"Why the hell didn't you answer your phone?!" Gabby yelled so loud that I had to hold my ears.
"Quiet, Gabs!" I hissed, and pulled her after me to a quieter place in the cafeteria.
"I hate when you call me that, but do you know what I hate more? Friends that don't call back!"
I pushed her down on a chair and took the menu offered from a slightly annoyed waitress.
"Just bring us some Pepsi Max," I mumbled to her, still trying to keep my best friend from blowing up like a chain reactor. The peroxide blonde, middle aged woman scurried away with a scowl.
"He stood me up," I said before Gabby could say anything more, and her face dropped from anger to absolute dripping, sappy sympathy.
"But oh, my God! I love him!" I whined as quiet as possible.
"You what?" Gabby exclaimed, confused as fuck.
"Not love-love him of course, but yeah. He's one insane son of a bitch."
"Okay! Rewind a couple of pages."
Then Gabby corrected herself.
"Or maybe we should read the whole book from the beginning. I don't understand a single bit, Mimi. He stood you up, but you love him? That doesn't make any sense at all."
"I know! It doesn't make sense to me either. The whole thing is just so crazy..."
I stopped talking when the waitress came with our drinks. She kept squinting at us in a way that made me want to apologize even though we didn't do anything wrong.
"We'll keep it quiet," I promised, although I wasn't sure how Gabby was going to react to what I was about to tell her. And the meek, fake smile from the lady told me that she didn't exactly believe me. She just kept chewing on her bubblegum with a tired, unamused look. But she did leave us alone eventually, and Gabby was quick to pull at my arm.
"Speak up before I contort into a black hole!" she whisper-yelled, and I nodded vigorously.
"Okay, so this is how it went."
But then I remembered something.
"Oh, mom loved my outfit, by the way. She told me to say thanks."
I received a dead-panned glare.
"Okay! So mom dropped me off at the restaurant..."
"He didn't even pick you up like planned? Man, that..."
"I didn't want him to! I didn't want him to know where I live, so I never sent him my address. I just asked where we could meet, and..."
I gestured with my wrist to make sure she knew where I was going, and she nodded eagerly.
"Well, he wasn't there."
I rolled my eyes when I thought of his explanation. I still didn't understand how we'd missed each other if he really was there.
"Or... He says he was, but somehow we didn't see each other."
Not unexpectedly, Gabby frowned. She didn't buy that at all, and to be honest, neither did I. Not really. I just accepted it because he sounded so sincere.
"Sis, the place has like twenty - twenty five tables. Tops! How is that even possible?"
"I don't know! Maybe he got lost in or behind the chaos of people, but at least I couldn't see him. And if he really was there, it was strange that he didn't just meet me at the entrance or whatever. Anyway!"
"Hold on! Why was it chaotic?"
"Ahh, some famous person, I guess. I didn't care to find out because I felt so dumb searching for a man that wasn't there."
Gabby corrected me.
"You thought he wasn't there. Maybe he was the famous person?"
"Yeah, right," I snorted and laughed. "I think he would have told me that."
Gabby shrugged.
"He hasn't given you any clues at all?"
I scanned my brain for possible hints, but just like I'd read through our conversation multiple times, I came out empty. So I shook my head.
"But that's not important, Gabs."
"Stop calling me that!"
"Fine. Gabby. Anyway. I went home and heard nothing until the day after. So I was angry, of course, but somehow I didn't wanna block him before I knew why he didn't show up."
"You've got a big heart, girl. I'd muted his ass before I even got home."
"Of course you would," I commented and rolled my eyes.
"But since I'm not you, we basically ended up apologizing to each other."
"You apologized to him? What for? You didn't do anything," she exclaimed a little too loud.
"Shh! Keep it down."
My eyes darted through the room after the midlife-crisis bubblegum chewing female that already seemed to want us out of there. But she was nowhere to be seen.
"Yes, I apologized for not believing him when he obviously told the truth. And... Uhm. I might or might not have given him a hard time about it."
I gave Gabby a sheepish grin and she laughed.
"So we kept talking... He's incredibly sweet, by the way. And really, really hard to stay mad at."
...and constantly flirting and makes me smile like an idiot, I added in my mind.
"Is someone getting a little smitten over here?" Gabby asked knowingly and wiggled her eyebrows.
"What? Of course not! I've never even seen the guy, since our first attempt failed."
"So there'll be a second?"
Gabby was almost rubbing her hands with excitement.
"No, there won't. I refused. I told him that I didn't want to meet, so we kind of agreed on that."
"Hmph. You're no fun."
