Destiny

“Too bad,” said Destiny. “I do not intend to put any effort into anything like that. I do not have the same goals in life as you.”

“If you are referring to my goal of sleeping with a man in every city that Dionysus Airlines travels to, I would like you to know that this is a very difficult to achieve goal,” said Chantal. Dionysus Airlines was the carrier that they worked for, their employer.

“You are well on your way to achieving it,” said Destiny. “I know that you really enjoy this, and you love the idea of having s*x with someone you do not know and going out and partying, but this is not something that I am into. I prefer to just stay at home, I am an introvert after all. I will go out, but not to a club.”

“Listen to me,” said Chantal, “you need to start living a little. You are twenty seven years old, which means that you have at most six more years before you have to retire. You are going to have to work at an office after that, because you will be too old to be a flight attendant. So you need to start enjoying yourself now. When you have been grounded you are going to regret the fact that you did not enjoy the perks of the job as much as you should have, trust me.”

“Okay fine,” said Destiny, “Let us say that I agree to this. Let us say that I agree to going out with you. What would this entail?”

“A night of fun and merriment!” said Chantal.

“Please specify,” said Destiny, “I would like to know what exactly you mean by merriment.”

“Well,” said Chantal, “we would go to a club and dance. That is it. We would drink, dance with a few guys and just have a good time over all. This is going to be the best way to enjoy ourselves. We are going to flirt with a bunch of guys, and whichever guys we actually like we are going to bring back to our hotel room and fu*k their brains out.”

“I do not know if I like that last part,” said Destiny.

“I knew you were going to say that,” said Chantal. “Look, how about this. We can flirt with a bunch of guys, and you can at least consider the possibility that one of those guys would be someone you would want to sleep with. Just be open to it, entertain that very remote possibility. And when you have finally decided who you are going to sleep with, then you can come up to me and thank me for telling you to do that!”

“I highly doubt that I am going to be doing that,” said Destiny. “I don’t really like the idea of one night stands.”

“That may be so,” said Chantal, “but trust me when I say that stranger s*x is the best kind of s*x. You do not know what you are going to get, and when you have it you will see that I am right.”

“I guess,” said Destiny. “I am still not really open to the whole one night stand deal, but I might be willing to go out with you and dance at a club. That sounds like fun, I guess.”

“Great!” said Chantal. “We are going to have a great time. Paris is a great place to just let your hair down and have fun, I guarantee that you are going to have a great time when you are there.”

“I hope you are right,” said Destiny. “I really do, because if we do not have a good time I am going to be so pissed.”

“Why are you so worried?” asked Chantal. “Do not you trust me?”

“No,” said Destiny with a laugh, “Of course I do not, I am not crazy.”

“Well ,you should,” said Chantal. “Anyway. What is it like on the relationship front? Have you found anyone you like, anyone that you might be open to starting something with?”

“Not really,” said Destiny. “I don’t really want to start a relationship now, I think. I want to save up, and eventually when I am settled enough I might want to start thinking about it. But for now, I think I would want to stick with what I have.”

“You need someone in your life,” said Chantal. “You need someone that you can spend time with, someone that you can share things with. I mean, I get that you are independent and that you do not need anyone, but God damn don’t you ever feel like you are going to go crazy if you don’t get some di*k!”

“I do feel a little… turned on sometimes,” said Destiny. “But I do not want to just have flings. I had a boyfriend once, it did not work out.”

“That was just one relationship,” said Chantal. “You can’t base all of your future on a single relationship. You need to open yourself up more, try new things.”

“So you keep saying,” said Destiny with a smirk. “What is next? Get out of my comfort zone?”

“It is not my fault that you do not listen to me!” said Chantal. “Anyway, how is your dad doing?”

“He is doing great,” said Destiny. “I might fly out to meet him, stay with him for a month. Some time during the summer, I am guessing. He will be free a lot of the time because of summer holidays. Perks of being a school teacher. I do think that it makes up for the fact that he makes so little money, because he has so much free time to do more things with his life.”

“That is a perk of this job as well, don’t you think?” asked Chantal.

“Yeah,” said Destiny. “I do think that I have a great job, and I am really grateful that I have it. My dad is really lonely, though.”

“He needs to get out there too,” said Chantal. “You and him are just the same, you wallow in the past.”

“Well,” said Destiny, “to be fair to him, my mother was the love of his life. He lost someone that he thought he would never be able to replace, you can’t really blame him for not wanting to move on.”

“He lost her fifteen years ago,” said Chantal. “If he does not move on now, he is going to end up miserable for the rest of his life. Look, the past is the past. It is over, it is gone. You can either live in the past, which means that you will never be happy, you will only be sad because you want something that can never come back, or you can move on and try to enjoy new things, try to find things to love again. If your dad does not do this he might never be able to find joy in life again, and that is something that really scares me. I do not want him to go through that, you know, I do not want him to go through the pain of living life in such misery.”

“I understand what you mean,” said Destiny. “I keep telling him that he needs to move on. A decade and a half is a long time, and I am sure that he needs someone in his life, someone that will help him and show him love. I can’t live with him. If I could I would but I simply can’t, and that means that he is alone most of the time. He needs someone to be with him all of the time, so that he has something to look forward to when he wakes up in the morning.”