“Natalie! I live with you. How is this good—” I stop myself, realizing I’ve become the woman at the other table, dishing out my business to a patio of strangers like a hot appetizer.
My eyes threaten to fall out of my head while I stare at the empty chair. Blood rushing in my ears barely covers the sound of snickering coming from the mortifying number of witnesses surrounding me.
The waiter reappears, plates in hand. “Will your guest be returning?”
My wide eyes snap to him.Read the room, bro!“No, Jeff. I don’t believe she will.”
“Should I . . . box this up for you?”
“Yeah.” I try to sound calm while answering his fuckass question in a pinched voice. “That would be great, Jeff! Thanks!”
He nods and goes about his business. I glance around, watching people look away quickly. With tears in my eyes, I catch the gaze of the woman from before, feeling the karmic connection to the stranger I was laughing at not two minutes ago.My bad, girl.
I now realizethismight be the worst that could happen.
~
I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I caught the waiter inside and paid for the 120-dollar meal at the bar, sniveling the whole time. As if getting your heart broken isn’t bad enough, adding witnesses is a million times worse. I want to shrivel up in the box with my pasta and cry myself to death, but sadly, I won’t fit.
Food in hand, I go outside, ready to embarrass myself in front of an Uber driver if it means I can get away from this scene.Do people use Uber in New York?
On the curb, the woman from the other table stands a few steps away, looking as miserable and embarrassed as I am.
“Um . . . hey,” I greet her.
She glances my way with a pitiful face, her eyes red with black smudges around them. When she realizes who I am, her scowl calms ever so slightly. “Hey,” she huffs, seemingly still pissed.
I don’t blame her. I want to run back to the West Coast on foot or crawl into the closest sewer drain and sacrifice myself to Pennywise—something. Anything other than crying in public while trying to figure out how to hail a—
Shit. Why am I waiting for a cab when I have nowhere to go but Natalie’s apartment? My head hurts too much to think straight.
“Is there a place nearby where I can get a room for the night?” I ask.
“I’m not from here.”
“Me either. I mean, obviously. I don’t know why I said that.” At some point, sense will return to me, and I will be able to process basic information like the highly educated adult I am. Until then, I’ll keep trying to see the search results on my phone through my tears.
“You took your food?” the woman asks with a hint of humor.
“Yeah.” What was I thinking? “It’s supposed to be some of the best in the city so . . . crying with pasta sounded better than crying on an empty stomach.” My hiccup was supposed to be a laugh. Luckily, she laughs for me.
Her head drops, her shoulders shaking with a giggle that she tries to hide. When she lifts her head again, I can’t tell if she’s laughing, crying, or both.
A cab pulls up to the curb next to the woman, just like in the movies. She opens the door but stops before climbing in, her finger tapping on the door while she considers for a moment.
She turns back to me. “I’ve been staying in a hotel that my . . .
Anyway, you can ride with me and see if they have any rooms there,” she offers. “If they don’t, at least there’s a bar where we can get drunk.”
We? Her small gesture feels like she threw me a life jacket. I don’tdeserve it.
“You just want my pasta.” Another talent of mine, cracking jokes at the worst time.
She chuckles, to my relief. “I could also use some pasta.”
There should be a moment where I consider whether she might kidnap or murder me, but I don’t see how either would make my night much worse. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
I climb in after her, ignoring the flinch from the driver when he sees our faces. We must look like a couple that broke up with each other rather than two halves of a public spectacle paired up in the back seat. We’re sad little guppies in the same fucked-up pond.