"Shut up! I haven't even come to the best part yet."
Gabby circled her finger out in the air to make me hurry up.
"He... Hold on."
I pulled Gabby up from her seat and dragged her toward the exit. But before we came that far, the waitress came scurrying towards us.
"You can't leave until you've paid for your drinks!" she exclaimed strictly.
"But we're not leaving," I retorted, but she wasn't convinced. So I dug into my pocket and grabbed whatever was in there.
"Here. This should be enough for both our sodas and two sandwiches. Now, can we go outside for a couple of minutes?"
She nodded sourly and went back to the cashier, and I pushed my very confused best friend out of the door.
"What the hell are you doing?" she asked, but I just smirked.
"You and all the guests in there will thank me later, because girl, you need to pack your bags."
"Uhm, okay?"
"We're going to a spa hotel weekend."
"We what?!"
"...and to Michael Jackson's concert in Huston!" I finished and clapped my hands in excitement. But when Gabby went several long moments without any reaction at all, I waved my hand in front of her to make her focus.
"Gabs? Are you okay?"
Suddenly there was a change in her. Something that was similar to a cartoon volcano building up pressure before it explodes. And like I anticipated, and the reason why I dragged her out of the cafeteria, she cried out with one of her absolute loudest primal screams that made her sound like she was close to death. I looked around nervously, and since Gabby wouldn't stop screaming, I tried to act as if everything was normal.
"It's fine, people!" I shouted to everyone who was staring. "Nobody's being raped or murdered! Everything's good! She just got a cramp in her vocal chords that needs some stretching, so don't mind us."
I placed my hand over her mouth to muffle her, while I slapped her shoulder.
"FOR REAL? A SPA???"
Now it was my turn to stare in disbelief. She seriously liked the idea of the hotel better than to meet Michael Jackson?
"Are you fucking tripping?" I yelled. "We're gonna meet the King of pop. How is it even interesting to get someone to smear a mixture of butter and sand all over your body, accompanied by music sounding like it's made of a guy high on meth?"
Gabby started screaming again.
"WE'RE GONNA MEET MICHAEL JACKSON!"
And there it was. Finally. Maybe the shock just made her temporarily slow?
"So, now you know. Do you think you can behave civilized enough to devour a meal, and have a conversation in normal volume?"
"YES!" she screamed, still way too loud to be near regular human beings.
"Gabby! Stop shouting!"
"Why? You do it too!"
"I'm doing it because you're doing it!"
"Then shut up, bitch!"
We stopped and looked at each other in complete silence. Then we burst out in hiccups of laughter.
"Shall we go inside and continue our lunch?" I asked, but Gabby had already taken my hand and was heading towards the entrance.
"See? I told you we'd be back, just like Arnold Schwarzenegger. And you're welcome. I knew you'd appreciate not to have your eardrums blown out today."
The lady still looked grumpy, but there was a fraction of humor in her eyes. And with a mumble about our food being served, she walked off and left us alone.
"You're really being serious?"
"Yup."
"Completely and utterly honest?"
"Yup."
"Cross your heart and hope to die."
"I don't wanna die! Not until after the concert at least. Because... And please be quiet now."
I made her cover her mouth with both of her hands, before I continued.
"We have backstage passes and we're gonna meet him when the concert is over."
"Hold me. I'm dying," Gabby groaned. "I can't take anymore. You can have my shoe collection, and your sister can have that coat she's always been jealous of."
"I knooow! I reacted the same way. And now you see why I couldn't tell you this over the phone?"
"Fuck yeah. I would never have believed you anyway. I'd be terrified that he'd drugged or hypnotized you, or something even worse. Jesus Christ!"
"It's insane. It's my biggest dream ever! Even my mom is ecstatic. But she made me promise not to beg him to marry me and make a fool out of myself, but who am I kidding? I can't promise anything like that."
"But your boyfriend's gonna get jealous," Gabby teased.
"He's not my boyfriend! Besides, he won't even be there. That's actually why we got the tickets. I guess he felt really bad about what happened on Friday, and also because he'll be too busy to talk to me the next few of weeks."
"If I didn't know any better, I'd think you guys were in a serious relationship already."
I scoffed and gave her a glare.
"That's never gonna happen. The universe doesn't want us to meet, because..."
"Oh, no. Here we go with the human existence and conspiracy theories. Mimi! Shut it! Let's rather use our time planning what to bring and what to wear at the concert."
But since the waitress already was glaring at us, looking at her wristwatch and chewing her gum angrily, I figured that it would be better if we continued that at home.
So that's what we did.