Didn't Stay in Vegas

by Chelsea M. Cameron

  “Hey, can I grab you for a second? I need to ask you something.” I excused myself from Maggie, who looked like she wanted to follow me but didn’t, and walked after Jessika back to the break room.

  “We didn’t finish our conversation. And you have ten more minutes for your break, so spill.” She leaned on the counter and I copied her pose.

  “Uh, well . . . some things happened?” I wasn’t sure if I wanted to talk to her about this because I was still trying to work through it all myself. I didn’t need other input confusing me further.

  “What kind of things?”

  “Let’s just say a lot of things changed and now my world has been rocked and I’m struggling to deal with the fallout. And I’m confused and things are awkward and I don’t know what to do.” Jessika’s eyebrows rose.

  “You going to elaborate on that?”

  I shook my head.

  “I can’t. Not yet. It’s still too much and I don’t even know what to say.”

  “Okay, fine. I’d say just take some time away from . . . whatever is confusing you. Try to pull your emotions out of it and think if this situation were happening to your best friend, what advice would you give her? Be as kind and loving to yourself as you’d be with someone you love.” I started laughing when she mentioned the part about the best friend, and she was looking at me as if I had lost my mind. I probably had. Must be all the caffeine.

  “I'm sorry. I’m fine.” It was a lot of effort to stifle the giggles and stop laughing. I took a deep breath and tried to find my center. My center was hopped up on too much caffeine. It was like I had pissed-off bees buzzing in my veins.

  “Okay, I think you should go home. Seriously. You only have a few days left, what are they going to do to you? Do you have any sick days left?” I hadn’t really kept track.

  “I’m not sure.” Jessika marched me back to my computer and made me check. I had one day left of sick time, somehow.

  “Okay, you’re going home,” she said, and made me punch out, said she would put Maggie with Linda to work on another project, and pushed me toward the staff room where we stored our coats and bags.

  I didn’t realize I had really left until I was standing on the street and people were pushing past me.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I had free hours in the middle of a weekday. What kind of luxury was this? There were so many possibilities and I still had so much caffeine in my body. First up, I think I needed to walk some of the caffeine off, so I took myself up the street to a juice bar and got one that was supposed to detox you, which was probably bullshit, but vegetables were always good, so I sucked it down and grabbed some weird cookies they had at the counter that were vegan and surprisingly delicious.

  After sucking down some more water, I could feel myself finally starting to crash from the caffeine wearing off, so I headed to Boston Common for a brisk walk through the gardens and around the pond. I stopped to talk to a few ducks and then tried to decide where to go. I was broke as fuck, so shopping was out. I realized where I was and then I knew my destination: the library. It didn’t matter if you were broke at the library. They’d still let you take out books.

  It had been a long time since I’d been there, so I let myself wander, stopping briefly to sit in the garden in the middle of the building, and then trying to decide what I wanted. There were a few new releases that I’d been wanting to get, so I headed that way first, and had to stop myself from getting too many because my backpack was only so big, and my back was only so strong.

  I wandered some more and found myself (somehow) in the self-help section. I didn’t believe in book shame, but this was not really the place I wanted to end up. I started to turn around and leave, but something told me to keep looking, so I did. I scanned the shelves and pulled out anything that struck my fancy. I picked up a book about money (I definitely needed some major help there, but that was mostly due to capitalism and having too much student loan debt), and then I ended up in the relationship area. Yikes.

  I skimmed through a bunch, but most of the ones I found were . . . very heterosexual. I didn’t need to know how to communicate with a man. Frustrated, I tried a few more and realized that I was looking for answers when there weren’t any right now. None of these books had this exact situation in them. The advice in these pages was probably something along the lines of “suck it up and talk to Emma, you idiot.”

  I knew if I told someone else what had happened, that’s what they would say. I loved Jessika’s advice to give myself the advice I would give someone I love. We were always hardest on ourselves. That led me to stroll down a different aisle and then to another area of the library where I asked myself what would happen if the roles were reversed. What would I tell Emma to do if she were me?

  What if I had been the one in love with her and then everything had happened? That was something to think about. I had to sit down in a corner in a plush leather chair that was so big that I felt like it encased me. There weren’t a whole lot of people in this part of the library so it was relatively quiet, but I was getting itchy, so I got out my earbuds and put on some music that I could tune out if I needed to, but would help with the annoyance I had with silence. I also had a fidget cube in my bag and got that out to give my hands something to do.

  Now I was imagining myself if I’d been in love with Emma my whole life. Had pined and wished and wanted her from afar and never gotten the courage to tell her because I was afraid of ruining what we had as friends. My head was definitely exploding again. Even though I was sitting down, I still felt like I was going to fall over somehow. I dropped the cube and my hands gripped the arms of the chair so hard I thought my nails were going to tear the leather. That would be a shame, so I let up, but I couldn’t calm my racing heart. It was definitely out of my control right now. I also had a floating sensation, as if I wasn’t completely tethered to my body. I looked at my hands, but were they my hands?

