Aurora and Therese were best friends. They both loved European football, plaid shirts, and classical music. Neither drank coffee, smoked, or did drugs, and they binge watched Monty Python together. They were even college roommates. The only difference was that Therese was 5'1" and Aurora was 5'11".
During sophomore year, Aurora met Luke the Athlete, who was 6'3" tall. They appeared to hit it off, and Therese was ecstatic for her friend. However, when Luke came to their dorm to pick Aurora up for their first date, he took one look at her friend and fell hard. Therese, despite her better judgement, felt herself falling for Luke, and they ended up going out that night.
Aurora, in the grip of uncontrollable hormones, watched the love of her life walk away with her best friend who was over a foot shorter than him, and burst into tears. Next she went to a bar and got drunker than she ever had before, which resulted in a random hookup with her cheating ex Jake the Rake. The next day she was the campus slut.
Therese felt awful and tried to apologize. Aurora listened patiently, then said that she needed some space to think. Therese wisely left her friend alone.
After summer vacation, Aurora moved off campus and into an apartment with three other girls, none of whom were Therese, who had moved in with Luke the Athlete. Aurora and Therese hardly ever spoke now, and their sudden friend-breakup was the source of much campus gossip and many posts on YikYak.
When Luke the Athlete inevitably broke up with Therese, he did it in front of the entire cheer squad and half the rest of the school, including Aurora. Aurora didn't care if she wasn't exactly friends with Therese anymore: no girl should be treated like that. So she stood up and shouted at Luke the Jerk that he was an assh*le. After a few seconds of stunned silence, Therese burst into tears and ran to hug Aurora. Now campus gossip and YikYak were buzzing with the news that the two girls were friends again.
Aurora and Therese discovered Tinder. Unfortunately, they were both very picky and swiped left on almost every single picture. Then Aurora found a picture of David the Actor, who was three years older than her and also worked as a chef at a street food truck. He was also way cuter than average. She swiped right.
Therese discovered Finn the Violist, who was two years older and was in an award-winning string quartet. He wasn't particularly good-looking, but seemed interesting. She swiped right.
A few hours later, David the Actor had swiped right on Aurora's picture, and Finn the Violist had swiped right on Therese's picture. The two girls sat side by side, messaging their respective matches and comparing responses.
Aurora: What music do you like?
David: Any genres really, mostly older stuff.
Therese: What music do you like?
Finn: Classical trumps all this simple pop shit.
Aurora: What do you think of Monty Python?
David: Essential part of comedic history.
Therese: What do you think of Monty Python?
Finn: What? Never heard of that.
After a few days of this, Aurora and David the Actor agreed to meet for dinner. David said he was bringing a friend, so Aurora convinced Therese to come along.
The friend, Hudson the Flirt, not only flirted with Therese the entire meal, but also tried to catch Aurora's attention multiple times. This vastly decreased Aurora's enjoyment of the date to the point at which she refused to kiss David outside her dorm. 6'1" tall and immensely arrogant, David was angry, and the next morning, she found that she had been unmatched.
That afternoon, Therese met Finn the Violist in the park. They got along so well that she brought him back to meet Aurora, who took one look at the 6'4" tall blond Norwegian standing next to her petite friend and almost had a heart attack. She did her best to be supportive, and succeeded in her endeavor, because pretty soon, Therese and Finn were an item.
After a few more blah dates, Aurora deleted the Tinder app from her phone and gave up on relationships for a while. Still, it hurt every time Therese blew her off for Finn the Violist. She spent more and more time at the library, burying her head in books to take her mind off her disappointing love life.
One cold, sleety day found Aurora holed up in the library with one of her all-time favorites: Howl's Moving Castle. When she finished the book, she discovered that the library was closing, and she'd forgotten to bring her umbrella. She went into the anteroom to get her coat.
"Which way are you going?" inquired a gentle voice. Turning, she discovered that its owner was a Japanese guy, about 5'8", who was currently buttoning his coat. He, too, appeared umbrellaless.
It turned out that Kei the Accountant was at the same college as she was, and in the same year, but they'd never met. He didn't know much classical music, but what he knew he loved, and he could quote any sketch that Monty Python had done. As they battled the sleet to return to campus, he asked her to meet him in the student union tomorrow.
She went, of course, and after a few weeks of hanging out he asked her on a date. And as far as I know they are happily married with three kids.
