What If That Was Fate?

5

Charlotte spent the whole night after their trip to the store thinking about the boy from the concert. The store was better lit than the back of the pit, so she was able to get a better gauge of what he looked like. She wanted to say he was pretty, though she thought she felt that way only because they made a connection. In hindsight, he was your average looking man.

He had his hair up in a bun, some of the hair falling onto the back of his neck. Like his hair was long, but not long enough. He was dressed casually, almost lazily. It was like a quick errand run, not caring who he ran into. Charlotte was almost the same in the sense that she wanted to be that comfortable. She often felt overshadowed by Valerie though, leading her to instinctively yearn to look nice whenever she was around her.

The concert made her realize that she didn't feel completely appreciated in her friendship with Valerie; not as much as she should be. She could understand not wanting to go to a concert, not everyone found joy in the crowd and environment. But not asking Charlotte how her night was when she knew how excited she was? Charlotte felt like a friend should want to hear about what makes her happy.

"Hey can I talk to you?" Charlotte called one of her other friends on FaceTime. She wanted to rant about Valerie and this was a friend of hers that didn't connect back to Valerie.

"Yeah what's up?" They replied. Just from the background alone she knew they were at work. That was one thing Charlotte was envious of; the work environment of them. Their coworkers were all friendly, they could talk on the phone, take as many vacations as they wanted. The requested time off process was also super easy for them and Charlotte wished the same of her job.

"So you know Valerie?"

They immediately rolled their eyes and sighed, "What'd she do now?"

"Well it's kinda a long story and you're at work--"

They looked around, "I've got time, shoot."

So she spent a long time excitedly telling them about the boy she met at the concert, down to the finest details. And they listened with complete interest, squealing and piping in happily at the cute parts.

"He so wanted to ask for your number!" They squeaked when she got to the part after the concert at the car.

"I'm so dumb, I should've asked him myself."

And she continued the story to yesterday at the grocery store when Valerie ditched her, then dragged her away from the boy right when she was sure he'd ask for her number or socials. That got her friend heated. They'd heard countless times of Valerie treating Charlotte like shit and they, frankly, were sick of it. But convincing Charlotte to drop Valerie had never worked.

"No that's definitely not okay. You're not overreacting. No genuine friend would've dragged you away from him when it was clear you guys were in the middle of a conversation and he was in the middle of talking? Like what the fuck! She just cuts him off and forces you to hold her things? Nah."

"I know. I was so excited to tell her, too, about him and hear her opinions and stuff and she just never asked and now I may never have the opportunity to find him again. Like I don't even know his name."

"It's bullshit. You need to drop her."

"But I feel bad!"

"Don't. It's your life and you don't need someone in it that treats you like that."

"Yeah girl the bitch isn't worth it," one of their coworkers piped up.

Charlotte chuckled, "Thanks. Well I gotta get ready for work at my crappy job now."