Not Soon Enough
Alice is dying to live.
In the final installment of Dying To Live, a flash fiction mini-series, there’s no doubt that Alice needs to get out.
That twenty-mile drive from Scott’s place in North Hollywood to Alice’s mom’s house in Pasadena would have only cost Scott an hour of his life. Alice couldn’t let go of that little fact.
“I don’t know why I keep going back to that scrub,” she says as she plops into Dave’s car. She closes the door and does a quick scan of the inside. “New car?” She sniffs the air as if that would help confirm her suspicions.
Dave smiles, but it’s an empty gesture. She came in hot, like a meteor, and now she feels bad bombarding him with her negativity, especially since he drove (a little bit) out of his way to help her. Dave is Scott’s younger brother, so she probably shouldn’t lead the conversation by insulting Scott.
“Hi, Dave.” She pulls on her seat belt and smiles one of those smiles that also looks like constipation. He waits for her to finish buckling up.
“Hi, Alice. How are you?” he asks. “Don’t hold back.”
“Yeah, that was a bit much right there.” Alice admits. “I’m sorry.”
Dave does his best to convey his disgust with her behavior, but his ruse is a house of cards. He cracks. “It’s all good, Alice. I’m just busting your chops.”
““Bust my chops?’” She laughs at the sound of it coming out of her mouth. “Who says that?”
This time Dave flashes a soulful smile, and Alice knows there’s nothing to worry about here. He isn’t mad at her. “Thanks for doing this.” She says, feeling a bit of relief wash over her.
“Anything for my big bro. That scrub.” Dave shifts into gear, and they’re off.
Dave has always been cool with Alice. They went to St. Rita’s together up through eighth grade before shipping off to different high schools. All these years knowing him, Dave never once made a move on Alice or let slip that he liked her like that, but she suspected he did. Some of her friends swore it, and Scott even once made a bad joke at the wrong time about it. Alice knew he liked her, but the heart wants what it wants — if that’s what you want to call it. Alice’s heart didn’t want Dave. Instead, she asked him to introduce her to his older, richer, brother, Scott. That dude came back to town a couple of years ago with an officially glowed up. Body, bank account. Alice always thought he was cute, but…damn!
It’s after ten in the morning when they pull up to Alice’s house. Her mom should’ve been long gone for work, but Alice spots her Range Rover parked in the driveway.
“Shit.”
“What?” Dave asks.
“My mom is home.” Alice grabs her purse and opens the car door. “I was kind of planning on not seeing her right now. We’re not on good terms, as usual.” She gets out of the car, closes the door, and spends a few seconds staring at her house. “Thank god I’m moving out soon.”
Dave rolls down the passenger side window. “You’re moving?
“Yeah,” Alice replies without taking her eyes off the house. When it becomes obvious to Dave, after a few seconds, that Alice isn’t going to say anything else, he asks, “Where to?”
Alice turns her attention from the California Craftsman home and bends down into the open car window to face Dave. “Rancho Cucamonga.”
“Dang,” Dave said, drawing out the vowel sound a couple of seconds for emphasis. “Might as well be in Nevada way out there,” he joked with her.
Alice feigns a little laugh and smiles. “Thanks for the ride, Dave.”
“Any time. I’ll see you later.”
Dave heads off to work, and Alice starts planning out how she’ll avoid the lecture she knows she’s going to get if she runs into her mom. However, one’s destiny is unavoidable, and it was written in the stars that Alice and her mother would cross paths this morning.
Alice sneaks up the driveway towards the backyard, but she’s stopped dead in her tracks halfway up by her mom coming out of the front door. Their eyes meet, and nuclear energy gets transferred between them for several agonizing seconds of glaring before Alice breaks under the pressure of her mom’s hard-boiled stare.
“Whatever you’re going to say to me, mom, save it for another day.”
Alice’s mom continues to glare at her as she walks past Alice towards the Range Rover. When her mom stops at the door, she turns back to Alice and shakes her head. “You smell like a whore. I raised you better.” Her mom slams the door and starts her car.
Alice wants to throw her keys at her the driver’s side window and scream every expletive she knows, but all she does is watch her mom back out of the driveway and head to work, without so much as a glance back at her daughter.
“I need to get out of this place,” she reminds herself before she turns to walk into the house.
After a long, rejuvinating shower, Alice is ready for lunch and a nap. It would be a perfect day off for her if her mom wasn’t going to be home in a few hours to ruin it. Still, Alice is feeling much better about where she’ll be at in two weeks.
She opens the refrigerator, still halway in a daydream about her new apartment with Jen. To her surprise, she’s struck gold in the fridge. Sitting on the fridge’s top shelf is a non-descript Styrofoam “to-go” container. The big, square clam shell ones that are ubiquitous in family-owned restaurants across the country.
Alice wraps her hands around each side of it. “Are you what I think you are?” The container, now resting on the counter, pops open to reveal the goods. “Oh!” Alice exclaims. Half of an enormous piece of carne asada burrito greets her. “Hello, there,” she says to the food, trying to seduce it into her mouth.
She plates the burrito and puts it in the microwave for a quick reheat. While she is waiting for her food to warm up, she hears her phone rining from her bedroom. Something tells her that it’s Scott calling to apologize for brushing her off. When she gets to her phone on its final ring, she discovers that she wasn’t even close.
“Jen,” reads the caller ID on the phone’s screen.
“I wonder what this bitch wants.” she wonders with a smile as she answers the call. “Hey, roomie! What’s up?”
“Hey, Alice,” Jen said. Alice knew this call was going to end poorly. Jen never called Alice by her name. “Are you busy right now?”
“No, girl. What’s up?” Something about Jen’s tone concerns Alice. “ Is something wrong?” She asks even though she already knows the answer. Jen had been sick with some sort of stomach bug the last couple of days. She’s usually out there with Alice, tearing up a dancefloor. “Are you feeling better?”
On the other end of the phone, Jen starts crying. “I can’t — we can’t live together. Something happened, and I can’t — ” Jen stops there, struggling to speak. Alice can feel the dam is about to burst. “I’m pregnant.”
It wasn’t fair. Nothing was ever fair. Alice does everything she’s supposed to do, but none of it matters. She still gets screwed, so this should come as no surprise. She shouldn’t have reacted the way she did, though. Jen certainly didn’t deserve it, but she got all of it from Alice.
“Fuck!” Alice screams into her phone, with every ounce of resentment for her own personal lot in life charged up behind it. She screams it out loud again before she throws her phone across the kitchen, right through the oven’s glass door. Alice looks at the chunks of shattered glass sprayed across the kitchen floor. She thinks of her tender sanity, and she knows that she has to find a way to get our of this house before she has a break down.
