“Great timing!” the girl behind the microphone chirped at me. “We only have enough milk to make three more drinks!”
Finally. Something going my way. Maybe this was a sign life was going to start turning around for me. It was a little win, but like small losses, they add up to the big stuff. I pulled up to the window with a smile. I’d made the cut.
The girl frowned at me. “I’m sorry. The car ahead of you forgot to add on a drink, and we can only make two drinks. Is there anything else we can get you in its place?”
Right. Right.Fucking of course.
“I’m really sorry.” She gave me an annoying smile to go with the fake apology.
“I don’t want anything else.”
“Okay! $14.00 then.”
For this, Vinny and Sam were getting taxed. Meaning, I was going to take sips out of theirs to cover the loss of mine.
After I paid, she ran back to grab the drinks. She handed them to me, and I set them on the passenger seat. As I went to pull off, the car in front of me slammed on its brakes. Mine were a little too slow to react, and I almost smashed into the back of the car. The two drinks, carrier and all, flew to the ground and made a pink puddle on my plastic floormat.
What. The. Fuck.
The driver, a young woman who looked like she had thousands of dollars around her wrist, stepped out of her car and made a shooing motion with her hand.
She wanted me to back up.
Fifty cars deep and she wanted me to fucking back up?
I flung the car in park and stepped out, holding on to the door. “Where do you want me to go?”
“They forgot to give me a straw.”
A straw? For a drink that had a cap with a mouth hole in it!
“Here’s the deal,” I snapped. “There are fifty cars behind me. I can’t move them. As you can clearly see, I’m not the She-Hulk.” Or I would have long turned green by fucking then.
“Get me a straw then.” She waved to the window. “You’re closer.”
Who the fuck did she think she was? A princess?
A new crack seemed to develop—inside of my mind. But it wasn’t one of those that made a line. It was a real and true crack. A snap.
I marched to the other side of my car and yanked the two plastic cups from the floor. Dregs of the pink liquid rolled around the sides before they pooled at the bottom of the plastic. I flung them both at her car, making it look like someone had puked Pepto Bismol on her paint job. She was screaming, pointing her bubble-gum-colored nails at me, and her diamond-encrusted phone was up to her ear.
My car was smoking some, maybe from the wait and the hot weather, and her eyes grew wide as I started to inch closer to her fancy European car. She flung herself on the ground when I got close enough to ram it. I moved that fancy bitch out of the way, and when I could get around her, I hit the gas, sticking the princess the bird on my way out of the parking lot.
Instead of relishing the feeling, tears streaked down my cheeks.
This was my life.
My life.
Flipping out over spilled drinks.
Jerry Rispoli came to mind. So did whoever he worked for. Jerry Rispoli existed because his boss did. It didn’t matter if he had a name or not—he would forever be known as the straw that broke my back.
The fucking bane of my existence.
I punched the horn and it got stuck. It wouldn’t dislodge. Everyone was staring at me as my horn went off in a continual blast.
Vinny and Sam were standing outside of Dynamic. They narrowed their eyes when my horn announced my arrival. My brakes screeched when I came to a halt, and I emerged from a cloud of smoke from my hood and dust from the lot.
