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to go on the midnight hike
with me. Her mother was the one who gave us the sex talk, for
crying out loud, when I was too embarrassed to ask my own mother
about it. She’s like my sister. I’ve attended every graduation or
awards ceremony she’s ever had. We’ve been on countless double
dates. I held her hair when she was puking her guts out the first
time she’d gotten really drunk. We still have annual shopping
trips, inside jokes, and special days with historical significance
known only to us.
    I remember how she cried when I got accepted
to the doctoral program at BU, and how she tried to put on a brave
face when she was helping me get packed up to leave. It was good
she had just gotten the drug sales rep job at Preston-Ward I’d
thought; it would keep her busy and her mind off my move to the
East Coast. When I’d accepted my job at Preston-Ward, she was the
first person I had called to share the news.
    Damn it , I think to myself, how could I
have guessed so poorly? And how had Kade managed to figure it out
so effortlessly? Apparently my two friends
are enigmas and I am just figuring it out now. Note to self:
Melanie isn’t as into tall, blonde, surfer-looking guys as I
remember, and Kade can read minds. Okay, well maybe Kade can’t read
minds. I’ve always known he is the king of observation and has a
keen intuition. Today it had just paid off. Plus he has that guy
thing working for him; since guys are ruled by their stupid
hormones, the laws of natural attraction just make more sense to
them.
    Glancing over at him perched on a stool by
the bar, I reminisce about us. I’d met Kade in undergrad at the
University of California, San Diego. Both of us were science
majors, so naturally we ended up in a lot of the same classes.
During our first quarter of chemistry, we were assigned as lab
partners. His quiet, efficient nature went perfectly with my OCD,
over-achieving, likes-to-work-alone personality. So naturally, when
we ended up in the same classes together, I gravitated toward him
rather than taking a chance on a new lab partner who might prove to
be unreliable or overly chatty. This unspoken partnership lasted
for four years, and somewhere along the line it turned into an
actual friendship. I think it was Melanie who first invited Kade to
go out with us one Friday night. Since that day, he’s always been
part of our group, mostly as a partner in crime, but occasionally
he’s had to play bouncer or designated driver. Despite our
shenanigans Kade has always managed to keep Melanie and I from
getting into any real trouble. I don’t know what we’d do without
the guy.
    Kade’s family is from Boston and I knew he
loved that area, so when I was looking at applying to BU, I
suggested he do likewise. I knew we weren’t looking at the same
program, since he wanted to pursue a PhD in chemistry, but
selfishly I didn’t want to go that far away by myself. I honestly
don’t know how much my request influenced his decision, but that
fall we both ended up in Boston at BU. It was nice having a friend
around, but it wasn’t the same as it had been during undergrad.
Neither of us had much free time anymore, and as we both became
busy with our individual programs, we didn’t see each other much.
By the end of our second year, we were more like acquaintances than
friends.
    After I’d accepted the job at Preston-Ward,
I hadn’t even contacted him to let him know I was leaving Boston.
Such a sad testament to how far apart we’d fallen over the years.
What I didn’t know at the time was he had also taken a job at
Preston-Ward. Apparently we started around the same time but it was
three months before I ran into him. After the initial shock of
bouncing off his chest one day as I rounded a corner too quickly
faded, I hugged him fiercely and blubbered on about how it was so
good to see him and I couldn’t believe how much I’d missed him and
how bad a friend I had been. In his usual calm, controlled manner,
he found me a