AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I expected you to be burning the midnight oil on your first day,” asserted Serena. Her magnificent titian tresses flamed copper and auburn in the September sun cascading through the floor-to-ceiling window behind her. She looked like a supermodel.
There was no reply from Valentina. She marched directly to her room and slammed that door, too.
“I guess now wouldn’t be a good time to tell her I drank the whole bottle of champagne you brought her,” Serena whispered conspiratorially, leaning her thin, willowy torso toward her friend.
Beautiful, elegant Alexis giggled.
Serena was the one you turned to when you wanted to party—when you wanted to really rip it up and forget your own name. When you wanted to paint the town red.
“I guess she had a bad day,” deduced Serena.
“I think that would be a gross understatement,” whispered Alexis. The blonde doctor stood up to clean up the broken glass.
Meanwhile, Serena shamelessly chugged the last drop of her drink. She tipped the empty bottle over to catch a few last drops in her glass; the tall, slender Irish lass had been known to have a wee nip or two—or twenty—from time to time when the occasion called for it. They had expected to be celebrating Valentina’s first day at work tonight, not bemoaning the sorry state of manhood in this century. She was ready for a night of fun.
“When do you think she’ll come out?” whispered Alexis, wrapping the shards of glass carefully in a brown paper bag for safety.
“Soon enough,” answered Serena. “She won’t get enough pity in there alone.”
Serena Richardson and Valentina Sanderson had been roommates since their freshman year at the University of Chicago. During that first year of college, they had lived together in the dorms, but for their sophomore year, Valentina’s parents had purchased her an apartment. Upon obtaining her doctoral degree in architecture from MIT, they had gifted her this upscale condo near the landmark Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago. She and Serena had always been best friends and roommates, except when Valentina had moved to Massachusetts for two years to finish grad school. Alexis Thomas was two years older than Serena and Valentina and had also graduated from the University of Chicago, for both her undergraduate degree and her MD. Now the three were inseparable.
“Men suck!” Serena shouted at the top of her lungs.
Alexis couldn’t stifle her laughter.
She knocked on Valentina’s bedroom door with concern. “Come out, Val. We want to hear about your day.”
“Men are assholes!” yelled Serena again.
Still nothing.
“They’re idiots!” the fiery vixen continued her rampage against the male gender. “All of them!”
“Serena…Shush!” Valentina said through the wall.
“Black-hearted ass-wipes!”
“Serena! The neighbors are going to report you again,” said Valentina, finally emerging from her brief, self-imposed exile.
“Was it a horribly bad day, Val?” asked Alexis sympathetically.
“Worse than horrible,” Valentina pouted.
She finally let Alexis give her a motherly hug.
“What could be that bad?” asked Serena. “You’re making six figures at your dream job at the company you have had your eye on since high school. It’s the top architecture firm in the city, and you’ll probably be their first female partner.”
“Somebody made you mad today, Val?” Alexis empathized.
“One word,” huffed Valentina. “Ethan Daniels!”
“That’s two words,” ribbed Serena.
“I have way more than two words to describe that jerk.” Valentina worked herself into a dither again. “They’re all four letters, and a lot of them start with the letter F.”
“There is only one four-letter word that starts with the letter F,” Serena deliberately provoked her in a sisterly manner. “Unless you count ‘fart’ as a swear word.”
“You know what I mean!” squealed Valentina.
