Cosmic Trifecta

by Anna Lewis

  ***

  As I found myself back inside the very familiar four walls that had made up my life for many years now, I realized that I was wrong to worry that my brain would immediately go back to Max. Despite the fact that I’d lived with him here, even though I’d found him screwing my friend on the couch, he was the furthest thing from my mind.

  All I could think about was Evan and the terrible way we’d left things.

  After a very long, stilted flight, I hopped off the plane to make my escape. I’d hugged the kids goodbye, and even held Evan close to me for a moment, but in a bid to protect my fragile heart I hadn’t even looked at him. Why didn’t I look at him? Just one more gaze into those beautiful eyes would’ve helped me get through this agony. It hurt so bad to let him go, it felt like there was a gaping hole in my chest, and I honestly wasn’t sure that I’d ever feel normal again.

  I dropped my bags on the ground and made my way into the bedroom where I flopped onto the bed. I felt deflated, like every aspect of my personality was gone. My mind kept spinning back over everything in Hawaii, reminding me of what a wonderful time I’d had. I thought about the first few days there, how weird things were until we kissed. Then I recalled the day at the theme park, followed by the drink and the first time we’d had sex.

  After that, us spending the night together became very normal, which made the night I felt like a princess even more incredible. That dress, the shoes, the diamond necklace… all of which he insisted that I keep…

  I forced myself to stand, to go and grab the necklace, just to give myself something the cling on to. I looked and felt like crap, my emotions were everywhere, but just for a moment I really wanted to wear it. I wanted to feel close to Evan and all that he’d meant to me.

  As I slid it over my head, one stray tear leaked down my cheek, and the emotion just started spilling out everywhere. I already missed Evan, James, and Lorna too. I loved the life with them, and not just because it was in Hawaii, but because they made me feel special too. They needed me, they wanted me around, I was important to them… and now I had nothing. How was I supposed to even go on knowing that I’d lost the best thing to ever happen to me? No job would ever feel the same, nor would any man. I was officially well and truly stuck.

  Knock, knock.

  Urgh, there was no way in hell that I was answering the door now, not after what I’d just been through. Knowing my luck it would be Max wanting to talk things through, or something equally cringe worthy. No, I would just remain as quiet as I could until the person went away.

  Knock, knock.

  I didn’t dare to breathe, all I wanted was to be left alone to wallow in my misery, hadn’t I earned that much? All I wanted was some space, why couldn’t I ever get what I needed?

  Knock, knock.

  Apparently not…

  “Ali, are you in there?”

  My heart stopped dead in my chest as I recognized the person calling to me. This wasn’t Max, coming for forgiveness, or even Taylor, with her much needed apology. This was the man that I’d left behind not so long ago. Did I want to talk to him again? Was I prepared to face the man that I couldn’t bear to look at because I wanted him so badly? The man that I never thought I would have to see again.

  Then again, if I didn’t hear him out, would I regret it forever? Would I always wonder what he had to say? Would I wish that I’d just spent five minutes being brave.

  “Y… yes,” I eventually stammered, realizing that I had to at least see what he wanted if I didn’t want to drown in regrets. “What do you want?”

  “Please let me in, I want to talk to you.”

  I stepped towards the door, trembling with fear the entire time. This wasn’t typical, this definitely meant something, I just didn’t dare hope what it could be. I knew what I wanted, but that seemed impossible. It had to be something else. Maybe the kids had convinced him to let me come back for work.

  As I slowly tugged the door open, I could see stress etched on Evan’s face too. Maybe I looked like an emotional mess, but he didn’t seem too much better.

  “How did you find me?” I decided to tackle the easiest question first.

  “You left your address on the resume, so it wasn’t too hard to find.” His expression was serious, there wasn’t even an element of humor there, which had me even more freaked out.

  “Did you… want to come in?” I stepped aside and he moved past me, but he remained in the hallway as he turned his body around to face me.

  “I need to talk to you, and this is something I should’ve said at the airport. Actually, I should’ve said it in Hawaii, I had plenty of chances to but I didn’t.”

