Lemon Crush

1. August

Lemon: a person or thing, especially an automobile,

regarded as unsatisfactory, disappointing, or defective.

“No, Myrtle. Come on, baby, don’t do this to me,” I begged under my breath when my old Honda—who’d never given me any trouble before—started spewing steam on the other side of my windshield.

Based on the red warning lights on the dashboard and the sickly-sweet fumes wrinkling my nose, there was some major what-the-fuckery going on under the hood that I didn’t have time for. Particularly now, when I was driving into one of the busiest airports in the country at zero-dark-thirty in the morning.

Welcome to my life.

“You need to find a place to pull over,” my sister ordered from the back seat.

Did I mention I had passengers expecting to reach a destination? Because I loved having witnesses to humiliating and potentially hazardous events in my life. It was the best.

With my pulse pounding in my ears, I gripped the steering wheel so tightly my hands started going numb. “I’ll pull over when we get to your terminal.”

“Morgan’s right.” My brother-in-law shifted his large frame in the seat beside me, trying to watch both me and the road while typing furiously on his phone. “You should stop before the engine seizes or you crack the block.”

Was he just making up terms to confuse me now? What the hell was a block and how was I cracking it? “There’s no place to pull over yet, but we’re almost there. Two more minutes, Gene.”

Said every pilot who ever crashed into the ground a half-mile short of the runway.

Not the right time to think about planes crashing!

“This might give us two minutes,” Gene said, cranking on the heater to full blast. When a wave of hot air gushed into the car, I let out an undignified whine and rolled down the windows. Now we were all overheating.

I heard the click of a seatbelt releasing and then Morgan was inserting herself between our seats. “August, you don’t have to prove anything to me. I know you’re?—”

“I’m not trying to prove anything,” I gritted out between clenched teeth. “I’m trying to concentrate.”

That was a dirty lie. I had absolutely strong-armed her into letting me take them to the airport this morning to prove I was happy about them going to Italy, followed by a cruise through the Mediterranean, without me. And I really was.

Mostly. I was mostly happy about it. The part of me that wasn’t had obviously alerted the karma police.

“This is what you get.”

Exactly. I should have considered the state my car might be in after barely driving it for well over a year. The state I might be in, when simply taking the airport exit had given me a nerve-jangling case of déjà vu, and promised a full-on panic attack in my very near future if I thought about where they were going without me. And why.

“Pull in there.” Morgan pointed at the United Airlines sign ahead. “Look where I’m pointing, August. There’s a spot opening up right there.”

Putting on my blinker, I craned my neck to see around her and, miracle of miracles, a guy in a Prius let us into the drop-off lane.

“Thank you!” I cried as I pulled to the curb, shifted into park and cut off the overheating engine with a groan that was as much resignation as relief. Now that we’d made it, I could finally admit the obvious to everyone.

“I’m cursed.”

“You’re not cursed,” Morgan said in a voice that suddenly sounded very far away. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

“I’m a writer. It comes with the territory.” I wrote about curses all the time, and this was what I’d imagined a few of them felt like.

You were a writer, before The Great Block turned you into a human doorstop.

Everyone’s a critic.

Before that doorstop situation, I came to the airport all the time without having a problem. Usually when I was the one flying off to interesting places, like New York, Reno or Atlanta, for promotional events and conferences.

Those were my halcyon days. The good old days of wine, roses and word counts.

The only glitch in that golden-oldies’ rewind was the time I came home early from a signing and found the man I’d wasted the last of my thirties on with a pretty young photographer that I’d introduced him to. I’d bought him headshots to help his stalled acting career as an anniversary present. All he’d gotten for me was a disturbing visual I could never unsee, because cliches existed for a reason .

That was the beginning of my downhill slide. Whenever I was in the mood to punish myself with a doom scroll, I’d look up pics of his photogenic family on social media. He had a wife, twins and one commercial for shingles to add to his resume now. Good for you, dickweasel.

In fairness to the no-drama crowd, leaving my bed at five in the morning to drive my sister and her husband to the airport—an excessive four hours before their flight—wasn’t exactly in the same category as discovering a cheating partner mid-flagrante. Still, there was a direct line from that moment to this.

It might not be a curse, but we could all agree it had been yet another exceedingly bad decision on my part.

Myrtle certainly did.

“August, are you listening to me?” my sister asked sharply, leaning into the open passenger window.

Morgan, her husband and their luggage had somehow left the car without me noticing. When had that happened?

“You need to get out now.” There was a subtle hint of fraying patience in her voice. I only recognized it because I’d heard it so often growing up. “I’ve convinced the officer to give us a few minutes, since the tow truck is already on its way. But he and the nice gentleman he called in to help want to do a quick search of the car for security reasons. They had an incident earlier this week, and they’re taking more precautions.”

Get out of the car? A tow truck? Was she already speaking the Italian she’d been practicing on her Duolingo app?

She couldn’t really be asking me to walk around in public like this. She might look airport-runway ready in her heather-blue cotton lounge set, with its matching boho-style head wrap to contain her tight black-and-silver curls for the flight, but I definitely did not.

My early-morning ensemble included a wrinkled sleep shirt that said Namaste-In Tonight , bleach-stained sweat shorts and floppy old slippers. And don’t get me started on the frizzy, dirty tangle on the top of my head that, at the moment, could only loosely be described as hair.

I wasn’t a morning person on a good day, and this was pre -morning on a bad one.

