A Little Like Fate (Robin and Tyler)

by Cheyanne Young

  Miranda pushes down a pillow and looks over at me. “I don’t want to sleep either. I’ve done enough of that in my life.”

  I eye her, using the small bit of light in the room to focus on her dark, now clean of makeup eyes. “You say the weirdest things,” I tell her.

  She breathes in through her mouth and lets out a long sigh. “Today was one asshole of a day.”

  “Yeah, it was.”

  “Did you expect this to happen when you packed up all your stuff and decided to move far away?”

  That’s a good question. I think back to two days ago when I got the brilliant plan to move. I remember being pissed off that Jason seemed to have zero interest in me after our night of drunken love making, and I remember the sickening nagging feeling of my promise to Grandpa. But did I ever actually sit down, make a pros and cons list and rationally decide to pack up and leave? Yeah, that’s a big negative.

  “No, I didn’t expect this to happen.”

  “I’m sorry if I’m a worthless pain in your ass that does nothing but drain you emotionally and financially,” she says. And for once her voice doesn’t have that sarcastic undertone it always has that makes her giggle after she says something completely bogus.

  “You aren’t that at all,” I say. “Why would you even think that? I like having you around.”

  “Heh,” she says sarcastically like she’s trying to find another way to snort without using her nose. “You don’t even know me, remember?”

  “I’m sorry I said that.” Silently to myself, I add the words: I am such an asshole. “I do know you, a little. You threw up on me when you were a baby. It was disgusting and smelled gross and it got in my ears.”

  “Wow,” Miranda says, abandoning her frozen gaze at the ceiling and turning her head toward me. “How did it get in your ears?”

  “You were sleeping on my chest on the couch. I was seven.”

  I hear her swallow in the silence that follows. “Now you have me thinking about babies.” It’s scary the way she says babies, like it’s something to be feared and run away from. It’s probably the saddest way I’ve ever heard the word spoken. Although babies cross my mind every so often for some reason or other, I know the subject has been stuck in Miranda’s head every moment of today.

  “Are you sure you’re pregnant?”

  “Three of the most expensive tests at the pharmacy say I am. I had to bum money off the cashier to buy the last one. He told me three out of three was enough confirmation anyone needed.”

  “What a jerk,” I say, just for the sake of saying something.

  “No, he was alright. My friend Jess went with me to buy the first one, and as he was giving me my change back he goes, ‘Good luck!’ and I was so embarrassed I turned to leave but Jess goes, really loud so everyone could hear, ‘I’m going to be a daddy!’”

  She does the heh snort again. “I guess that part was funny.”

  “Sounds like a good friend.”

  “She is. We’ve been friends since fourth grade. I know she won’t tell anyone in school, but it’s not like I care about them anymore.”

  The bonds of our friendship are raw and new, but I’m dying to know the answer. “How did this happen?”

  Her face turns slightly toward me but I can only see the pillows surrounding her head. “Uh, I had sex. Duh.”

  My cheeks burn again. “I know that,” I say sarcastically. “But how did the pregnancy happen? You should know better.”

  “I do know better. We used a condom and everything. Trust me, I thought we did it right.”

  “And the guy?” I ask, feeling the boundaries like a tangible force between us as I push them apart. It is none of my business, but by the way she showed up at my house this afternoon, she can probably use someone to talk to. And also, wow. How has it only been a few hours since I left my condo?

  “He just got a scholarship to play college football. His parents didn’t think it was right for me to ruin his chance at playing professional football with an illegitimate child, so…”

  “So? What do you mean so?”

  She stares at the glow-in-the-dark star. “So, I mean that I agreed to stay out of his life and let him get famous. He promised he’d send me money when and if he gets drafted into the NFL.” She fidgets with the comforter. “But…I don’t really care. I mean, if I’m not good enough for him now, I don’t want to be with him if he decides I’m good enough later on.”

  “I think you’re making a good choice,” I say.