  “Right, okay.” I nodded and waited as patiently as I could manage, but everything was jumping everywhere in my chest. I didn’t dare to dream, but my emotions darted everywhere.

  “I guess I’m just not very good at this, and I never have been,” he was babbling, looking everywhere but at me. Whatever he had to say, it was clearly very difficult. “But I don’t want the month to be the end of it. I want you to come back, the kids want you to come back too.”

  “To work?” I needed utter clarification here before I could even think of committing to anything. I needed to know exactly what I was giving myself over for.

  “No…” he took my hands in his, and stared deep into my eyes. “I haven’t exactly worked out the details of everything yet, but I do want you back in my life, we all do. I’ve explained to James and Lorna that I’m falling for you, and they’re happy with that, they want you to come back in any capacity…”

  “You’re falling for me?” To hear him say it in such a blunt way, at home as well, not just in Hawaii, it really took me back. This was actually real, this meant something huge, it was everything that I wanted.

  “Of course I am, I spent the last month trying to tell you that.”

  Oh my God, everything he told me was the truth, this was almost too much to handle. I’d assumed he meant it in a throwaway manner, but he was actually being honest. “Well,” my voice was thick with emotion. “I’m falling for you too.” This was my dream coming true, but this time it was happening within the context of my reality, making it that much more special.

  “So… is that a yes?”

  I paused for a second, just wanting him to sweat before my face burst into a happy grin. “Of course it’s a yes, a thousand times yes.”

  As our lips crashed together I knew that it would always be a yes for Evan Hawlin, he was the best damn thing to ever happen in my life, and this time I’d never have to let him go.

  THE END

  = Bonus Book 15 of 20 =

  For Their Pleasure

  I glanced around at the diner that I worked in. It was called the Broadway Café, even though it was on Fifth Avenue. It felt as if the air itself were oozing grease. I wiped a hand across my sweaty forehead. Customers who were seated in the drab brown booths were all starting to watch the scene that had slowly been unravelling. I tugged nervously on the apron to my brown cotton uniform.

  I’d had enough. I had, truly, hit the end of what I could handle. The customer was grinning at me smugly. His teeth were crooked and yellow—like a rat’s. I lived in New York City. I knew a rat when I saw one. He was a middle-aged man, with dark hair that was thinning on the top. His skin was pink and shiny, and he had dark, beady eyes.

  “I ordered fries to go with this,” he insisted. He hadn’t. I write this stuff down.

  “Let me get you some fries,” I replied kindly, wondering why anyone would want fries with a salad. Didn’t that destroy the whole point? And who orders a salad at a diner, anyway? You go there for burgers and bacon and stuff. He frowned and glanced at his watch.

  “How long will that take?” he asked, and I felt my stomach sink.

  “Ten minutes,” I replied archly, giving him a tight-lipped grin. I wanted to give him a piece of my mind. So far, he had been incredibly rude. He had already changed his order after I’d already brought it to the kitc
hen, he’d insinuated that I was fat, and now, he was calling me out. Clearly, he wanted to fight somebody. But, dear Lord in Heaven, I wasn’t in the mood that day. I had already put up with ten of his kind already in the past five hours that I’d been working my shift. He shook his head.

  “I don’t have ten minutes,” he replied, folding his arms across his chest. My eyes widened. I glanced around the greasy spoon diner that I’d worked at for years. A few people were watching with vague disinterest. The walls were yellow, and the whole place was trimmed in brown. I found the whole aura of the place to be depressing. I didn’t really know why I’d stayed there. I didn’t feel particularly loyal to it. When I didn’t respond, the customer went on.

  “I don’t think this salad is going to be filling enough.” He really enunciated his consonants. He even spat a little.

  “What do you want me to do about it?” I snapped. “That’s what you ordered.” He looked at me in surprise. He paused for a moment, and my stomach churned nervously. I couldn’t believe what had just come out of my mouth. I was known for my patience.

