We all need a Jordan. And Kendra knew how lucky she was to have one. They’d become friends in college during biology class, closer during chemistry, and shared secrets during labs. Basically, solidifying their place in each other’s lives as chosen family during the hectic intensity of their senior year. These two girls shared everything. It wasn’t a stretch to say that they knew each other better than they knew themselves. So it wasn’t a surprise to anyone that they decided to find a place and continue being roommates after graduation. They were both smart (actually, very smart) and ambitious.
Jordan went directly into neuroscience. Kendra wasn’t sure where to go.
See, Kendra had what her mother liked to call, “A brain for chess.” She looked at life and problems, decisions and calendars, choices and consequences, all of it from the angle of a seasoned player calculating nine moves ahead. In some ways, this was a really smart and thoughtful way to go about one’s existence. In others, it was absolutely paralyzing. And the more she learned about the world and the older she got, the more her “chess brain” would take over.
“No, that’s not right,” Jordan stated matter-of-factly over two flat whites at their usual coffee shop in Baltimore. Kendra allowed herself two coffees a day exactly before 9:30 am. Otherwise, she noticed a disturbance in her sleep and woke up with puffy eyes. Kendra did not like puffy eyes. The two best friends had found an apartment with a landlord who had let them sign a very particular 18-month lease. Kendra had thought that the 2 bedroom place was in an up-and-coming area and that the rent would increase if they signed a year commitment but also that two years was way too long and they could potentially be locking themselves into an unfavorable situation. Jordan usually went along with Kendra’s overthinking. Except when it came to Freddie, her boyfriend of three years.
“You can’t stay with a guy because you have really high hopes for what he will become. You have to love him for who he is now. I don’t think people really change. That’s like, a line in Frozen.”
Kendra knew the Disney movie backward and forwards and didn’t need to be reminded of a song sung by a gaggle of very intuitive rock trolls. She also knew, deep in her soul, that Freddie was cheating on her. He was immature. But, she knew he was capable of more. He’d grown a lot since they’d first started dating. He was a tech whiz and loved to read. He was spontaneous and very, very kind to his Basset Hound, Wayne. He had a growing tattoo collection, images of all the experiences in his life that he’d found meaningful. Freddie was also cute, with one of those chin dimples that reminded Kendra of the princes she’d grown up watching in animated tales about love. He just needed to figure a few things out. Like how to do his own laundry, pay his bills on time, and, well, monogamy. Kendra’s plan had been to wait it out and be the supportive partner to him when he finally got there. But the cheating suspicions were tearing her apart.
It was all the usual clues. He’d become super possessive of his phone. He was working late, slipping out on weekends. The guy who’d been wearing the same American Eagle polo khakis since high school was now online shopping for much tighter pants. He’d started wearing cologne. Oh, and lying. He’d bought her some beautiful lace underwear, totally out of the blue. It wasn’t like him to get her a gift. Kendra’s brain domino’ed through the steps of the breakup.
She knew what would happen. Unless she had irrefutable evidence, she’d confront him with her suspicions and he’d deny it. Then he’d do the thing that Freddie always did – make her think that it was her fault. That she was crazy and paranoid and suffocating him. He’d probably accuse her of cheating, which they both knew was an absurd impossibility. And she’d cry and they wouldn’t speak for two days.
Eventually, she’d end up apologizing for not trusting him and then nothing would change. But what if it did?
What if they did break up and then Freddie blossomed into the incredible man who Kendra knew he could be and she watched some other girl snatch him up and get her perfect happily ever after? She knew that he would be successful and probably pursue exciting passions like skydiving and fathering gorgeous children and that she’d spend the rest of her life stalking him on social media from a one-room basement apartment somewhere with bad weather and no nightlife. Kendra’s spiraling was really getting a bit out of control. But she didn’t know how to stop it, even though those thoughts felt like swallowing Pop Rocks with a dry mouth. Gross.
“But he’s not perfect.” Jordan insisted, a small line of white foam settling on her annoyed lips. “He’s the one scoring in this relationship. Not you.”
Kendra wanted to believe her friend. She really did. But, she couldn’t. She finished her latte, immediately wanting another one. And something stronger.
“I’m not ready to give up on him. Or us,” she dropped her voice, peering at her best friend with those eyes like the Antonia Banderas cat in the Shrek movies.
“I am,” Jordan wasn’t in the habit of sugarcoating anything. She would probably have a cold brew after this. “He’s cheating. He sucks. And sometimes his chin looks like a butt.”
