The Worst Friend Then You Can All Lose My Number novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Zero
Joss reads the Lisbon ratings on her TV, Carys scores a zero, and Jared rants in front of the room. Carys cancels every Tokyo hotel on her phone and leaves, and Jared texts that Joss said she would.
Joss propped her phone on the bookshelf to film us and read the trip ratings off her TV.
After every trip, the four of us rated each other as travel companions in our group chat.
It was a joke. That was what everyone said.
I planned every day of that trip. I drove the rental car for nine days. I booked the rooms on my own credit card and handled every logistics problem from the airport to the last dinner.
Joss tapped her remote.
"Okay. Final scores for Lisbon, everyone. The boys got an eight and a nine. I got a modest seven."
She smiled at the camera.
"And our worst friend of the trip, with a zero from everyone. Carys."
The numbers sat on her TV in white type.
Carys. 0. 0. 0.
Jared laughed first.
He was on the couch with his arm along the back, the same couch where I had sat next to him for three years.
"I'm sorry, but it's true," he said. "A trip with her is a punishment."
I put my wine glass down.
"Say that again."
"Her hotels are dirty and the rooms are a wreck. Her sightseeing lists put me to sleep. Every trip, I spend half of it waiting for her to fix something she broke."
Joss made a small sympathetic noise.
I looked at her screen again.
"Caleb didn't vote," I said. "His line is empty."
"A missing vote counts as zero," Joss said. "That's the rule, babe. I'm not making it up."
Caleb stood by the window with his back to us.
He did not turn around.
"I booked the Hotel Alma Azul," I said. "It had a 4.8 rating and six hundred reviews. I have the confirmation in my email."
"And we ended up by the train yards," Jared said. "With mold in the shower."
"The hotel moved us. They said our booking had a problem."
"Hotels lose bookings all the time," Joss said, lightly. "It happens, Carys."
"It only ever happens on mine."
"Because you're careless," Jared said.
Nobody in that room said he was wrong.
Joss crossed the carpet and put a tissue in my hand.
"Don't take it personally," she said, in her soft voice. "It's a game. You do the actual work, and everyone knows it. Jared's just tired."
She squeezed my shoulder.
"Have some more wine."
My hand was shaking around the tissue.
I thought about the seven trips. I thought about the nine hours I had spent on Lisbon's day four alone, so that nobody would stand in a line.
I thought about the $6,210 Jared owed me and had never once mentioned.
Then I looked at my phone, and the next trip was already sitting there.
Tokyo, in three weeks.
I had put the whole thing on my card. Six hotel nights in Shinjuku. Two nights in a ryokan outside Kyoto. The rail passes. The food tour that Joss had begged me to get.
The flights were not mine. Each of them had bought their own.
"Carys," Jared said. "Sit down. You're making it weird."
"I'm not making anything."
I opened the booking app.
"What are you doing?" Joss asked.
"Cancelling Tokyo."
Jared laughed again.
"You're not."
"Shinjuku, six nights," I said. "Cancelled."
My phone buzzed with the email.
I held it up so he could read the word.
"The ryokan," I said. "Cancelled. The rail passes. The food tour."
I read each confirmation out loud, one by one, and the room went quiet, except for the sound of Joss's phone still recording.
"You're being dramatic," Jared said. "We already have flights. We're going to land in Tokyo with nowhere to sleep."
"Then you'll land," I said. "You can plan it."
"Carys, come on." Joss put her hand on her chest. "Don't do this to Caleb. He didn't even vote."
Caleb finally turned.
He looked at me.
He did not say a word.
I realized I had been waiting for him to say one.
So I stood up.
I opened the group chat, the one called The Four, and I pressed Leave.
The TV behind Joss showed the system message in small gray letters. Carys left.
"Good," Jared said, to the room. "She'll be back by Monday. She always comes back."
I took my jacket off the hook.
"Turn that camera off," I said to Joss.
"Babe, it's just for fun."
"Turn it off."
She reached over and tapped the screen, still smiling at me.
I was in the stairwell when my phone buzzed.
It was Jared, texting me from the couch twenty feet behind me.
Joss said you'd do this. Go stay at your sister's tonight. I'll leave when I'm ready.
I read it twice on the landing.
I had not told anyone I was going to cancel Tokyo.
I had not known it myself until I stood up.
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