Mira had just gotten home from her night shift at the hospital. Her car was in the shop, so she’d taken mine. I’d spent the last ten minutes frantically stress-texting her, asking where she was. She had gotten held up by an emergency patient. At this point, I wasn’t going to be late beyond one or two minutes, but I’d be tense the entire drive to work.
“Sorry I’m late,” Mira said, plopping her purse on the counter. “But do you want the bad news or the really bad news first?” She set two envelopes on the counter next to me as I rushed to rinse my bowl in the sink.
I reached for my glass by the sink and took a big drink. “No news.”
“Your student loan bill arrived.”
I swallowed and wiped my hands on a towel before accepting the document.
“I told them to stop asking me for money. It’s rude,” I said with a lightness I didn’t really feel as I ripped open the document. I had made several large payments, but it never seemed to go down.
“What’s the other bad news?” I asked, searching for my Chapstick on the table. Might as well hit me with everything or else I’d be more anxious not knowing.
“The rent is going up.”
That stopped me. “What?” I would have preferred not to know that one. Picking up the letter she held in her hand, I scanned the document. “Two hundred dollars more a month? How can they do that to people?”
“Everything’s going up. The apartments Brock and I were looking at the other day were crazy high. I’m so sorry.”
I bit my lip and put on a good face. “Maybe you and Brock could move in here,” I said. “I’d be a fun third wheel. You’d seriously never know I was here.”
She grinned wickedly. “You’d definitely know we were here, so maybe you want to re-think that invitation.”
“Okay. Nope. Nope. Nope. Offer revoked.” I smacked her arm as I strode out the front door, purse and keys in hand. “See ya.”
I’d be okay. I’d made it through worse. I either needed to find a new roommate before the end of summer or a new apartment. I was sure it would be hard finding something cheaper than what my rent was now, even with the two-hundred-dollar hike. If Salt Lake City was a car lot, I was definitely living in the used section. After paying for my mom’s storage unit, I had four hundred dollars left in my savings account. I vowed to protect it like gold. I mentally calculated where that extra rent would come from. Instead of the entirety of my cleaning job going directly to my student loan, I could pay the minimum balance and use some of that money for rent. I could make it work. Maybe I could get a couple roommates. Share a bedroom with someone. The lack of privacy made me physically ache. But I could do it if necessary. It would take me years to save up for tuition again, but lots of people go to college in their thirties. It would be fine. This was a hard season. I’d get through it. I always got through it.
I had almost convinced myself of that fact as I drove to work. My heart had settled into just enough denial that I turned up the volume on the radio. A pop song was playing, and I needed a distraction. I’d be fine. I’d get through this. I would still be able to pay off my student loans in—
Suddenly a booming pop exploded in my ears, and my car jerked toward the sidewalk at my right. Instinctively, I tried to turn back toward the road, but the wheel felt tight, almost impossible to budge the other way. I stomped on the brakes. A man walking down the street jumped out of the way moments before my car came barreling onto the sidewalk and then to a heaping stop. It took a few seconds for my brain to catch up to what had just happened.
The next half hour was a merging of emotions. Thankful I hadn’t been driving down the freeway when my tire popped. Thankful for the man on the street who didn’t get run over but, instead, helped me call a tow truck to take my car to a tire shop. A thudding in my gut, trying to calculate the cost of a tow truck. The tall thin man at the tire shop with the greasy white uniform telling me he could not sell me just one tire. It would be too unsafe. My three remaining tires were all threadbare.
“You’ll be back in a week, maybe two, with the same problem. That is if you’re as lucky as you were this time. You could have been seriously hurt. It’s too dangerous to be on the road.”
Utter devastation clenched my heart, and all my attempts at being positive seemed to vanish. Just like that, I handed over the last of my meager savings for four new tires on my rusty, old, beat-up Honda Civic.
* * *
“So nice ofyou to show up to work,” Anita barbed, her eyes peeking over the partition separating our desks as I dropped into my seat, three hours late. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. Apparently, my emotions were equipped to deal with a lot of unexpected things today, but my co-worker’s snide, clueless comments were going to push me over the edge. I spent what little energy I had left going through the motions of turning on my computer and putting my purse in one of the pull-out drawers of my cubicle.
She huffed at my silence, her eyes drifting down to my rumpled outfit, probably reeking of rubber from sitting in the tire shop. “Calm down. I’m just kidding. Holly told us about your car.”
The receptionist’s motive had been pure. Of course she had to tell those who worked near me why I would be late, but I still detested people knowing my business. I forced myself to take a deep breath. So far, it had been a horrible day—after a horrible weekend—but I was determined to push the emotions aside until a later date. Hopefully never, with a side of…wait until I’m alone.
“I think I parked by you the other day. How old is your car, out of curiosity?” Anita asked, her sickly sweet voice grating my insides raw.
“Not sure,” I said. “And it was the tires. Not the car.” Thankfully, the car had been working great.
“My dad won’t let me drive a car with over 75,000 miles on it. He always said he never wants to worry about me on the road.”
My toes clenched inside my white Keds, and I forced myself to take a breath to re-focus and calm myself down. In my moment of attempted Zen, I noticed a large cup of what looked like some form of pop with a lid and straw next to my computer. I hadn’t had anything but a bottle of water at my desk the past couple of days. I peered over the lid to see a dark liquid with bubbles, which immediately made my mouth water. I wouldn’t be drinking a stranger’s soda, but I could only imagine how much a caffeinated sugar-laden drink would help lessen the day’s sharp edges.
“Whose drink is this?” I asked the area around me.
“I don’t drink soda,” Anita declared. “Too much sugar.”
From behind me, Shawn’s voice finally spoke out. “Yours maybe?”
