Melanie Parks had it all. An amazing childhood best friend Lauren Porter, they're attending one of the best colleges in the country together, a great family, and a longtime boyfriend, Jamie Sanders, she loves and who loves her back.
Or so she thoug...
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"What are you wearing tonight?" my childhood best friend and roommate, Lauren Porter shouts across our apartment from her bedroom.
"Still trying to figure that out," I call back.
The two of us are getting ready to go out for some drinks and maybe a little dancing if I get enough drinks in me since it's the Saturday before classes start for the spring semester.
We are juniors at Virginia Tech and after being separated in the dorms our freshman year, we decided to get an apartment together for the last three years of our time here. While we both are in their College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, she's here for a Multimedia Journalism major and I'm majoring in Public Relations.
Lauren and I have been best friends even before we were born. Her parents and my dad are all in the medical field and have crossed paths countless times over the years, our moms becoming close friends themselves. We are both only children having grown up in Memphis, Tennessee, so we grew up more as sisters than best friends, being practically inseparable, wherever one of us was, the other wasn't far behind. The two of us will go to our graves with things we'd never tell anyone else, always getting in trouble together when we were growing up because we never tattled. We have seen each other through everything you could imagine being in our early twenties, broken friendships, relationships with ex-boyfriends, drama and rough times with our families.
My dad, Dominic, is an anesthesiologist at Methodist Hospitals of Memphis while my mom, Naomi, is the Superintendent for the Shelby County School District where I grew up. Lauren's dad, Michael, is the top physician at the Family Medicine Group while her mom, Elaine, is the Executive Director for her family's fertility clinic, MIG - Modern Gynecology & Reproductive Health.
"Let me know if you want to borrow anything of mine!" she sing-songs in near perfect pitch. Her voice has been incredible from a young age and she wants to pursue music as a profession, but she's appeasing her parents by getting a college degree "to fall back on if music doesn't pan out" in the words of her parents.
"Only if I decide I want to freeze!" I laugh.
It's the middle of January so it's barely ten degrees above freezing out and I know she's going to be in some skimpy little number.
My phone vibrates a couple times in repetition on the double vanity I'm leaning against looking at my closest. Bending my arm, I reach behind me to bring it up to my face so I can unlock it, finding a couple text messages from Jamie, my longterm boyfriend.
Jamie [01/14/2023 7:19PM]: I don't understand why I can't come with you tonight.
Jamie [01/14/2023 7:19PM]: Don't you want to hang out with me?
I let out a heavy sigh at this attitude he's had ever since I told him earlier Lauren and I were going out tonight, by ourselves.
Jamie Sanders and I have been together for about four-and-a-half years and he also attends Virginia Tech for a degree with their Pamplin College of Business. His dad is a top architect back home and Jamie's supposed to follow in his dad's footsteps to take over the firm.
