Chapter 2

My Forever Man 2

Birthday Dinner Celebration!

                So, my two friends Becca and Maria are taking me to dinner and a bar tonight. As much as I wanted to just stay home and cuddle under my down comforter drinking coffee and reading my new book, they were literally going to drag me out of my house tonight. I slept most of the day as I got off my shift at seven am. So, I will be wide awake tonight and we can stay out until they shut the bars down and knowing Maria, she will just move the party to my house afterwards.

                I do the necessary primping for the night shower, curling my brown hair, and just a tad bit of makeup. I hate using makeup, Becca says I need to use it to hook a man, to make myself look as good as I can. But seriously if I want a forever man they will have to accept and love me as myself not one caked in makeup. So, I don’t see any point in making myself look differently. They did tell me to wear red, they wanted us to color coordinate. I was okay with that idea. So, I went with my mid-calf boots skinny jeans and a red glittery long-sleeved low-cut V-neck shirt. My thought was that the glittery shirt would look great in the lights of the bar. We were going to a local bar that I knew had strobe lights and glitter all over the dance floor. You could consider this a club but in reality, it was a bar in a small town trying to look like a club.

                Becca and Maria picked me at my house in an uber. This was a sign that they planned on getting me shitfaced. They hired this uber to pick us up and take us everywhere all night to each place they planned on taking me, along with taking us all back to my house at the end of the night. His first stop after getting me was taking us to our dinner. Becca got his number and said she would text him each time we needed him to come back. She promised him a big tip at the end of the night.

                The restaurant was the nicest Chinese restaurant in the nearest city. As I said we live in a small town. It took an hour to get to the restaurant. During our drive we sang along to the oldies our parents grew up listening to. Music from the 80’s. God that was such a long time ago. Our driver was older than us and I think he was amused with us and our taste in music. But he didn’t say anything to us the entire time. The three of us sat side by side in the back seat of the small car.

                It was cold outside, there was snow here in Ohio. Not much but enough for the drive to take a little bit longer.

“When dinner is over, make sure you get your fortune cookie.” Becca said as we pulled up to the entrance of the restaurant.

“Why?” I asked her.

“Duh, today is a special day. In fact, I think you need to have two cookies. You turned 22 on the second day of the second month in 2022. How many people can say the same thing? It’s like magic.” Maria said in an I-can’t-believe-you-don’t-understand tone.

I rolled my eyes at them and said “If it’s so lucky why hasn’t anything happened yet today? It is already six pm”.

“What time were you born?” Becca asked me.

“I think my mom told me I was born at 11:11pm” I replied.

“Are you serious, that’s just another way of saying 22. You are a lucky person; you have the coolest numbers. You should look into numerology.” Maria said.

“No, I never even gave it a thought. It’s just a number.” I told the both. We walked into the restaurant. It wasn’t just a Chinese place, they had hibachi grills. The waitress took us to an empty grill and told us the cook would be right out. We gave her our drink orders. We opted for margaritas now and harder drinks at the bar. I looked around the restaurant they had floor to ceiling mirrors on one wall making the room look larger than it was. There was a lot of red, gold, and dragons everywhere. I loved the décor. After I took off my coat my glittery shirt sparkled and the girls both committed on how cute it was. And it looked great in this room full of red and golds. I kept catching glances of my reflection in the wall mirrors. Becca had on a red fuzzy sweater the kind that felt like angels’ hair and black skintight pants. She also wore boots. Maria wore burgundy red dress, she had on black leggings and knee-high boots, and she stayed warm with a white puffy coat. We looked good.

                When our drinks were delivered the cook also came out. He was tall, older, and not Asian. My guess was he was Mexican or mixed. He wasn’t bad looking but not my type. But he tried flirting with Becca. Of course, it wasn’t me. It’s never me. I could see Becca reaching for her drink using her left hand, she was subtlety trying to tell him she was married by showing off her ring. Becca was the only one married out of the three of us. I was envious of her relationship with her husband, he treated her like a goddess. The cook was good at that he did, he made onion towers and he even put flames on the shrimp. It was very impressive. I think he got Becca’s gestures after a while, and he gave up his flirting and just put on a show for us. After we ate that amazing meal, the waitress brought over the bill and several fortune cookies for us. Becca and Maria immediately gave all the cookies to me and made me read them out loud to them.

‘When one door closes another door opens’ I have seen this one before. It felt like a typical fortune cookie saying. One that was mass produced.

(The love of your live will appears in front of you unexpectedly) Yea this one was a long shot, and I doubted it.

(You will be going on a magical trip soon) Huh? This one seems weird. All the cookies had lucky numbers on the back and all three had the same few numbers in common. (11. 2. 22) The rest of the numbers were different, but they had the same three on each. Weird I thought.

“See I told you, you will have good luck, something magical is going to happen.” Maria said, then Becca said, “I think you should make a wish tonight at 11:11pm.” I rolled my eyes and suggested they send a text to the uber guy. Maria said she already did. The girls paid for our meal, and we waited in the lobby for the driver to come back. It started to snow, and we didn’t want to wait outside in it.