Kendra couldn’t hear any of that. “No. It’s like John Travolta. It’s perfect.”
But even in chess, there is no perfect move.
At work that day, Kendra couldn’t focus. She’d been trying to plan out something for their dating anniversary but could not get Freddie to commit to a single night out. And that’s when she decided to surprise him at his office with a picnic. Kendra took the day to plan. Freddie wasn’t the only one in their relationship not reaching their full potential. Kendra was working at fertility clinics. But not working in a lab or with patients or trials. Nope, Kendra answered the phone, and made appointments, and talked prospective clients off of emotional cliffs. The lead doctor in her office, Abigail, was pushing her receptionist to go to medical school and eventually take the reins of her practice, but Kendra just couldn’t make the move. For a chess player, she was stuck with a Rook in her hand, frozen in decision paralysis. Instead of taking the downtime at the office to question her inability to move and why the Disney film about the princess who ran away to a secluded ice castle was her favorite movie, Kendra instead planned her anniversary date. She would surprise her boyfriend after work with an Instagram-worthy picnic.
Freddie had landed a coveted position at a very cool startup run by two Stanford roommates who were on a mission to create an environmentally friendly, plant-based sustainable protein. According to Freddie, this could eradicate global hunger and change the world. Kendra was always flooded with pride when she told people about her boyfriend’s line of work. She loved talking about his career trajectory, the training that he was doing for a full Iron Man race, or how he was brewing his own beer in his garage with the microbrew set she’d gotten him for Valentine’s Day. But there was a lot that Kendra didn’t tell people.
She omitted the story of how they’d been dating for three years and for three years he’d forgotten her birthday. She glossed over the times he disappeared for a night or two and came back home exhausted and with the world’s worst excuses. Because, she’d tell herself, who was she to judge? She wasn’t perfect. There was the time when she’d forgotten to turn off the bathtub and flooded the kitchen. The time when she’d misunderstood her anatomy assignment and accidentally taught herself how to fully taxidermy a wild turkey. There was the time when she was about to win the local 10k and been so embarrassed that she hid in the woods for half a dozen other runners to cross the finish line so she wouldn’t be the center of attention. It’s not like Freddie had even been there waiting for her. Apparently, the line for his morning smoothie had been super long on race day.
So Kendra spent the day ordering the perfect picnic dinner online from their local grocery store. She picked out fancy-sounding cheeses and French bread, little pickles, and a jar of mustard covered in a little red cloth. She picked out a bottle of wine and added two plastic, stemless wine glasses to her online cart. Then she added a bouquet of wildflowers, a package of local salami, a small salad, and an assortment of sweets. She gasped at the total but typed her credit card information into the website. Freddie was worth it.
Kendra’s office closed an hour before Freddie was ever finished with his day and she was grateful for the extra time. She drove directly to the grocery pickup line and loaded her bags into the trunk. Then she made a quick stop at the hardware store, picking up a photograph-worthy picnic blanket and a basket to arrange her purchases. Freddie liked things to look perfect. Kendra liked making this for him. She sprayed her rose mist from her purse all over her curly hair and face, applied lipgloss, and popped some Trident into her mouth. She could feel her stomach tighten. Was it nerves or excitement? Kendra tried to parse out the difference.
To calm her jagged breath, she did what she always did, envisioning each step of the night, watching one thing lead to another. She imagined herself knocking on the blue converted bungalow, each office looking like it belonged in a reality show home rather than a startup office. Freddie worked in the back in a space that had most likely been a child’s bedroom. The walls were now covered with vintage neon signs and framed photographs from the founder’s global pilgrimages to the far corners of the Earth. The kitchen had been decked out and regularly restocked to resemble a funky, side-of-the-road cafe, encouraging the employees to park themselves at the office with no real reason to leave. Freddie’s desk was red and metal and had some great story about it that he was always too busy to tell his girlfriend. There was a couch on the far wall, a low, velvet thing sitting atop a lush pile of carpet. It was there that Kendra would lay out her tablecloth, set her picnic, and then maybe make out with her man when all the other employees had left for the night. It was the kind of place where she was sure that no one would care about her plans.
When she pulled her Corolla up to the side street where the blue bungalow was located, she was happy to see that the only bright lights were coming from Freddie’s office. She turned off her car, popped the trunk, and loaded her arms with her purchases. She straightened her tweed dress, fluffed out her hair, and smiled at her reflection in the car window. Kendra looked great. She had the night perfectly planned. She couldn’t place the butterflies zipping around her stomach so she told herself that she was just excited. Who knew how hot the night was going to get once they’d finished their wine and Freddie saw just how devoted Kendra was?
