Page 104 of Turnabout Is Fair Cosplay
I snort. “I feel like time is running out to live the life that I want to live.”
“Let’s try again.” Adam opens up the box of tacos. “How you been?”
“If life is a highway, then I feel like my car has crashed over the barrier, landed in the bay, and is taking on water. I’m trying to roll the windows down and get out before I drown.”
Adam bites into a taco. “That is a very specific and disturbing metaphor.” He pauses before taking another bite. “Are you still having nightmares about tsunamis?”
“Adam, focus. What am I going to do?”
“What are you going to do? What am I going to do? I’m in love with a woman who wants nothing to do with me outside of cosplay.” Adam inspects the other box of takeout and smiles widely when he sees the Korean fried chicken. “Heat level?”
“Fry your brain,” I say before grabbing a wing.
“You mean thaw your cold, lonely heart?”
I do not appreciate the dig. “So what’s up with your girlfriend?”
Adam groans. “I wish she was my girlfriend.”
How does he do it? He’s so open and honest. More importantly, how does he know what he wants? I’m tail-spinning trying to make any choice about career, home, hobby, yoga classes, organic or nonorganic mini bell peppers. Which, apart from this fried chicken, have become my favorite snack as of late.
“She’s…” Adam drums his fingers on the counter. “She’s like a Viennese Sachertorte.”
I stare, nonplussed. I can’t help it. How am I even supposed to respond to that, particularly since I don’t know what a Sachertorte is?
“A very fancy, layered chocolate cake,” Adam explains.
“I’m going to stop you there and change the subject before I throw up. How did you know you wanted to do this?” I gesture to the room around us.
“Tacos and Korean fried chicken for dinner?” Adam deadpans.
“Ditch law school. Run your own business.”
“Because… It’s what I wanted to do.”
“But how did you know what you wanted to do?”
“Bea… You’re getting too meta for me. It was simple. I saw how law school sucked the life out of you. It transformed you into a—”
“Don’t say it.”
“—cactus.” Adam grabs another taco. “A sedentary, prickly, often sickly hued, and dehydrated human.”
“But Portia and Juliet didn’t become cacti.”
“Portia has always been a shark, and Juliet believes she’s truly helping people. They like the game for their own reasons.” Adam stretches his arms up and behind him. “You know what you don’t want your life to look like, right?”
My mind jumps to golf on Saturdays with Mom and Dad, carpooling to the office while my 1977 Porsche, the one splurge I allowed myself when I got hired, sat under a dustcover in the driveway. Worse still were the days I stayed late.
It was no big deal, Mom would say, always so happy to come pick Dad up, and I’d drive home in the dark all alone. Trudge up the stairs with a Diet Coke and pack of Peanut M&M’s, spritz my cactus collection, and read Tolstoy until I fell asleep.
Adam unpacks a second box of tacos. “What do you want your life to look like?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Sure you do.”
“I thought… It’s stupid.”