  “I want the pot roast,” he replied. That was the last straw. I huffed loudly.

  “You just said you didn’t have time for the fries! How you gonna have time to wait for the pot roast?” I yelled, gesturing wildly with my hands. “You think this stuff just magically appears?” I glared at him. He scowled right back at me.

  “The customer is always right,” he declared.

  “How can you be right if you’re contradicting yourself all of the time?” I yelled. Just then, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to find my boss, a tiny, dark-skinned man with eyes that bulged out wildly when he was angry. His eyes were bulging out wildly in anger.

  “Tiana,” he hissed. “What are you doing?” I just stood there, my mouth hanging open because I honestly did not know what I was doing.

  ***

  I threw open the door to my apartment, letting it slam shut behind me. I turned to twist the locks shut. The apartment had a combination kitchen and living room, which were painted in white, with matching white linoleum flooring. When I turned back around, my roommate, Jacki, peered out of her bedroom, which was off to the left of the living room.

  Jacki looked a little bit like Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. Usually, she was the crime-fighting hot-pants wearing version, but for work, she was the svelte, sophisticated Dr. Harlene Quinzel-type. She was dressed elegantly, in a white, fitted sheath dress. She had on a black cotton apron and black patent leather stiletto heels. She worked at a classy restaurant on the Upper East Side. She was putting on a pair of pearl earrings.

  “Whoa there!” she hollered, her usual volume. “What’s wrong with you, lady?”

  “I was just fired,” I said.

  “Oh no!” she replied sympathetically. “Ti, what happened?” She walked all of the way into our living room, which was decorated shabby-chic style with furniture from various flea markets that we’d frequented. I threw myself down onto our floral print couch and stared at my feet in my Nurse-white sneakers.

  “This customer was being awful,” I said. “Then, I dunno. I guess I just lost it. I yelled at him. I got petty. The boss came over.” She sat down beside me.

  “Well, you didn’t like it there, anyway,” she replied, shrugging sympathetically. I nodded.

  “What am I going to do, though?” I complained. “Rent is due next week. I’m already living paycheck-to-paycheck. Now, there are going to be no paychecks to live between. Jacki, how am I supposed to live until I find another job? It’s dog-eat-dog out there!”

  “Don’t worry, Boo,” Jacki replied easily with a smile. “Antoine’s is hiring.” I sat up. Antoine’s was where Jacki worked. It was super deluxe. The reservations were months out for booking. It paid well. The clients tipped well. And the grease stayed cleverly tucked away in the kitchen…if there was any.

  “Seriously?” I gasped excitedly. She nodded.

  “I was gonna tell you anyway since you were working at that greasy-spoon diner, but now it seems that it’s like, fate,” she declared.

  “How am I gonna get an interview?” I wondered sarcastically. I knew Jacki was about to call in a favor for me. We had been best friends since middle school. We had been roommates ever since we were both old enough to rent our apartment in the Village. It was more than we could afford, and Jacki pulled her weight a little more, but I evened things out by doing extra chores.

  “Please,” Jacki said, feigning hurt feelings. “I got this covered.” She pulled her phone out of her bag, which she always threw down on our dinged-up wooden coffee table as soon as she entered the apartment. She texted her boss, then sat there smiling at me in silence. I grinned back at her. A few seconds later, the text alert went off. Jackie looked at it.

  “You think you can come in tonight for a quick interview before we start serving dinner?” she asked me.

  “Definitely,” I replied. She nodded and sent the text confirmation back to her boss. She grinned at me.

  “You’re totally gonna get it,” she said, nodding her head.

  “What am I going to wear?” I asked her, standing up and walking back to my room, which was on the opposite side of the kitchen. Jacki followed me. She walked past me and toward my closet. Flinging it open, she began to rummage through my clothes. She pulled out a simple black dress, one which accentuated my curves in just the right way.

  “You wanna look classy,” she said, throwing it at me. “You can borrow my pearl necklace. That should do the trick. Let’s fix your hair in a bun, and then you can borrow a pair of stilettos.”

