Wanderer

1) Time Keeps Me Up With Its Constant Beat. I Can Drag My Heels Or Move My Feet

Tick Tock- Molotov Jukebox

"This is Keith, leave a message at the beep." My supervisors voicemail blared on my speakerphone.

"I'm serious when I say that my pussy literally bleeds when you play anything Taylor Swift," my friend, Maricela says while she scrolling through my music library.

"Mari, shut up!" I whisper right as the beep comes up. "Hey Keith, it's Valentina Benucci. I can't make it today and I'd like to PTO to cover my absence."

I hung up quickly before Mari could say anything else and rearranged my backpack on my lap to get comfortable. We were on the Metro Train on our way to visit one of old friends from high school. I had to call out of work to hang out since we spontaneously decided to do this and Mari doesn't have job so I just had to pick her up.

No, I don't have a car, but my she doesn't like riding the train alone. I never understood why, but I never question anything. Let people be people, you know?

"One day, I'll get a car and we won't have to take the bus everywhere," Mari swears again. We've been saying that we'll 'get a car' since we graduated high school, but it's been a whole year. I don't mind, I know life gets in the way of plans and promises.

"Yeah we'll just buy a car and life will be so much easier," I nod along.

We each had an earphone in and, since we have basically the same music taste, just scrolled through my phone to listen while we relaxed together.  Out of the both of us, I had apple music and I was the one with the iPhone, so my phone was the one primarily being used all the time. Mari always complained about her Samsung and swore to get a iPhone since the beginning of our friendship, but like our car mission, she has yet to buy a new phone.

"Vince keeps texting you," Mari says, scrolling through all my downloaded albums.

"I'll text him later," I mumble, drawing little cats riding planets on my arm with my work pen. "He leaves me waiting hours for his one word replies. Thank god he's just a hoe or I would actually worry."

She laughs and keeps pulling chips out of her backpack to snack on.

That's the one thing Mari loves to hear about; my sexcepades. She's too gay to actually hook up with anyone and her on/off girlfriend would probably snap Mari's neck if she tried. However, she's always all ears when I call her with the old "Guess what happened last night?" line.

"Jay and Geo texted you too," she says through mouthfuls of chips. "I'm logging you out of bien-chula, these hoes are getting annoying." I have two accounts of everything. A personal and a hoe account that I connect to all my dating apps. I'm usually always logged into my hoe ones, which has severed a lot of friendships that were alive solely because of social media. True friends always have your number!!

I shrugged and chewed on my lip while I kept drawing. "You better wash that off before you work at the library tomorrow," Mari warns me.

"I'll wear long sleeves."

I've worked at the Phoenix Public library for three years now, and its part-time minimum wage, but it's my actual dream job. I've told everybody that I would find a new job, but its been three years now and I have made no such moves. The only reason its so good is because it's a government job. The pay is too shitty to live off of. I mean, don't get me wrong, the work is the best thing ever, but the management is the worst.

"Ew, skip," Mari says, skipping Tyler, the Creator. She's too personal with things. If her ex liked strawberry ice cream, she would whole-heartedly avoid strawberry ice cream. If her ex liked fucking red hair, she hated red-heads. "Gingers," she would sneer. Since her ex likes Tyler, the Creator, you better believe she's deleting his music off of my phone.