Ray Everett could have had a better morning. He overslept, burned his eyes with shampoo, ripped a shoelace, and stained his lucky blue button polo shirt with strawberry and banana yogurt. All this before 7:15. Too bad because he always needs whatever luck he can squeeze out of that shirt.
Things like these are always happening to Ray. Luckily, there hasn’t been anything life-shattering or dire consequences when these unpredictable things happen to him. It’s not like he was born to lose, like in the Social Distortion song lyrics, but he was born with unnaturally bad luck.
Because of this unfortunate luck, his friends and girlfriend, Claudia, started calling him Everyday Everett. They see it often. Him being a jinx, that is. They gave him a fitting name and enjoyed saying it with how nicely it rolls off the tongue.
It’s now almost 8 am. Ray sighs and looks at the red shirt he had to change into after seeing a text from Claudia reminding him to wear his blue shirt today. He needs to get going. But today, he’s not frantically rushing to work on time; instead, he’s heading to Claudia’s place. They’re both off work today.
He’s about five minutes from Claudia’s when traffic gets stopped at a red traffic light. He glances down at his phone to check for any missed text messages from his girlfriend. Then he looks up and sees in his rearview mirror the reflection of someone looking mad and sprinting up the sidewalk toward his car. He locks the car doors just in case. Better to be safe with his bandwidth of lousy luck.
He turns up the music, clinches the steering wheel, and looks forward. Hoping that whoever it is will flash by. Tap. Tap. Tap. His wish didn’t work. “Why me,” he curses his luck.
Ray turns to his right and sees someone peering through the passenger side window into the car and at him directly. Oh! He knows them. He unlocks the car door for the person and watches them slide into the back seat. “Just drive,” the person commands.
“Why were you running like that?” Ray wonders. “I thought you were some crazy person about to harass me.”
“Well, with your luck, Everyday Everett, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Claudia teases him, “I was rushing to get to you. I couldn’t take this wait any longer…to marry you. How long until we get to Las Vegas?”
“According to Maps, we’ll arrive in a precise 6 hours and 43 minutes.”
“Well, it would be five minutes later if I hadn’t run to you like that. That was absolutely worth the physical effort,” Claudia points out.
Ray starts and quickly stops humming Run to You by Bryan Adams. “What do you want to listen to?” he asks.
Claudia suggests Ball & Chain by Social Distortion, not by any means a wedding song but by their favorite band. Ray nods his head and smiles all the way to Nevada.
<END>
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