Set the alarm for 2:30 am. Calculate how many hours of sleep you’ll get if you fall asleep Right. Now. Toss and turn, reliving that one time you got sick on your teacher’s shoes in sixth grade and that time you told the insurance broker ‘K, love you, bye’. Finally fall asleep at 11:00 pm.
Sleep through your alarm and jolt awake half an hour later. Pour coffee on your cereal and decide to skip breakfast. Put the milk away in the cupboard. Splash water on your face in lieu of a shower, pull on two mismatched socks, and put your shirt on inside out. Drive to work in the dark in a stupor, miraculously arriving only slightly late for your 4:00 am start.
Burn your arm on the inside of the oven door when you’re pulling the raisin bread out. Drop the whole pan on the floor, destroying three beautiful loaves who didn’t deserve that kind of treatment.
Drive yourself to the hospital and wait four hours to be seen. Blush cherry tomato red when the hunky doctor finally comes in to see you. Sit there praying that he doesn’t notice you shiver every time his fingers brush your arm. Wince when he bandages the vicious blisters, and turn your head so he can’t see your eyes tearing up.
Go home alone to an empty apartment, wondering if you’ll still get paid for your full shift because the rent is five days past due and the cupboard’s offerings for dinner consist of a lonely tin of sardines and the now-sour milk. Oops. Take a long afternoon nap.
Wake up at six, stomach rumbling so loud you peek out the window to see if a train is going by. Call and order a pizza. Flip the TV on to a cheesy rom com and imagine yourself as the heroine and the hunky doctor as the sheepish lover knocking on your door to declare that he loves you ‘just the way you are.’
Open the door, for Pete’s sake, because this is real life and it’s the pizza delivery you ordered, not your Prince Charming. Stand there praying for the ground to open up and swallow you up alive when all seven cards in your wallet get declined in rapid succession. Literally die of actual mortification when the pizza delivery guy whips out his own credit card and pays for your pizza.
Fumble and stutter your thanks and, on a whim, invite your pizza savior to come in and dine with you. Kick yourself when he replies that he can’t because he’s working till eight — of course he can’t, you fool. Feel your heart skip a beat when he scrawls his number on the pizza box. Stay up half the night exchanging flirty texts. Fall asleep with a smile on your face.
Sleep in till noon.
Aly Writes 