In a terrible rom-com-type situation, Kendra swung open the blue door only to hear very intimate sounds emanating from the back of the bungalow. She begged her feet to stop and turn around but they weren't listening. She marched through the conference room, a giant map of the world covering the large wall, and interrupted her boyfriend and his intern in a very, very compromising situation…. On the red metal table whose origins were still unknown to Kendra. Freddie did all of the things you would expect him to do. He jumped off the table, pulled up his pants, apologized profusely, while also trying to placate the underwear-clad woman who was now also in tears. It was an unwinnable situation. Except that Freddie had a way with those.
The intern left, somehow no longer crying, as Kendra sat on the velvet couch, listening to Freddie apologize over and over and blame the situation on his work stress and her expectations of him. Kendra looked at her boyfriend, her eyes wide like the Shrek kitty, thinking of Anna in Frozen, begging for a true love’s kiss. And then her chess brain turned on. The first thing that she did was forgive him. She laid out the picnic, all the perfect parts of it, poured the wine, lit the candles, and watched Freddie sit on the floor, lounging against the sofa cushions, drinking out of the stemless plastic goblet as if he hadn’t been mostly naked with a completely other person only thirty minutes prior. But Kendra waited to accept his apology.
That night, in bed, she ignored his advances.
“You’ve broken my trust,” she whispered. Kendra was not an actress. She meant what she said.
“I’m so sorry,” said Freddie who was so sorry that he’d been caught.
“How are you going to show me that?” Kendra heard her heart beating in her throat and prayed that she was the only one.
“You’ll see,” Freddie whispered back, trying to pull her rose-scented hair closer to him, “I’ll do anything,”
Now, Freddie had used that line before. But Kendra had never taken him up on it. She told herself that she wasn’t some high maintenance girl who needed a guy to “do anything.” She didn’t like asking. But all that changed when she saw the intern in her underwear. He’d purchased both women the same lacy lingerie.
“Tomorrow, after work, we’re going to Lucky’s. I want us to permanently commit to each other.”
“Ok,” said Freddie after a moment. His tone indicated that he felt like he didn’t have a choice. Lucky’s was his favorite tattoo parlor.
Kendra couldn’t sleep that night. She’d played an imaginary game of chess with a fictional opponent that lasted an hour in her head. And then she planned the following day. Instead of working particularly hard at her desk, she sent calls to voicemail and designed an ink-heavy image on her computer. She daydreamed about each step of the process. One minute into her lunch break, Jordan called.
“How did last night go?” she asked, crunching on something into the receiver.
Kendra took a breath and decided to choose her words carefully.
“It was exactly what I needed.” Now, Jordan was too good a friend to miss the sprinkle of weirdness in Kendra’s voice.
“TELL ME!” she cried, food probably ejecting from her mouth. But this was a big deal for Kendra. She had her plan and needed to keep it close to the chest in order to execute it perfectly.
“No.” But, meet me at Lucky’s on Chestnut at 6:15. Wait in the car.”
“Done.” Jordan was dying to know what was going on but knew not to push it. And at 6:15, she was there, waiting for Kendra in the parking lot, ready for, well, anything - except for what she saw.
The Kendra that walked out of the tattoo parlor was somehow - well, taller. Her face was brighter, her shoulders lower, and there was a swing in her step that Jordan hadn’t seen in her best friend in recent memory. The new Kendra sauntered over to Jordan’s car, hopped in the passenger seat with a relaxed, sparkly smile, and simply said.
“Wait till you see him and be ready to go.” Jordan didn’t know what to say, so she did as she was told. It only took a couple of minutes for Freddie to walk out of Lucky’s, his bicep bright red under the fresh ink, calling for Kendra.
“Babe, they’re ready for you! It’s your turn.” And that’s when Kendra opened her window, blew a kiss to her inattentive, self-absorbed, cheating boyfriend, and yelled, “I’m so sorry, have I broken your trust?” And sped off with Jordan while Freddie stared at his arm, the name KENDRA spelled out in seven-inch Old English lettering…
It took Freddie approximately four minutes to understand that he had just been permanently tattooed and then dumped all within the same evening. Shaking him from his disbelief was the gruff voice of the pirate-looking man who’d just spent two hours ripping into his skin, now demanding payment. To add insult to injury, the pirate also wanted to know where the girlfriend went.
Kendra eventually picked herself up and went back to school. She still sees Freddie around from time to time. But never in a tank top.
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