Wednesday, March 13th
2:33 p.m.
His orange juice slides across the moving strip in record time.
It’s Wednesday and I have learned his habits, so I know in the middle of the week he stops by the grocery store closest to his house to buy prepackaged juice boxes before picking up his daughter, Sadie, from kindergarten. He avoids self-checkout because he doesn’t understand all the buttons, but if someone were to ask him on a day when the lines are long if he wouldn’t mind pushing over there, he would say he loved technology and hell yes.
The juice boxes are a gateway to the first twenty minutes of a Hallmark movie. The scene is shot on the elementary sidewalk and the hot, single dad is introduced hugging his sweet baby girl before you get to know how thin his benevolence really is and the mom movie ends with him screwing the twenty-something aspiring baker who could easily double as a swimsuit model and probably does in front of other cameras.
Monday through Friday, he’s an urban dad at 3:15. I’m a teenage runaway at 1:45 and by 3:00 I’m a stalker in soft jeans. I’m five-foot five inches of two sweet syllables that feel like hot shots down the throat, Pah-pee, a vocal vacation for the lips and for the legs I’m one pair of eighties’ stockings that will take you to dreamy-teen eyes hooded with rustic shades you can’t buy from Sephora.