Page 8 of Sounds Like Love
Whatever dread had clung to my heart evaporated. A laugh bubbled out of my mouth. I abandoned my suitcase and rushed toward her. She threw out her arms, poster flying away like a Frisbee,and I threw out mine, and we grabbed on to each other so tightly, I thought our spines would crack.
We almost toppled each other over, giggling. Gigi always hugged like it’d be the last time we ever would. It was one of her mindfulness exercises in college, and it stuck. The costume smelled like chili cheese dogs and beer and beachy surf, and it scratched at my face angrily, and people were looking at us weirdos making a scene, and I didn’t care.
I washome.
Finally, she let go and looked me up and down with a critical squint. “Damn, are you sure you didn’t also have to check those bags under your eyes?”
I felt the grime of LA shuck off like an old skin. Lighter. And I couldn’t stop smiling. “Carry-on only. Could youimagineif I had to check these suckers?”
“They’d be over the weight limit,” she agreed, grabbing the handle of my suitcase, and walked me back to her car, illegally parked in the arrivals drop-off. She drove a beat-up yellow VW Bug that could barely fit my suitcase, never mind the plethora of costumes she had crammed in there for her job.
“I feel like a five-hour delay is a new record—how many of those were on the tarmac?” she asked.
“All five,” I moaned. “And I had the middle seat.”
She pushed my suitcase into her trunk beside a shrimp costume and one that looked like an anatomically correct heart. “That sounds like quite the pickle.” Then she finger-gunned me.
I gave her a deadpan look. My dark hair was pulled back into a sloppy braid, and I was sure I hadn’t gotten all the Cheetos out of it from sitting between two food-fighting siblings, and while I’d thought to put mascara on in the morning, if it was still there, it’d clung on by mistake.I felt oily, and I smelled like an airplane, and my legs hurt from sitting that long.
“Itwasa big dill, yes,” I commented flatly.
She laughed and unzipped herself out of her costume. Right there at the curb. Then again, Gigi was so used to quick changes in odd places that she didn’t even give it a second thought. Unlike the traffic guard coming to tell us we had to move. Under her costume, she had on her street clothes, a T-shirt that readrevel at the revelry, high-waist denim shorts showing off her black floral tattoo accented against the warm brown skin of her thigh, and high-top Converses. Her box braids were swirled up into a bun, and her chunky glasses matched the teal beads at the end of them. We piled into the front seats and snapped on our seat belts.
“You ready?” she asked, and I hesitated for a moment.
We could buy a ticket to Spain, I wanted to suggest.Maybe Norway? Take a vacation—ignore this summer. Ignore everything that’s coming.
But there were some things I couldn’t run from even if I tried. That awful, curling dread returned to my stomach. “I’m glad to be home,” I replied, the lie tasting sour in my mouth.
She reached over and squeezed my hand tightly. She knew the truth. “We’ll get through it.”
Georgia was my oldest friend in the world. She knew me—the real me—on a level that no one else did.
A driver blared their horn behind us, wanting our spot in the airport pickup lane. Gigi threw them the bird out her open window, took her time putting her VW Bug into gear, and crept out of the parking spot.
“You’d think you’d be flying first class by now with all those royalties rolling in,” she commented,pulling out onto the highway for the long three-hour drive back home.
I scoffed. “Ha.”
She shrugged. “I hear your song all the time! The Margelovesblasting the trap remix. It’s annoying, but also kinda cool, too.”
I shifted uncomfortably. “I haven’t heard it.”
She grabbed her phone on the console. “I think I have it on a playlist—”
“No!”
She glanced over at me with a frown. “Everything all right?”
I fiddled with my seat belt. “Oh, sure—I’m fine. I just don’t want to hear it right now, you know?”
“You’re probably sick of listening to it.”
“Yeah.” Something like that. “But you know what Idowant? Do you got the goods?”
She scoffed. “As if you even have to ask.” She reached into the back seat and grabbed a greasy bag from Cook Out. “You know I always deliver.”
I dug into it. “Bless you.”
