Amie

Yesterday, after a wonderful lunch and a movie date, Amie and I said goodbye to Kelly (who was off to see a bunch of girls on skates fight to the death or whatever), and we got into my car.

"Wait a minute!" Amie said. "Where are we?"

I paused, and for a split second, I forgot where we were. I hadn't slept at all the night before. (If you're a regular reader, you already knew that.) My mind started to work a second later, and I was thinking of all of the possible answers, Columbus, Ohio, Easton, by Abuelo's, in my car.

Instead, I said, "What?"

"Are we near a..." Amie started to rifle through her purse, "a... a..."

I started to fill in the blanks with nearby stores.

All of them were wrong.

"A book store?" she said.

"Barnes and Noble?"

"YES!" she said.

"YES!" I said.

"Can we go there?"

"YES!"

All this time the car was in reverse, and I had my foot on the clutch and the brake, all ready to back out. I was giving all of the right signals to a parking lot lurker, and yet, I wasn't backing out until I said that final YES.

I backed out, and saw in the rear view mirror that there was a man in a silver Mazda behind me making some exaggerated hand motions and mouthing words I couldn't understand, no doubt, about the fact that I had taken my sweet time to vacate my parking spot.