My Perfect Mistake

My head was pounding still from the night I had just endured, Kiley seemed to be fine although she had probably had more than I last night.

“Lina, you alright?” Kiley asked as I stumbled to my car.

“Yeah, hangover symptoms coming back.” I knew what they were, I had experienced them many times before and they were honestly just making my day so much worse. I took in a deep breath of air and decided I better be the passenger for the ride over to the movie theater.

Kiley drove like a complete dare devil and I’m sure scared everyone around her as she drove, I wou7ld never understand how she even obtained her license with the ridiculous way she drove everywhere. She slammed the brakes to a stop in one of the handicap parking spots at the front and got out. “Ki, you can’t park here.” I mumbled as I got out and walked to the door, it was pointless to even try and argue with her.

“Leo! It’s Kiley, get your Italian ass out here.” She yelled as soon as she opened the door. She caused all the other employees to give her a blank stare along with all the customers scattered around the lobby.

“Kiley!?” Leo stuttered out in embarrassment as he stumbled out from behind the counter. He cautiously gave her a hug and chatted quietly with her a few feet away from me.

“Linda, Kiley left her jacket in theater 12, can I take her to get it?” His voice was lowered as if he was afraid of Linda. Sure enough, Linda stood up from her swivel chair behind the snack bar and nodded with a gruff tone, her small blue badge happened to read ‘Manager’.

The three of us soon rounded the corner towards all the theaters and headed down towards the end of the hall, Leo stopped in front of a door that read, Authorized Personnel Only .

“Kiley, you owe me so much. I could lose my job over this.” Leo was stuttering incredibly bad, I was beginning to think if he stuttered under pressure or if it was his normal speech.

My body suddenly got an odd feeling as we all stepped into the security room, as though my body was trying to tell me something, as if it didn’t want me to know who this person was.
“Yo, Lina come here.” Kiley yelled, snapping me back into reality.

I crawled my way over to one of the open black leather chairs and planted myself down into it. I was facing four big monitors all displaying different parts of the theater. “Where are the security guys?” Kiley asked with curiosity.

“They’re in the main security room; this is just the back-up and storage for security footage. You wanted to see last night’s movie attendants’ right?” Leo’s voice held less of a stutter and more of an Italian accent now, maybe my assumptions had been right after all and the stutter was just from nervousness.

“We’re looking for something that would tell us everyone who bought a ticket for the 4:35 showing of Hit and Run.” Kiley was intently glaring at the screen with wide eyes, she was searching the cameras as though she was a detective scoping out a criminal.

“Well, the cameras are connected to the computers so we may be able to see all the selected footage of those who bought tickets for Hit and Run.” Leo was mumbling as he searched through some files, his cursor landed over a file that read Ftg.Hit&Run
“Smart security system you guys got going here.” Kiley laughed a little and continued to intently watch the monitor screens.

“Yeah, Linda talked the owners into updating it a few months ago, so far it seems to be paying for itself. We already caught several employees who were shelling out free tickets to their friends.”

“Must make you feel a little uneasy, huh Leo?” Kiley didn’t think about her questions before she asked them and it wasn’t too hard to see the uneasy feeling that washed over Leo’s face as he registered his actions carefully.

“Kiley, seriously?” I asked while rolling my eyes.

“It was an honest question.”

“You just thrive off of tormenting others, don’t you?”

“Basically.” Kiley giggled and gave Leo a reassuring pat on the back.

“Here, these are still frames of everyone who bought tickets to the 4:35 showing for Hit and Run. Enjoy.” Leo sighed deeply and handed the mouse over to Kiley who quickly enlarged the first photo.

There were several photos in the file and at first we sat there studying every single one dubiously and realized we were taking an awfully long time. I’m sure Leo’s manager was going to get extremely curious soon and that wasn’t going to be good for Leo.

“Kiley, we need to hurry this up. Leo’s manager may get quite curious if she realizes how long we’re taking to find a jacket.” My voice was back to its normal tone and my body didn’t feel like it had a hangover anymore aside from a feint headache that I still possessed.

