Distortion

Doreen hadn’t been planning much for her birthday.

Low-key was how she liked things, and she would have gladly spent a quiet evening at home were it not for her parents’ insistence that they go out to dinner.

They worried about her.  The burden of being an only child, was made greater by the fact that she was also ‘willfully single’ as her mother referred to it.  No matter how many times she told them that she was perfectly happy and didn’t need, or particularly want, a partner, they always fretted and insisted that isolation was bad for a person.

“Have you met other people?”  Doreen joked to her father, who always responded to her sarcasm with a dutiful chuckle.

Walking up to the front window of the restaurant, she could see them already seated with glasses of wine, animatedly discussing something that was almost certainly her.

“Oh for fuck’s sake.”

She’d arrived almost twenty minutes early and they’d still beaten her there.  Her folks were probably going over the current iteration of their game plan for getting her life back on track.

Doreen sighed, wishing she’d popped a weed gummy before leaving, then slowly reached for the door handle.