I woke up the next morning with an extra spring in my step. I normally have this rule that before coffee nothing counts. If you stub your toe, burn your toast, have frizzled hair, none of it matters because you haven’t had your coffee so the day hasn’t really started. But that morning, I took everything into account. It didn’t matter if I stubbed my toe, or if my hair looked awful. The smile I had made up for any unfortunate occurrences. I was sitting in the living room, sipping on my freshly brewed coffee and looking out at the view. The sun was reflecting off of the Rocky Mountains and I knew it was going to be a good day.
“Who made coffee?” Kat interrupted my thoughts.
“I did.” I smiled proudly at Kat as she poured herself a cup.
“Should I trust it?” She stopped pouring and gave me a smirk.
I rolled my eyes at her and returned to the window to admire the view.
“What are you doing up so early on your day off anyway?” Kat joined me on the sofa. “Did you wet the bed or something?” She giggled.
I gave her a sarcastic laugh. “I just woke up really early and couldn’t fall back asleep.” I explained.
“You must have gone to bed early; you were sleeping when I got back from my walk to the store.” She pointed out.
“Yeah I know.” I thought for a moment. “It was the weirdest thing...” I continued “after my conversation with Phil I just fell asleep like a baby.”
“Wait a minute. Back up.” She stood up from the couch, a hand on her hip. I wanted to laugh – her face was serious, but she was wearing flannel pyjamas bottoms with rainbows on them and a pink t-shirt that read Smile if you’ve had it last night. I guessed that she was probably wondering who called whom and how we got to talking on the phone. “You totally broke the boycotting boys rule...which means I win!” She exclaimed.
I burst out laughing. “No I didn’t break the rule – I ...” I thought for a moment “I forfeited” I continued.
“Whatever.” She put her coffee down on the dark wood end table. “It’s completely irrelevant. The point is you talked to Phil, and you are smiling!” She clasped her hands together. “You talked to Phil!” She beamed and began excitedly dancing around chanting “Joyel talked to Phil, Joyel talked to Phil. And she’s happy and they are going to get married and make babies and I’m going to be an auntie!”
“What the bloody hell are you doing Kat Attack?” James was standing in the doorway with bed-head and his eyes half opened.
“Oh sorry Jimbo!” She had a smirk on her face and I couldn’t help but giggle. “Did I wake you?”
“Did you wake me?” He sneered. “Joyel talked to Phil, Joyel talked to Phil, marriage and babies, yay, yay, yay!” He mimicked Kat, dancing around in his boxers in the kitchen entrance. “No, no, you didn’t wake me at all.” He said sarcastically and turned to find Luke standing behind him with his arms crossed and a confused look on his face. Kat and I were laughing uncontrollably as James walked away and headed down the hallway to his bedroom.
“So Jojo talked to Phil ay?” Luke joined us in the living room.
“And she made coffee” Kat pointed out.
“Woah!” Luke exclaimed. “You’re on quite the roll” he looked over in my direction.
“So how did it happen?” Kat seemed eager.
“Well, I woke up, came into the kitchen, opened the cupboard, grabbed the coffee, put in a few spoonfuls, added the required amount of water and turned the machine on.” I explained. “And voilà coffee” I raised my cup and smiled.
“You know what I mean.” She rolled her eyes.
“I told her to do it.” Luke said proudly. Kat gave us both a perplexed look.
“It’s true.” I admitted.
“And was I right?” He smirked.
“Yes, you were” I smiled.
“Wait a minute, am I missing something here?” Kat asked looking for an explanation. “I leave for an hour and Luke gives relationship advice to you and you actually listen to him?”
“What can I say?” Luke threw his arms up. “I can be a pretty persuasive man.” He said pompously. “So what did he say?”
“Well...” I took in a deep breath and smiled as I began to tell both Luke and Kat about my conversation with Phil.
“Wow!” Kat smiled. “So are you going to go back?”
“I don’t know” I admitted.
“I reckon you should stay.” Luke said firmly.
“Or she should go” Kat replied to Luke.
“Nah, if she goes back right away she’s giving him the control. He’ll know that he can play her like a puppet.” Luke explains to Kat.
