The Third Wheel

THREE’S A MAGIC NUMBER.

Think of things that come in threes:

The Three Little Pigs.

The Three Musketeers.

God’s Holy Trinity.

Three Blind Mice.

Traffic lights: Green, yellow, red.

Wine. (Red, white, pink. I hate wine. That will probably be your first strike against me.)

Three feet in a yard. (I also hate math.)

A trilogy’s always got three books, doesn’t it?

The Three Stooges.

Three sides to a triangle.

Three sides to every story, huh? (In my world.)

And there are always going to be three wheels on a tricycle.

Cut to: Professional third wheel, Kristina Flores.

And Kristina Flores is me.

I guess you could say that I’m used to it by now, the fact that I’m always your third wheel, but there are still a lot of times when I think what am I doing? and others when I want to bash my face in, and even when I’ve got the fear of missing out, I still want more than anything to have it be just two people, just four people, just six. Give me an even number, because, if not, it’s a guarantee—I’m going to be the odd one left out.

Even now, let’s analyze my situation: I’m twenty-five, somewhat attractive (I do force myself to jog once a month, and I can do five push-ups per workout, if I’m in a good mood), and have some money in the bank. I’m independent, can cook for myself (though my mom may disagree), and keep my legs shaved. I can throw a baton, skate without completely toppling over, and keep a clean-cut lawn, like my grandfather’s crew cut military hair. And yet, yet again, I find myself in the same peculiar situation, just like when I was fifteen.

“So, Kristina,” says Andrew Jester, who is the new boyfriend of my good friend, Hanna Hughes, whom I met three summers ago. Just for good measure, he wraps an arm protectively around her. Hanna, who loves to be the center of attention, bats her eyelashes big and pageant-like. Surprisingly, she wasn’t a sorority girl. “Tell us more about what you do.”

“Well,” I begin, tapping my lips with a napkin. I’ve ordered a traditional plate of spaghetti, and I’m beginning to regret the choice, especially with my Dillard’s dress that cost me nearly a hundred bucks. I should be sticking to a five-dollar Coke with my salary. And while I don’t typically dress in department store clothing, the sparkly blue lace called my name, and unfortunately my credit card too. The dress would be perfect for a first date. Preferably a first date with just one guy—not his girlfriend too.

Andrew’s phone lights up on the table, and then it’s buzzing too, like an uncontrollable bumblebee, and then he’s gone from the table. Hanna’s got me captive, and she grabs my arm, her shiny French manicure catching my gaze. That manicure alone could buy me this fancy meal. My shoulders droop.

“Don’t you just love him?” she exclaims. This is her third guy this year. It’s only April.

“He’s a keeper,” I say, taking a little sip of white wine. The only reason I’m drinking it is because Andrew insisted that I warm up my palate, and Hanna wanted me to liven up for our little arrangement. It was supposed to be a double date, but the guy went down with the flu (good timing), and since I was already dressed up, why don’t you just come out with us anyway?

I can remember it now, and like usual I’m regretting my choice to do social things.

“Darn right he’s a keeper,” she says, throwing a hand through her honey-brown hair. Hanna Hughes looks like a million bucks, because Andrew’s worth a million or more. As she chats on and on about this man, I grow more and more frustrated.

The restaurant is a local’s kind of place. It’s quaint, draped in white stringed lights, and there is a genuine fountain in the middle of the seating area, where lapis colored water is more conversational to me, and I grow fascinated with the constant cycle of the fountain, and Andrew is suddenly back, and he says, “Sorry about that. Work stuff.”

“What happened, honey?” asks Hanna, claiming him again, nestling into him. Come on, Hanna. I’m not taking your man.

“Just the fact that…” Andrew intentionally pauses, waiting for the drama to build, for Hanna to almost—she can’t ruin that fifty-dollar manicure now—chew her nails, and then he exclaims, “we just sealed our two hundred thousand case!”

