Destined To Collide

Chapter 23

"That's okay," she says, "you can charge it right here on my desk."

"Thank you, so much," I say, "I finally catch a break today."

"One of those days, huh?" she asks sympathetically

"Oh, it's been one of those lives," I say, "My dad walked out on my mom and me when I was very young and I hardly ever hear from him anymore, I'm a struggling art student, I have a crappy waitress job, my mother is in and out of chemo for breast cancer, my love life is currently on hold and I wasn't exactly setting the world on fire, anyways. I had cheating boyfriends all throughout high school and the few guys I dated in college were bland and boring.

"The one silver lining in all this is that I've been corresponding with an art agent out in New York named Ashley, she's wonderful and she's become a friend. She comes here pretty often because her agency has an office in Salem so she comes here to scout potential clients.

"Oh, that sure is quite a lot you've got going on there, huh?" the clerk says dryly. I realize I've just been venting to a complete stranger about my personal problems."

"O, gosh, I'm so sorry," I say, "I didn't mean to turn you into my therapist just now."

"That's quite alright," Tiffany says, reasuredly, "you'd be surprised how many people get overwhelmed by life and end up letting it all out here, to me. It doesn't happen with any of my coworkers; just me. I guess I have one of those faces." she pauses and looks down at my phone which is still charging on my desk "Oh, look, you're phone is at 25% percent now."

"You can turn it on I guess, so we can get this squared away. I still need to get a rental car." I say, but then a question dawns on me, "Hey, can use this voucher towards renting a car?" I get a little excited about this potential possibility.

Tiffany makes a tisk sound and says, "sorry, unfortunately, it can only be used toward a flight with this airline alone." My phone turns on. I unhook it from the charger.

"Alright, here's the address." I show her my phone. Now that's all done, I've got to go to this AVIS here.

an unnecessarily long hour later

That took a lot longer than I wanted to but I finally got a car but it's the absolute cheapest one they have; both in price and quality. Of course, my luck being what it is, I get the worst lemon in the history of rental cars.

I barely got a few miles away from the airport and now I caught a flat tire. The cigarette lighter thing doesn't work to charge my phone even further, so it died again in the course trying to call Janine. And now I'm stranded in a place I don't really know with no way to get anywhere and no way to reach anyone.

I'm trying to flag some cars down, but no one's stopping, they just keep driving. Like I said earlier, people are uncaring assholes.

I've been out here doing this for I don't know how long because, of course, the clock in the car doesn't work and we know what's up with my phone.

But suddenly, I see a car from the other side of the medium, going the opposite direction toward the airport. The driver makes a u-turn and pulls up right in front of me.

"Having trouble with your car, there, huh?" asks the man that was driving that car as he gets out and walks toward me.

"Yeah, I've got a flat tire," I say, distraught, "Thank you so much for stopping. I've been trying to wave down people for awhile and no one's stopped to help until you came along. This has already been a banner day for me." And once again, I let loose on a complete stranger all my life's problems up to and including all the chaos from today. During this time he's been changing my tire. He also let me charge my phone in his car.