Dough, Diamonds and a Dash of Hate

I

Authors note: I know it's cringy and rushed, but this is literally just context. It won't get good until about chapter 3, but I swear it will get good. I'll try to post every week but give this a chance (whatever this is). Also, English is not my first language, so if there are any mistakes, please let me know. Thank you for reading this chapter.

HARRIET

~4 years before~

Have you ever had that one person who, no matter how hard you try, you just can't get rid of? For me, that person is Adrian Moreau. Imagine you're trying to sleep, and you have a mosquito that won't leave you alone all night, you get the picture. Basically, we were on the same class in 10th grade and after that it was impossible to get rid of him (believe me, I tried). I was always annoyed by his need to compete for everything, and of course I competed back, tests, assignments, presentations, you name it, the rest of the class didn't even matter, we just needed to get a better grade than each other. To be honest, I don't even remember how this rivalry started, I just know that one random day I wasn't studying because I wanted to and because I had to be better than him.

My last straw was when he was valedictorian. It wasn't even fair, all because of his damn PE grade. I swore I'd never see him again, so when I received my college application results, all of which I'd passed, I decided to go to my second choice, Stanford, with 100% certainty that Adrian would go to Harvard. Imagine my shock when I arrived at Stanford on the first day and saw him with that arrogant smile and his hands in his pockets, staring at me. I went to the car and screamed until I calmed down. Obviously, he was going to take the same degree as me, I already knew he wanted to go into business and then take over his father's company, so it was another three years of putting up with him. I swear, I was going mad; he was driving me crazy.

The only good thing about that university was that my roommate Catherine for some reason became my best friend, we have absolutely nothing in common. She loves going out and is super outgoing, she talks to everyone as if she's known them for years, but we hit it off right from the start and became close very quickly. She used to tell me that I needed to stop studying and go out with her one night, but she didn't understand what it was like to have an Adrian in her class who got the best grades without studying a third as hard as I did.

I promised myself that on the day of the last exam I would finally go out with Kate, even if I was sure she wouldn't like it, I would go out and that would be worth the thousand hours I spent studying and that would be it, at least to celebrate never having to see the most annoying person on the face of the planet again.

When we arrived it wasn't as bad as I thought, but I hated all those people in such a small space, I don't hate people, but I hate it when there are too many of them, and they're everywhere, and it feels like you have no room to breathe, so I decided to try being Kate for a day and have a shot, after that everything was much better.

-------------------------------

I wake up on the sofa in our apartment very confused, without a memory of the night before.

"Kate?" I ask, sitting up on the sofa with a terrible headache.

"You woke up?! Yes! I'm sorry, I really am, I swear I didn't leave you. You said you were going to the toilet and I thought 'ok' because you didn't seem too affected by alcohol, and you hadn't drunk that much." She says it too fast and I stop.

"Kate, calm down, I don't understand anything," I say, and she sits down on the sofa with tears in her eyes.

"I feel terrible. You were taking a while, but I didn't think anything of it, so I went looking for you, but you weren't there and there were lots of people, and I was freaking out, and I swear if you hadn't shown up the next minute, I was going to call the police. You were so bad yesterday, Harriet, you were awful, you threw up all over my clothes just as I was dragging you up the stairs." She explains with a look of honest pity.