  “Girl, I can’t walk in those no how,” I snapped. She looked at me, her eyebrow raised.

  “You’re gonna have to,” she said. “It’s part of the uniform.” I sighed. I was exhausted, but I was going to have to pull it together—I couldn’t afford to not have a job. And Antoine’s was an opportunity too good to pass up.

  ***

  I sat across from Jacki’s boss, Joe, hiding my nerves. Going from being fired to a job interview that I’d been wanting for ages was a mind trip. I was going to have to lie by omission for sure—the firing just didn’t exist. It couldn’t if I wanted this job.

  Joe was a twenty-something hipster-looking dude. He had a moustache that he pomaded and black-framed glasses. He adjusted them on his nose as he looked me up and down. On his off-time, he for sure wore plaid shirts. I just knew it.

  Jacki had worked some kind of magic, and taken me from fired diner waitress-chic to classy and elegant potential-waitress at one of the fanciest restaurants in New York City. I was dressed in my black dress, my hair pulled back into an elegant top-knot, and Jacki’s pearl necklace around my neck. She had expertly added thick, cat eyeliner over my ice-blue eyes, and applied bright red lipstick. I’d barely recognized myself in the mirror.

  “So, you have experience as wait staff?” he asked me. I nodded.

  “Yeah, I worked at a diner out on Fifth for years,” I replied. He squinted at me.

  “Why did you stop working there?” he asked. Jacki had told me how to answer that one.

  “I wanted to improve my prospects,” I explained. “Jacki told me about this job, and I jumped at the chance.” He raised an eyebrow.

  “You quit your job before the interview?” Oops, I thought, but I grinned coolly.

  “I feel confident that I would be a good fit for Antoine’s,” I replied like I was James Bond.

  “How so?” he asked.

  “I am experienced, I am patient, I am prompt, and I am a good worker,” I said.

  “I fired the last girl because she was rude to customers,” he said, playing with his pen. “I am looking for someone with patience, as our clients can be very…high maintenance.” He speared me with a look.

  “I can handle high pressure situations,” I replied confidently, not missing a beat. He nodded, his face entirely neutral.

  “I like Jacki. She’s a real straight-shooter. She says that you’re good,�
� he said. “I’d like to offer you the job on a trial basis.” I smiled delicately, trying not to over-do it in my excitement.

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  “Excellent. Let’s go sign some paperwork and get you the uniform, and you can start on the lunch shift tomorrow.” We both stood, and I held out my hand for him to shake. He gestured toward the door to his office.

  When we opened the door, Jacki was standing outside of it. She grinned, having heard everything, and gave me a high-five.

  “Yes!” she hissed, and then ran off, her stiletto heels clicking on the floor. I looked over at my new boss, who was rubbing his forehead with his hand.

  “You live with her?” he asked tiredly.

  “Yeah,” I said, grinning.

  “She’s really…unique,” he said, shaking his head.

  “For sure,” I agreed.

  ***

  Antoine’s was elegant, to say the least. It had cream-colored walls, which had crown molding and crystal chandeliers. It had a deep red carpet that was thin enough to not be difficult to walk in stilettos on. All of the tables had fresh floral arrangements which were brought in every morning. That day’s arrangements were a combination of yellow roses and calla lilies.

  It was my first day on the job. I was wheeling the dessert cart onto the main floor. It was less than an hour into my shift, and my feet ached in the stiletto heels. I felt like I was clomping around with all of the grace of Seabiscuit. The white dress was impossible to keep clean when you were serving food. Just impossible. And the Ladies Who Lunch were excruciatingly picky.

  “Oh,” they gasped in unison as I wheeled the desserts to their table. They all had to be at least seventy. They all wore hats. They all wore thick multi-strand pearl necklaces. And white gloves. They had each eaten a salad, all of which had very special instructions come with the order. They all had one glass of white wine each. Now, they were gasping over the elaborate desserts like little birds. I smiled, masking the excruciating pain that my feet were in.