Page 8 of We Met Like This
She laughed. When I didn’t join her, she said, “Wait, are you serious?”
“Unfortunately, very.”
“I’m sorry, I know how much you want to find love. Fingers crossed that your guy is waiting for you at the nearest train station or chicken farm. Have you checked the chicken farms?”
I chuckled. “Maybe I should. But in the meantime, I’m back on the apps.”
“You’re swiping for dates?”
“Unfortunately,” I said.
“Is that Maggie!” my older sister called out. She was the only person who called me Maggie. Had since I was little. “I was just going to call her.” The sound of the phone changing hands was followed by my sister’s voice. “Hi.”
Audrey had the perfect life. The perfect real estate investor husband, the perfect five-year-old twin boys, the perfect house, the perfect wardrobe. I (along with approximately five hundred thousand viewers a week) knew this because she had a popular YouTube channel all about her life called Success from the Inside Out.
She had always been a go-getter. Where I spent my elementary years on the playground, she ran for and was nominated student body president. Where I spent my high school years writing movie scripts starring my latest crush, she spent hers organizing food drives and heading a remodeling committee for the cafeteria. In college, I was more social than studious, while she double-majored in interior design and business. If she was running up a mountain, I was telling her I’d take the long, scenic way around it. She was good at standing out. I was good at blending in. We didn’t spend a lot of time walking the same path, but she was always giving me advice, alwayspushing me, always telling me how to walk my path better. Without her personality to go along with it, however, her plan wasn’t working.
“Hi,” I said with a smile. I hadn’t seen her in a couple weeks, but we talked all the time. Despite our differences, we were very close. “Are you stocking Mom’s fridge?” My sister only lived a couple miles from our parents and she often swung by after a grocery run with fresh fruits and veggies.
“Yes, without me, these two would be dead already.”
“I’m fifty-seven, not a hundred and seven,” Mom said from the background.
“I’m helping you make it to a hundred and seven,” Audrey returned. Back to me she said, “The twins have a T-ball game this Saturday. Nine o’clock. Can you come?”
“Isn’t that a bit late for them?” I asked.
“Funny. Nine in the morning.”
“I know, I know. I have a brunch with friends but maybe I can come for the first part.” It wasn’t that I didn’t want to watch my nephews chase around a ball for an hour on a Saturday morning. I loved seeing them. It was just that they lived about an hour away, depending on traffic. I would not make it back by eleven. The last game I went to, between traffic and parking and the game itself, had taken five hours out of my day. Five!
“I’ll text you the address,” she said.
“The boys were more interested in the orange slices after the last game than me, Audrey. Do they even care if I’m there?”
“Of course they do! And I want to see you too.”
“Me too!” Mom called.
“I’ll try.” What I meant by that was I’d seen which argument would win that morning—the guilty side or thescrew itside.
“I have to run,” she said. “Samuel just spilled some juice on Mom’s carpet. See you Saturday!”
I pictured the phone being shoved back to Mom as my sister rushed off to save the carpet.
My mom laughed as she came back on the line.
“Is your carpet going to live?” I asked.
“It was a tiny drop. But you know your sister.”
“I do.”
“How is work?” Mom asked.
A car to my right lay on their horn and made me jump. It shouldn’t have. I’d been driving in Los Angeles traffic for years now; horns were like white noise.
“You’re hands-free?” She’d obviously heard the horn as well.
