What followed was a series of aggressive emails, threats to be sued for “damages,” lies about a sick sister from Italy, and less than 60 days to move out and find a new place in a city with a 1 % vacancy rate where I have a better chance of finding Tupac Shakur than an affordable home.
“Ladies and gentlemen, there is no more alcohol,” the flight attendant announced. We were only half way to Sin City, but full of booze and tiny pretzels. It had been a long, cold winter-spring-winter, and as the plane touched down I could literally hear a teary eyed Kelly Clarkson sing, “some people wait a lifetime for a moment like thissss.” When my best friend suggested Vegas for her bachelorette, there were no questions – other than, “how can I afford this?” – and I promptly emailed my credit card and passport number to a lady from Flight Centre Bowmanville. The bride-to-be did all the planning, I just sat there refreshing my credit card statement, justifying every expense leading up to the trip with a healthy I-worked-two-Saturdays-in-a-row-therefore-I-deserve-this mentality. I don’t deserve anything. What I needed was a break and two miniature bottles of prosecco, thank you. By the time we checked into our hotel, I was both drunk and hungover from the sheer enormity that is the Las Vegas strip. Everything in Vegas is big. The casinos, …
The three of us are a team. We stick together through the puke and the pain and the mess of it all. But tonight the team is broken and I’m afraid it’s my fault.
When I moved to the city last year, I realized two very important things: people do cocaine, no one rollerblades. I am a member of the latter category. They call me Blade Girl – nobody calls me that. On the first of April, my mom and I packed two cars full of giant Rubbermaid containers and made our way to my new home; although, it wasn’t entirely new. I had been devising a plan to get back to Toronto ever since my parents pried my tiny-baby hands from the front steps of 79 Farnham Avenue twenty years ago. I’m not bitter, I just never forgave them for taking me away from my first love to a semi-detached in suburbia. Okay, fine, the burbs were actually a great place to grow up. It’s where I met my best friends, sort of lost my virginity, and peed myself while crying on the stairs because I couldn’t find the bathroom in this strange new place where all the houses looked the same – I was five. My parents …
It’s two in the morning and my Dad and I are screaming at each other in the light of the bathroom. The other end of the hallway is dark and quiet, but on our side we declared war. My Mom, tired of listening to us, has gone to sleep in the basement – a house divided. We never fight, but judging by the way we are now, you would think we’re professionals. A flood of mascara dyed tears run down my face and sting my eyes. The tears make it hard to see him, but his words make it impossible. This isn’t him. This isn’t the man who ran behind my little two-wheel bike, the only one I trusted to pull out my loose teeth, the hero who caught my puke in his bare hands when I was sick in a fancy hotel room. Ahh, the joys of parenthood. Imagine loving someone so much you would catch their puke in your bare hands? “You would do the same for your kid,” they always tell me. I gag at the thought …
Here lies Meredith, she was delusional, yet grossly self aware, cause of death: waiting for a text.
My warm face pressed into the backseat window, it was the only thing that made my mind, spinning with thoughts and several Moscow Mules, go still. I looked at him sitting in the passenger seat where he scrolled through his phone to find my favourite country song. He turned around to look at me and smiled. I smiled back, then turned away, my breath fogging up the cold glass as I sang along. He asked me to be his girlfriend earlier that night and we lived happily ever after. Jks, we broke up six days later. “I don’t want you to hold me back,” I told him, after my friends left and the house was quiet. “I don’t want you to hold me back,” he replied, his blue eyes meeting mine. I didn’t turn away this time, I was getting better at the whole eye contact thing. He explained that relationships aren’t about holding each other back and, although my cognitive skills were impaired, I understood. “We have to tell each other everything and always be honest,” he insisted, …
