This choice: To a friend's house, one with a nice patio to lounge on. • Go Back...Chapter #3To a friend's house, one with a nice patio ... by: Unknown After her strange encounter with the pushy old woman, Alice had an urge to go home. But, since it was such a lovely day out, she decided that the home she went back to didn't necessarily have to be the tiny little one window apartment she begrudgingly called home. Instead, she texted her good, and significantly more affluent, friend Julia. Julia was some sort of architect, though the exact nature of her work was so far above Alice's head that she'd stopped trying to understand it a long time ago, and had built herself a lovely house with a large patio perfect for lounging around and sunbathing.
"Hey, I'm bored and in dire need of a tan. Cool if I drop by to hang in your backyard?" Alice texted, knowing her friend well enough that when she made it back to her car she'd already started driving to her house.
Fifteen minutes of driving later, and about halfway to Julia's house, Alice got a reply. "Sure but you'll have to provide your own rope" Alice rolled her eyes at Julia's dark joke. Alice continued her drive, and while she noticed a slight ache in the small of her back she didn't put much thought into it. Her car's seats were all decrepit old crap with more lumps and hard spots than the surface of the moon, and while she could usually ignore it there were definitely times when they made her back hurt. She simply assumed that this was one of those times, and continued driving.
Pulling up to the beautiful two story house in the suburbs that Julia had designed herself, Alice saw her friend standing on the balcony over her front door and waving jovially. "So, which tree are you planning to hang from? The apple's got thicker branches, but I think the peach tree may be a little taller."
"Not sure yet, I'll have to sleep on it. Preferably while sleeping on your patio." Alice answered, walking around the side of her friend's house to her back yard rather than going through it.
"Ya mooch!" Julia called with an uncharacteristic New Jersey accent (a state she wasn't from and had never been to) as Alice disappeared around the side of her house, a long running joke from their college days that everyone in their friend circle threw around when they did one another a favor. Disappearing into her home, Julia changed out of her pajamas (she worked almost entirely from home, so pajamas constituted 80% of her wardrobe) and into a cute little bikini to join her friend in sunbathing. While Julia skin was naturally more tanned than Alice's due to her Hispanic heritage, she had been cooped up for a little too long working on her projects and could certainly use some bronzing. Looking herself over in the mirror, she also realized she should probably start jogging again, as her hips had plumped up and a little pot belly had sprouted from her abdomen despite Julia's very light eating habits.
Shaking off her negative thoughts, Julia pulled on a pair of flip flops and made her way to her back yard, where her paler and lither friend was already stretched out on a fully reclined lounge chair wearing a comically large pair of black sunglasses. "What, you get a job with the Men in Black now?" Julia teased, lightly slapping the side of thigh with the back of her hand.
"Not yet, though I did meet an alien today." Alice said, lazily trying to swat her friend's hand away even after she'd stopped.
"I already told you, white girl, I'm third generation American!" Julia said, laying herself on the seat beside her friend and reclining the back until it was almost flat.
"I meant at the market." Alice said, rolling her eyes behind her glasses. "I was out shopping, and there was this tiny old lady, like, 'had more wrinkles than face' old. Anyway, old lady was selling handmade jewelry at a stall that I had never seen before and I'm 99% sure wasn't even supposed to be there. The jewelry was really chintzy stuff, with like fake gems and weird made up symbols carved into it and stuff, and you know I'm not Ms. Rockefeller like you so I didn't feel like spending some of my slave wages on her crap. I tried to let her down easy, but granny wasn't having it. As I'm walking away, this old coot slams down the necklace and starts muttering to herself, like she's trying to invoke the dark lord Satan or something to come up and smite me. Super weird."
"Sounds more like a witch than an Alien." Julia said, closing her eyes as the sun's rays bore down on her.
"I guess. Whatever it was, it was weird." Alice said, closing her eyes. She smiled, the warmth of the sun against her skin easing the pain in her back. "You know, most hosts would've offered their guests a drink when they arrived."
Julia chuckled. "You know, most friends wouldn't show up at someone else's home unannounced and then start demanding things."
"I announced!" Alice replied, vaguely motioning in the direction of her phone which neither woman could see with their eyes closed. "And I'm not demanding anything. Just saying that a drink would be nice, and that since we live in a society you're kind of socially obligated to provide one."
"Ya mooch!" Julia responded, making a grand show pressing her butt as firmly into her chair as was humanly possible before sighing deeply and pretending to be asleep. Alice and Julia sat in silence for a long while, and while Julia only pretended to doze off for the sake of her joke, Alice really did fall into a pleasant nap. After fifteen minutes, Julia realized that "Dammit, I actually am a little thirsty."
Standing up, she went back into her house and started rummaging around in her refrigerator, trying to pick a weather appropriate drink. She settled on a nice cold glass of lemonade, spiked with a little vodka, and prepared a glass for Alice in case she woke up. Returning to the patio, Julia saw...  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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