Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 73665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
I lose half the skin on the side of my hand and my pinkie, but when I find my phone, it’s worth it. I can call for a tow truck, and I’ll probably be home in an hour. I might just have a small, bland condo, but at least it has a great tub. Nothing would feel better than putting on some rage, I mean classical music, and sinking down into warm water before I toss myself into bed and not cry myself to sleep.
The phone…
Is…
Dead.
“You have to be kidding me!”
There’s no head-flopping onto the wheel this time, but I do full-on knuckle punch it, which results in a little toot of the horn that makes me jump so hard that the seatbelt locks up, pinning me to the seat.
“Motherflucker!”
That just reminds me of everything I’m currently trying not to think about. A whole body shudder rocks me, which makes the seatbelt of prison death tighten up further. The upper part is pretty much right across my airway. I drop my dead phone and fumble with the release, but the evil belt of car strangulation gets a good thirty seconds of cutting my air off before the click of relief comes.
I grasp at my throat, panting and gasping for air.
In the span of half an hour, a good portion of my life has gone straight to shit.
My relationship? Dead. My car? Dead. My phone? Dead.
I resist the very tempting urge to have a full-scale meltdown. While raging would certainly feel good at the moment, I need help, and needing help involves venturing out of this car into public to try and hunt down a phone. Or maybe payphones? I can’t remember the last time I saw one. It’s now just past eleven. Most businesses will be closed. I can’t walk into some place with snot running down my face and my eyes swollen shut from crying and expect anyone to want to loan me a phone.
I very unwisely wore my contacts. I don’t have my glasses with me, and even though my eyes feel like mini sandstorms and shitstorms had a baby, I’m going to have to keep them in or stumble around almost blind.
I genuinely try to look on the bright side of the shitty times. I’m lucky enough—if I can even use that word right now—that my car decided to die downtown. I wasn’t even going to drive this way, but traffic was light, so I decided not to take the twenty-minute detour around the normally packed streets. Downtown means there has to be something open. I could be stuck on the side of a road right now with nothing more than a trench coat and towering heels on. There’s no way I can walk more than a few blocks in these shoes without feet death, so my car dying right in front of a number of buildings is a blessing.
Providence has to be one of the most underrated cities in this whole country. I was born here. I thought about leaving to go to college and trying to make my way somewhere else, but I love the old-timey, classic, romantic aura. The pictures of the nighttime downtown skyline with most of the buildings lit up and clustered right on the water, giving off sleepy reflections, stand as the poster child for how picture-perfect this place is.
I can practically hear my mother’s dry voice of reason echoing in my head as I zip my purse back up, throw the strap over my arm, and get out of the car. All this could have been easily avoided if you’d done what I told you to do and picked a stable, soul-sucking career with set hours and a reliable paycheck. Or a stable career with unreliable, wild hours that will exhaust you and leave no room for anything else in your life but will at least provide some semblance of satisfaction.
It could also have been avoided if you’d been responsible, charged your phone, and not gone out with a heaping toolbag of douchey trouble. I’m not the kind of mother who says I told you so, but I saw this one coming from a mile away.
My mom is a doctor. She’s good at giving long speeches and sad mom faces when I inevitably end up disappointing her. My dad’s a lawyer, and he’s perfected the stony, give-nothing-away aura. If he found out about tonight, he’d just shake his head, but even with his face blank, his thoughts would be obvious.
Since the fob won’t work, I lock the car manually and then stand on the sidewalk for a second, glancing up and down the street for signs of late nightlife.
My heart gives a funny little bounce in my chest in a good way when I realize where the car died. I’m only a hundred feet or so from the Bellhop Hopperbell. My bestie since my last year of high school is the most amazing, badass, fight a herd of stampeding monkeys for you type of woman, and it just so happens I know her uber duper rich and sort of absentee father owns the place. It’s just one of a chain of many hotels that he runs. Magnate? Dominator? Mogul?