Page 7 of So Not My Type

Cool. So you went to school. UW? You want a purple cookie or something?

Perhaps Sophie’s internal dialogue was not the most mature. Who did Ella think she was, anyway? How hadn’t she changed—at all—from the snotty girl Sophie met when she first started?

She’d seen Ella a smattering of rare times over the years. A holiday party a few years back when she wore an actual gown like some Southern debutante. Once when she rounded the corner at work and Ella was talking with her dad. Last year, as a passenger of George’s chauffeured car. Ella’s face always held a sour smile that didn’t reach her eyes, a slightly scrunched nose like she just smelled something rank but was trying to be polite, and a trailing gaze like she measured the person next to her and declared they weren’t as good. Having received that look many times had sadly not made Sophie immune to it.

The coconut-scented steam filled her small shower space, and the moisture clung to the gray-blue tiles. She scrubbed her skin within an inch of its life with an organic loofah as the irritation from yesterday bubbled up and spilled over.Must be nice to have a daddy who gives you everything. What do dinner conversations around their custom-made, knotty-woodbanquet table sound like? “Hey, honey, need a new car? Let’s go to the Mercedes dealership. An education? Here’s my wallet. You need a job? Of course!”

Nepotism at its finest.

And she absolutely refused to acknowledge the soft mouth and sultry dark eyes that she’d forgotten about over the years. Finishing the shower, she toweled off, threw on a tank and underwear, and grabbed her phone.

She needed some best friend relief, stat. Her fingers flew across the screen, and she prayed Maya would respond.

Sophie:

You up?

FaceTime rang within a minute, with her bestie Maya’s tired face and floppy blond ponytail splashed across the screen.

“Why you up so early?” Sophie propped the phone on the edge of the dresser.

“You’re the one who texted me,” Maya whispered as she walked down the hall. “Remi’s still sleeping. But Ben got home at 5:00 a.m. from his hospital shift and I’ve been up since.”

“Ah.” It had been close to a year since Maya found the love of her life, Remi, and a new family member in Remi’s roommate, Ben. But sometimes, Sophie still struggled with the change. She’d never tell Maya, but part of her, buried somewhere deep and low that she didn’t like to acknowledge, was envious. NotofMaya and Remi’s relationship.

Sophie wanted herownRemi.

So many things had shifted over the years. When Sophie met Maya as kids, they’d quickly become as close as twins. Being an only child, with two parents that worked double shifts to pay for their home, she spent more time with Maya’s family than her own.

Everything was fun back then. Easy. Sophie egged Maya on to ditch school, or run barefoot in Lake Sammamish at night, or shove as many grape-flavored pixie sticks in their mouths as possible until the sugar buzzed their brains and limbs. Fits of giggles, popcorn fights, and sidewalk chalk filled their days.

But when Maya’s dad died when they were teenagers, part of Sophie died along with him. Maya’s dad was a sitcom dad—goofy, drove her mom crazy, and loved his kids to his core. He even loved Sophie. He’d ask her about school, marvel at how many books she could read in a month, eat her terrible snack concoctions (sugar and cinnamon on onion chips, anyone?).

Sophie’s heart had broken for her friend, and for herself. It seemed so selfish, so ridiculous, for her to mourn a dad the way she did that wasn’t hers—like she was stealing from her friend and simultaneously betraying her own dad.

“What time is class?” Sophie dug into her closet and yanked out a shirt.

“Not till ten.”

Maya started her master’s in nursing at UW last semester, and the morsels of time they previously had together vanished. Sophie liked to blame Maya’s graduate schooling for the fact they never hung out anymore, but in reality, Sophie’s work sucked up almost every free second.

Maya yawned and dug into the refrigerator. “I’m gonna swing by Mom’s house before Harper goes to school and terrorize her a little.”

Sophie tugged a shirt over her head. “Tell them I said hi.”

“Tell them yourself.” Maya raised an eyebrow.

Fine, Sophie deserved that. When Maya left for college in Minnesota after high school, Sophie picked up the sister slack, as Maya called it. And Sophie loved bonding with Harper and Laney. Since she was little, there had always been a hole inside her, and being around them filled it. She loved her parents, ofcourse, but when she was a kid, they worked so many hours and couldn’t always find babysitters, and she spent too much time alone. But with all the hours she’d been putting in these last six months, this last year, these last few years, her second family slipped away.

Sophie dug in her drawer, looking for one of her favorite black skirts with pink gemmed bones and skulls. “How’s Remi?”

“Cranky.” Maya huffed with a grin and poured a glass of juice. “She doesn’t think the new bartender they hired is up to speed.”

“It’s been a week.”

“I know!”

Sophie shimmied the skirt up her legs. “Maybe you’ll go back to slinging drinks.”

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