Assisi & Brannan #12: Best Friends

I get more texts from my roommate Katherine than anyone else. Even Sam.  She was my dorm roommate in freshman year and we’ve been friends since.

That year she invited me to her home for Thanksgiving. Katherine was a trust fund child who grew up in Atherton.  The driveway to the house was so long that we could not see the house from the gate.  For much of the holiday I could walk in the enormous house undisturbed.  They had valet parking when the guests arrived for dinner.

Men were drawn to Katherine as much for her sweetness as her wealth.  When we moved from the dorm into an apartment, we always dressed before we came out of the bathroom in case there were strange men walking around.  None of us were shy, just wary.

When she heard I got the job at BAR she offered to share her apartment in San Carlos Hills with me.  The rent was cheaper than what I could get on the market.

And we are best friends.

After I told Sam to shut up, I spent more time with Katherine who tried to set me up with her friends. Yesterday morning after a late night we sat looking out at the view of the peninsula. Two planes came in low toward San Francisco airport.

“Why don’t you go out with him?” she asked me.  “He obviously likes you and I think you’d like him.  You just don’t know it.

I stared at her wondering how she could give me advice on romance when she changes boyfriends as frequently as the wallpaper on her phone which she was tapping impatiently on.

“Well how do you know that I like him?”

“It’s all the stuff you tell me, you complain about him a lot.  It’s like you’re obsessed with him.”

“I’m not obsessed with him.”

She gave me a look that said I was bullshitting.

“OK even if I liked him, he’s my boss.  It’s not a good idea to date your boss.”

“Why wouldn’t you date your boss?  That’s the best way to find out what he’s really about.”

“And if you break up?”

“You worry too much,” she dismissed me.

She got up and went to the counter where we threw our mail.

“Oh this came for you.”

It was a plain envelope. I opened it and found a copy of my first article I published in BAR.

A chill shot through me.

Nothing was written on the article but I knew who sent it.

© Jocelyn Uma 2014. All Rights Reserved.