Jaime pulled into the parking lot of a familiar building.

“Victoria’s? I love Victoria’s!” I practically squealed at the sight of my favorite diner. Jaime chuckled at my excitement as we both exited the car and made our way to the restaurant’s entrance.

“Yeah, I heard they got a new menu, so I figured we’d check it out,” Jaime said as we walked.

Once we were inside, we were greeted by a tall, black woman. She almost looked like me; big, curly hair, an eyebrow piercing, and we stood at almost the same height. The only drastic difference between us was our skin; hers was a few shades darker than mine. “Dylan?” she said, cocking an eyebrow at me.

I squinted at the unfamiliar hostess. I found her nametag on her chest. Susanne, it read. That name ran no bells for me. “I’m sorry, not trying to be rude but, do I know you?”

She laughed out loud a bit. “You gave me my medusa piercing like a week ago,” she replied, gesturing toward her upper lip.

I then noticed the silver stud that stood just underneath her nose. “Oh! I remember you!” I lied.

“Really? Wow.” She chuckled nervously. “Well, is it just you two?”

“Yes,” Jaime responded before my brain could even process what she had said. I was too preoccupied scurrying desperately through the unorganized clutter of my memories of the past few weeks to try and remember what the hell this girl was talking about.

“Alright, follow me.” Susanne gestured for us to follow her, and she led us to a booth in the corner of the moderately-busy diner. Jaime and I sat down across from each other as the waitress placed the menus in front of us.

I stared intently at the menu in front me. My eyes absentmindedly glazed over the breakfast and lunch options in front of me, but the words written on the page just seemed to blend together in an abstract painting of black and white. I forgot how to blink for a while, and soon everything around me blended in with the white and black on the page, forcing me to rub my sore eyes as an attempt to stop the headache that was creeping in.

“Dylan? Are you alright?” Jaime asked me from across the table.

“Don’t you think that was a little weird?” I asked him, hoping he’d say yes so that I wouldn’t seem crazy.

“Hi, I’m Anna. I’ll be your server for today. Can I start you off with something to eat?” A high pitched voice said from the end of the table, interrupting my conversation with Jaime before it barely even started.

I rolled my eyes away from Jaime and put on my best fake smile for the overly-enthusiastic college girl. “I’ll take a water with lemon and a hamburger with cheese and lettuce only.” I handed her the menu as I finished telling her my order.

“I’ll have the same,” Jaime gave her a smile that was more genuine than mine. She seemed to inhale everything we were saying with the oxygen in the air, never taking out a pad and scribbling it down like most waiters and waitresses.

“What are you talking about?” Jaime asked once Anna had walked away, resuming our conversation as if it was never interrupted in the first place.

“The hostess. She said she knew me. I have no idea who she is!”

“Dylan, chill out for a minute. When you have a job that causes you to meet a lot of people, it’s impossible to remember them all by name or face. Trust me, I would know.” Jaime was very calm, and it was frustrating the hell out of me that he didn’t see my concern.

“No no no, you’re not getting me! I’m not a rockstar, or famous or anything like that. I’m just a tattoo artist! I still remember Joan, who was my first tattoo a year ago. Oh, and when I worked on New Year’s day, there was Zack, who lost a bet and had to get his nipple pierced.” I laughed at the memory. He and his friends were so stoned that day, and it was an awesome way to start off 2013. “Do you see where I’m going with this? I’ve recognized people I’ve tattooed and pierced on the street from months before, and I couldn’t even remember this girl’s name from a few days ago.”

“You’re getting old, Dylan. Yep. That’s what it is.” Jaime laughed lightheartedly.

“Jaime, I’m serious.”

“Alright, Dylan.” So you forgot one person. What’s the big deal. Dee, you have like six or seven clients a day, at some point, you tend to lose touch of each individual person.”

I thought for a moment, realizing Jaime was right. Something else was still bothering me, though. I tried to figure out how forgetting who Susanne was correlated in any way to my life outside of the parlor. “Jaime, can I ask you something?” I said, a little calmer now.

