Jumping Ship

Title: Jumping Ship

Genre: Chick-Lit

Rating: PG

Thoughts: This came about pondering the situation Christie finds herself in.  I’m not really loving the way this wound up because I think I wrote everything I had yesterday.  I might revisit this, but I’m not sure how much it interests me.

——-

“I haven’t heard from her in weeks!”  Natalie snatched her keys and purse from a table by the door.

“I know!  I got a call from her parents,” Sarah still hadn’t moved from the couch and looked from Natalie to Amy who stood in the middle of the ring of furniture.

Amy was texting with her right hand and thumbing the sparkling wedding set on her left.

“Amy.”  Natalie jingled her keys.

“Right, right.”

“You know,” Sarah rubbed her chin thoughtfully and looked at Amy, “the last time I saw her, was at your wedding.”

Amy sighed and flipped her hair over her shoulder.  “Everything’s been such a blur since the wedding.”

Natalie and Sarah both rolled their eyes and gave each other a long suffering look.

“You know,” Amy brightened and looked at the other two, “I should be getting the pictures back soon!  Christie will want to see those, right?”

“Amy,” Sarah fixed her eyes on the woman who had been the focus and pain of all their lives for the last year.  “Did you ever stop to think that Christie, who struggled to fit into the dress you picked out for her, who agonized over being too tall and not perfect enough, was pushed over the edge by your wedding production?”

Amy clenched her fists, getting defensive.  “The wedding was beautiful!  Everyone had a great time.”

Sarah shook her head.  “Christie cried in the bathroom because Charlie, the groomsman you put her with, said she was fat.”

Natalie stood by the door, her eyes wide.

“Charlie was an ass.”  Amy flipped her hair and clenched her phone in her fist.  “Christie can do better.”

“Amy, in case you haven’t noticed, Christie doesn’t think so.”  Sarah put her purse in her lap and leveled with their blissful friend.  “If it’s taken you this long to see that Christie has always been shy and self-conscious, you’ve had your head farther up your ass than I thought.  The only reason she’s ever even had a boyfriend was because we set her up with people.  This thing with your wedding, she was overwhelmed.  We all were. Five hundred people!  Amy – do you even know that many people?”

“Family and friends!  And then some co-workers.”

Amy and Sarah stared at each other for a moment.  Sarah was blunt and honest, but the kind of friend who never let go.  Amy had lovingly dubbed her “The Pit-bull” in college.  Amy, for all that the wedding sent every other thought and consideration out of her head was the life of their group.

“Hey guys, um, so her flight is coming in soon.”  Natalie thumbed at the door.  “So are we going to go?”

Christie twisted the seashell necklace around her finger and buckled her seatbelt for the descent.  Her extended weekend getaway to distress had turned into a week, and then three weeks.  She was fairly certain she was getting fired, but she didn’t care.  It wasn’t like her data entry job was going anywhere.  Her supervisor didn’t promote girls that didn’t screw him or get him jelly donuts, and Christie’s diet strictly outlawed donuts, and her supervisor was a disgusting piece of work.

Three glorious weeks spent in Florida.  She’d gone to escape the depressingly perfect wedding and her own glorious inadequacies.  She hadn’t expected to find the solution to all her problems.

The minutes spent before the plane landed stretched on for eternity.  As soon as the wheels touched down, Christie and every other technology crazed person on the plane powered on their phones, filling the cabin with dings and chimes.  For the last week and a half her phone had experienced a serious backlog of calls, messages and text messages.  She’d dutifully ignored them all, except for one.

Christie giggled; twenty-seven and giggling, this was a new stage indeed.  She opened the message.

From: JD

Let me know when you land. Miss you already.

She hugged the phone to her chest and looked up at the buckle-up light, a broad grin on her face.  Biting her lip she sent a text back and scrolled through the rest.

After Amy’s wedding she’d gone off her own deep end.  She couldn’t booze it up, too many carbs and would completely cancel out the starvation diet she worked so hard to maintain.  Ice cream and sappy movies would only make her feel more hopeless.  Instead, she did something she didn’t even expect; she took a vacation.  The first day and a half was miserable; she wasn’t ready for a bathing suit, she was alone, and everyone else was having a wonderful time on the sands at South Beach.

But all that changed because she decided to take the bus.

Choosing to cover all her bases, Christie penned a quick message.

To: Mom, Amy, Natalie, Sarah

Hey! Just landed. Call later!

She got a reply almost immediately.

From: Sarah

Here to pick you up!

That wasn’t what Christie had planned on.  She chewed her lip and texted JD again.  He was at work so he couldn’t reply immediately but he said he liked looking at his phone and having multiple text messages from a girl.  She thumbed through the ones from him and wiggled her newly painted toes.

It was agonizing how long it took to unload the plane and she could only drag her feet so much before turning up at the baggage claim.  Natalie, Sarah and Amy were waiting in a cluster.  She saw them before they saw her; of course they didn’t recognize her.  They were looking for a girl probably in sweatpants and flip-flops, her hair up in a ponytail and white as a ghost, her weight hidden by a bulky sweatshirt.  That was what they expected from her.

Christie checked her reflection in the tinted windows.  She’d splurged on highlights so her hair looked almost caramel, with bits of blonde.  Three weeks spent working on her tan and her skin had a sun kissed look she’d never thought was possible on her.  She still wore flip-flops but she’d exchanged sweatpants and a sweatshirt for a sundress and oversized sunglasses.

“Here goes,” Christie muttered and hoisted the imitation designer purse on her shoulder and put on a nervous smile.

“Oh my gosh,” Natalie saw her first.  “Christie?”  She shrieked and dive-hugged her.