“What?” Hanna screams, as if she’s personally delivered the deal. Maybe she will bite those nails straight off. “Oh, Andrew!”

He leans in, kisses her on the lips, and says, despite a little leaf of basil coating one white tooth, “This is cause for celebration!”

“Oh, you better believe it!”

Which is how I find myself at a little club on the edge of downtown. It’s close to midnight now, I’m wearing a much-too prudish dress, and unlike the sleazy women on the curb, who will inevitably have the time of their lives out on the dancefloor, I’ve been somehow persuaded to go to a place called THE RAINBOW KITTEN on a Wednesday night, with Hanna Hughes and her boy toy, and I could have left, yes, I could have; but I have a problem with persuasion. I’m like Anne from Anne, the book by Jane Austen. If somebody invites me someplace, I feel like I have to go. It’s been one of my flaws since I exited the womb, and as I stand in bloodthirsty heels, Hanna and Andrew have already left me in the dust. However, they’ve also lured me in by inviting my best friend in the world, Bella Royale, who appears a few moments into my misery.

“Why do you look so good?” Bella shouts over the screams of a hundred women flirting with the bouncer who may be a bona fide mobster. Bella, though a beautiful woman, is coated in makeup that is completely unflattering, but she looks the part. She’s wearing a shirt that barely covers any of her breasts, her skirt is tighter than my high school volleyball Spandex, and she’s standing like the Leaning Tower of Pisa on account of her bargain Marshall’s Manolos.

“Hey,” I say, kissing her cheek. “Thank you for rescuing me.”

“You know I’m always down for a good club,” she says, lifting an arm to wave at Hanna, who doesn’t notice her, because Andrew is talking about his favorite subject: himself.

“I didn’t realize that,” I say.

“Remember when we first came here?”

“How couldn’t I?”

There is a wistful look in Bella’s brown eyes. She really is beautiful, I think, but she still looks a little bit like a witch tonight. There is a sudden boom of bass, but no one on the streets can tell if it’s from the club or a passing gangster’s car. Bella lifts a pack of cigarettes from her purse, and I swat them away.

“What are you doing?” I hiss.

“I need something to ease the pain. It’s been two months.”

“If I hear one more thing about him, I’m going to personally chop you up. If I’m going into this club, you better go find yourself somebody, okay?”

Time for some clarity. I do not condone random rebounds from the club. In fact, I argue for the opposite. Why not just enjoy being single and dance the night away? But Bella isn’t one of those girls. She’s in it for male attention, and I’m not in the mood to be Bella’s therapist for too much longer. Though I love her to death, and I’d kill for her, sometimes I do want to kill her myself.

“What are all these fools doing?” Bella exclaims, trying to shoo the women in the line. There are fifty women for every one man, and I’ve never been one for competition. This ratio even feels normal.

Slowly the line moves forward, and when we’re finally up to the bouncer, who looks like he may send us to the curb, we’re granted access into the deep bowels of THE RAINBOW KITTEN. Even in my Kate Middleton-esque dress, I’m club-approved. Green and purple strobe lights zoom across furry heads, and there’s the immediate odor of stale popcorn and alcohol. Rihanna’s Barbadian vocals seduce over the thrill of the speakers, and there is the immediate sensation of a thousand grinding Memphians, and Bella is somehow already in the middle of it, singing like a groupie, and I follow her in, wanting desperately to find the right rhythm, to imagine I’m anywhere else, and Hanna and Andrew are already nowhere to be found. Who knows if they even came into the club.

Bella sways her hips like she’s Shakira. She could be, except that I’m the one with South American heritage. “Take your hair down.”

“Why?” I ask. “It’s hot in here.”

“You need alcohol,” she protests, already. This is the normal conversation. Before we even enter a place, Bella is already prepossessed by the desire to drunken herself.