  Miranda sits up on her elbow for a moment before falling back to the bed. “Let’s stay here in Salt Gap. Let’s find our soul mates and live happily ever after.”

  I roll my eyes in the dark. “I think you have a little brain damage to go along with that broken nose. There is no such thing as soul mates.”

  “That is the most absurd thing I have ever heard,” she says.

  I can’t bring myself to disagree, to spout off a ton of facts that will prove her wrong and me right. Crushing her delusional dreams of love and romance wouldn’t solve anything, plus I am confident that life will take care of that on its own. We lay, face up in bed, side by side for what feels like hours, both of us trapped in our own mind, thinking things that only make us feel worse.

  I don’t know how I’ll ever fall asleep, but eventually, I do.

  Chapter 4

  My condo is cleaner than it was the day I moved in. Everything has a place now, where before it didn’t. Unopened mail and opened mail in neat filing trays, nail files that rested between the couch cushions now have a jar. That stupid exercise ab rolling machine has been retired as a clothes hanger and now sits folded up under the bed where it’ll hopefully stay for eternity. I’ve never cleaned so much in my life, and I’ve never been so ridiculously depressed. It’s almost midnight and I’m not tired at all.

  After my panic-induced dose of insanity a week ago, everyone insisted I stay at home and not come to work until I got my shit together mentally. Maggie oh so very kindly offered to take over on Jason’s offer and the seller accepted. They close next week. I get zero commission, because taking half of Maggie’s six percent would be admitting I did something right.

  Everyone else is business as usual, and here I am, Robin Carter, self-induced ex-Realtor. My condo has never felt so small. Is this all I am? All I’m worth? Selling real estate wasn’t ever my passion in life, but it was in the family and I was good at it. After my shitty engagement fell though, I poured my heart and soul into selling real estate. I was Houston’s top Realtor. Grandpa taught me everything I know, and I had thought he was proud of me.

  I did not tell Maggie why I had my panic attack that day. I sure as hell didn’t tell Mom either when she called demanding to take me to the hospital just minutes after the ambulance decided I was healthy and would live through the night. Who knows what they would have said if I told them Grandpa made me promise to quit my career while he was on his deathbed. Mom would think I was lying probably, and Maggie would try to turn it around and bitch that Grandpa always loved me more and of course he would tell me some life-altering secret while they were sleeping in the hotel next to Hospice care.

  I stare at my nails, their cuticles perfectly manicured since I had nothing better to do this morning. A lump rises in my throat and I try to swallow it down, but it doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked all week. This is the sort of thing that a girl needs her best friend for. I have no best friend. I’m sure she’s happily curled up with a post-blow job smile on her face while lying in my ex-fiancé’s bed. You’re supposed to be able to count on friends. And family. I can’t count on anyone but myself.

  In my Victoria’s Secret sweatpants, oversized Texas A&M sweatshirt, I look like a pink oompa loompa rolled up on the couch.

  Oompa, loompa, doompidy dailure.

  Robin Carter is a total failure.

  Grandpa’s watch is set thirty minutes ahead of the actual time. I’ve gotten used to referencing it and automatically subtracting to find the real tim
e. Sometimes I wish it really could see into the future. What will I be doing thirty minutes from now?

  Will I suddenly have an answer to my problems? Will I fall asleep and see Grandpa in a dream where he can tell me exactly why he made me promise what I did?

  My honesty has never been challenged this much. I grab my netbook off the end table and open my browser to Google. As asinine as it sounds, I type the words, What is the statute of limitations on keeping promises after death?

  The search results load in a fraction of a second, but I don’t feel like reading them. The internet can’t help me, not unless there’s a Google search engine wired directly to Heaven. I was so close to selling the McMullen Loft and raking in the commission, but I couldn’t do it. It was as if promising Grandpa on his deathbed put a curse on me ala Jim Carey in Liar Liar.