“Or it would be incredibly romantic. He could pick you up at the airport and hold up a sign that reads Girl of my dreams and you’ll know it’s you.” She beamed.
“Oh! I like that idea!” I said wanting to cry at the thought of how romantic it seemed. “It would be like a scene from a movie!” I pointed out.
“You two are ridiculous.” Luke shook his head in derision as he walked over to the kitchen.
“Even if I wanted to go home, I can’t afford the plane ticket.” I looked up at Kat who was standing in front of me.
“What about asking your mother to help you out?” Kat suggested. Oh god, I thought. My mother, my thoughts continued as I realized I hadn’t returned her call - yet again! She knew something was up. It was completely out of character for me to be acting this way and withholding information from her. Under normal circumstances, I am the daughter who calls her mother to share her stories of daily events that occurred, or even about her sex life. Even when I was younger, at the end of every school day I would sit in the kitchen as she cooked supper and I would tell her about the boys I thought were cute and the problems my friends had. If cell phones had existed back when I had my first kiss I probably would have called her immediately after to tell her. But for some reason, in the past few months I stopped sharing. Perhaps I knew that she would disapprove, or maybe I wanted to save her from feeling disappointed. I had been keeping so many secrets. I had been living a complete lie and if I were to call her and tell her all of this at once she would surely go into cardiac arrest. Just thinking of it, was giving me palpitations. Breathe Joyel, breathe. I instructed myself.
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s an option.” I managed.
“Can’t she just join you on your road trip, Kat?” Luke yelled over to us from the kitchen. “Aren’t you heading that way?”
“The van is full.” she yelled back.
“What is he talking about?” I looked to Kat for an explanation.
“Didn’t I tell you?” She gave me a confused look. “A bunch of us are going on a road trip, we hired a van and everything.” She paused before continuing. “I’m dreading going with the psycho who threw the fork at my head, but other than that it should be fun.”
“I had no idea.” I admitted.
“I’m sure I mentioned it. We planned it months ago – you know, before we knew she was psycho and stuff.” Kat laughed.
“So when do you leave?”
“May 7th.” She smiled.
“Wow, that’s soon.” I said realizing that it was already April 28th.
“Yeah, I’m real excited about it; I’ll be gone for a whole month.”
I was happy for Kat, but at the same time I felt sad that I would be left alone. The road trip sounded like so much fun and I was reminded of how I always wanted to have my very own road trip across the West Coast of the United States. A few years ago, I had even planned it all out with maps and an itinerary. I had purchased a few journals in order to document the road trip like in Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the road’, one of my all time favourites.
“I started working at the hotel in order to save up, and just completely forgot about it – until now!” I was explaining this story to Kat.
“It’s never too late.”
“I know!” I nodded. “I’m sure I will get around to it one day when I can afford it.” I smiled.
“Don’t you have a birthday coming up?” Kat smirked as if she had an idea. I nodded yes. “Why not ask your parents for a birthday present advance?”
“For what?”
“For the road trip, silly.”
“Road trip?” Luke was confused. “What happened to going home to be with Phil?”
“Oh, that’s true.” Kat realized. “You could use the money to go home.” She smiled.
“I’ll think about it.”
I walked into my bedroom and sat down on my bed. An hour ago, I was on a cloud and felt like nothing could bring me down, and now I felt more confused than ever. Instead of being on the cloud, I felt like it was hovering over me. Like the time when I was five and went to my Nan’s with my father. She had just made a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies and it was close to supper time. I asked my dad if I could have a few and he handed me three of them and said “don’t tell your mother.” I poured myself a big glass of milk while Nan handed me a few more cookies and winked at me. For a five year old, it was like being on a cloud. But when I got home, the cookie secret was hovering over me and I avoided my mother for days. I finally confessed everything and all she did was laugh. When I asked her why she wasn’t mad at me she said “because you told me the truth.”
There I was, fifteen years later, sitting on my bed feeling like I had just eaten a bunch of cookies behind my mother’s back and all I wanted to do was confess everything. I picked up the phone and dialled her number.
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