I’m transported to the first time we came here, as sophomores in college, when we were pimpled and more innocent and carefree. I still didn’t enjoy it then. I can almost see my twenty-year-old self in this crowd of drunk, sexual souls, and I’m a little disgusted. Again, my dress is too nice for this place.AndI’m in heels.

A few seconds into a Drake song I don’t mind, a man sidles up to Bella. He’s not bad-looking, but he’s definitely a bit creepy. Yet Bella doesn’t seem to mind, and her body begins to move closer and closer to him, because she’s a magnet to anything male, and I know exactly where this is going.

“I’m going to get a drink!” I shout over the screaming horde.

“What?” Bella shouts back.

“I’m going to get a drink!”

“Good. You need it!”

I push through the crowds, forcefully, though there is definitely now a trace of vomit on my gorgeous, hundred dollar Dillard’s dress. I imagine that I am Holly Golightly throwing my own party, but who am I? I’m a lonely woman in the middle of a bunch of ridiculously foolish rap lovers. At least the DJ isn’t playing EDM.

The bar is lonely too. There are a few creepy white men with faux-’fros. I order a Diet Coke and set up camp near the soda fountain. As I sip the foamy substance, looking like a chaperone, I scan the crowd. There are at least a couple hundred people here, even on a Wednesday night, which is ridiculous. Don’t these people have jobs? School? Responsibilities? I begin to wonder how many of these people are drunk right now. Up ahead of me, only fifty feet or so away, a woman begins grinding, hard, on a man who’s wearing a shirt with a picture of a llama on it. Behind them, a group of college girls are jumping up and down, getting a good workout in (more than my five push-ups, that’s for sure). I see a few men trying to make some moves on voluptuous vixens, and in the midst of all this, there is Bella, who is somehow my best friend in the world, her arms wrapped around a random man’s neck, and I know she desperately misses her ex, but this isn’t the proper way to get over it, I think.

I take another sip of my Diet Coke as a man draws closer to me. I can feel his presence immediately, and I grip my cup tighter. At least it isn’t one of the fake Afros.

“What’s a beautiful woman like you doing all alone?” he asks, leaning across the edge of the counter.

I turn to him. I hate this. He’s not ugly, but he’s a creep. I can already tell. Any guy at a club is a creep in my book. Once, I went to a dancefloor with an acquaintance from my Intro to Stats class, and she disappeared with a guy for ten minutes. Scared to death on her behalf (innocence, I tell you), I tracked her down to a random corner of the club, where not even the roaches go, and there she was, making out with a boy who looked like a cotton farmer, and a few days later, she passed out with a severe case of mono. That scarred me for a while. I don’t like guys in clubs.

While I want to be nice to him, I don’t say anything at all. I take another swig of Diet Coke and try to steel my nerves. My Argentine cousins would laugh at my trepidation. Go for it. Adelante.

“Well,” he says, drawing his finger against the rim of the cup. “You’re the most beautiful woman here.”

“Thank you,” I say, looking away from him, thinking that I want to do nothing more than take a hot bath, call my mother, and schedule a manicure for the following day. Maybe make myself a bowl of guacamole, now that I’ve mastered the recipe, after three years of trial and error.

Suddenly, there is an organismic moan from the crowd, because the king himself, Kendrick Lamar, has emerged through the speakers, spewing off hip hop proverbs. While I like the music, I’m not feeling it, and then my friend, the guy who complimented my dress, is already dancing with another woman.

I laugh.

Who knows how long I’m standing here, but it feels like eternity. So much so that I blow through three cups of Diet Coke, and then I’m a bit tired all the sudden, because it’s close to one o’clock, and am I the designated driver? No. Bella can Uber home. Who knows about Hanna and Andrew, because I took my own car.

I squeeze through the senseless zombies on the dancefloor who smell of the dank and dark world known as clubbing. It takes me three minutes, but I eventually make it to Bella, who is full-throttle with her new chico, and I tap her on the shoulder.

She turns around and throws an arm around me. “There you are!”

“Here I am,” I say as she tightens her hold around my neck. I can barely breathe now.

