Taken By Surprise

by Jessica Frances

  Chapter Two – The Best Friend

  I go through the motions of going to work and then actually working. I’m not sure what I’m meant to do about the dream. Fight it and do whatever I can to stop it? Or go on a holiday and enjoy what time I actually have left? Or ignore it? Given my past, it sounds crazy to ignore it, but why would someone want me dead? Why would someone shoot me? That sounds just as crazy, too.

  In less than two weeks, I might be dead; shouldn’t I have a bucket list or something? What if I do two weeks of insane things and then I don’t die? What if my dream doesn’t come true? I haven’t had one so full on like that for years, maybe it’s wrong? Or what if all I have to do is make sure one thing changes, like I never have a party. Will that make a difference? When I’ve tried to change things before, I was only a kid; now, I’m an adult. I have more power and control over my life, so will I be able to avoid this?

  Someone brushes passed me and I snap back to my surroundings, realizing I’m already at the entrance of MAY; the local café/bar. It’s actually called Mad About You, but all the locals just call it MAY. The owner is obsessed with the TV show. It’s one of the most eclectic places I know. It has the look of a café—nice couches, exotic coffees on offer, loads of people sitting around with laptops and books—but technically, it’s also a bar.

  They sell alcohol, have sports games up on the TV and usually draw a crowd of tradesmen just after lunch to about the time when Dana and I arrive at six o’clock. It was the first place Dana and I met up at when we both got jobs working in the city and now it’s our place, where we always go to hangout. The barman, Sam, is the older brother of Dana’s boyfriend, Drew. Even though we’re underage, he serves us a beer when his boss isn’t around.

  Dana works two blocks from me and we meet for a couple of finally-finished-for-the-day-lets-unwind-and-forget-we-have-to-do-it-again-tomorrow drinks as many Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays as possible. She manages a small book store that is fighting to stay open with competition from the big chain stores taking over and eBooks becoming more popular. This means that, when I find her at the bar, she usually has her nose buried in some new book. The noise and distraction around us would be too much for me to be able to concentrate, but Dana can lose herself in the pages and often our conversation will begin with what is happening in the story she is reading; what characters are interesting and so on. She loves to read anything and everything and that is one of the many reasons I love her so much. She always goes into any situation—and book—wanting to love it. Therefore, not surprisingly, she usually does.

  However, today I find her sitting on a stool at the bar with her chin in her hands rather than a book. A nearly empty light beer is at her elbow and her coat is still wrapped tightly around her with her vibrant, wavy, red hair spilling out over her back in its usual, unruly fashion. No matter what Dana does with it, there is no way to tame it. Her stockings and shoes are mud splattered and I watch her legs dangle limply off the stool she is sitting on, not quite reaching the floor. She takes another long swig of her beer and I quickly move over to her. It’s unusual for her to be drinking without me.

  As I approach, I can tell Sam is saying something to her, but whatever it is isn’t cheering her up any. Dana loves to smile. Whenever she sees me looking down and sad, she’ll give me a big smile and, no matter how I’m feeling or for whatever reason, I can’t help smiling back. She has that power over me and, similarly, her frown is enough to make me worry and feel upset.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” I drop my handbag to the ground and signal to Sam that I’ll have the same as Dana while resting my other hand on Dana’s arm.

  Before she answers me, she takes another mouthful of beer. That is definitely not a good sign. “Hank came into the store today.” Dana sighs heavily as if merely saying that sapped the energy right out of her. Hank is the owner and he rarely comes into the store. She doesn’t hate him because Dana never hates anybody, however she definitely doesn’t like him. “He said our sales aren’t good enough. That we should be pushing books onto people, recommending anything, even if we know it’s not what they’re looking for. I don’t think I can trick my customers into getting a book that I know they won’t like. I have a lot of regulars who trust me, Zee. I can’t lie to them.”

