“So, I moved up here about a year ago with a guy. He got a job out at Intel’s huge campus; I found a gig at a gym here as a trainer. But it turns out the guy I moved here with was a prick, just wanted me for arm candy, but didn’t actually think of me as relationship material. Back at my hometown I have many friends so it was easy to change place and all but here, the only guy you know is your guy, you’re kind of stuck with him. I didn’t realize he was a sack of shit until I move here. I don’t know why I didn’t notice before we moved, but I guess sometimes a big cock and a fat wallet make you overlook more important details.”
The blender came to a halt, and Jade poured the concoction into two glasses. She took a small jar of maraschino cherries out of the fridge and dropped one in each glass. She handed one to Mirnda.
“Cheers!” This time, the resulting clink was much more satisfying. Both women took a drink – Mirnda a small sip, Jade a larger one.
Mirnda’s eyes lit up. “Wow, this is delicious!” Her second taste was much larger than her first.
“Told you. Don’t drink it too fast, though, you don’t want brain freeze.” Jade smiled. She sat down at a barstool next to the kitchen counter, and Mirnda took the adjacent one. “I tended bar right off the beach for a couple of years. The beach bunnies loved the frozen tropical drinks, and the guys were only too happy to buy them. A bartender learns pretty quickly how to do it right, because the better the drink, the better the tips.”
As Mirnda decided she liked this woman, she took another drink. “Somehow, I’m guessing you didn’t have too much trouble in the tip department.”
“No problem with the guys. But for the women, the quality of the drink mattered. If they got their buzz on without tasting the booze, everybody wins, including the bartender.”
Mirnda nodded. “I was a waitress in college. Keeping the bartender happy made my job easier. More booze in the drinks equals more tips for me. More tips for me equals more tips for the bartender.” She took another drink.
“So, where’d you go?” Jade asked.
Mirnda looked puzzled.
“To college?”
“Oh. Mergo.”
“That place is also hometown?”
“Kind a yes… But I lived this city more than city.”
“So, why’d you leave hometown? Mergo City is good, isn’t it?”
“That was the problem. I didn’t want to be at home. I wanted to live on my own. This City is 45 minutes away, so it was close enough for emergencies. Plus, this city has a pharmacy program, which I was interested in at the time.”
“You’re a pharmacist?” Jade asked. She had finished her beverage and was putting together another round, filling up the blender as she spoke.
“Oh, gosh, no. I realized I hated it during undergrad, and it was far too many years worth of school for me at the time. I ended up with an Technical Engineer degree, which helped me in Foxes Company.”
“Oh that is pretty good job… You must be rich lady?”
“Hm… Yes, I might be top 10% in the city but not that much. Anyways, You said that you’re an athletic trainer?” Mirnda asked.
“Yup; I’m at the gym four days a week, and I bartend three nights a week at a sports bar. The money’s not great, but it pays the bills, and I don’t hate my job, which is always nice. I also get a little side money from my mom’s online jewelry shop. She makes this weird, quirky, jewelry which has some niche market somewhere. But she knows nothing about computers, so I run the website, which basically consists of posting new pictures every month, and I get 10% of sales which come through the website; works out to a couple hundred extra bucks a month for about 2 or 3 hours of work. I’ve told her she should do it herself, but she insists she knows nothing about computers. I think she likes having it as an excuse to talk to me a couple of times a month.”
“Oh, wow. You’re a website designer?”
“Hardly. I took, like, three classes in college when I thought I wanted to do something amazing with my life like becoming what currently richest men are, but with tits. Learned enough to get by, but also enough to know I had no natural knack for it, or an important enough reason to get good at it. But I picked up my mom’s side-business during a class project. Four years later, I’m still doing it, and making a little money. If I ever wanted to run a real website, I’d have to spend a lot of time learning the ropes prior to working on it. But the foundation is there, just in case.”
“Interesting. I wouldn’t have pegged you for the type.”
“Yeah, I’m not the typical webmaster.”
“I’ll say.” Mirnda took another drink. “So how did you meet Karan?”
“You know how a gym’s most crowded time of the year is the first couple of weeks of January, when everyone makes resolutions to get in shape but are gone by February 1? Karan was one of those. But we got along well, and he hung around long enough for us to become roommates when that asshole and I split up. Karan realized I could contribute some money, keep the place cleaner, and the food in the fridge healthier. I’ve managed to convince him to stick with the gym routine, though. How long has it been since you saw Karan?”
“Hmmm. Four years, maybe five?”
“I think you’ll be surprised. He’s lost about twenty KG and is in much better shape.”
Mirnda nodded approvingly. “Well done.”
“Me nagging him about diet and exercise was great when I was his trainer. Then it worked fine as roommates, because I had even more say over his diet. Then we tried dating, and that didn’t work so well.”
Mirnda swallowed hard. “Dating? I thought you said you were just roommates.”
Jade didn’t miss the significance of her pause. “We are! We tried dating, and my nagging drove him crazy, I didn’t like his snoring or his controlling habits. So we went back to being roommates, and everything was fine again.”
