My shift ends at six, but I resist clocking out because the last ticket in the queue is a simple password reset and it would be pointless to leave it for Monday. Who am I kidding? I don’t want to stand up yet. The weighted heather gray blanket is snuggly across my shoulders, and the fire has burned down to where the logs hold true, but glow orange at the seams. The rain against the windows is almost hypnotic, and nothing in this room requires my attention.
It was mother’s house, but now I call this house my own. Seven hundred cozy square feet with two bedrooms, one of them still half gutted from the renovation she started the spring before she died. The new walk-in closet was the last thing finished. She used it for exactly one week before a happy hour driver ran a red light while she was in the crosswalk on Rylee Corner, and that was that. The closet is just a box of organizers and hangers, but sometimes I stand in there breathing the cedar just to feel close to her.
The laptop chimes. Ticket closed at six fourteen. I clock out. I shut the lid and allow my hands rest on top of it. The fire cradles me dozy as I watch the stray sparks scatter against the screen. I think I am in the mood for some chamomile tea, but there is no motivation to make the "long" trek to the kitchen.
Afterall, I call myself a professional homebody. It sounds more socially acceptable than agoraphobic, which sounds clinically needing some serious help. I have a routine that feeds my sanity. I work remotely for a start-up that builds scheduling software for dental practices, and I do it from this comfy couch with a blanket wrapped around me with a pair of fleece-lined slippers on my feet. I own fifty pairs of slippers with no end in sight. I own an ant hill of sleep clothes, which is the term I prefer to pajamas, because sleep clothes implies intention, a wardrobe choice or a lifestyle. My pillow collection numbers, well to be honest, I stopped counting when I realized I may be a hoarder too.
Outside, the rain picks up to monsoon mode. I can hear it on the roof, a sound I usually nap worthy, but tonight it makes the room feel miniature. The fire is losing its warmth. I should toss in another log, but don't feel the urge to move.
The knock comes at six thirty-two. I know the time because I look at my phone and think, no one knocks at six thirty-two on a Friday. No one knocks at all, really. Packages get launched on the porch step. Simon, the almost retired postal guy delivers the mail in the metal box by my door. My mother’s friends stopped coming by even to claim their casserole dishes they left after the wake, and I never had many of friends to call my own. To sum it up, I rarely open the door to anyone.
I remain a lazy potato. The knock comes again, more annoying this time.
“Sunny! I know you’re in there; your car is out here like always. Open up, it’s freezing and I already smell like a wet dog.”
Mitzy. I exhale and shove the blanket off. While still in contact with the couch, I reach to undo the deadbolt and pull open the door, leaning into the cold, misty air. Mitzy Loreno is shivering on my doorstep in a faux-fur coat and platform boots, holding a bottle of red wine by the neck like it is party time.
“Finally,” she says, and pushes past the couch into the living room before I can say hello. “It's a mess out there. Why do you have to live so far from us normal folk?”
“I don’t live far, I prefer it here, where I grew up. Good old boring Saw Mill, recliner town capital of the world."
She sets the wine on the coffee table and shrugs off her coat, and I see she’s wearing her famous sequined top underneath, which means she came straight from work or she’s going straight to a club after this. Her hair is long, sable and wavy. Her skin has that orange tone from the spray tanning booth she swears she’s quit using, and her eyelashes are so flirty long they cast shadows on her cheeks when she blinks. She has a new piercing in her left upper ear, a tiny barb wire hoop.
“Is that new?” I ask.
“Got it a month ago, but you’d know that if you ever got off your duff to visit me.” She drops onto the couch and pats the cushion beside her dampening the white slipcover. “I have news.”
She’s already pulled up a photo on her phone, and she shoves the screen toward me eyes before I’m ready for a face-to-face conversation. I haven't had one of those for a while.
“Look.”
I look. It’s a rooftop, lit with string lights and lined with glass railings. Beyond the railings the Atlanta skyline is blurred into a smear of gold and blue. There are tables covered with white linen and little candles in glass holders. In the corner of the shot, I can see a bar with a copper counter. It looks expensive. It looks like a place where people wear heels and eat some gourmet hors d'oeuvres from little silver plates lined with fancy lace doilies.
“That’s the Skyline Club,” Mitzy says. “It’s in Buckhead. Very upscale. Very rooftop. Very tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow night?”
“Ethan’s surprise party.” She says it casually like I should already know. “His brother, Daniel put the whole thing together. Rented the space, invited like forty people, don't worry I got you in.”
Ethan. The name lands softly. I haven’t seen Ethan in months. I haven’t seen him since before my mother died, before the house became mine, before I started measuring my life in slippers and sleep clothes with shifts that end at six but really end at six fourteen.
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“What do you mean you don’t think so? He’s single now. Did I tell you that? He and what’s-her-name with the bubble gum lips broke up.”
“You told me.”
“So, what’s the matter with you?”
