Julia London: The Bridesmaid

Lord. Kate was not alarmed; she was annoyed. Lisa had always been like this, always creating drama, always second-guessing everything about her life. Kate’s aunt—Lisa’s mom—said she was a dreamer. Kate’s mom said Lisa was a little wishy-washy. Kate thought Lisa was just straight-up nuts most of the time, with a little deranged thrown in to make things interesting. “Are you kidding, Lisa? Your wedding is in two days. Two days!”

“I know, I know,” Lisa moaned. “But we had this discussion last night—well, more of a fight, really. Anyway, he said there were certain things I ought to understand by now, and I said, sometimes I think I understand too much, and he said, what’s that supposed to mean—”

The baggage carousel suddenly cranked to life, drowning out Lisa’s recounting of the fight.

“Okay, listen,” Kate said. “You have to take a breath. I’ll be there soon, okay? You’re just having bridal jitters, that’s all. Everyone gets them. But Lisa, do not flip out. Do you understand? Don’t flip out! Don’t do anything stupid until I get there.”

“Okay,” Lisa said, but she didn’t sound particularly on board with that plan.

“Is that a promise?”

“Sort of.”

“Okay, well look, I’ll call you in a few hours. Right now, I have to go. I have to… change planes,” Kate said quickly.

“Call me as soon as you can,” Lisa demanded.

She would call her all right, Kate thought. If she lugged this damn Scarlett O’Hara dress across a freak snowstorm and an air traffic controller strike for nothing, she could not be held responsible for what she would do to her most beloved cousin and best friend.

She spotted her suitcase coming around. Naturally, it was on top of other bags. She pushed her way into the rail, then muscled her heavy bag off the merry-go-round. She knew she shouldn’t have brought so many shoes.

With her belongings all around her now, and the dress propped up beside her, Kate pondered what she should do next.

“What is that, anyway, your own personal flotation device?” a male voice asked.

Kate had to lean forward and around her garment bag to see her ex-seatmate. Joe looked completely unruffled by all the airport drama. At his foot was a gray suitcase, only half the size of hers. “One can never be too prepared, I always say,” Kate said. “Where’s yours?”

He actually smiled at that. “If I am going to be some place that requires a personal flotation device, I don’t think my flotation device is going to make much of a difference.”

Kate smiled. “You make a good argument. So did you hear? Air traffic controller strike is coming.”

“I heard,” he said. “So maybe you do have the right idea,” he said, looking at her garment bag. “Because if that happens, the only way out of Dallas might be via raft.”

“Hey!” a woman said behind her.

Kate turned around to see Blondie standing next to her, still furiously typing away on her phone, two bags stacked neatly beside her. “So some people are trying to get to Austin or Houston from here to see if they can get out. They’re further south and can route around the storm through Phoenix or someplace like that.”

“Oh,” Kate said. She was aware that Joe had suddenly moved closer, was standing at her back, listening. “How are they getting there?”

“Rental cars,” Blondie said, and looked up. “Just down that hall.”

“Thank you,” Kate said. “Did you get one?”

“Not me. I am checking into the Gaylord and getting a massage. You should really do the same.”

“I’ll think about it,” Kate said. She did not relish the thought of driving to Austin or Houston, not without at least seeing what the airline came up with. But neither did she like the idea of leaving the airport to check into a hotel. She turned around to speak to Joe, but he was gone—she spotted him striding in the direction of the rental car agencies. Apparently he thought that was the only way out of here, and the fact that he did made an impression on Kate. Maybe he knew something she didn’t know.

She gathered up her mélange of luggage and hurried after him.

Joe was in the Dollar Rent A Car line, so Kate went to the Budget line, determined to get a car before he did. But as she waited, she noticed that voices were getting louder and louder at her counter. People in front of her were sighing loudly and with frustration, muttering under their breath.

She checked Joe’s position at Dollar and was startled to see him looking at her. She quickly looked away. The couple in front of her suddenly whirled about with stormy expressions. “Is something wrong?” Kate asked.

“They don’t have any cars!” the woman said angrily. “I can not believe they don’t have any cars! They are a car rental company ,” she said emphatically.

“No one has any cars,” said a man behind Kate. “They’ve all been grabbed.”

“Then why don’t they bring them from other places?” the woman demanded, as if it were perfectly reasonable to expect that the car rental agency could have anticipated this disaster.

Kate began to gather her things. It was back to the airline, she guessed. “I heard that Hertz had a few cars,” the man behind her said.

That brought Kate’s head up. She whipped around to look at the Hertz counter, and when she did, she noticed Joe was looking at her again. His gaze followed hers to the Hertz counter. And then he looked at her again.

Kate suddenly lurched in the direction of Hertz, dragging her garment bag and kicking her tote bag in front of her until she could dip down and pick it up as she sprinted across the tile floor. By the time she had picked it up, however, Joe had made an acrobatic leap over the blue rope of Dollar Rent A Car and was sprinting ahead of her in the direction of Hertz.

Kate angrily used her garment bag as a blocker and actually rushed through a couple deep in conversation to shorten the distance she had to cover to beat Joe. But she was weighed down with her things, and he obviously possessed some freakish natural athletic talent, because he didn’t even look winded as he sailed to a spot in line in front of her. He turned around and smiled at her. “Sorry, but I have to get to Seattle.”

“So do I!” she said sternly. “I have to get to a wedding!”

“And I have to get to the opportunity of a lifetime. It’s every man for himself.”

“That is not fair!” Kate cried.

“Who said natural disasters were fair?” He smiled at her.

“Do not smile at me,” she said angrily. “Do. Not. Smile .”

But he did smile. He smiled with twinkly blue eyes as if she amused him, as if they were standing at some bar in the middle of happy hour instead of a crowded airport in the middle of a natural disaster.

And then the Armrest Hog got the last rental car at DFW.

The car Joe got was roughly the size of a pickle jar. He couldn’t make the driver’s seat go back far enough to accommodate his legs and cursed the idiot who had designed such a stupidly small vehicle.

The guy at the counter had told him Austin had one airport, but Houston had two. Joe had instantly concluded that his odds of getting a flight out had to double with two airports. “How long will it take me to get to Houston?” he asked.

“Three and a half hours on a good day,” the man had said.

“Okay. How long on a stupendously bad day?”

The man had laughed. “Have a good trip, sir!” he’d said cheerfully as he handed Joe the keys.

“Too late for that,” Joe had muttered, and had stomped out of the office with the keys in hand.

After he’d wedged himself in the car and started driving—directly into the sun, that was—he was reminded that he had a splitting headache, and after a day of trying to sober up, he was ravenously hungry. In fact, he was surfing his phone for any nearby McDonald’s as traffic crawled along, which resulted in him taking a wrong turn.