“You just did,” he responded.

Just then, Anna came back with our glasses of water with slices of lemon stuck onto the brims. She placed two straws on the table in between us and told us that our food would be out shortly.

Once she was gone, I spoke again. “Does it bother you? You know, how normal everyone is acting right now?”

“What do you mean?” Jaime asked, taking a sip of his water through one of the straws.

“Well, Ashley’s ex just got put into a federal penitentiary for over a decade, but none of us wanted to testify against him to put him there. And did you know that she and Vic had sex? Now we’re acting like nothing ever happened. And less than a month ago, Drew and her fiancé broke up, and now she’s already living with Mike. Did you know they’re trying to find a house for the three of them? Obviously, they were having an affair, but besides them, we were the only two that knew about them, but no one cared. I’m living with Tony now, and I barely even knew him three weeks ago. Don’t get me wrong, I feel so strongly about him, but all of this happened so goddamn fast. And what about me and you?”

Jaime raised an eyebrow at this. “What about us?”

“Well, I know for a fact that two months ago, Drew would’ve been calling me every day to try and get me to admit to the fact that there’s something going on between us. Even if there wasn’t. Now we spend at least every other day together, and the only person who hinted at any inquiries of our relationship was Ashley, and we all know she never makes any sense.”

“Okay, yeah, I admit; some of the things going on with everyone have been a bit odd, but what does this have to do with anything? I’m kinda confused.”

“Jaime, you frustrate me. It’s just like…I don’t know… I just feel like we’ve all had such a dramatic month that now we’re numb to everything. I almost feel like if I were to cheat on Tony, he’d brush it off as a simple mistake. As long as I’m not in Boston. Do you get what I’m saying at all?”

“So basically, you want us to react to everything.”

“I don’t want us to be a soap opera! I just want everyone to acknowledge things. Can we act like people again, and not robots?”

Jaime looked up at the ceiling for a minute, almost as if that was the only way for him to fully process all of the opinions I was feeding into his brain. While he was doing this, our jubilant waitress came back with two plates of the same meal. She placed a plate in front of each of us and then turned to go serve another table. Jaime and I both took bites of our burgers before he finally decided to speak again. “I think I see what you mean, Dylan. And honestly, something was feeling kind of awkward for me as well, I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it. But now I think that’s what it was.”

“So now that begs the question,” I forced myself to speak instead of taking another bite of my delicious cheeseburger. “What do I do? I mean, what do we do?”

“We wait it out. Mike’s birthday is in less than a week, and Christmas is coming up soon after that. We can’t re-complicate things by bringing out old feelings now. This is supposed to be a happy time.”

“So what am I supposed to do? Wait until 2014 to fix everything?”

“Don’t make it seem like 2014 is years away. I’m sure that by that time, we will have dealt with things like adults and figured out our feelings. A lot has changed, but just let things happen. Sometimes it takes another disaster to happen to make people realize what’s going on in the world around them.”


It wasn’t until later that day, when I was back at Inks, and I just finished giving a few apprehensive teenage girls belly-button piercings, that I understood exactly what Jaime was saying. Maybe, this is one of the instances that he was talking about, in which something else has to come fuck everything up before people stop numbing themselves to the pain of reality. Maybe I just have to wait it out and see what else is going to happen to make things difficult and
complicated.

And this was a truth I was willing to accept, actually. The only problem was that the other, more rational, part of me, was constantly tapping me on my shoulder, whispering, “You need to be careful what you wish for.”

And oh, how I wish I’d listened to that voice.

Notes

Cliffhanger alert?

FYI, the only reason I why the name of the restaurant they went to is Victoria's is because there's this place called Victoria's in Boston and it is so goooood.

Also, I believe Celebration of An Ending is gonna have four total parts, kinda like a mini series? This is because this story is sadly nearing it's end.

BUT THERE WILL BE A SEQUEL.

That's why I may or may not be fucking things up once again, because I'll have a lot more time to maybe fix things again.

But tell me what you think? What do you think is gonna happen?