  Fuck my life. I throw my arms in the air and fall sideways on the couch. The television clicks on, its volume up entirely too high. I jump, bolting out of the couch as fast as if I’d been electrocuted. My house is haunted. My heart races as I look around the room expecting to see a ghost. But then I realize the remote control was under my head when I plopped over.

  A wave of relief gushes over me so quickly it hurts. Now I’m imagining things. I thought I was expecting Grandpa to die. I thought I was totally prepared for him to leave the earth—it was his time and he knew it as well as we did. So why has it turned my entire life upside down?

  And what the hell did he mean by telling me to find my happiness?

  Chapter 8

  My car will be in the body shop for three to five days. Because it’s a foreign car all the parts had to be ordered from a warehouse in Anaheim, California. My insurance company could probably send me a rental car, but what’s the point? It’s not like I have anywhere to go.

  “Let me guess, the place is called Salt Gap Body Shop?” Miranda says, climbing up on a stool next to me at the bar of the Salt Gap Diner the next morning. After scavenging through the bottom of my purse for quarters, she just dropped a handful of them in the jukebox. I already regret it as a Kesha song starts to play.

  “No, actually,” I laugh and eat a bite of my pancakes. “It’s called Joe’s Body Shop. It was right next to a place called Hudson Armory and Tactical.”

  “Nice. At least someone in this town has a creative spark.” Miranda tears her bacon into bits and mixes them with her grits. I’ve never had grits until this morning, and mixed with salt and butter, (and probably bacon, had I thought to do that) they are totally delicious.

  The diner is packed today, so much so that it almost looks like a completely different restaurant from the one we visited last night for dinner. We had to sit at the bar because all the tables are taken. The bar stretches across the length of the restaurant, minus the end where a swinging door allows employees to come and go from the kitchen. Our plates sit on a wooden countertop coated with half an inch of clear resin. Sandwiched between the wood and the resin are dozens of old photographs, movie ticket stubs, autographed scraps of paper and other old fashioned mementos. There’s even a feather from an Indian headdress buried by Miranda’s orange juice.

  The walls are made with reclaimed wood from barns or fences and they’re decorated with all kinds of photos and western memorabilia. I feel like I could eat here a dozen times and still not see everything there is to see.

  “I wish Elizabeth was here. I wanted to see if she’s okay.” Miranda frowns thoughtfully as she scopes out another waitress in the crowd and I can tell she’s thinking about asking her for Elizabeth’s whereabouts. Elizabeth’s boyfriend may have broken Miranda’s nose last night, but hopefully he didn’t also break hers.

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” I say to reassure the both of us. Last night I had more important things to worry about than a small town waitress and her roid-raging boyfriend. Last night, I figured I would never see her again. Now I’m almost certain I will.

  The warm August air is beautiful, and the walk from the diner back to the inn isn’t so much exercise as it is peaceful. Miranda’s enjoying it too, I think. After our long talk last night, that invisible shield of awkwardness has been dropped between us. We’re acting like the blood relatives we are. Well, not the way Maggie and I interact, but the way two relatives should act around each other.

  “I can’t believe I forgot to pack proper shoes,” Miranda says as she trudges along the broken asphalt road in a pair of my black flats. “I would kill to have my Converse right now.”

  “And I would kill to have you stop kicking those rocks in my eighty dollar shoes.”

  “Must be nice to be so rich,” she says, absentmindedly kicking yet another rock. Yeah, okay. She can just have those shoes now.

  “It is nice,” I say, ignoring her eye roll. “But this is nicer.” I stop in the middle of the road. My arms spread out and up, taking in the sun’s warmth and the wind’s gentle chill and the smell. Oh, god, the smell of fresh country air. “A girl could get used to this place.”

  Miranda nods. “And a baby could totally grow up here.”

  I don’t say anything because I don’t want the truth to interfere with my beautiful, quiet moment in nature. Miranda can let her imagination roam for now. She can think she’s getting out easy by running away from home and raising a child in some new and fascinating small town. But the truth is that she can’t. She will have to go home and be with her mother and face her life the responsible way. You can’t just pack up and run away from all your problems.

