Page 15 of Best I Never Had

I chortle, rolling my eyes as I turn to walk in the opposite direction. “Yeah,” I say sarcastically. “So lucky.”

Lucy nods a lazy goodbye as we separate, her walking into her English class and me right into bio where I’ll have to sit next to Hayden for an hour and wonder what it is about him that Lucy has deemed Jenny such a “lucky girl.”

I’m already reaching into my binder for our homework assignment when Hayden finally saunters in with a lazy smile plastered on his face.

“Hey, Marquez,” he says with a relaxed edge to his voice as he slides into his seat.

“Marquez?”I question. “I didn’t know we were on a last name basis.”

“Are you kidding?” he responds, the disbelief creasing his brow and deepening the curve in the corner of his mouth. “You’re the only one that knows how dirty the inside of my mouth is.”

I cringe, mentally recalling a recent assignment when we had to swab our own soggy saliva onto agar plates for bacterial and fungal growth. “Don’t remind me.”

He chuckles, nudging my shoulder with a fist as Mr. Khan powers up the projector, calling our attention to the front of the class.

present

By Monday morning, my hangover still hasn’t abated. The multiple tequila shots Lucy forced down my throat, ones that Hayden couldn’t intercept, with my sister’s hip attached to my side as she grew drunker and clingier, have a lot to do with it. The lingering nausea, along with a dull headache, remind me that I’m no longer in my early twenties when I can bounce back after a night of binge drinking as quickly as it takes me to pop two Advil. Still, as I watch Lucy shove her belongings into her matching lavender-colored suitcases, I can’t regret the weekend that we had.

“Text me when you land,” I instruct. “I’ll be at work, but call my office if you need anything in the meantime.”

She heaves her suitcase, the smaller of the two, and hoists it into the trunk of the yellow cab with ease. “I will.”

She looks significantly peppier and brighter than I do. The day before, while Carmen and I stayed in bed well into the late morning, Lucy was already up, exploring the city and bringing us a tray of coffee and turkey BLTs by lunchtime.

We embrace in a tight hug. My arms cling to her as I say goodbye, knowing that the following months we’re going to spend apart will only remind me that my baby sister is an independent adult before we unwillingly separate.

“Bye, baby girl,” I tease, bracing my hand against the open car door.

She rolls her eyes and slides into the back seat as I close the door behind her. “Bye, Natty,” she calls from the open window.

I watch as the cab drives off, and she pokes her head out the window to wave back at me. The cab disappears into the sea of traffic and busy New Yorkers on their daily commute.

After my own twenty-minute pedestrian commute, I walk into the building that houses my office, riding the elevator as it climbs up the high rise to the thirty-sixth floor. Dern Tech Solutions has been in the business of software design and computer hardware manufacturing for eight years. I came on board as a product manager with nothing more than a communications degree, learning the field of tech as I worked closely with our marketing department. I’ve grown comfortable in the field, learning to keep up with the fast-paced digital age that consists of tablets and computer apps. It’s a job that’s kept me busy when my life revolved around building a life together with Matteo. One that I had no idea would crumble so quickly when I broached the subject of a future.

“Good morning,mi amor!” a cheerful voice calls as I place my laptop bag on my desk chair.

I turn to see José, a member of our marketing department who has literally become my work husband, standing too energetically for a Monday morning at the doorway to my office.

“Good morning,” I say quietly, the nausea resurfacing as the scent of José’s onion bagel permeates through the wax packaging in his hand.

“Uh-oh,” he says, noticing the greenish-gray undertone of my complexion. “Fun weekend?”

“It was fun until Saturday morning and I remembered that I’m not twenty-two anymore.”

He laughs, oblivious to my aversion to his breakfast and peeling back the crunchy sounding wrapping in front of me. “How about we go out for lunch today? My treat.”

“Sure.” I settle behind my desk and hear my Slack message ding on my desktop as soon as I power it on. I roll my eyes and look at José. “Mark is already messaging me, and it isn’t even nine a.m.”

He shakes his head. “Which means I probably have a message waiting for me too.”

José’s wide mouth clamps onto his bagel, and he inhales almost half of it as he turns to walk away. I type a response to Mark’s message asking me if I’ll be attending this afternoon’s meeting with the marketing department, José’s department. I smirk as I see José’s name pop up in the group chat window.

Before I know it, I’m elbow deep into our meeting’s agenda and responding to three days’ worth of emails from Mark. A heavy pile built up in my inbox, as I took the day off on Friday for Lucy’s arrival. Mark working through most weekends, this past weekend obviously not the exception, doesn’t help either.

I’m responding to an email from one of our software engineers about a new iOS program and the compatibility for our users when José knocks on my glass door.

“You ready?”

---