Not that it mattered. I could have driven here from the spa in a new outfit after ten hours of sleep, and she’d still have the edge in the looks department. She took after her dad, who’d been an Idris Elba-style head-turner in the seventies. It explained why she was born with an eternally sun-kissed tan and could have appeared in the dictionary next to “statuesque.” Meanwhile I, like my very Irish paternal relatives before me, was practically allergic to the sun and had a natural propensity for baked goods and pants with elastic waistbands.

People were always surprised to find out we were sisters.

“Any day now, August.”

She wants you to get out of the car.

I got that. The problem was, I didn’t think I could physically get my hands to unclench from the steering wheel.

“Is that legal? And if so, can’t they search with me in it?” My voice was still raspy from too little sleep and a fresh new flood of anxiety.

“Gene, will you get the bags checked without me?” she asked over her shoulder. “August Retta, I want you to exit this vehicle right now, before they think you’re on drugs and we all end up in airport prison.”

That worked. It was all in the delivery, and hers had that no-nonsense ring to it that could stop all bad-seed adolescents in their tracks. “Yes, Principal Bryant.”

I let go of the wheel, my fingers tingling back to life when I wrapped them around my travel mug full of coffee. Then I opened my door and slipper-shuffled across the pavement to join her beside a dirty concrete column. The planes rumbling through the dark sky overhead, the constant stream of cars and the acrid scent of exhaust were like bony fingers plucking at the over-tight strings of my anxiety.

So was the flashing No Parking sign glaring at me like an accusation.

“I didn’t think it would be busy at this hour.”

“It’s Houston International. It’s always busy,” she said absently. “Give me a second. I need to answer this text from Ann to tell her where Tilly’s morning meds are. I know I wrote it down.”

“Take your time.” She could text her dog sitter, and I’d stand here like the Before picture to her After, drinking my coffee and people watching while my car had her privacy invaded.

Apart from my melodramatic entrance, it seemed like a fairly routine morning. You could use it as the B-roll for any movie with air travel. Most of the early-bird fliers were rushing toward the doors, staring at their phones as they dragged their rolling suitcases behind them. Some hugged each other goodbye, while others waved flippantly at the person who’d dropped them off and driven away without worrying whether or not they’d ever see them again. One mother tried to soothe her sleepy, crying child as a gray-haired couple looked on, sniffling and waving.

I quickly looked away from that emotional moment, my attention latching onto a man who was on his knees, repacking a long black bag that carried an easily visible snowboard. That, I could appreciate. This very intelligent individual was wisely abandoning the oppressive summer heat for cooler pastures.

“Lucky you,” I muttered, tempted to follow him. But even if I wanted to, I wasn’t going anywhere. Not while I was still chained to my money pit of a house and suffering through a record-breaking case of writer’s block. Oh, and potentially a broken car now. Good times.

Stop whining and look on the bright side .

I could try. If I ignored the blistering Texas heat, the bugs, the truck nutz, the giant mall churches, the Lone Stars or bluebonnets stamped on everything and the politics, I supposed this wasn’t the worst place in the world to have a midlife breakdown.

Yeehaw.

That was you trying?

I’d give it another shot after I finished my coffee.

Morgan slid her arm through mine, either in a show of affection or to keep me from bolting back to the safety and anonymity of the CRV that was currently being cavity searched by guys with guns. They wouldn’t find anything in there but dust and pollen. Maybe the piece or six of candy that had dropped between my seats last winter, when I was trying to pass a Jeep while ripping open a bag with my teeth. I knew they were still in there somewhere, since Myrtle’s interior gave off the scent of melted butterscotch on really hot days.

“It smells like antifreeze, so it’s probably your radiator.”

I made a sound of disbelief. “You Googled that on your phone, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t have to.” She tapped her temple. “It’s all right here.”

I didn’t doubt it. Her best friend was a mechanic, her husband was obsessed with amateur car racing, and Morgan would have made it her business to know everything about something she used every day. She was all about thorough preparation. She did it for her life, her job, and the vacations she and Gene had been on nearly every summer since he’d gone into remission. Montana, Thailand, Belize…

This trip wasn’t so much a vacation as an emotional journey. One with scenery I’d dreamt of experiencing for so long that I’d actually written about it in one of my books. Lago Maggiore had a magical ring to it.

Your characters would call this trip a quest.

Yes, and I was missing it. Because at this point in my story, I couldn’t manage a quest to the grocery store, or this airport, without it becoming a cautionary tale.

I made my lips curve in the semblance of a smile for Morgan’s sake. “The good news is, I got you here in one piece. And now that a tow truck is on its way and these guys are almost finished violating Myrtle’s freedoms, we can focus on what really matters. Like, do you have everything you need for the flight?”

As soon as the question came out of my mouth, I chuckled. “What am I saying? You’re so organized you could run a small country. Travel tip: Don’t take over any small countries while you’re away.”

“I make no promises,” she said, totally deadpan.

My smile grew more genuine and I held out my arms. “Bring it in, sis. Hug me goodbye and then go and enjoy your fancy breakfast in the first-class lounge until it’s time to board. I’ve got this, and I’ll only cry on the officers and embarrass myself a little bit after you’ve gone. Seriously, I’ll be fine,” I added, slowly lowering my arms when Morgan made no move to embrace me.

Instead, her restrained expression transformed into one of frustrated anger.

“You don’t have this , and nothing is fine, August. You are not fine.” She gestured to what I was guessing was everything about me in general before pointing at Myrtle. “The unnecessary car calamity we almost had? That was not fine. And you’re crazy if you think I could leave my sister standing outside the airport dressed like a homeless person with her life in shambles so I can go have pancakes.”

That was actually…a lot for Morgan.