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Dendra was not what any of her friends would call "successful," but she was doing fine. She had a great team, never missed a morning run, and had somehow managed to land a job more in line with her skills after the NaranjaTheory Fitness debacle. She'd be lying if she said it's what she had in mind when she quit kickboxing to focus on battling, but she’d started to enjoy playing teacher. It was fine.
32 might have been a little late to finally figure that out, but if she was going to live her life as a more-boring-than-average adult, she could at least try to be a decent friend. So she'd keep battling Tulip on her days off, she'd keep pretending to be surprised when she lost all their bets, and she'd keep ignoring that stupid part of her otherwise perfectly strong cardio system that still felt a twinge whenever her love life came up.
Like today.
"Honestly," Tulip was saying between careful sips of her flat white, "You should put yourself out there more. When's the last time you had a date?"
"I dunno." 3 months, 2 weeks, and 6 days. "I deleted Embr after that one girl wouldn't stop trying to sell me essential oils.
"That was ages ago! You can't tell me there's no one you're even interested in."
"I've been busy!"
"And ‘busy’ is just Dendra for ‘avoiding the problem,’” she said, punctuating the accusation with her coffee stir. “What happened to that coworker you were talking to? The nurse.”
“Don’t ask,” she groaned, slumping further into her seat.
“Do not tell me I spent three hours talking you through picking out a bath bomb and you chickened out of giving it to her.”
“I didn’t chicken out!” She kind of chickened out. “I left it on her desk.”
“Okay. Not really my style, but we can work with it. Did she say anything about it?”
“I maybe… kind of… forgot to leave a note with it.”
“You’re joking.”
If she was, no one was laughing. “I was so focused on getting out before she came back from lunch that I didn’t think of it!”
Tulip let out a long breath, perfect pranayama posture giving way to resignation. “You’re lucky you’re hot, you know that?”
Before Dendra had finished tucking that one away to overthink later, bells jingled against the cafe door.
Rika strode in as casually as if coming to the tippy-top of a remote mountain village for a latte was a normal thing to do. "Hey, Ms. Dendra," she nodded in their direction. Then, with a wink, "Petals."
Dendra smiled, waved, and tried not to choke on her coffee as Tulip tittered and wiggled her fingers in response.
As soon as Rika passed them on her way to the counter, Dendra dove across the table to hiss, "Really? Rika?! When did THAT happen?"
"Oh, settle down, it's not serious." The amount of hair twirling Tulip was doing with her forefinger said otherwise. "She was in town for the meteor shower last night, I had a new batch of 24-hour lip color to test, and one thing just led to another. You know how it goes."
Dendra did know. Dendra had helped her test her first three long-wearing lipstick formulas back when Tulip was still figuring out how to get pigments out of their dorm room carpet. Not that it had ever led to anything more than bruised necks and bruised feelings in her case. Certainly never giggly morning-after breakfast conversations communicated exclusively through eyelash batting.
"Cradle-robber, much?" Dendra laughed, banter coming almost as easily as ignoring her emotions. "Can she even drink yet?"
Tulip rolled her eyes. "Yes, actually. Not that the girl who had three fake IDs has any room to talk. Besides," she leaned in to whisper with a smirk, "she can do a lot more interesting things with her mouth than drink."
This time Dendra really did choke on her coffee. Waving off stares from the next table, she lowered her voice.
"Isn't she still, like, your boss?"
"You know the Elite Four don't have direct gym oversight."
"Well sure, but wherever the E4 shows up, the chairwoman isn't far behind. And that means a whole lotta powerpoints about which coworkers you can and can't make out with. Spoiler alert! It's none of them!"
Tulip smirked behind her cup. "Since when does the freshman shotgunning champ care about rules? They're more like guidelines anyways. The way Rika tells it, everyone past puberty in that office is sleeping with someone they're not supposed to."
"Great. When next year's sexual harassment seminar has 5 new slides I'll know who to blame."
"Come on, live a little!" She said, swatting at her arm. "You could do with breaking some more rules. You forget what you're missing!"
Dendra sighed. She couldn't really disagree. Since starting at the academy, she hadn't had time to do much outside of work and her trips to Alfornada. As great as it felt to be able to make a difference for her students, a woman could only listen to so many impassioned speeches about vtubers before going a little stir crazy. Maybe she did need to step out of her comfort zone to find her mojo again.
She was about half way to coming up with a change of topic when Rika sauntered back over with a freshly brewed macchiato-something-or-other. “Hey, girls.”
“Hey,” Dendra gritted out. “Yeah. What’s up?” If the smarm wasn’t already laid on thick enough to make her gag, Tulip’s fawning grin would have pushed her over the edge.
“Oh, not much.” Rika swirled her drink as if she wasn’t just standing there calculating the best place to stand for maximum cleavage visibility. “Just playing chaperone for Poppy’s scout group again.”
“Right. Meteor Shower?”
“Yeah, did you see it?” Now she wasn’t even pretending to look at Dendra.
“No, I missed this one.”
“That’s a shame.” A long drag of coffee and crooked smile. “It’s not every day you can catch a shooting star.”
Tulip’s giddy laughter drowned out the pained groan that spilled out of her mouth. This was it. Hell was real and she was living in it. She could see the hideous bridesmaid dresses now.
“I’ve known Dendra forever!” Tulip was saying. “We were roommates all the way back in college.” Oh, was she part of the conversation now?
“What? No Way,” Rika laughed. “You can’t be more than 25.”
Another peal of nauseating giggles. “Oh, shush! Flattery will get you nowhere.” Farther than Dendra, apparently.
“College sweethearts, huh?” This time she did glance at Dendra. “Be honest. How bad of an influence was she?”
“What?!” Tulip shrieked and slapped Rika on the elbow. “No, we never dated! She’s my best friend.”
“What, really?” The surprise really wasn’t necessary. “Are all the stories I heard about sororities wrong then?”
“Oh my god, you’re incorrigible!” Tulip laughed. “Here, are you busy? Pull up a chair.”
“No!” Dendra said. Yelled, if the others’ faces were any indication. “No. I mean. I was just about to leave, so you can take my chair.”
It was probably fair of Tulip to look confused. “What? But you said you were going to proctor for me today.”
“Yeah! Right!” Dendra had already stood up and started backing towards the door. “I’ll see you at the gym. Three o’clock!”
“It’s at two!”
“Yeah, two! That’s what I meant! I’ll be there! Take your time!” Dendra didn’t stop to check if she’d been heard before booking it down the street.
It was fine! It was fine that she was spending half her weekend stuck up a mountain with nothing to do now. It was fine that her only friends were people she met over a decade ago. It was fine that Tulip was hooking up with her coworker. Her tall, thin, twenty-something battle prodigy coworker. Perfectly fine!
Dendra stopped at the corner and dug her heels into the ground. She took one steadying breath and then another before releasing her battle cry.
“OSU!”
Breaking into a sprint, she tore down her usual Saturday route without a thought of pacing herself. She’d run until the lactic acid outpaced her lungs and burned through her quads. She’d run and then she’d run some more and then maybe she’d be able to breathe again. She’d be able to breathe and she’d be fine.