Wren

Chapter five: Kate

"Millie your coffee is up" my friend Kate called from the kitchen.

I drag my feet through the apartment and sit beside her at the breakfast bar "thanks" I offer sipping the hot liquid gingerly.

"It's your first week next week, how's it feel to be a fully qualified college teacher Mill" she asked.

"Kate it's far too early to converse" i say sipping my coffee further before finding her waiting my response with a smile.

"It feels good ... it feels like five years of study on study on study was semi worth it" I offer and I lean forward and place my forehead on the cold surface of the breakfast bar.

"What's wrong ... tell your best friend" she asked rubbing my back.

"Nothing" i mutter, barely audible under my hair and squished against the cold marble counter.

"Millie" Kate asks again. "Tell me"

I sit back up and look back to my best friend of twenty years, Kate was quite literally my right hand at this point and had kindly let me move in with her when I left university and moved back to Oregon. Kate is jolly and loudly positive, nobody escapes her optimistic view on everything, even me, and I was beginning to think I was Kates sarcastic and pessimistic thorn in her side.

"I feel like my mother is about to smother me with her petticoat... and wrap her apron strings around my neck" i state dramatically.

Kate rubs my back, her full cheeks lift into a smile "Millie she means well... she loves you... she just doesn't know when to let go... maybe it's time to let her know as kindly as possible when she is being overbearing"

"I tried the kind as possible tact and she told me I was being weird, and that college had made me soft"

I look to Kate for her wise words, her smile gets tighter like even she's finding the positive and encouraging answers to living with Moira Dawsons overbearing nature hard to come by.

"Then just take one day at a time. Millie you are super smart, you know your subject, there is no need for Moira to school you, you've been schooled for over five years in psychology by the best of the best. The community college is yours, Moira doesn't exist there. You will be the only Ms Dawson that they have heard of, so let that be your place to leave your mark. When you go to the university to assist, just do what you need to do knowing you are doing it right for you and then leave. Don't let Moira get into your head, the university wouldn't have allowed you an assisting role if they didn't think you were up to it, even if you are the professors daughter"

"True" I say reaching around Kates shoulders and hugging her "what would I do without you Kit Kat"

Kates body vibrates a little as she lets out a laugh "you would be horribly negative and live on coffee and chocolate pop tarts"

"Ooh do we have any" I ask as my ears prick up to any mention of pop tarts and I remove myself from her neck, her blonde bob cut tickling my nose.

They were an awful habit from a teenager that I couldn't shirk off, the disgustingly unhealthy pop tart breakfast, sometimes lunch, ashamedly dinner on occasion.

"Millie... looking at you I'm not sure how you eat such trash and look like you do... and here I am five stone overweight despite eating healthy seventy percent of the time... unable to close my jeans by dinner time. There wouldn't even be vegetables in this house if I didn't do the grocery shopping"

"Wait" I say reaching for her arm theatrically.

Kate turns to me, hiking her purse onto her shoulder "what" she asks almost concerned.