“What are you doing?”

“I think I’m going to head out now. I have some things I gotta catch up on. Like sleep, you know?”

“Oh, come on! We just got here. Come on, Kristina. Live a little.”

If I had a dollar for every time I’d heard someone say that to me, I’d be quite the lucky woman.

“Not really,” I say, shaking my head at her. A woman bumps into me, and I can feel a splash of alcohol stain my leg. Disgusting. “Hey, no worries. You okay? I think I may go on home.”

“Come on, Kristina,” says Bella again, though she’s already forgotten me, and she’s back with her man.

Cue a sad song. Any sad song you’d like. And there’s me, walking out of the club as a gust of forceful spring wind prepares to knock me down. A hundred young people are still trying to clamor into the club, and the bouncers act like they’re guarding the president. I, meanwhile, reclaim my pride and sashay to my car, which is parked five minutes away. When the gale of wind bothers me too much, I unleash my hair, letting the brown I’ve always hated flow down my back, but who cares anymore?

I decide I need a McFlurry. Judge me as you will, but it’s what I need.

Ten minutes later, I’m flying down the interstate, coasting toward the wide open spaces belonging to suburbia, and just for the heck of it, my windows are down, and I can taste the thunderstorm in the air. A crack of lightning lights up the sky up ahead, and it’s frightening, but it’s rejuvenating too. There is no need for music as I speed along, because my eardrums are already burst from the whole clubbing experience. When I checked my phone in the car, I learned that Hanna and Andrew did not even make it into the club, but they wanted me to text them when I got home (as if they would even know when I did, anyway?). Oh well. At least the date was over. Maybe it was for the best that I didn’t meet whoever the man was they wanted me to fall hopelessly, inevitably in love with. For the best.

When I hit Collierville, I bounce off the interstate and cruise to the nearest McDonald’s. While not exactly an ideal restaurant, it’s what I want, and I’m going to give in to my desire for once. I park my car, slam the door behind me, and sashay on in.

The woman at the counter is filing her fingernails. She looks like a high schooler. When she notes me and my expensive dress, she pouts her lips and says, “What you doing here for?”

“M&M McFlurry. Biggest size.” I hand her a five-dollar bill and smile. “And to answer your question, I’m here because I want to be.”

“Looking like that?” she asks with a skeptical eye. “You’re the second one tonight.”

“What do you mean?”

“The man over there,” points the girl, and suddenly I note that her fingernails are a foot long each. Acrylic. Fuchsia. “He comes in, looking fine.”

“Really?”

I look over at the seats, but I don’t see a guy. Supposedly, he’s blocked by a massive, leafy plant that has no reason to be there, except to taunt my curiosity. Really, I don’t even care. I just want my ice cream.

“Yeah. Well, I ain’t one to judge.”

It takes her a hundred years to hand me back my change, and a thousand more to prepare my soft serve delight, but when I finally have it in my possession, I take a giant gulp of it and smile. Maybe it’s the M&Ms. Maybe it’s the boredom. Maybe it’s because I didn’t get myself a man for the night, and I never will.

But I walk over to the restaurant portion, which was supposed to have closed over an hour ago, but they must have made an exception for the guy. That’s all I can think to myself. But I walk over, and I take a seat at a booth. It’s definitely the M&Ms.

I pop some of them into my mouth as I observe the scene before me.

It’s well past midnight. McDonald’s. And somehow, just somehow, there is a well-dressed man, in a suit and tie, for crying out loud, who is eating a Big Mac. He’s probably thirty, has a hint of five o’clock shadow, and he looks about as fed up at the world as I do. My heart starts beating, like that sort of beating, because he’s attractive, and he’s got the same idea I have. He sees me too, and he cocks his head in surprise to see that I too am having the same thoughts.

He smiles at me for a second, his lips twisting into something that melts my heart, and then he shakes his head. And then I know what’s happening—he’s getting up to leave.