Love Out of Order (Indigo Love Spectrum)

DOWNHILL SLALOM

Wal-Mart on Saturdays. It is something I try to avoid at all costs, but sometimes it’s a necessary evil. I plotted
my way down the aisles, darting around the many obsta
cles in my white sneakers. I wanted to spend as little time
in that place as I possibly could. Plus, I was genuinely in
a hurry. Another good reason to avoid Wal-Mart on
Saturdays.

I was on a mission. Astoria Banks is not the kind of
person you keep waiting. Have you ever had a good
friend you really love, but who scares you sometimes?
Well, that’s how I feel about Astoria Banks. Her beauty,
lack of inhibition and ability to captivate even the people
who disliked her were imposing. I remember when she
first cut her hair short and texturized it. When I told her
I wished my head wasn’t so big so that I could do some
thing like that, she laughed at me and told me to do it if
I wanted to. Astoria wore her personality on the outside.
I was in awe of her.

Anyway, as I headed through the store in some sort of
impossible, frantic, downhill slalom, I was of course
derailed. I know, inevitable, right? “Excuse me,” I mut
tered to a woman blocking my path with her cart, chatting to her friend while her kids ran in circles around
them screaming. “Excuse me,” I said a little louder as I
looked for any hole through which I might be able to
maneuver my cart. “Excuse me.” That last one had a little
more force in it. I no longer cared about being rude.

Then, when I pushed past her, she had the nerve to
give me a dirty look.

“You should have moved out of my way one of the
first forty-five times I asked you to,” I muttered as I
charged down the aisle, racking my brain for the solution to my problem.

I never knew what to get Astoria. She was so picky.
Yet, she never wanted to tell anyone what she wanted.
Whenever I asked what she wanted as a gift, she would
ask me what the point was. She would say that if she told
me what to get, she might as well buy the thing herself.

“Crap,” I muttered, pulling my ringing cellphone out
of my purse. I had forgotten that I was supposed to meet
Suse at her house before going to the restaurant until the
moment I saw her number displayed on my caller ID. I
put the phone to my ear. “Hey.”

“Denise, where are you? It’s five. You said you’d be
here by four-thirty,” Suse said with a sigh. Suse was big
into punctuality. Me, not so much.

“Wal-Mart. I kind of forgot all about Astoria’s
present,” I said, grabbing a packet of stationery from a
shelf and wincing at how lame a gift that would probably
be. I had never even seen Astoria use stationery. Maybe
because she didn’t have any to use? Nah. Probably not.

“Denise! Where has your mind been lately?” Suse
asked. I could almost see her small nose scrunched the way it always was when she was frustrated.

I got to know Suse through trial team try-outs during
my first year. Suse is from a small town in southwest
Virginia, and it shows from her accent to her mannerisms to
her strange obsession with four-wheelers. She has quite a
range of interests, though. She and my friend Melissa are in
the same sorority. She is petite, has short, blonde hair, brown
eyes and a pudgy face with a pug-like nose.

“Uhm. Lot going on. Interviews. Journal. Trial team.
And on and on and it never ends,” I said as I grabbed a
gift set containing scented body gels and lotions. That
and stationery? Was that good enough? Eh, it would have
to be. Plus, Astoria knew how horrible I was at giving
gifts. She should have stopped trusting me to surprise her
by now. So it really was her fault.

“Okay, well, are you still coming over here first?”

“Sure thing. I’m headed to the checkout line now.
Which means I should be out of here by sometime
tomorrow.”

“Good. Try to get here soon. We need time to decorate before Astoria gets there.”

“Yep,” I answered before flipping my phone shut and
stuffing it back into my laptop bag. I had come to the store straight from the library and hadn’t had time to switch to my normal purse.

I looked up with a glimmer of hope as the number for
one of the express check out lines lit up—number three.
I gripped the handle on my shopping cart, focused on the
e
nd goal. The illuminated number three. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a middle-aged couple and a
mother and her two bad kids headed toward number
three, attempting to steal my glory. I couldn’t let that
happen. Victory had to be mine. These glory stealers
clearly did not know Astoria Banks.

I charged forward, slipping past both sets of startled
shoppers. I mumbled an apology when the woman of the
middle-aged couple gave me a look of consternation and her hand fluttered to her heart. I skidded to a halt before
the cashier. Her dark brown eyes grew wide in her burnt
almond face, but she didn’t say anything. She just started
ringing up my items. I was actually out of breath.
Luckily, I was too frazzled to be embarrassed.

Finally, I walked out of Wal-Mart, relieved and victo
rious with my crappy present for my best friend swinging at my side in a white plastic bag. I shielded my eyes from the late afternoon sun’s rays and looked around the gen
eral vicinity of the rows of cars where mine should be.

Spotting it, I walked over to my car. My whip. My
ride. My . . . well, at least it had four wheels and a motor.
Yeah, with a rusted-out tail pipe, a busted rear door, paint
missing in large patches over the trunk, the roof more
rust than paint, half a faded Dartmouth sticker left over
from a previous owner, and of course my college and law
school stickers, my Sentra that had been gray at some
point in its life wasn’t going to win any prizes at the car
show. But it got me where I needed to go—most of the
time. And the rest of the time, well, the auto club needed
someone to keep them in business, right?

U
nfortunately, that evening was not to be one of the
times my car wanted to get me where I wanted to go. The
traitor left me there in the Wal-Mart parking lot alter
nating between heated threats and cajoling murmurs in
an attempt to get my engine to turn over. Stupid Dad
just had to be right about replacing the battery. Well, I
just hadn’t had time. But sitting in that parking lot, I was
wasting plenty of time trying fruitlessly to get the car to
do something I knew it wasn’t going to do.

Just as I was about to scream, I heard a voice that
made me freeze in mid-curse. “Denise?”

I didn’t want to look up because I knew I would see
John Archer’s face. Sitting there in my stupid jalopy, I
would see John Archer standing by the driver’s side door.

“Denise, are you okay?”

Okay, maybe more embarrassing not to look up. I slowly turned my head and looked up at John Archer.
John, make my palms sweat, make me smile like a
moron, make me have a crush for the first time since high
school Archer. He stood there in a black T-shirt and
khaki shorts, his hands in his pockets.

Somehow, I managed to find part of my voice. “Hi.” “Car trouble?”

“I think it’s the battery.”

“I have jumper cables,” he said, jerking his head in
the direction of his black Mercedes Kompressor. “I could
give you a jump.”

Damn. Why, why, why did it have to be him? “Sure. That would be great. I’d really appreciate it,” I blubbered.

“
No problem,” he said, already walking back in the
direction of his car.