  The song I was listening to ended and another began, and it made me jump because it was a switch from a calm folk song to a louder and more aggressive pop song. I yanked out my earbuds and I was glad that no one was around to see me having a complete and total breakdown. If I was a car, I could call someone to come and fix this, but I wasn’t, so I was going to have to handle this myself.

  I called on all of my meditation skills, but it took quite a while for me to be able to breathe in a normal way and get my heart to slow the fuck down.

  Once I was out of the woods, I tried to figure out what the hell had happened. I had just flipped out and I wasn’t sure why.

  Emma. Thinking about Emma. Thinking about being in love with Emma. I wasn’t, but even thinking about it was . . . something.

  I wasn’t in love with Emma. No, I wasn’t. Now I was arguing with myself. At least I wasn’t saying anything out loud. Muttering to myself might get me thrown out of the library, but maybe not. That probably wasn’t the worst thing that had happened in the Boston Public Library. Ew. I didn’t want to think about other things that had happened here.

  I needed to move. I needed to pace and think again, so I got up and put on my backpack, full-o-books, and left, not even caring where I was going, but then I realized I was headed toward the ocean. I could smell the salt hanging in the air and it always made me feel like I was safe. I couldn’t explain it, but whenever my life was shitty, I wanted to smell and be near the sea. Too bad I was too broke to head to the Cape like other people. Maybe after Lara’s wedding we could all plan a group trip. Then it wouldn’t be so expensive if we split renting a place together.

  I walked as close to the water as I could get and let the salty breeze tease my hair, blowing it all over my face. I closed my eyes and breathed deep. Now it was time to organize my thoughts about Emma.

  I wish I could do this with Emma. She was the one who helped take what was in my brain and turn into something coherent. Sometimes I just needed to talk some tangled thing out to her and she would sit and listen to me, even if I wasn’t asking h
er to say anything. She was always like that, and I gave her great advice that I would never follow myself. I gave her better advice than I’d give myself because I cared about her more.

  We were best friends. I loved her the way a best friend did. Right?

  Sure, I got little flutters in my chest when she came in the room, but that was because she made me happy. That didn’t have anything to do with romance. I got flutters when I saw pizza too. I didn’t want to fuck or marry pizza. Well. Maybe I could marry pizza if I wasn’t already married to Emma. Right. I kept forgetting about that somehow.

  It didn’t have to mean anything, being married to Emma. I was sure that people who were best friends had gotten married before and it wasn’t for romantic or sexual or any other reasons. We’d just gotten drunk, and I bet there had been plenty of those.

  It all came down to this: did I love Emma as something other than a friend? I still didn’t know. How did you know if you were in love with someone other than as a friend? Where was the book on that? I pulled out my phone and did a quick search. I read through a few lists, but most of the things were also best friendship things. Weren’t they?

  You were supposed to put your best friend above your others. That was what made her a best friend. So what if I loved touching her hair. So what if we’d already fucked and it was amazing and I couldn’t stop thinking about it? SO WHAT?!

  I was getting nowhere, so I put on a podcast and started walking again. I might as well pick up Vegas and go home. It would be nice to see him and relax in the apartment for a little bit. I could even make dinner for Emma, or at least try. If it didn’t work out, I could always order food and then pretend I made it. She would let me get away with that because apparently she was in love with me.

  I couldn’t figure out why, but I guess that wasn’t my job. My only task was figuring out how I felt about her. I didn’t really want to, honestly, because I knew when I did, everything would really, definitively change. We were in a strange sort of limbo right now, not knowing how to be around each other, but at some point, that limbo would lead somewhere.

  I couldn’t lose her. No matter what. I couldn’t live a life without Emma in it. What would be the point?

  They were surprised when I came and got Vegas, but he greeted me as if we hadn’t seen each other in three thousand years instead of just a few hours. It was a struggle to get the wiggly puppy and my backpack full of books home in one piece, but I made it. The first thing I did when I let Vegas off his leash was grab some treats. We were working on training and I wanted to be really good at it. I wanted him to be the valedictorian of the puppy training class. Emma would probably say that we’d be happy as long as he just did his best, but I wanted him to be the best instead. Wipe the floor with those other loser puppies.

  “Sit,” I said to Vegas. He was working on this one. I tried a few times and finally rewarded him when he sat with one of his new favorite treats. He chomped it down so fast that I thought he was going to choke.

  “Calm down there, puppy,” I said, as he whined for more treats. I made him sit again and gave him another, but that was it. I distracted him from begging me for more by getting his loudest toy and throwing it across the room for him to chase. I burst out laughing when he skidded on the slick floor in his attempt to barrel after the toy. So cute and so enthusiastic.

  I made myself a cup of herbal tea and fixed a quick snack as I unpacked my library books. I wanted to read them all at once, but that was physically impossible, so I sat down with the one that I wanted to read the most and cracked it open, completely ignoring the stack of books I’d bought with Emma on the day we’d gotten Vegas. I set a timer for myself because if I didn’t, I’d get completely lost in the world and be here reading for the next ten hours straight.

  Vegas danced around with his toy and every now and then I’d look up and throw it for him. I couldn’t remember an afternoon like this during a weekday in forever. My new job had better vacation time, so I was definitely going to make days like this a priority in the future. Getting things done was important, but so was taking time to do a whole lot of nothing.

