Collision Course 4.31

            Rosita drove slowly to Alice’s apartment, her eyes very serious, and her body tense.  Tears glistened in her dark eyes, hands white knuckled on the steering wheel of her car.  The music was hard and pounding, not her normal fare, but tonight wasn’t her normal night.

            Just when things seemed to have gotten close to normal, close to what she wanted her life to be, and this had to happen.  This awful, unfortunate, unwanted, insane thing had just happened, and there was nothing to do but roll with her punch. 

            Pulling up to Alice’s apartment building and heading up to the fifth floor of the building, knowing that Alice should be home, hoping that she was, because, god knew, Rosita needed her right now.  She needed someone to tell her it was ok, and that she was going to be all right.

            Her jello legs slowly carried her to the elevator, her mind a total blur as she pushed the button of Alice’s floor.  Half way up, Rosita pulled the stop button, her breath coming in hot, hard spurts.  Putting both hands to the door, pushing up against it, the anger in her rising, making Rosita want to scream at the top of her lungs, but trying, desperately, to hold it in. 

            “Fuck!” yelled the Latina, kicking hard at the door of the elevator, hating the world.  Wanting to just disappear off the face of the earth.  This couldn’t be happening, but she knew that it was, this was her life, and it was systematically being destroyed by all the choices she’d made a life time ago. 

            “Calm down, Rosita, this isn’t the end of the world,” said Rosita softly, pushing the button back and allowing the elevator to drop her off on Alice’s floor.  “It will be ok.”

            Wiping her eyes and heading down to Alice’s door, fishing out the lock picks from her back pocket, quickly opening the door to her girlfriend’s apartment.  Letting herself in, sweeping the door closed softly.  Leaning up against it, closing her eyes and sighing loudly.

            She’s only been to Alice’s once, and had gotten the sense that the woman was a free spirit, one of the things that had so attracted to Alice.  Free, funny, sexy, wounded but wouldn’t be downed by all that life had dealt her.