  Zee is a nickname that Dana calls me, usually when she’s upset or I am. It’s like a security blanket for me and a call that she really needs me when she uses it. When we first met and decided that we would be best friends, we thought that we should have a nickname for each other, just between us, because everyone who’s loved and has friends has a nickname; or so we thought at the age of six. So we went with the obvious choices of Zee and Dee. Hers never really stuck, but mine comes out every once in a while.

  “This is going to hurt business, not help it. He wouldn’t listen to me at all, either. He just said he would be back in a month and there better be some improvement.”

  I clasp her hand. “Look, he probably woke up feeling unimportant today and decided he wanted to feel like he did something. Don’t worry about it.”

  “What do I do, though? He wants more sales. We’ve been consistently selling around the same amount every week. That used to make him happy, but now he needs more!” Another large gulp of beer. I’ve barely touched mine and, since no-one likes warm beer, I also take a large mouthful of my own.

  “Well, I don’t know when the last time I read a book was, so I’ll definitely need a few. I mean, did you know I own a book shelf that’s full of stuff? It’s called a book shelf, I definitely think I should honor the name and put some books on it.”

  Dana smiles at me, one that I of course can’t help smiling back to.

  “I appreciate the thought, but I’m not sure if you will be able to buy enough books to really make much difference.”

  “Ah, but I know people. I shall spread the word to my minions and they shall flood your store!”

  She rolls her eyes at me, but she obviously decides to indulge me. “Okay, let’s say that works, all it’ll do is make business good while they come and then go back down once they’re gone.”

  “Well, I know I don’t have customers in quite the same way you do, however correct me if I’m wrong, aren’t you supposed to give them such great service that they want to come back to you again and again?”

  “Oh, shut up!” Again the smile and again I smile back. We finish off our beers, grab new ones and move over to a couch where we can sit more comfortably. I never quite liked beer when I first started drinking, but Dana did, so I got used to drinking it very quickly.

  “Cheer me up and tell me how things were with Joel today.”

  Joel is a guy I work with in my office. In fact, the only person I work with in my office. We’ve barely talked since he started a couple weeks earlier, although he is so incredibly hot that he has come up often in my talks with Dana. I always get a strange feeling around him, as though something is off with him, but the first time we met I forgot my own name. From that moment on, most things I say to him become constant amusement for Dana and me later. I just can’t help making a fool out of myself in front of him. Bizarrely, he seems just as awkward as I am, which I find really surprising.

  I’m not horrible looking, I know, yet I’m definitely not in the same league as Joel. There is no reason for him to be shy. He’s athletic looking with broad shoulders, at least two feet taller than me and, embarrassingly, I have been lost in his light blue eyes more times than I care to admit. That is also a problem because, when I do lose myself, it often takes me a few moments to realize I’ve stopped functioning, but he of course hasn’t; so he must think I’m a crazy weirdo while I openly gawk at him, which is what happened today.

  “Things today were quiet, although I did nearly fall off my chair when he caught me staring at him.” I laugh with Dana as I remember leaning back in my chair, staring at him while his chair was turned towards me and he looked over a file in his hands. I found myself mesmerized and then he s
uddenly looked up at me. Flustered at being caught, I nearly fell backwards and only just managed to grab hold of my desk in time. It had been very embarrassing; my cheeks were burning and I made sure to avoid glancing anywhere in his direction for the rest of the day.

  “That is hilarious.” Dana smiles at me again and I’m glad her worries about Hank and the bookstore seem to be in the past for now. My thoughts, however, circle back to where they’ve been since I woke up from my dream this morning.

  “I have a hypothetical question for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Say you found out you only have two weeks to live; what would you do?” I take a swig of beer to disguise my suddenly shaky hands. My emotions have been running high since this morning and I don’t want Dana to suspect anything is wrong. I still feel like I’m in a constant state of panic, not knowing what to do.

  “That’s kind of morbid. What made you think of that?”

  I try to keep my face impassive. “It’s just a random question. Would you go away? Would you jump out of a plane? What would you spend your final two weeks doing?”

