I balance the pizza on my hip and reach for the handle. Nothing.
Locked. Because apparently, I like to live on the edge.
“Vivian?” my mother says. “Are you even listening to me?”
I stare at the door. At my own faint reflection in the glass. At the fact that I am standing on my front porch on a towel. Barefoot. Holding a pizza. With absolutely no way inside.
My eyes close briefly.
“Well,” I say slowly, “how unfortunate.”
“What’s that?” my mother asks, immediately alert in that way she gets when she thinks she’s about to be proven right about something.
“I locked myself out.”
There’s a pause.
And then, “You did what?”
“I stepped outside for my pizza,” I say, keeping my voice impressively calm considering my current situation, “and the door locked behind me.”
“Are you serious?”
“I wish I wasn’t.”
I glance toward the street as the driver’s car pulls away. Traitor.
“I’m standing on my porch,” I add. “With dinner. So at least I won’t starve.”
“Vivian,” she says, her tone morphing into something dangerously close to exasperated concern. “This is exactly what I mean. You get distracted.”
I let out a small, incredulous laugh. “It’s pizza. I didn’t enter a high-risk situation.”
“You weren’t thinking, were you?” she presses.
“I didn’t think I needed a strategic plan to answer my own front door,” I cut in.
“You’re being defensive.”
I tilt my head back, staring up at the sky for a second. Deep breath. Big ones. Is there enough zen in the world for me at this moment?
“Look,” I say, adjusting the pizza box against my hip, “unless you have a spare key you can magically send to me by way of a spell, I’m going to have to let you go.”
“I didn’t call for us to argue,” she says.
“Yet, here we are,” I reply.
We both stop; I know I’m tired and can’t go back and forth anymore. I hear someone in the background and the muffled sound of her hand on the receiver. In a second she’s returned.
“I need to go, Vivian. It’s work. I’ll call soon,” she says finally and the line clicks dead.
I pull the phone away, staring at it for a second before letting out a long exhale.
“Well done,” I mutter to myself. “You call, spin me out, and dump me for work. At least nothing’s changed.”
I reposition the pizza box as I glance down at my bare feet, then back at the locked door.
“Really nailing the whole ‘capable adult’ thing tonight.”