“Alright fine.” Kiley gave an exasperated sigh and started to click through the photos a little bit faster than before.

So far, we weren’t having any luck. Neither Kiley, nor I recognized any of these faces and it was beginning to make me feel like this search was hopeless, part of me wondered why finding my one night stand was even important anymore. I really didn’t care anymore, all I wanted to do was sleep off the headache I still had and get ready for the Econ test.

Right as I was about to tell Kiley to just give up I noticed out of the corner of my eye a very familiar jacket. “Stop!” I yelled at Kiley and she immediately took her hand off the mouse.
“That’s him, that has to be him. That’s the jacket!” Kiley almost screamed in excitement.
“Oh my gosh Kiley, you know who that is don’t you?”

Kiley paused for a second and looked more in depth at his face. Her mouth slowly began to fall open.

“That’s your ex-boyfriend, the one you swore that you were in love with. Lina! Oh my gosh, it’s Mycin!” Kiley nearly screamed at my frozen body. I couldn’t move, seeing his face brought up too many memories, too many.

“Mycin..” My mouth whispered his name with such delicacy that I felt it would fall and shatter to a million pieces once it rolled off my tongue. I hadn’t seen Mycin in months, months that had felt like years. He was someone I cared about so much that even to this day my heart still ached when I thought about him. I had finally gotten over him about 7 months after we broke up, it had felt like too long and I had to admit to myself that I had never really gotten fully over him. But, here he was back in my life.

“Lina, we need to go find him. You need to talk to him, obviously he wouldn’t of even talked to you unless he felt he needed to.”

“Kiley, he cheated on me.”

“Lina, I know. I was there, and I’m sorry but, don’t you feel that you should talk to him. I mean I know it’s just a one night stand but, he’s your ex and not some random guy you met at a party.

“Kiley, he moved houses a few months after we broke up, and I don’t know where he lives or works. He also does college connections now so he only has one class at the high school.”

“Facebook tells you allot, doesn’t it Lina?” Kiley asked with a smartass smirk on her face.”

“Well I see his status updates on my wall which gives me every right to read them so, shut up.”

I just rolled my eyes at her and stood up.

“So what’s the plan?” Kiley asked curiously.

“There isn’t one. We’re just going to drop it seeing as how I don’t care about him anymore ( Lie ) and there isn’t a reason to talk to him.” I stormed out of the security office and back towards the lobby in frustration.

It had taken me too long to get over Mycin, so I was not about to give into him again. He cheated on me which obviously means that he didn’t care and I had made the stupid mistake of sleeping with him and now that I did, he got exactly what he wanted.

“Lina, wait up!” Kiley yelled as her feet thudded down the hallway after her.

“I told you, it was just a one night stand. It didn’t mean anything to either of us.” I said quietly when she got into earshot of my voice.

“Lina, are you so damn dense that you’re not remembering what he gave you this morning?! He gave you a note, a note that asked you to call him and not only that but, it also told you why he had to leave this morning. He WANTS to talk to you and I’ll be damned if I am going to let you wither away at yourself for not talking to him. You gave him everything and he threw it away, so you moped around for months thinking it was your fault. You still love him and last night was way more than just a one night stand.” Kiley took a deep breath and looked at me, waiting for my answer.

“Fine but, there’s one little problem with this whole talking to him thing Kiley.”
“And that is?” She pressed.

“We don’t have a way TO talk to him!” I threw my arms in the air and started back towards the doors of the movie theater.

“Pfft, you may not but, I do.” Kiley whipped out her cell phone faster than a police officer can whip out his baton and started scrolling through her contacts.

“Ki.. Ki what are you doing?” I asked with horror stricken in my features.

“If we can’t get to Mycin directly, then we go to the next best thing.” Kiley’s mouth began to form into a devilish smirk as she began dialing.

“What’s that Ki?” I asked with a little hesitation.

“Mycin’s best friend.”