I look at the photo again. The rooftop is giving me the feels. But I also feel the distance between my couch and that rooftop. A stretch of highway, exit ramps and streets in unfamiliar territory. Then, somewhere in the middle are other parts of Atlanta that real estate brokers call up-and-coming, but the locals know where drug dealers hustle like fast-food drive throughs and parks that smell like urine, from critters the city don't exterminate.
“I don’t like Atlanta,” I say. “And I don’t like surprise parties. And I don’t like driving at night in the rain.”
“They're not calling for rain tomorrow.”
“That’s not the point.”
Mitzy sighs, and it’s the sigh she always gives me, the one that means she’s trying to be patient, but her patience is wearing thinner than her eye liner. “Sunny. When’s the last time you went out? Like, actually out, not to the grocery store or the pharmacy?”
I don’t answer, because we both know the answer.
“This is Ethan,” she says, softer now. “Ethan, who you’ve had a thing for since college. Ethan, who is single, turning thirty and having a party on a rooftop in Buckhead. You’re not going to just sit here in your... what are those, fleece?”
She gestures at my slippers. They are fleece. They’re pale green with sherpa lining, and they’re my favorites.
“They keep my toes honest,” I say.
“Honestly, they’re a cry for help.” She reaches into her large plum leather bag, which looks like it could hostage a Yorkie, and pulls out something wrapped in tissue paper. “Which is why I bought you these.”
She hands me the cocooned gift. I unwrap it slowly, because I know what it is before I see it...slippers. Plush pink, with little chop sticks on the toes and a sole made of something durable enough to wear outside.
“They’re indoor-outdoor,” Mitzy says. “See? They’re transitional slippers.”
“Interesting.”
“Don't dilly-dally, try them on.”
I slide my feet out of the fleece and into the chopsticks. They’re soft and squishy yet have a reinforced sole. I suppose they fit like Cinderella's glass slippers. Mitzy knows my size because she’s been buying me slippers for years, ever since I told her I was building a collection and she decided it was her job to manage the inventory, well at least some of it.
“My feet approve." I pause. "No, seriously, I really like them.”
“They’re a bribe. You keep the slippers, you come to the party.”
I look at the funny chopsticks on my toes. I look at the fire, which is barely alive. I look at my laptop on the coffee table; at the rain on the windows; at Mitzy’s face, which is smokey eye shadow and dark mauve lined lips. She has a bit of an attitude when she knows what’s best for me.
“I’ll go,” I say. “But I’m driving myself.”
“What? Why? I’ll pick you up.”
“Because you’ll drink more than a camel and I don’t want to be stuck if I want to leave early.”
“You’re not going to want to leave early. It’s a party. It’s Ethan.”
“I may want to leave early. I’m not saying I will. I’m saying I want that option.”
Mitzy studies me with her freshly waxed brows, and I can see her deciding whether to argue. Then she shrugs, stands up and grabs her coat.
“Fine. Drive yourself. But you have to actually show up, okay? None of that last minute texting stuff saying you having a panic attack.”
“I don’t get panic attacks...well not for a while.”
“You know what I mean.” She leans down and kisses the top of my head. “I’ll text you the address. Seven o’clock. Wear something cute, not homely.”
And then she’s gone, so I lock up behind her. She left the red wine sealed on the coffee table. I glance at it assuming it's the food store wine, but I feel bad when I realize it's the good stuff, Caymus Cabernet Sauvignon, my favorite.
The house is quiet again. The fire has gone to ash and I'm looking at my phone. Mitzy has already sent the address. The Skyline Club, 3301 Lenox Parkway NE inside the Hyatt. I open the parking app to search for garages near the venue. The hotel parking seems overpriced, so I find one half a block away, and I book a space for tomorrow night. The confirmation arrives in my inbox, and I save the QR code to my wallet, and I set the phone down on the counter.
Ethan. Tall, brown hair, polite in a way that makes all grandmothers proud. He held a door for me once, at a restaurant in Decatur, and I thought about it for a week. He’s thirty now. He’s single. He’ll be on that rooftop tomorrow night, under the string lights, and I’ll walk in and he’ll see me and maybe we'll vibe. Or maybe we won’t. Either way, I’ll be there.
I haven’t been out in weeks. I haven’t been to Atlanta in longer than that. The thought of it makes my hands go still on the counter, makes me notice the way the rain has softened to a drizzle, makes me count the days since I last sat behind the wheel of my car and drove somewhere that wasn’t the pharmacy or the grocery store.
I pick up my phone again. The QR code glows on the screen, a little square of black and white that means I have a place to park, a spot reserved, a destination. I close the app, open my photos and scroll back to a picture I saved months ago, a candid shot Mitzy took at a barbecue. Ethan lost in the sunlight with a half rack of saucy ribs dangling from his mouth. I look at it for a long moment. Then I lock the phone and set it face down on the counter. What am I going to wear that is cute?