Christie grinned and hugged her back.  Amy and Sarah closed in on either side, creating a massive group hug.  There were immediate demands for where she had been, what she had been doing, why she hadn’t told anyone anything – and Christie didn’t say a word.  She was a deer caught in the headlights; too many questions and none of it she’d even once considered how to answer.

“Are you even listening to us?”  Amy tossed her hands up in the air, laughing though it was obvious she was frustrated with Christie’s silence.

“Yes,” she said at last, sheepishly.  “I just – it’s a little overwhelming right now.”

“Of course it is! We’re all yelling at you and none of us has even mentioned how amazing you look.”  Sarah took a step back and eyed Christie’s transformation.  She was still heavier than the other three, but there was something different about how she carried herself.

“Thanks.”  Christie blushed.

“Okay, so let’s get your bags and we can grab some food and then you, young lady, are going to tell us everything.”  Leave it to Sarah to take charge.

Half an hour later, seated around a table at Joes Crab Shack where Christie’s tropical dress fit in perfectly.  They all sipped appropriate looking fruity beverages, making small talk.

“So, seriously cupcake,” Sarah put her drink down with a heavy clink, “what’s the deal?  Where have you been?”

Christie’s phone lit up, her hand diving for it.  For a moment she shut out whatever the other three were saying and focused on the text.

From: JD

Glad u made it home ok. Friends already nabbed u? Everything ok?

To: JD

Yeah.  We’re at Joe’s now.  It’s just weird. I didn’t really think about having to tell every1. Things u don’t think about in the act.

She looked up at three anxious faces.  “Okay, so I decided to go to Florida for an extended weekend and it turned into three weeks.”  Christie shrugged and clamped her straw between her lips.

“And what?”  Amy leaned forward; she smelled a rat and Christie was a terrible liar.

Fidgeting with whatever was nearest her fingers, Christie looked guilty.

“You go away for a three day weekend and stay three weeks?”  Sarah rolled her eyes.  “Doing what?”

Amy winked, “Or who?”

Christie went three shades of red and looked down at her hands.

Three very wide sets of eyes and three very shocked faces sat in stunned silence.

“Christie,” Natalie hissed, “what happened?”

“You’d better start talking before we fill in the blanks for you,” Amy advised.

“Well…”

She’d been sitting on the bench, waiting for the bus.  She was just going to go back to her hotel and get some ice cream at a gas station and hole up until it was time to leave.  Someone sat down at the end of the bench.  Unlike everyone else, he wore cargo pants and a tshirt, listening to an iPod, and wore rather drab colors.  She didn’t even remember what she’d said; something snarky about two people who walked by.  He’d looked at her with vacant, lost eyes that wondered more why she was talking to him than what she’d said.

“Sorry,” she’d mumbled, and went back to fiddling with her bag.

“Yeah, tourists this time of year.”  He shrugged and smiled at her, sort of shy.

“Gee thanks.  Should I pack up my bags and go home?”  Under normal circumstances Christie wouldn’t have said anything to him, but she was in Florida for the direct reason of doing something abnormal, except she had failed.

“Sorry, you don’t really look like a tourist.”

“Is that a good thing?”  She squinted into the near setting sun.

He shrugged and fiddled with his iPod.

“This is going to sound weird,” Christie blurted out, “but do you want to get some food?  I’m down here by myself and eating alone sort of sucks.”

He looked at her like she was from Venus and had antennae coming out of her head.

“It’s stupid. Ignore me.”

“No, that sounds good.  Just not every day you sit down for the bus and someone asks you out to dinner.”

“So to recap,” Natalie said, “his name’s JD.  He works IT in Miami and owns a condo.”

Christie was picking her napkin into little tiny bits.

“And you spent three weeks in his condo?”  Sara was halfway through her food, which was better than everyone else.  They’d spent most of the meal with jaws dropped.

“It wasn’t three weeks.”  She looked like she was sunburnt, all the giddiness from earlier sucked completely dry.  Retelling the last three weeks made it all seem crazy.

“Wow, Christie, you’re the last person I thought who would jump off the deep end like this.”  Amy picked at her food and fiddled with her phone.

“So how’d it all end?”  Natalie bit a fry in half.  “I mean, what do you say to a guy you spent three weeks with and then just up and leave?”

“Um.”  Christie looked at the blinking face of her own phone.  Another message from JD.  “He’s sort of coming up here next weekend.”

Three shocked faces gaped back at her.

“What?”  Amy set her phone down hard.

“He’s coming here?”  Natalie repeated the words like she was just learning English.

Sarah pursed her lips and swirled her drink.  “What’s your mom going to say?”

“He’s coming.”  Christie shrugged her shoulders and sat back in her chair.

“Wait.  Let’s go over this,” Amy leaned forward, “You meet some strange geeky computer guy in Florida, shack up with him for three weeks, everyone you know is shut out, and then make a big decision like bringing the stranger up to meet everyone else?”

Christie’s eyes flashed and she glared at Amy.  “You know, if he was one of the ass holes you set me up with, you’d be buying me lingerie if he lasted three weeks.  You’re just upset because I found a guy, on my own.”

Natalie looked shocked and reached out to put a hand on her friend’s shoulder.  “Christie, that’s not true.”

“We’re just worried about you.  What if he’s some skeezy.  We’re just looking out for you.”  Sarah shook out her hair and looked matter of factly at Christie.

“You’re just mad because I did something for myself, without asking you.”  Christie dug in her purse and slapped down money.  “Is it too much to ask to just be happy for me?”  Standing up, Christie walked out of the restaurant and jumped in the next cab, abandoning friends and her things at Joes Crab Shack and called the one person who might not understand her, but at least supported her being happy.