Feeling Lucky
by Calder Cassetti
Lucy in the Sky plays on the radio, at 3:13 in the afternoon of March 13th, and this is the moment I’ve been waiting for.
I run over and turn up the volume, be sure, be sure, checking the red numbers of the clock. I hold my breath. I can’t blink. Three shiny pennies from the parking garage sit on my dresser drawer, and I twist the bracelet around my wrist, but my anxious ears haven’t deceived me.
I promised, I think, and my stomach hurts not-entirely unpleasantly. I am not a brave person. I move towards the phone anyway.
When the hour and minute hands align precisely, I dial, sweating and stalling for time by telling a few jokes first, “did you hear about the one where—” and she laughs and plays along, waiting for me to get to the point.
Eileen is very patient on our phone calls. I love her dearly for it, and even more so when she takes my suggestion for dinner and runs with it.
“Oh, there’s a fabulous new place on Highland, but I doubt we’ll even get close to the door.”
“Let’s try, anyway,” I say, still marveling at my pennies and Lucy, which by now, of course, has shifted into something louder and worse. “I’m feeling lucky.”
“Are you?” Eileen drawls out, and my ears burn red, but she’s always teasing, Eileen is, and I’d never try to get lucky without feeling very lucky indeed, first, and without asking the girl out on a date, which I’ve always been too scared to do.
Oh, there were close calls, back in the day, but the timing has never been right.
A long line snakes out the restaurant door on Highland, and I play with the three pennies in my pocket. Eileen is serene. I talk too much, go into too much detail about work and the weather, but Eileen agrees with most of my assessments.
“I’m partial to partially cloudy mornings,” she says, as we scoot up in line. My ears prickle. I almost don’t believe it, but Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is playing from someone’s phone speaker, and a ridiculous swoop of bravery that smells like Eileen’s vanilla hand lotion surges through me. I reach for her fingers.
“Come on!”
“What are you doing?!”
She giggles, though, as we approach the harassed host, and when I tell him we have reservations for 8:30, he doesn’t even ask for our names.
I pull Eileen’s chair out, nice and easy, and order two Cherry Cokes as she laughs and orders one martini, “but can you put it in two glasses?” Our waiter is unamused, buttoned up, but I plan on tipping three hundred percent.
Giddy with luck, we drink our Cherry Cokes and shared martini, putting on voices as we read aloud from the glossy menus: “an apricot ahi tuna!” she cries, delighted. “Mango mutton and silver plum pork!”
“Silver plums, say?” I ask, thinking of her earrings, sparkling in the dim light. “Let’s get thirteen of them.”
I’m going to ask her, I think wildly, the idea of us on a date almost unbearable, but for Eileen, I’d do almost anything. I’d hitchhike up a mountain or all the way to Mars. The full moon is in Mars tonight, the thirteenth day of our thirteenth month circling in and out of this wonderful friendship. Is it terribly greedy of me to want more?
We eat. I sign the check with a flourish. We walk hand-in-hand from the restaurant to the car, bright moon partially obscured by a cloud, and I’m only warm because Eileen is the warmest person I know.
“Thanks for the date,” says Eileen, when we drive up to her street.
She tilts her face up to kiss me.
Right there in my car, in front of her neighbor’s house, without a single sign I could’ve seen coming, and I’m so surprised that I almost don’t kiss her back.
But I do. Kiss her back, surprised and scared, because this hadn’t been a date, right? But Eileen is already peeling away, leaving the seat warm and sweet behind her, and I’m left in the car that reads 11:14, numbers that don’t mean anything except everything.
A song plays on the radio that I’ve never heard before. I throw the car into Reverse with a giddy rush, and the drums sound neat, but they would sound even better at a wedding reception, with a thirteen-tiered wedding cake.
Fourteen, I think dizzily, unable to shake the silly grin from my face. Hell, what about fifteen or twenty?
Calder Cassetti (she/her/hers) is an attorney from the Southeastern United States. She has previously been published in Spellbinder Magazine, Cagibi, Grim and Gilded Magazine, and Reverie Magazine. She was shortlisted for Uncharted Magazine’s 2024 Romance Fiction Challenge.