“Yeah. Toby and I looked; he says that we have enough food for about a week as long as we are frugal about it.”
“Oh my God, Maggie I'm so sorry this is how it turned out. I know you were looking forward to going to Vail.”
I swallowed and nodded slowly. It was kind of funny how one action had spurred the chain of events that had gotten me snowed-in with Toby. Was there a good reason why I couldn't have waited a little bit and just gone at the same time as Maggie and Easton? It was useless to contemplate that now. I was stuck with the last person on Earth that I wanted to be stuck with.
“Don’t worry about it, there's no way you could have known or even prevented it. I asked already but how are you doing by the way? Did the check-up go okay? I hope everything's good?”
“It did actually, it seems like such a bad time to announce this but, I'm pregnant.”
Oh my God, she was pregnant!
Oh my God, she was pregnant.
I was happy for her. Obviously, I was thrilled for her. She was my friend and she was excited. She was having a child with the man that she loved, and then that she was going to marry. Of course, I was thrilled for her.
I wished that that was the only thing that I felt. Besides being friends, Missy and I were also colleagues. More accurately, she was my boss. What would having a baby mean for her business? What would it mean for my job?
The thing about Missy was that she didn't need the money she was making from her business. She mostly just did it because she liked it and she was good at it. She had grown up wealthy and had always had money at her disposal. Easton, the man she was marrying was the founder of a business that was valued in the billions.
Taking time off when she gave birth wouldn't hurt her financially so why wouldn't she do it? What if she wanted to put her business on hold and take time off? Even better, what if she decided to shutter her business completely? She could do it if she wanted to and not feel a thing. I would though.
I left my old accounting job to work for Missy. Even though it was an assistant position and by all measures, her business was a small one, she paid me very very well and the job was fun and a lot more flexible than anything I had had in the past. If she decided that she didn't want to work anymore, which she very well could, I was out on the street. Well, not literally, but I would have to find something else and I would have hated giving up this job that I liked so much, and that paid me so well.
There was the other little bit of me that wasn't quite thrilled about her announcement, the part that was a little bit jealous. Out of my new friend group of Missy, Eddy, and Brenna, not only was I still the only single one, but I was now the only one that didn't have a baby. I tried my best not to fixate on timelines and having abstract things achieved by certain age milestones. It wasn't useful and all it did was make you feel bad about yourself, but from time to time, like now, it was hard to get away from those feelings.
“Congratulations, I know you guys are going to have a beautiful, healthy baby. I'm happy for you.”
“Thank you. I don't know what to feel right now, I'm nervous and kind of clueless, but I'm excited.”
“How is Easton?”
“He's excited too. We thought we would at least be married before this happened, it wasn’t planned at all, but we were going to get around to it anyway so why not.”
I congratulated her again. That creeping feeling of not having done enough came up and wrapped itself around my neck.
When was it going to be my turn? I was twenty-seven. I had never had any hang-ups about turning thirty, but being surrounded by my new friends and their successful husbands had planted and then exacerbated my feelings of unworthiness. I saw how happy they were and how well their lives were going. What did I have to do to get that? It hurt, even more, to think that I could have had it at one point, but it didn't work out.
“Enough about me though. You guys hang in there. We're going to get you out as soon as possible.”
I got off the phone with Missy feeling worse than I had before. There was possibly a rescue team coming out to get us, great. Until then, she was expecting a baby with a man she loved, my job security was in danger, and by all accounts or at least in my friend group, I was a failure.
I looked around the kitchen for something to do to get my mind off those thoughts. Being all the way out here without the usual distractions, my mind could spiral undisturbed and leave me in the worst mood. I decided to make dinner. While I would have loved some fresh ingredients, the canned tomatoes and deli meat and cheese were going to have to work for the pasta dish I had in mind.
The guerilla meat sauce that I cobbled together looked awful but it tasted okay. I was pouring it over the pasta when I heard Toby walking into the room. I wanted a distraction, guess he worked.
“What’s that?” I heard him ask. I ignored his warm presence behind me.
“It’s dinner unless your standards are too high in which case, I can't help you.”
“It smells good. Thanks for preparing it. Anything I can do to help?”
He was being oddly kind and communicative considering he had stormed off before. Maybe he had rubbed one out while he was upstairs and was in a better mood. Whatever, it wasn't my problem. The person who was forced to be my roommate was actually being tolerable for the first time since we had gotten here.
“You can get the plates and the silverware out. I was going to eat right there on the island. You can join me if you want.”
“Thanks,” he said, sounding sincere instead of sarcastic. He got everything set up and I plated up the food. I took my time dawdling before I finally sat down next to him. For a few minutes, the only sounds were forks scraping on porcelain and our mouths chewing.
It was awkward. How many more days of this since we were officially trapped? Just because we were the only ones in here didn’t mean we had to eat meals as a family. Fuck that.