The living room had changed a bit since Mirnda was last in it; the furniture and the art were still the same, but the far end of the room had been rearranged to make room for a stair climber. An exercise ball and some smaller weights littered the floor near the machine. While Mirnda was looking around, Jade had made her way to the kitchen.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Jade asked, rooting around in the fridge. “I’ve got … water, guava juice, pineapple juice…” She trailed off.
“Oh, no thanks,” Mirnda said as she followed Jade into the kitchen. “I’m good.” Mirnda immediately noticed one change – a modern, fancy refrigerator had replaced the old standard model.
“Or, if you’re in the mood for a more adult beverage, we’ve got a couple of open bottles of wine, or I could probably make something fruity if you like mixed drinks.” Jade paused. “Oh, and Karan probably has some shit beer in the garage.”
Mirnda smiled. She was familiar with Karan’s beer preferences. For someone with relatively grown-up tastes, he had never grown out of his affinity for the first beer he ever drank as a frat boy.
“I’ll pass, thanks. Maybe water?”
“Water it is, then; on the rocks, neat, or from the bottle?”
“Bottled water?” It was more a question than an answer, but Jade took it as the former and handed her a bottle water that was branded. Mirnda raised an eyebrow.
“That’s my influence.” Jade nodded, smiling. “Karan has no interest in anything that’s not easy. He put me in charge of choosing what groceries to get, and he pays for them. He gets in shape, and I get to eat for free. Seems like a good deal.”
“For sure,” Mirnda responded. Jade picked a glass of some pinkish-yellow juice off the counter, and started chugging it. It was gone in a few seconds, and Jade went back for more. “Sorry, I just finished thirty minutes on the treadmill when you knocked, it makes me thirsty.”
Just thinking about thirty minutes of cardio made Mirnda thirsty. She does exercise and it’s in a great shape but she wasn’t like Jade.
As she watched Jade bend over to reach into the fridge and pour herself another glass of juice, she took a big gulp of water.
“So,” Jade asked, “how do you know Karan?”
Mirnda tried not to blush. “Um… we … met through some mutual friends who organized a group rafting trip one weekend, and just stayed friends ever since. It’s been a couple of years, though.”
“Karan went rafting?” Jade raised an eyebrow. “He’s not much of an outdoorsman. The only thing I have seen him do outside is play golf.”
Mirnda nodded knowingly. “They sold us on the trip by telling us it was a ‘Booze up and riot’ kind of trip. Start drinking Friday morning, don’t quit until Sunday afternoon.”
“Now that sounds more like Karan.”
“Yeah, but it didn’t work out that way exactly. We all met at our friends’ place, and they had rented a van big enough to fit 10 people plus gear. But by the time we got there, it was pouring rain, and the raft with the booze in it tipped over at the first rapids. It was entirely Karan’s fault.”
Jade burst out laughing. “That’s Karan, all right: 90% charming and 10% enormous klutz.”
“Oh, absolutely. He doesn’t screw up all that often, but when he does, he makes it count.”
Jade laughed again while Mirnda continued.
“We lost it all; nobody had really had a drop to drink yet. We took a group vote and powered through the whole trip Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, which was originally supposed to last all weekend. We ended up in Mirmo Place by mid-afternoon, and were all impatient to get drunk, so we decided to salvage the weekend by renting out a few rooms in a hotel and get drunk indoors. Since he flipped the boat over, we made Karan drive the van with all us rowdy drunks in it all over town. It turned out to be a very memorable weekend, at least in part because it started off so terribly.”
“That sounds like a blast.”
“It was. And Karan was a good sport, considering we spent all three days giving him endless shit about losing three hundred dollars worth of booze.”
“Well, he is a good sport.” Jade raised her glass. “To Karan.”
Mirnda tried to toast her back, but a plastic water bottle didn’t have much effect. It was almost empty anyway, as it was a hot day.
Jade noticed as well. She finished her glass, and then looked up at Mirnda. “My original plan was to make myself a mixed drink. Can I offer you one?”
“Oh, no, I shouldn’t, I mean …”
“I insist.” Jade wandered over to the wine bar opposite the refrigerator, ignoring more minor protests by Mirnda. “You ever have an Alabama Slammer?”
“Yeah, sure, um … I had a lot of them in college when I just wanted to get drunk but didn’t want to taste the alcohol. It’s got, uh … grenadine, southern comfort? Real fruity?”
“That’s a good start. Did you like it?”
“Not bad, for a fru-fru drink.”
“Ever had a frozen one?”
Mirnda thought for a minute. “I don’t think so; I didn’t know they came that way.”
“Best drink on the planet.” Mirnda watched as Jade pulled out three distinct bottles of alcohol from the wine bar – Southern Comfort, sloe gin, and vodka. She also grabbed a bottle of red syrup that Mirnda suspected was grenadine. She took those over to the blender; from the fridge, she then extracted some ice into a glass from the refrigerator dispenser while removing what appeared to be a carton of ice cream from the freezer side.
She dropped the ice into the blender and followed it with a couple of ounces worth of the vodka and the southern comfort. She followed it with a splash of the sloe gin, and a little bit of the grenadine. She then took an ice cream scoop out of the drawer and scooped out two scoops of the ice cream (which was actually orange sherbet) and plopped them into the blender. The blender cap went on, and she started it up.
“Your turn.” Mirnda had to speak loudly to be heard over the blender. “How do you know Karan?”