  I don’t tell her any of that even though running away is exactly what we’re doing.

  We’re greeted at the entrance to the inn by a tall plain woman with long brown hair in a braid that trails down her back. She’s wearing a simple navy blue knit dress with wooden buttons. It reminds me of the kind of clothing you see in thrift stores, the stuff that no one would ever buy.

  “Welcome to Salt Gap Inn, ladies. May I help you today?” Her voice is throaty like she smokes a pack a day. She folds her hands in front of her on the counter and awaits our response.

  “Are you Sherry Singleton?” I ask, remembering the scrawly old lady hand writing on the note left for us last night.

  “Yes ma’am, I am. Owner and manager.”

  “I’m Robin Carter, I checked in last night,” I say, digging in my purse and pulling out my wallet. “Actually, I never got to check in, so I should do that now.”

  “Oh, yes! Of course.” She turns around and flips through an old filing cabinet, pulling out a card. I can’t believe this town hasn’t heard of using this fancy thing called a computer to check in guests.

  “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here to meet you last night,” she says, taking a pen out from behind her ear and writing the name Robin Carter in neat upper case letters on the card. “It’s this damned weather, I tell you. It makes my joints all stiff and wouldn’t you know it, I can’t even get up out of my chair if I sit still too long!”

  I smile politely and nod, like I understand the complications of weather and arthritis. She slides the card over to me and I sign it at the bottom. It’s basically an index card, preprinted with spaces for the dates and a little spot to check each calendar day I plan on staying. “I don’t know how long we’ll need to stay. Can I pay for three days and take it from there?”

  “Of course, dear.” She waves away my hand when I try to hand her my debit card. “I won’t need any payment from you.”

  “Huh?” I ask, my mouth open as I look at my rejected debit card. There’s no way southern hospitality is this nice.

  “Thomas Hernandez came by this morning, said he was paying for your stay.”

  “Who?” I ask, mentally scanning through every Hernandez I know and wondering how anyone from back home would know where I’m even at, much less offer to pay my bill.

  “Marcus Hernandez’s father. Like I said, he came by this morning and he said his son owed you an accommodation since he made your stay longer than you expected.” Miranda and I exchange glances and for the first ti
me, Sherry seems to notice the gross abnormality in the middle of Miranda’s face. “Goodness, child! What happened to you?”

  “Door hit me in the face,” she says with a smile. Sherry’s brow deepens in that same way my grandfather’s did when he was worrying about me. Miranda’s face was a total accident, but regardless, I don’t feel like talking about it now. A huge part of me feels one hundred percent responsible for the damage inflicted upon her, even if she is legally an adult.

  “That’s insanely nice of Mr. Hernandez, he didn’t have to do that,” I say, bringing the conversation away from my niece and back to the situation. The one time in my life I actually have extra cash to blow, I don’t even get to spend it. The moral and ethical side of me wants to argue and demand that I pay for my own room, but the other moral and other ethical side of me thinks it’s actually fair that the man pay for the damage his son caused. Had my car not been smashed, we would never have stayed in this tiny crap hole of a town.

  “They are some nice people.” She takes the card from me and places it back in the file. “So, what are you two girls going to do for the remainder of your stay?”

  “I haven’t really thought about it,” I admit, glancing around the foyer for a brochure shelf or something advertising tourist info and local entertainment. There’s no public transportation system here either. “What is there to do in Salt Gap?”

  “Well…” Sherry says, glancing to the ceiling as she thinks.”

  “Oh ya know,” Miranda says. “Skeet shootin’, porch sittin’, wrastlin gators.”

  I give her a look and turn back to Sherry, awaiting her real reply. There’s no way she’s going to suggest those things.

  Sherry brightens at the mere thought of what she’s about to say. “Ah! Of course. You’re here just in time for the Cockroach Festival!”

  Chapter 9