Have We Met Before?

I can’t remember the last time I truly had a great night out with a friend. It’s been far too long since I’ve taken time off to have fun in general. 

Ever since I graduated from college, it’s been all work work work. I feel like I faded away from most of my friends, whether we were separated from my lack of interaction or if they got busy with adult life, too. 

From time to time, I check in on social media, seeing who’s pregnant or who’s getting married next- I’m not surprised at all about those numbers given the state of my old high school. 

But I got out of that town for a reason. It was terrible. Not to mention how rough my family life was. 

You would think that after everything I’ve been through, I would’ve been too discouraged to try. But no, that only made me more driven to become something before I doomed myself to become nothing. 

I put myself through college, paying for it all with the scholarships I earned from my academics and extracurriculars, and a part-time job at a busy restaurant where I spent most of my time away from home when I wasn’t at school. And no one ever paid attention. 

My siblings probably hate me because since I was working, my parents made them pick up the slack of my chores. That’s the only nice thing they ever really did for me. 

I didn’t enjoy my high school years at all, really. I’ve been working since I turned fourteen and driving my own car that I bought at sixteen. That’s no way to spend your teenage years at all. 

I had some friends but it wasn’t enough. Never had a romantic partner, for sure. People have flirted with me here and there but I never felt like I had the time for a relationship. 

I did have a best friend, though. Melina. We were inseparable at school. The best pair of nerds you could find anywhere. Because of the positive influence we had on each other, our counselors were always pulling strings to keep us in the same classes. These people were also aware of my home situation, so they kind of found it important to let me have a peer to reach out to. 

My home life wasn’t bad to the point where someone could legally do something about it. So assistance from the school was about all I had to go off of. That doesn’t make me any less grateful, though. 

Unfortunately, the best friendship I’d ever come to know would end in a horrific fight. 

It was when we opened our college acceptance letters together our senior year of high school. 

We had strategically applied to the same schools. Since none of them required an early decision, we let the mystery letters pile up and waited to open them until the night before decision day at our school- that was an event they hosted in early May for the seniors to announce to everyone what school they planned to attend. 

But when Melina and I opened our letters, we found that we actually wanted different things all along. 

Trying to go off to college with your best friend isn’t like it is in the movies. There are so many real-life, serious things to consider here. 

I got accepted into Georgetown University, a wonderful college in Washington D.C. that had a great business program. 

All my life, I wanted nothing more than to own my own business and be known and remembered as a successful entrepreneur- back when I was looking into schools, I felt called to Georgetown, I thought it would give me everything I could ever want, and open doors I couldn’t have even imagined I’d find. 

Melina’s big dream was to be a famous fashion designer. Clothing design was her true passion. Parsons School of Design in New York was the perfect fit for her. 

To this day, I don't think I could really tell you why I applied there, or why we thought having different dreams but sticking together would have worked out. Melina was the closest thing I truly had to a family member, or what felt like one. I guess you could say I applied for her. 

When we opened our acceptance letters for Parsons, within a second, she was able to tell that I didn't really care for the institution. Then she asked why I wasn't excited, and my eyes fell upon the unopened letter from Georgetown. 

It was at that moment that my beautiful best friend and I realized that the dreams of experiencing college life together were to be shattered as soon as I opened that letter. 

There wasn't a shred of doubt over whether I'd gotten in or not. 

The silence that weighed the mood and tone of the evening was heavier than a dense fog on an early spring morning. 

“Well, don't just sit there, Sasha. Open it.” The pain in her voice, no matter how much she tried to mask it, oh how I knew it was there. 

I was hurt by the way she was acting towards me after I opened the letter, revealing I had gotten in. 

We got into this massive argument after the fact. Melina kept saying how we were supposed to stick together and that was the whole reason we had applied to the same colleges and made a life plan together in the first place. I countered her words by trying to express that while she was my favorite person in the whole wide world, we had to come to terms with how we had very different goals and wanted separate things. I said that our dream schools would give us the best chances at getting what we wanted, even if we weren’t at the same place doing it. 

She wanted nothing to do with me after that. And it was harder than anything to put it behind me. What made things worse was how shocked everyone was the next day at school when we stood apart, announcing our different schools. 

I think the complete and final straw was when I told everyone that I’d be attending Georgetown in the fall. I could see it in Melina’s eyes that she’d been holding onto some shred of hope that I’d change my mind at the last minute. Everything fell away as I avoided her gaze, not budging on my decision. 

We graduated two weeks later, and haven’t spoken since. It was an amicable goodbye getting pictures taken with her family after the ceremony. They’d apparently been wondering why I hadn’t been coming around their house much during that period of time. Melina was straightforward and told them we decided that we wanted different things, but didn’t say much else. 

I spent June and July working overtime to save up a bit more money before I headed out on my own. 

All my life I lived in Maine, through every good and bad time. My family moved a lot throughout the state when I was in elementary school. 

Everything settled after I had a screaming match with my father one night before I started high school. 

I yelled and shouted about how I was sick of the life I’d been living. How everything I tried to do always got undermined by whatever everyone else wanted or had going on. I cried about how unsupported I felt, how trapped my life seemed, how doomed I thought I was. 

He told me that he wouldn’t care if I went to college. He moaned and groaned and complained about how expensive it was. When I sobbed saying how him and my mother should care, and that I believed it was only right if they helped me, that’s when he snapped and told me that I had to do everything myself, that he didn’t want to waste his hard-earned money on something that probably wouldn’t even be worth it in the end, especially for them, no matter how much I tried to convince him that I’d pay them back someday. 

My mother talked with him and they decided we would stay in Augusta until I graduated. I turned fourteen two weeks later- and from then on, I worked until I dropped, every single day. My older sister taught me how to drive. Once I got my license, I was completely on my own, only using my parents’ home for shelter most nights. 

I’m twenty-six years old, and I haven’t spoken to nearly anyone in my family since the day I moved out. There’s one aunt who I talk to once in a great while. She tells me everything about the family and I tell her everything about myself. I don’t know if she ever says anything to anyone about our conversations, about how I’m doing. She did come to my college graduation, though. That’s the most support I’ve ever gotten from my family, and it was only one person. 

Melina plagues my mind every now and then. I’ve never been able to find her on social media, and I’m too ashamed to try and contact her folks, as much as they’d raised me. Aunt Garyn drops comments about the Winchesters as if she’s hoping I’d take my best friend back. 

Melina was everything to me for four years straight. It really is a shame I haven’t seen her in so long. 

You can imagine my surprise, however, when there was this brunette woman sitting next to me in the bar, looking oh-so familiar. 

She had dark brown locks thrown into a messy sock bun, and moss-green, almond shaped eyes that fit perfectly with her tan skin. 

She had a face that I longed to see but never thought I’d encounter again. 

Finally, after some minutes of deep contemplation, I tapped her on the shoulder. 

“Excuse me, but have we met before?”