                Our next stop was the bar/fake club the girls wanted us to go to. I been there just once before with the girls. The drive took thirty minutes to get there because the snow was coming down harder. The uber driver told us if the weather got too bad, he might not be able to take us all the way back home. The city was already on a level one emergency. If it got to a level three, we would have to stay in the city. We agreed to his idea. We all wanted to make it to my house safely, that’s why we got a driver to begin with because we knew we would be drunk.

                When we entered the bar country music was playing. This bar plays all kinds of music, country, hip-hop, techno, rap, and rock, new to old. The light changed when the genre changed. It was nice having a verity. We went to the bar and put our names down for a pool table, when one was free, we would be third in line for a table. In the meantime, we sat at a high-top table and ordered drinks. It was nearing 8pm. We ordered a variety of drinks and a few shots. I favored sweet drinks. We ordered purple hooters, sex on the beach, buttery nipples and three shots of Malibu.

                We drank and talked for a long time, some dance music came on and the glitter ball started to rotate. It made my glittery top shine. I practically glowed. Maria dragged all three of us to the dance floor. I had enough to drink that I was drunk happy and warm. I didn’t care how bad my rhythm was at that point. I was having fun. We ordered more drinks and danced more. A few times we tried to do a line dance. It didn’t go over very well I kept tripping over my own feet.

“Hey, it’s getting close to eleven, lets go back to the table so Emma can make a wish.” Becca said to us.

“How are we going to make a wish we don’t have a candle?” I told her.

“Don’t worry I made arrangements.” Maria said and guided us to our table. I noticed she made a wave gesture over to the bar tender. When she seen Maria waving at her she nodded, and Maria pointed to her wrist like she was pointing to a watch. Then the bar tender gave a thumbs up and moved away. Good lord what did these girls have up their sleeves. Right at 11:10 the bartender came over with a large cupcake. It looked like it was chocolate cake with bright red frosting swirled high on top. And on top of that was a lit candle.

                The music stopped and Happy Birthday started to play. A few of the lights pointed right at me and lit me up like a Christmas tree. It felt like everyone here stopped and looked at me. They all started to sing along to the song. Just as the song ended the clock display on Maria’s phone clicked over to 11:11 and I blew out the candle and made a wish. There was clapping and cheers once the candle was out. I received congratulations and well wishes after that for the rest of the night. I had awesome friends. They had this all planned. Right down to the minuet.

“So, what did you wish for?” Becca and Maria almost said at the same time.

“What else would I wish for?” I told them, “For a forever man” I said.

We ordered more drinks and another round of shots. I shared the large cup cake with the girls and then we danced more. We were drunk and on a sugar high. It was getting close to 1:30am and we decided it was time to call the uber back. He texted back saying he would be there right at 2am. We danced more until it was closer to the time to leave. We never did get to shoot any pool.

We waited near the exit for the driver closer to two am. While we waited, I checked my messages on my phone. I had several wishing me a happy birthday, some from friends other from family. I posted a few pictures on I*******m while we waited. The driver got there right when he said he would. He said he would try to get us all the way home. The snow was coming down harder, but the plow trucks had been out for a while now and streets were getting cleared off. He thought we had a good chance of making it all the way to my house.

                The drive home was taking a long time. While the streets were getting cleaned of in the city the highway wasn’t cleared. It was bad. There was slushy Ice and snow mixed thick on the roads. We were quiet in the back seat of the car. We didn’t want to distract our driver, not in this weather. I sat on the passenger side Maria in the middle and Becca on the driver’s side. It was so dark outside, and even though we were drunk I think we were quick to sober up some. It was dangerous to be on the highway in these conditions. But we had no idea it was this bad. Apparently, the plow trucks hadn’t made it this far out of the city yet.

                We were in the car for over an hour so far. It only took us an hour to get to the city, but we weren’t even halfway to home, and it was already taking longer. Maria fell asleep and I could see Becca nodding off. I however was wide awake, still drunk and scared but completely aware of how bad it was outside. We were only going about 40mph. The snow was falling in large thick clumps. There were red lights up ahead of us and they seemed to be getting closer together. Everyone ahead of us were slamming on their breaks. The road lit up in red break lights. The driver had no time to slow down a very large semi truck slammed on his breaks right infront of us and his trailer swung sideways nearly folding the truck in half. Time seemed to slow, and it felt like eternity, I had enough time to look at my two best friends, they were both asleep and completely unaware of what was happening. I looked towards the driver, and in the last seconds he covered his face with his arms. He knew we were going to crash. We weren’t going fast but the momentum of the car and the ice seemed to propel us faster. Our driver had no time to swerve, and we hit the broad side of the trailer head on, I saw it happening there was nothing I could do, I froze and watched as the front of our car slide and crash under the trailer. Loud metal cracking under pressure and glass popping and shattering filled my ears. I could feel my body fly forward; I was weight less. I had no control. It happened so fast but felt so slow in the moment. Then there was nothing.