AncilA man came staggering through the aisles bumping into tables and chairs as he moved. His movements could have been compared to that of a newborn deer. He almost successfully made it through the aisles but his success fell short as he collapsed to the floor, unconscious.
“Another one bites the dust!” one of the waitresses shouted, making her way over to the fallen man who was only a couple of feet in front of Samantha and me.
I looked at Samantha expecting her to laugh but her eyes remained focused down in her bowl of al-cream. She wasn’t eating though. She sat there, pensive, swirling her spoon around in the bowl mirroring her thought process.
There was a moment of silence but I broke it by saying, “I wish Kate were here.”
“Yeah, me too. She would have loved that whole dog chasing its tail analogy,” Samantha said.
“I know. That’s why I said I wished she were here.”
Samantha sighed. “She just recently stopped answering my calls and responding to my messages. It’s almost as if she fell off the planet or something. I haven’t heard from her since we last spoke two days ago.”
“Join the club. She wouldn’t answer my calls either,” I said. “How did you two meet anyway?”
“We met at a writer’s conference in Forks around this same time last year. Summer. She was just sitting there in the auditorium taking notes as the speaker spoke. My boyfriend and I got there late, so we asked her for notes on what we missed. She was so friendly with us as we sat there. She told us how much she loved writing and about her book, Notes of a Love Affair. We just naturally became friends.”
“You think she’s happy?” I asked, scooping up some al-cream but then changing my mind about eating it.
“I don’t know, and if she is, I don’t know for how long. Tom is a man whore. Every day he’s with a new girl, dumping the old ones and leaving them heartbroken. He dumps girls like the morning garbage and I’m afraid for Kate that he might do that to her. After everything she’s been through in her life, I don’t think she’d be able to handle it. She’d be crushed to death.”
“I know,” I said.
“She wasn’t going to leave you, you know. She was coming right back to you. All she wanted to do was take the opportunity to talk to Tom and find out why he had left her. She had no intentions of hooking up with him. All you had to do was wait.”
I paused for a second and in that moment recounted all that had happened. I felt deep regret and pain and an urge to blurt it all out to Sam but I simply murmured, “I know.”
Samantha and I didn’t finish our al-cream sundaes. It was a joint decision since we had to drive and whatnot. We both left two, big, quarter-eaten bowls of al-cream on the table and then left.
On our way back, Samantha told me more about the BOWA Writers Conference where she had met Kate. At the conference, Kate had told Samantha and her boyfriend that she had attended every year since its inception without the intention of missing any. So, there was a chance that if I attended the conference this year, I’d be able to find Kate and at least attempt to get her back. It was definitely a plan.
Samantha didn’t leave immediately after we left the al-cream store. As night time approached we went up to my room, crawled out the window, and sat on the rooftop right above the patio overlooking the entire neighborhood. We sat quietly for a while looking out at all the houses that beset the landscape. I could see my neighbor, Mrs. Dean strolling outside, pushing her newborn baby on her stroller. Mrs. Dean was the kind of person who was always pregnant despite the fact that she was never married. She was my neighbor for 15 years and I always remembered her as being pregnant. She had had six children within the last ten years.
I remember having a childhood crush on Mrs. Dean. She was 20 years older than me but I didn’t care, SHE WAS HOT. My crush on her eventually waned as I grew older and realized that there wasn’t a chance in hell for me there. But as I saw her and her baby, for some strange reason, I smiled. I felt happy for her.
“Another one huh,” Samantha said referring to Mrs. Dean and her baby.
“You know her?”
“Yeah. She and my dad were pretty close at a point in time. My mom didn’t know about it but I saw what was going on.”
“Small world,” I said.
“I can probably bet a million dollars right now that one of her children is his.”
“You know, I had a crush on her when I was younger.”
“So why didn’t you pursue her?” Samantha asked.
“The same reason I didn’t pursue you.”
Samantha remained quiet for a while then said, “And why’s that?”
“I was friend-zoned.”
“Huh. And here I thought you had friend-zoned me,” Samantha giggled.
I opened my mouth to speak but then I stopped to reassess my thoughts. I felt as though Samantha was messing with my head.
“But do you want to want to hear a secret about the friend zone that most girls won’t tell you?”
“Umm, yeah sure,” I said.
“It’s not inescapable.”
