When Two Roads Collide

Standing in front of her mirror, which she had barely hung securely, Olivia Acker thought about how her perspective on life had changed. Five years before, when she had graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Landscape Architecture, she knew that some people want true love, while others want luxury and wealth, but she just wanted true happiness. Not just the happiness that every now and again gives you a temporary boost of self-confidence to make you believe that you can conquer the world. No. The happiness that makes you feel loved and accepted no matter what. She considered how she still had no experience in any type of romantic relationship, just a degree that meant nothing in the central part of a city like San Francisco.

She pulled on her dark brown curls, looking deep into her own blue green eyes in the reflection in the mirror.

“Caring, trying to be confident, too hardworking…,” she tried complimenting herself. “Too hardworking: that’s the problem.”

The mistake had never been the men she dated, according to her younger sister, Lilly. The problem was that she never loved herself enough. That emptiness and void had always been filled by her trying to love others. So, Olivia sometimes convinced herself that falling in love was just one of her crazy unachievable dreams, considering she was just a normal, unrecognisable assistant in the city. Then, other times, she felt even more pressure to fall in love before her twenty-sixth birthday, else her party would have to be a “single’s only party”.

A loud thump on her apartment door, almost a “bang”, shook Olivia back to earth. She quickly grabbed her dirty clothes that were strewn all over the apartment and threw the bundle behind the door. When she opened the door, it came as no surprise that it was Kate in the doorway, carrying loads of groceries. This was Kate’s usual way of making sure Olivia was still alive.

Kate, with her blond hair and dark brown eyes, was one of the accountants working at Golden Holdings. Kate and Olivia met when they regularly bumped into each other at Rose’s Coffee Shop on the corner, and later decided that they might as well go together. Since then, every day at one o’clock, they went out to get coffee. Or sometimes they sneaked out a few minutes earlier. Olivia always believed that their differences were precisely what held together their friendship.

That day, like most other days, Kate was in a hurry. Olivia sometimes felt that Kate buying her groceries was just one of Kate’s monthly chores.

“Gosh, Kate, tell me you still have money in your credit card,” Olivia said, standing shocked in the doorway that was blocked with too many bags of groceries.

“Well, if I have to be honest, my parents may not get a gift on their anniversary,” Kate replied sarcastically.

“Stop! I don’t want to know. Thank you for your effort,” said Olivia, helping Kate unpack the groceries onto the kitchen table.

Olivia didn’t know why it still surprised her when Kate acted like she was her mother. To be honest, if it had not been for Kate, Olivia probably would’ve still worn her thrift store clothes from the yearly Christmas market in Livingston. Before Olivia could think of another excuse for not doing grocery shopping herself, Kate interrupted.

“Don’t use any of your old excuses again; I know them all. And I know that your billionaire boss gives you a hefty pay check every week,” Kate said, stopping to stare at a bottle of milk to consider her next words carefully. “By the way, I don’t know how you do it.” Kate put the dairy products in the fridge.