MWF Seeking BFF by Rachel Bertsche Read Free Book Online Page A

Kappa.”
    Now that she’s a senior, I know Rebecca’s especially eager to stay in touch with those of us who might be able to hire her in six months. I can’t blame her. Six years ago, I
was
her. In her email, she asks if I’m available to get “dinner or something” before her break. She has no idea what she’s in for.
    I hit reply. “Are you free tomorrow night?”

CHAPTER 3
    FRIEND-DATE 5. At 7:45, fifteen minutes after Rebecca the intern and I agreed to meet, I get my first indication that this bestfriendship isn’t meant to be. I’m waiting at the bar of a local sushi restaurant and haven’t heard a peep from her about a late arrival. Tardiness is my pet peeve, but tardiness with no phone call or text I’m pretty sure is just rude. Could I be getting stood up? By my
intern
?
    When she finally shows—“my midterm ran, like, so long”—we settle in and catch up on office gossip.
    “Dave quit,” I tell her.
    “I heard!”
    “And Tim,” I say.
    “I know, so crazy.”
    She’s as informed about my office politics as I am.
    Most of the evening is spent going over the finer points of job searching. I give her some insider tips, share a website I found invaluable, and spend half the meal trying to convince her that no matter her qualifications, getting a publishing jobsix months before you’re available to start working is impossible.
    Rebecca’s life, one that still includes those magical words “Spring Break,” is pretty far removed from mine. Probably too far for a true friendship to blossom. It’s not merely that we’re six years apart—at 31 and 37 we could be a perfect fit. It’s that she lives in a college bubble, the same one I happily inhabited myself. I don’t begrudge her the sorority parties and dance marathons, they just don’t interest me anymore. I don’t care which fraternity raised the most money for the charity ball, and though I admire the work she does in her Investigative Journalism class, it doesn’t inspire much conversation between us other than how it can help her get a job. And given that she checks for texts/emails/BlackBerry messages whenever I utter words like “in-laws” and “wedding” and “mortgage,” it’s clear that the life of a married woman is one she’d rather gouge her eyes out than have to hear about all the time. It’s a total lack of social identity support. I don’t validate her role as college student, and she seems to think that being a wife and homeowner makes me something of a sellout.
    But the night isn’t a total bust. I promise her that if I ever do start writing full-time, I’ll take her on as a research intern and it’ll come with no pay or benefits. She promises to accept such a position. Everybody wins!

    On Friday night, I’m alone in my kitchen with my Empire Red KitchenAid stand mixer (God bless registries), making the one recipe I swore I never would: two batches of my mother-in-law’s Mandelbrot. It’s Matt’s favorite dessert andhis mom has been baking it and sending care packages to his various places of residence since I’ve known him. When he first offered it to me in his freshman dorm room I resisted. Same when it came from the fraternity house or the senior year off-campus dump or the law school apartment. But when I eventually visited his family’s home in Cape Cod, fresh with the smell of just-baked cookies, I caved and never looked back. Mandelbrot, for the gentiles out there, is a Jewish version of biscotti. My mother-in-law’s version has chocolate chips and is covered in enough cinnamon-sugar to kill a diabetic. Delicious.
    When I first started dabbling in the kitchen, I warned Matt not to even ask for Mandelbrot. I would never be able to make it as well as his mother does, and I wasn’t interested in hearing my husband whine, “It’s not the way mom makes it.” Just the thought of it gives me flashes of
Everybody Loves Raymond
, and not in a good way. Still, Natalie has invited me to her friend’s