"Reina?" Nicole, my best friend, was standing in front of my desk, waving her fan (which she always carried) frantically. "Reina, can we go now? Lord, I can't stand this perfume. How do you stand it?" She wafted harder, hoping to make the scent of my boss's perfume disappear faster.

"I dunno, Nicole," I replied, refusing to look up from the pile of papers I was sorting through on my desk. "Can't you see I'm working here?"

"Yes! And I can also see the clock which reads 3:35pm which, if I am not mistaken, means that your shift ended five minutes ago. So it's time to go! We have a dinner date with Rob and Steve tonight, remember?"

"Of course I remember." I finally stopped sorting to look up at her and show her my phone. "How could I possibly forget with you sending me text reminders every half hour for the last two days?" I sighed, scrolling through our one-sided conversation. "Nicole," I said calmly. "I'm not sure why I have to remind you of this again, but I, unlike you, earn a salary meaning my work ends, unlike yours, when I'm actually done working. When the clock strikes, I don't turn back into a pumpkin if the work still needs doing."

"I know," Nicole harrumphed. "That also means you don't get paid overtime, so let's go! You're not getting paid for the work you're doing right now!"

Looking up at the clock, which now read 3:37, I sighed. If I were to leave now, chances were, this group date would be over faster meaning I might have some time for myself before running off to my night job. "Alright." I resigned to letting myself be yanked from my desk chair and dragged down the hall so fast I fell splat on my face before my feet could catch up with the rest of me.

Nicole left me where I was and ran off to find a ride to our apartment.

"Taxi!" I heard her shouting as I caught up with her.

"What the hell?" I shouted, yanking her out of the middle of the road and back on the sidewalk. "Why do you always do that?"

"Oh, come on, don't be so worrisome." Nicole pulled out her decorated pink handkerchief just to waft it at me. "We've already discussed this. As a young, rich, woman in the New York City of Massachusetts, my family has a high priority and a lot of money. If I were to get hit by a car, Daddy would bring the whole thing to court where it would become some sort of public scandal because I'm black," she repeated, as she had many times before, leaning over to click the "k" in my ear. "So, I'm not too worried about it! The worst thing that could happen is that I'd become famous."

"Actually," I mumbled, "the worst thing that could happen is that you could be killed." But my words fell on deaf ears as Nicole was already hopping into a vacant Taxi.

"Where to?" the driver asked.

"Wayside Garden Apartments," Nicole shouted, resting her feet on the driver's headrest, much to his annoyance.

"If you're gonna do that, Miss, you might as well call yourself a GetThere," he grumped.
"Oh, but Reina, tell him that we don't want to do that. You see, Sir, riding around using the Taxi service is much more vintage than GetThere, making it so much more exciting. Besides, I can pay for whatever damages I cause."

"Can we just enjoy a quiet ride?" I whispered to Nicole, before she made yet another mistake where she flaunted her parent's wealth, only to have to pay big money when the person she told sued her for way more than whatever the damage she had actually done.

***

At five o'clock sharp, we were back in a Taxi, by Nicole's request, and on our way to whatever diner Nicole had set up our double date at.

"Do I really have to go to this?" I whined.

"Yes. You need to get yourself back out there," she declared with conviction, this time, stabbing a hole in the back to the headrest with her stilettos. "Oops. It's been three years since Mark ended it. I know it was hard to get over your high school boyfriend breaking up with you months before your college graduation, but that's what you get for following someone to the point where they can't breathe. Oh, I'm not blaming you, Reina honey." Nicole patted me on the head as I glowered. "It only makes sense to do what your loved one wants to do, and he was a jerk. I mean, come on! Who threatens to take a girl to court if she doesn't abort her baby? That's just evil! But you're about to turn twenty-six and that young beauty thing you've got going for you now isn't going to last forever. You gotta get out there again!"

"Can we like, I dunno, not talk about this right now?" I asked her.

"Yeah, yeah okay, we're here anyways." But she just kept on blabbering about how "you aren't a failure, but oh, it wasn't that you were a failure, you just, made some mistakes, but you are back on track now," to my very embarrassed ears.

"Party of two?" the waitress at the front interrupted us, already gathering our menus.

"Actually, there will be four of us, two young men will be joining us shortly."

"Of course," the waitress replied, grabbing two more and nodding at Nicole as she requested a name for the party. Finally, we were led to a table in the back corner. I scooted across the bench and next to the window so that I could stare outside if my date wasn't appealing enough to me. Nicole scooched in next to me, leaving space across us for Rob and Steve.

"Ok, so which one is my date again?" I asked. But before she could answer, we were interrupted.

"Hi, I'm Rob. Which one of you is Reina?"