holiday syndrome

4. the walk

"no i got no answer for you" 

gif: mads

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     MADS was infuriating. Marley arrived at the diner after half an hour of working up the courage to actually show up. Her palms were sweating and her hair had become a frizzy mess on the subway, but she had accepted it and gone anyway. Though, instead of meeting Mads at the diner as Mack had promised would happen, she instead found herself sitting alone in a booth by the window. It was a sunny enough day and the air wasn't as frigid as usual, but nothing about being stood up was particularly desirable to Marley.

     The waiter seemed to take sympathy on her after forty minutes, even offering her a free cup of coffee and a plate of pancakes (though she felt like he may have just been hitting on her when he offered pancakes). Marley took the pancakes graciously and managed to stuff them down in under fifteen minutes which was when the waiter seemed to get the hint that she wasn't girlfriend material.

     She supposed that was a good thing, considering he was well into his fifties.

     "Hey Mars, Mads has just called me and interrupted my shoot to tell me that he is stuck with a bit of a problem at work. I'm about to text him your number so if you could please text him back and ask for the address of his old apartment, that would be great. I have to go, bye!" Mack sounded as enthusiastic as a widowed blind woman who lived in the middle of the woods with a pet rat. She didn't give Marley a single chance to respond or to refuse.

     Marley considered completely denying that she heard Mack's quick phone call; she could easily claim that her phone had been breaking up through throughout the call. Then she could call it quits and run off to restock her alcohol stash before heading home. It was a Sunday anyway; she wasn't required by any social standard to actually get anything done on a Sunday afternoon.

     After ten minutes of finishing her coffee and debating on what to do, she got a text from an unknown number. The message was a number that she didn't recognize but figured was Mads, along with a text from her sister including a xoxo that clearly meant nothing. Her sister texted like a teenage girl and was known for over exaggerating everything, such as her feelings towards Marley. They hadn't hugged or kissed in ten years.

     "Anything else I can do for you," the waiter said with a tone laced with pity, eyeing her up and down like he was considering giving her another shot. Marley grimaced and shook her head, lifting her phone back up and deciding to just text Mads.

     "I'm fine, thanks for everything," she said with a forced smile, dropping ten dollars on the counter despite his promise that the food and coffee was free.

     She texted Mads and told him she was on her way before hailing a taxi. She recognized the street that the address was on and didn't want to bother using the subway if she didn't have to. The subway was handy and it was sure quick but it was always full of the strangest people. She also didn't like the possibility of falling in and being killed. Not that it happened that often.

     Hailing a cab, she went over practical conversation starters and topics of small talk in her mind. She hadn't had much trouble talking to Mads in the two times of meeting him but things felt so much more complicated since then. Maybe it was Mack's conversation she had overheard while leaving work, or maybe it was still the looming memory of Mads' pre-wedding breakdown. 

     The cab driver seemed pleasant and particularly chatty, soft rock music playing as she slid into the back seat. The bearded man scratched his head and smiled kindly into the rearview mirror before pulling out into the street. Marley's heart leapt into her throat when they swerved, though somewhat smoothly, and missed a speeding vehicle by a millisecond.