  An hour later, I reluctantly put a bookmark between the pages and set the book down. It was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do. The book was everything I wanted it to be and there wasn’t a dull moment to take a break, but I had stopped myself anyway. I had a quick stretch break and then went to the kitchen to figure out how to make an impressive dinner for when Emma came home. I always wanted to impress her because I felt like I failed so often at everything.

  We had shrimp and chicken and peppers and kale and rice and quinoa and limes and barbecue sauce and a spice cabinet full of everything you could possibly want. I put a bunch of the ingredients into a search engine and decided to make barbecue shrimp over rice on a bed of kale. Healthy and delicious. I could pull this off, I was sure.

  EMMA WALKED IN THE door just as I had started to cry.

  “What are you doing home?” she asked, and then she saw my tears and immediately dropped her backpack and came over to hug me.

  “I’m sorry. I left work early because I had too much caffeine and then I was trying to make dinner and I ruined everything somehow.” I gestured to the burned shrimp and gluey rice. At least the kale was okay, but all I’d had to do was wash and put that on a plate.

  “Aw, it’s okay. We can have chicken on a salad. It’s all defrosted and everything. Don't worry. Thank you for making dinner for me.” She rubbed my back and soothed my tears and I sniffed and tried to get my shit together. I didn’t know why little things going wrong always upset me more than bigger things.

  “It’s fine,” I said, wiping my eyes. “I don’t know why I’m making such a big deal of things. I’m just being dramatic.” Emma squeezed my shoulders and looked down at the burned shrimp.

  “You’re not. I remember when I was learning how to cook and I ruined an entire lasagna and I felt so horrible because the ingredients weren’t cheap and it was completely inedible. It’s okay, we can buy more shrimp. And maybe I have been remiss in not teaching you how to cook.” I shook my head.

  “No, that’s on me. I’m a grown fucking adult and I should have learned on my own. Just because my parents didn’t want to teach me doesn’t mean I couldn’t get on the internet and figure it out.” In fact, I was going to do that. There were plenty of videos online that would break it down so simply so that a child could follow them. I could at least handle that.

  Emma tossed the ruined food and I scrubbed out the pans in the sink as she got the chicken started in a pan with some lime juice and spices. She asked me to cut up some peppers, so I did that.

  “How was your day?” I asked, because she’d been conspicuously silent.

  “Good. I have a huge test next week, so I’m probably going to have my nose in the textbooks this weekend. Sorry.”

  “That’s fine,” I said, trying not to chop my finger off. “Just let me know when you need breaks and I’ll bring you tea and take your mind off it. I can quiz you too.” Emma was a huge fan of flash cards and I had quizzed her dozens of times before.

  “Sounds good. I’ll probably hit you up for that on Sunday.”

  We lapsed into silence again and I could feel the tension in the room.

  “Everything okay?” I asked. She turned around and gave me a startled look.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Um, because of last night? And we’re not being like we usually are.” She stared at the chicken, pretending that she had to watch it as if that was the most important task in the world.

  “What do you mean?” Okay, now she was just being obtuse. I sighed and she glanced up at me.

  “You know what I mean, Emma. We had sex and you told me you loved me and now things are weird, which is probably why you waited for so long to tell me that you loved me in the first place. You probably could have done that without the sex, even though the sex was . . .” I trailed off because my brain tended to shut down when I thought about the sex
. I’d done my best not to think about it because when I did, I forgot everything I was doing, including how to breathe. I dove headfirst into my memories and my face flushed and it became uncomfortable to be around people. Like they could see me thinking lusty thoughts about my best friend.

  It was happening right now and I had to snap myself out of it.

  “Are you okay? You look like you’re stoned. I’ve never seen you stoned, but this is probably what you would look like.” As she said it, I could feel my cheeks heat and I had to stare down at the peppers.

  “I’m fine,” I said, chopping the peppers into smaller pieces.

  “No you’re not, tell me.” This was probably a derailing tactic, but whatever. If she really wanted to know, I’d tell her.

  “I was thinking about what it was like fucking you. I can’t stop thinking about it. I messed up so much stuff at work and the new girl had to keep asking me if I was okay because I’d trail off in the middle of a sentence because I was thinking about you.”

  I wanted to see her face when I said it, so I made sure I was staring right into her eyes. They were a mix of blue-green right now.

  Emma and I stared at each other for seconds that felt like years. Like eternity. Something shifted between us and I couldn’t even breathe. I had forgotten how, and it didn’t seem important in this moment. I nearly swallowed my tongue when the sound of the smoke alarm startled both of us.

  “Shit,” Emma said, ripping the smoking pan of chicken off the stove and throwing it into the sink before running to the smoke detector with a dish towel and waving it until the beeping stopped. Vegas decided to join the mayhem and howl, so I picked him up to comfort him and then open a window to get the scent of burned chicken and burned shrimp out of the apartment.

  “We’re going to get evicted,” I said, as I came back into the kitchen to find Emma scraping the chicken into the trash. “Order pizza?” I suggested, setting Vegas down. He was still barking, but it wasn’t as loud.