  “Hm.” Dana puts her beer down on the table between us and looks away as she thinks about her answer. “I suppose I would fight to have longer, two weeks is no time at all, but since this is just a hypothetical and, given the fact that no one would really be aware of something like that, I would just want to spend as much time with you and Drew as I could.”

  “Really? No crazy overseas trips? No death defying acts?”

  “I suppose I would want to reread Jane Austen and maybe try to fit in every Jodi Picoult novel, too.”

  “Books? You would want to sit around and read books?”

  “They’re classics, Zoe, if you had read them you would know that. Why? What would you do with your last two weeks?”

  I shrug. It’s a question I have been pondering all day and I still don’t have any clear answers.

  “Dana! Zoe!” someone calls from over near the bar and we look over to see Drew waving madly. He points at our drinks and puts two fingers in the air. We both shake our heads no. A couple of drinks, every couple days when we meet at MAY is usually enough for us. It gets busy here after a few hours and we’re ready to call it a night by then.

  Drew quickly catches up with his brother Sam before he heads over and then collapses himself down next to Dana, draping his arm around her shoulder. They exchange a quick kiss, smile and then both go back to drinking. He’s tall, lanky and his sandy blonde hair always hangs around his face; it never seems to grow long enough for him to put it behind his ears. Dana has a thing for guys with long hair and I think this is as far as Drew is willing to go. Drew is the same age as us, though he looks like he’s in his late twenties; the glasses he always wears make him appear older. Once, when he was seventeen, he thought he would see if he would get asked for ID going into a club and no one questioned him.

  “How was your day?” Dana asks Drew, resting her hand on his knee.

  Drew moans and takes another gulp of his beer. It’s funny how alike they both are. “I’ll be happy if I never see another number again.”

  Drew is studying to be an accountant.

  “That bad?” I ask.

  “Yeah. Some days things add up like they’re meant to and some days they don’t. Today was the latter.”

  We sit at MAY talking until the hour is up and the place is so crowded as well as stuffy that hearing each other is becoming harder and harder. We stand out front of the main entrance and load on our layers as the chilly wind tries to invade our bodies. Ever since Drew and Dana moved in together a year ago, I have caught the bus alone. They invited me to live with them in their two bedroom apartment. I know they meant it and I know it wouldn’t have been weird because we love each other too much for me to feel like a third wheel, but this was something exciting and new for them. They needed to do it alone. So I stayed living out in the suburbs with a forty minute bus ride into work and the same to get back home. Drew and Dana, on the other hand, catch a bus for ten minutes and it stops directly one block from where they live.

  “So, I’ll see you on Wednesday for a drink?” Dana asks as she tries to help Drew fix the collar on his jacket that is sticking up at the back.

  “Yeah, I’ll see you then, but in the meantime, I’ll be spreading the word.”

  “The word about what?” Drew asks while patting Dana’s hand away from his collar and straightening it out himself.

  “The word about the best bookstore in town. Have you not heard about it, Drew? It’s only two blocks from here and the service you get is amazing!” I give Dana an enthusiastic, over the top, thumbs up and she laughs at my antics. “Just practicing; what do you think?”

  “It’s maybe a little too much, Zoe.”

  “Don’t worry; I’ll work on it.” I hug them both and wave to them as I step onto my bus. They always wait for me to catch my bus before they catch their own, which leaves from the other side of the road. They say it’s just to keep me company while I wait, however I know it’s because they don’t want me to be left alone at night in the city.

  I lean my head against the window and think about Dana’s answer to my earlier question. She would spend time with Drew and me and, if it was possible, she would fight against only having two weeks left. Was that what I should do? Should I spend more time with Mom? More time with Dana? Should I simply make sure I never have a party? Or perhaps try and find myself a man? The only guy that I think I might be even remotely interested in at the moment is Joel. Maybe I should attempt to talk to him at work without making a total idiot of myself?