Page 63 of Anatomy of a Meet Cute
“It’s okay. I wasn’t getting much done. I was mostly watchingHousewives.”
“That was my plan, too, before all this stuff went sideways.”
“We are related for a reason. Now, go fix this and then get some sleep. You got actual lives that depend on you,” Isaiah said, his voice sounding like the aural equivalent of a hug.
“Good night. I love you, brother,” Sam said, feeling the knot in her gut start to untwist itself.
“Love you too, sister.”
With that, the line went quiet. Sam sighed and looked over at the clock, then at her laptop as her brain clicked something into place. Unpleasant as Travis had been, he was right about his mother not receiving an invitation. Sam shuddered and tried not to gag. She didn’t relish the thought of confessing her failure to her friend, but the longer she waited to tell Jehan that Travis was right, the worse she would feel. Assuming Jehan had a midday shift, she should be home in about forty-five minutes.
Picking up her laptop, Sam shuffled into the living room and sank back into the couch. If she was going to wait up for Jehan, she might as well use the time to fix her mom’s party. With a heavy sigh, she settleddown enough to employ a trick she’d learned in an anxiety-management seminar in her first year of medical school—writing out bad news before you had to say it. The seminar was designed to help future doctors manage the terrible feelings that came with having to tell a patient or their family members difficult diagnoses. However, Sam figured it would work just as well in her own life. After a good twenty minutes of typing and then retyping her apology, she was ready.
Sam picked up her phone and dialed her mother’s number again. Just as Isaiah had promised, she was sent straight to voice mail. As she waited for the “You’ve reached Diana Holbrook; I can’t come to the phone” spiel to end, she tried to focus on her breathing. She didn’t need to be afraid. This wasn’t like in old movies where you’d start leaving a voice mail and then someone would pick up. Her mom had shut her phone off, likely to make a point to Sam, and now she could leave Diana a message without fear.
As soon as the tone beeped, Sam started. “Hi, Mom. Sorry I missed your call. I was with my hospital colleagues.” A mild fib for the cause, she thought as she took a breath. “Anyway, I want you to know how sorry I am to have mixed up your and Jehan’s invitations. I’m sending out an apology email and a corrected e-vite now, so no need to worry about that. You were wise to send out the Facebook invitation, so at least there is one correct source for the information.”
Pausing, she looked down at her script and did her best to not sound robotic as she read, “Again, I truly apologize for the embarrassment this likely caused you. I want to assure you that the other details are being handled with more care. I can understand if you need time to work through all of this, so I won’t call again. I’ll let you reach out to me. Okay. Love you. Bye.
“Woof,” Sam exhaled after the call had been fully disconnected before dropping the phone on the couch next to her. Rolling out her neck, she changed the cross of her legs, set her laptop on a throw pillow, and then got to work on updating the guests.
Finding a sufficiently distressed-looking e-vite template, Sam crafted an “event update” to her mother’s guest list. The initial four-sentence email took her all of seven minutes to write. Second-guessing and rearranging those four sentences took a good fifteen minutes. Then she tacked on another five minutes’ worth of excessive spelling and grammar checking before finally hitting send.
Setting her laptop to the side, Sam slouched over onto the armrest of the couch. Her night had started off on such a high, and now she was back where she’d begun—an exhausted mess who was out of her depth. Sam massaged one of her shoulders and gently prodded at a thought she’d been avoiding all afternoon. What was she trying to prove? Since coming to San Francisco, she had done nothing but overextend herself. She wanted to be a good doctor, daughter, and friend. Right now, she didn’t feel like any of those things.
The sound of the lock on the door turning yanked Sam’s attention away from her introspection. She sat upright, a second wave of fear and anxiety flooding her brain as she listened to the seals around the door squelch on the wood floor.
“Hey. What are you still doing up? Don’t you have a shift in like six hours?” Jehan smiled as she stuck her head around the corner to see who was still in the living room at almost midnight. Her friend’s face faltered when she saw her, and Sam was sure Jehan could tell that she was actually a steaming pile of bad-friend garbage. “Everything okay?”
“I—” Sam’s voice cracked. Closing her eyes, she stopped and shook her head before opening them and starting again. “Jehan, I’ve got something to tell you. And I want you to know how sorry and embarrassed I am.”
“What happened?” Jehan asked, tension rolling her shoulders forward as she stopped untying her shoes and walked into the room.
“I promise I will make this up to you, but ...” Sam looked at her hands as Jehan dropped down on the couch next to her, concern written all over her friend’s kind face. Forcing herself to make eye contact,she told Jehan the whole pathetic story. Along the way, Sam watched Jehan’s emotions play out from concern to surprise to something that looked oddly like relief.
As she wrapped up with the correction email she was about to send, she watched as Jehan marshaled her expressions into placidity. Taking a deep breath, she asked, “Is your mom’s party going to be okay?”
“Does it matter? I’m more worried about your party,” Sam said, watching her friend closely. Jehan’s reaction was so calm it was eerie. Even for someone as mellow as Jehan, this reaction was understated. Either she was going to explode shortly, or there was something her friend wasn’t sharing. Or, Sam reasoned, maybe she was living in a dream sequence, and this wasn’t really happening at all. She hoped that wasn’t the case, or she would have to throw out the evening with Grant as well. And she wanted that to be real in spite of everything else that had happened tonight.
Jehan shook her head. “My party is a month and a half away. I mean, was your mom planning on inviting people from out of town? Did anyone book a hotel too far from the venue or anything?”
“Not that I know of.” Sam wrinkled her nose as she thought through the list of names. “Most of them were local from when we lived around here twenty-five years ago.”
“And the party is still like two weeks away, yes?” Jehan asked, her voice calm as a lake.
“Two and a half, really.” Sam shrugged.
“Your mom will be fine then. And as for my party, we’ll send out an oops email and an updated invite.” Jehan threw up a hand as if tossing out some minor hiccup.
“I already drafted one. I just wanted to tell you before I sent it so you weren’t caught off guard.”
“Even better. See, this is no big deal.”
“But Travis was so upset with you because of me.” Sam said this part fast. If she didn’t acknowledge the trouble she had caused herfriend’s relationship, the guilt might crush her. Whether or not Sam liked Travis, Jehan didn’t deserve that trouble.
“Water under the bridge. As they say, if you don’t fight about wedding planning, were you ever actually engaged?” Jehan laughed, but the sound seemed hollow. Sam was about to ask what was really going on and why her friend was so calm when her phone flashed with a text message that she decided to ignore. If it was her mother, she would have called, and nothing else was more important than seeking her friend’s forgiveness.
“You aren’t upset?” She eyed her friend, who conveniently looked down at Sam’s phone blinking with a text message instead of meeting her gaze. “Because I’d understand if you were. I messed up your party and caused a problem between you and Travis. I really apologize.”
