When no such phantom item appears, I start to panic that this really is going to be like kindergarten all over again, except it’s far less acceptable to cover your own legs in urine at the age of thirty-one.
Just then, the door to the men’s restroom at the far end of the hall opens, and a guy steps out. He doesn’t meet any of our eyes as he passes us, but I can sense the casual aura of no-bathroom-wait-time rolling off him in waves.
I glance to the women in front of me again, not having shifted even an inch, and I come to a conclusion I’m not exactly proud of—I have to do it. I have no other option. I need to cross into enemy territory and lift my leg to piss—at least figuratively. Literally speaking, I’m really hoping there’s a stall.
I scoot around the women as inconspicuously as I can and beat feet toward the not-busy-at-all door the lone man left behind. It opens silently, and I peek my head in with trepidation.
“Hello?” I venture into the vastly undercrowded space.
No one answers, so I take one last deep breath of fresh air from the hallway and dip inside.
The stall door is cracked open in vacancy, and I fall on it like a vulture on roadkill. I’m so close to bursting, I’m shocked I managed to get this far without pissing on my shoes.
Still, even on the verge of my bladder exploding, I take the time to survey the environment. Men’s restrooms are seriously disgusting. I do not know how they live like this. I do not know how I will live like this one day, assuming I actually find someone to share my life. But that’s another story for a different day.
Today’s story involves peeing. Right effing now.
With bumbling, urgent hands, I grab some toilet paper and wipe furiously at the disgusting seat, toss the soiled paper in the toilet, grab some more and wipe at every physical surface there’s even a chance I might come into contact with. All while dancing around on my tiptoes.
Then I kick my foot up into the air and flush, just to rid the area of the first layer of grime, and then pull some more toilet paper from the roll to line the surface of the toilet seat.
Finally ready to relieve myself, I turn around and squat, hovering with as much adeptness as a woman on the brink of passing out from bladder trauma can manage.
By God, that feels good.
Like, I know orgasms are great, but holy moly, this kind of relief comes pretty damn close to ecstasy.
On and on, I keep going until the pressure to keep still makes my legs start to shake.
Almost, almost, almost, I coach myself.
My head falls back as I reach the bottom of the barrel, and a heavy sigh escapes my lungs.
“Oh, thank God,” I mutter quietly to myself. “Thank God I—
The door bangs open and into the wall, and then a male voice mutters, “Shit,” under his breath.
My muscles tense briefly, shocked by the intrusion, but thankfully, it’s only a millisecond after that that I kick myself into action. Chaotic and frantic, I stand up from the toilet, pull my panties up and my skirt back down around my hips and turn to kick my foot up onto the toilet flusher again.
Though, my tight pencil skirt makes the maneuver difficult, and because of my hurry, I fall gracelessly into the wall of the stall with a loud bang before I can stop myself.
So much for staying incognito…
“You all right in there, dude?” the guy asks with a chuckle from the other side of the stall door, his shoes visibly standing near the sink. “Need me to give you some space? Come back in a little while?”
I wince, wondering if he’ll still be as cheerfully flexible once he hears the feminine pitch of my voice.
Without an option to avoid interaction altogether and wanting to rip the embarrassment of the situation off like a Band-Aid, I unlock the door to the stall and step outside with a smile.
“Sorry,” I say with a laugh, slowly bringing my eyes up from the floor. “The ladies’ room was packed to the gills, and I—”
“Lauren?”
I’m startled, and the slow journey of my gaze from the floor to the stranger jolts into a sprint and lands in the familiar blue eyes of an unexpected finish line.
Of all the freaking people to find here…
“Garrett?” His name pops from my lips without a second thought.
“What are you doing here…” he asks, looking around at the white subway-tiled walls and urinals to make sure he came into the room he thought he did. “…in the men’s restroom?”
He smiles so big, I can’t help but return the expression. In fact, it’s kind of crazy how quickly he’s disarmed me from what should be an unbelievably unsettling situation.
“Desperation,” I say simply, figuring it’s probably best if I don’t ramble into all of the details of how close I came to peeing myself with one of my father’s firemen. “Women always take forever in the bathroom, and the line was all backed up.” I know I just threw myself and my fellow ladies under the bus, but what can I say? We do have a tendency to take forever in bathrooms. Though, in our defense, our anatomy can’t compare to whipping out a dick and letting it rip in a urinal.
“So, you decided to take the road untraveled,” he asserts.
I nod.
“A woman who takes matters into her own hands,” he says admirably. “I like it.”
“Oh yeah,” I say with a laugh, heading for the sink to wash my hands. “They’re preparing my Medal of Bladder Freedom now as we speak.”
He smirks at that. “Sometimes simple ingenuity is the best.”
I lather my hands with soap and glance at him in the mirror. For some reason, instead of moving on to doing his business, he’s taken a position to my side against the wall, with his arms crossed against his chest.
I try not to let it bother me that he’s watching me so intently, but I can’t deny there’s an unexpected heat creeping up the back of my neck.
“Don’t let me stop you from…” I jerk my head toward the stall. “You know.”
He laughs. “I just came to wash my hands before I eat, actually.”
“I think hand sanitizer might have been a better bet than chancing this place. Is it just me, or do you guys prefer your restrooms to resemble nuclear waste sites?”
“Oh, come on,” he says with a chuckle. “It’s not that bad, is it?”
I nod, and he shrugs. “We’re just animals, I guess.”
“Makes sense.”
I leave the faucet running and step to the side to grab a couple paper towels, jerking my chin at the space I’ve vacated. “It’s all yours.”
I watch closely—probably more closely than is remotely necessary—as he takes his place at the sink and pumps the foaming soap into the palm of his hand. He lathers to protocol—we’re talking a full twenty seconds of finger-twining, palm-scrubbing cleanliness—and then rinses in the water before nodding to me in a Would you mind? gesture.
“Oh,” I mumble, fumbling behind me to grab a couple paper towels and handing them over to him. He dries the water from his hands and then uses the bunched-up towels to turn off the tap without having to touch it again.
The whole scene is the equivalent of a gorgeous sunset to my physician eyes.
“Wow,” I marvel. “That was remarkably germ conscious.”