“Oh,” I spoke softly. “Those little bottles of booze are called airplane bottles or shots because I think you usually buy them at an airport, or they are what you can actually take on an airplane.”

Krista blushed some more.

“I’ve never been on an airplane,” Krista answered bashfully.

My eyes lit up.

“Neither have I,” I blurted out.

“Did we just become best friends,” Krista blurted back.

I jokingly just laughed and nodded on the outside, but on the inside, all I could think was, yes, yes we did.

We eventually got to Krista’s story after we heard a few ladies (myself included) retell the fucked-up tales of woe we justifiably let dominate our lives.

That familiar drunken sweat returned to my palms when Krista stood up to dive into her story.

“Hi, my name is Krista Hansen, I’m from Springfield, Missouri, but I only just moved there a few weeks ago from Wichita, Kansas. It has been really, really good for me to hear all of your stories about going through the same thing I went through six years ago. There are not groups like this anywhere in Kansas as far as I know, so I’m so glad I found y’all here. I don’t know if you saw it in the news. It was a bit of a story over in Kansas City, but don’t how far it made it, but my son, Christian Hansen was murdered six years ago and they never found the killer. Never really found a suspect, other than me, I guess. At least that’s all they could come up with, but I was cleared, and it all went away.”

I felt my heart swoon for this woman. She was so much like me.