1
Raina loved to give her opinion on everything from manners to fashion to the proper way to hang a new roll of toilet paper. She wrote a weekly advice column in the local paper which allowed her to do just that. Most weeks her column was easy to write because the letters she received were filled with trivial matters. In fact, a lot of her readers simply wanted her to decide who should win an argument, and taking sides when you know neither party personally is fairly easy to do.
Where Raina struggled was in answering letters concerning matters of the heart. She was a hopeless romantic. It may have been the fact that she was born on Valentine’s Day, or that her parents still held hands after more than thirty years of marriage, but whatever the reason, she desperately wanted “happily ever after” for everyone. Letters about how to move on after a break-up were particularly gut-wrenching for her, but Raina did her best to keep everything light. This must have been what her readers wanted because the same column in her college paper had earned her quite a following. Only a few people who worked at the paper knew who actually wrote the column so it was a quiet sort of fame. She kept her anonymity by writing under the different, though not terribly inspired, name of Jane Smith. She had originally hoped to write as Harriet Smith, which she pitched to the editor as clever since everyone knew that Harriet Smith was always on the receiving end of advice from Jane Austen’s Emma. However, the paper’s editor then explained that Harriet was a poor choice because no one would write to someone who sounded old enough to be a grandmother. Raina tried to point out that someone older and wiser was exactly the sort of person who should be giving advice. To which he explained that Harriet was “still a stupid name” and Raina settled for Jane Smith. Whether or not the editor was right soon mattered very little as her fan base grew. It was enough to allow her to move on to a real paper, one that paid real money, upon graduation. Granted, The Oakville Herald was hardly The New York Times and she had to work part time as a proofreader to make ends meet, but the column was fun and Raina really had no complaints on the job front. At least, no serious complaints.
“Nadine snapped at me again today.” Raina sighed as soon as she walked in the door. Her roommate, Vicki, was lying on the couch with a small stack of bridal magazines on her chest. She shifted the stack to the coffee table and sat up to look at Raina as she came in.
“Of course she did. You really shouldn’t be pestering her at work.” She said playfully.
“Oh stop it.” Raina laughed and continued with mock exasperation. “I’m trying to share my day with you and you don’t even care how difficult my life is. You need to practice pretending to care about these sorts of things for when you’re married. What are you going to do when Dan tries to tell you about his day?”
“Maybe I won’t have to pretend to care when it’s his day. But seriously, was it something you found or missed this time?”
“Something I found. And she was more ridiculous about it than usual.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“She used the possessive your instead of you’re, like ‘you are,’ and when I pointed it out she tried to convince me that although she did make a mistake, that wasn’t it.”
“What?”
“Exactly. She said it was the correct your, it just wasn’t how she meant to use it. Then she actually rewrote that whole sentence and the one before it to make the your she used fit in the article.”
“So… she made more work for herself rather than admit she made a mistake? What is her problem with you anyway?”
“Beats me. As far as I can tell she’s just upset because she used to proof her own articles and the new editor decided it was better to have two sets of eyes looking over each piece. So now she takes it out on me. Whatever. I’m going to put my stuff away.”
Vicki nodded and picked up the top magazine again. Raina took her bag into their bedroom and dropped it on top of her dresser. That was as away as it could get. The room was pretty cramped with their two beds and two dressers and a fair amount of clothes and shoes spilling out of the closet.
They probably could have used a place with more space, but when they moved here from the dorm in May, Vicki had only intended to stay for three months. She had been newly engaged to Dan, a great guy whose only major flaw was a serious overuse of the word “trippin.’” When they called Vicki’s home church to set a date, there had just been a cancellation in August so they grabbed the date and set to work planning a modest ceremony. The first order of business had been to invite both sets of parents out to dinner to make the formal introductions. Their mothers got along unfortunately well and planned a lunch on their own the following day. They continued planning over lunch and now Vicki was getting married in February and was going to thank both of them when she saw how lovely everything would be with the extra time.
Despite the cramped living quarters, Raina was secretly a little relieved the wedding had been pushed back. After February 5th, she was going to be living alone for the first time in her life, a prospect that made her a little nervous. She grew up with two older sisters and shared a room with one until the oldest left for college. Her sisters, Cathlina and Beth, were both married now. Cathlina had two little boys, ages two and almost four, and Beth was expecting her first, a girl, in about a month. Raina would be seeing them both later that night. They had a standing arrangement to go out one Saturday each month. Cathlina set it up shortly after her second baby was born and referred to it as her “sanity saver.” However, she described it as a chance to not have to be the adult and still spent a lot of the night using her mommy voice so it may have been too late.
Raina came back out of the bedroom and looked at Vicki studying the magazines as if she still had exams to worry about. The two had met during their second year at school and quickly bonded over a mutual dislike for the teacher they shared. He was an English professor with a penchant for what he considered poignant or bittersweet novels. He thought anything with a happy ending was mediocre at best, as though happiness was not a valid emotion. Clearly, Vicki shared Raina’s romantic nature. They also shared a dorm room their third and fourth years.
Vicki was smaller than Raina at just over five feet tall. She had strawberry blond hair, blue eyes, and just a spattering of freckles across her nose. Raina was five foot nine and occasionally felt her height made her stick out, particularly when she was out with Vicki. Her long hair was medium brown with a gentle wave. She believed it to be her best feature when she bothered to do anything with it, but most days it was just swept up into a pony tail. Though certainly not stunning, her features were soft and her deep brown eyes sparkled when she laughed.
“Hey, Vicki… Did you decide if you’re coming tonight?”
“Yeah, I am. Dan has a thing.”
“What thing?”
“Some guy thing. I think they have tickets to some game or match or, you know, some sports thing.”
“Hmmm… you don’t have to pretend to care, huh?”
“He knows I’m not a sports fan.”
“Okay.”
“Is that what you’re wearing tonight?”
“Should I change?”
“Definitely. You need to wear going out clothes.”
“I was actually out most of the day in this.”
“Just because you weren’t home doesn’t mean you were out. There’s no one to impress at work.”
“I need to impress my sisters now?”
“Come on, as the only single woman in our group, you know you’re in the very advantageous position of having your pick of any guys we might come across.”
“And since we never meet any, the pick of zero is really quite an advantage.”
“True, but Beth did say she had someone in mind to fix you up with.”
“I really hope she’s forgotten about that. I have yet to experience the joys of the blind date and I think it’s something I can continue to live in ignorance of.”