a position in Portland. I liked to make him feel guilty about it often; it was how I showed love.
This was getting kind of pathetic. My list of emergency contacts (and by emergency, I meant rescuing me from sticky situations) had dwindled steadily over the last couple of years. I’d lost them to new love, engagements, career moves, life. Meanwhile, I was chained to a tree.
If that didn’t say something about my life…
My eye snagged on a name and my heart thumped happily. But my heart had always been stupidly optimistic, a habit I’d vowed to break after my split with Alec the Awful.
I startled when Peter barked, “Why is she still here?”
“Shut up, Peter,” Mario said, his eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses. But I knew he was staring at me just the same. “Alicia, get a move on.”
I shot him a pleasant (and totally fake) smile. “I’m on it. I’ll be out of your way before you know it.”
Quickly, I composed a text message and hit send.
I pulled my sticky t-shirt from my body and stretched my legs. Shifting my weight, I shook out my arms. I didn’t know which was worse—my urgent need to find a bathroom or the red tinge my skin was taking on by the second. At least I didn’t have Peter scowling at me. He’d stomped off ten minutes ago after he made Mario promise he’d have me “taken care of” before he came back at one.
I patted the tree. “You’re worth it.”
This tree had been the center of our town since the two Hart brothers had settled here after the Civil War. It was right in front of this tree, maybe even where I was sitting, that the oldest brother married Emily. However, if the rumors were true, the large heart with the initials in the middle was made by the younger brother for the love of his life. Who also happened to be Emily.
Love was complicated, even back then. Love was also stupid, nonsensical, illogical, and downright exhausting. Which is why I was on a Love Sabbatical.
Alec had been clear our break-up was a Me Problem and not a Him Problem. At first, I’d been angry. Now I wondered if he was right. Maybe I was the problem. The unsolvable kind. All of it had felt like my heart had been run through a meat tenderizer. I was in no mood to relive that.
After adjusting my oversized sunglasses, I leaned my head against the trunk of the tree, ignoring how pieces of my light-brown hair snagged on the bark. My eyes drifted shut, the heat of the July sun making my limbs heavy and reminding me I hadn’t slept well last night. Sleep was important; a lack of it was one of the few things I knew triggered my seizures. It had been eight months (or two years, depending on who you asked) since I’d had one and I’d like to keep it that way.
I must have dozed off because it was the grumbly voice of Mario saying, “Finally,” that woke me. I cracked open one eye behind my glasses, then the other and watched Theo Goodnight head toward me, a ring of keys dangling from his fingers and a small, quiet smile hovering around his mouth.
I braced myself for the inevitable flutter of dragon wings—butterflies were much too small and delicate to create this sensation—in my stomach like they did each time I saw Theo. It was a sickness, and one I’d had since the age of fourteen, the summer I began to see Theo as something other than my brother’s best friend.
A total cliché but I did everything in my power to get him to notice me back then, including: the two solid months I wore high heels every single day because I read men loved a woman in heels, the anonymous letters I slid into his locker and the final straw, tracking him down in his college dorm room and professing my undying love.
There was also the poetry. The kind of poetry you’d expect a lovesick teenage girl, whose working knowledge of poetry was limited to Dr. Seuss, might write.
The worst thing? A part of me would always have a crush on Theo.
Pausing at my feet, his smile grew as he took in the situation. “New hobby?”
I’d found that the easiest way to deal with Theo, to deal with anyone, was to pretend you were fine. Smile, joke around, make everyone comfortable, even if I wasn’t, especially when I wasn’t. It had become my superpower.
I shoved my sunglasses on top of my head. “Yep. City Hall’s on the calendar for next week.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Mario said from where he stood ten feet away, staring at his phone. “You get one free protest. After that, there will be consequences.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re no fun.”