Chapter Text
Kendall Quinn could already feel a migraine coming on even before she heard the knock on her office door, looked up, and saw Kimmie Boubier standing at the threshold. Yeah, that was a migraine all right. “Yes, Kimmie?” she asked with exaggerated patience.
“Hey,” Kimmie said awkwardly, which was fitting, since everything had been awkward about her from the day Kendall had been introduced to her. “So, um, how’s it going?”
Kendall blinked at her. “I’m swamped under this caseload, Kimmie,” she said, which was close to the truth. “Is there something that you need?” Lessons in how to stop fidgeting, perhaps?
“Right! Yes, well, you see, today’s Thursday.”
Kimmie had never been the most articulate person, Kendall had found, and she had a tendency to become even less so the longer she talked. Still, this was a personal record for her. “And?”
“Aaand, that makes tomorrow Friday.”
Did IQ’s drop sharply while I was away? She cursed inwardly for even thinking that. One of her ex-boyfriends had been such a closet geek, and he’d inflicted more than enough science fiction on her, even in the short two months they’d been together. If she ever quoted one of those movies out loud, Kendall would never forgive herself.
“So,” Kimmie continued, evidently taking Kendall’s silence as some sort of invitation to go on speaking, “that means tomorrow night is Friday night.”
Kendall was about to scream that she could have gotten all of this from the daycare facility downstairs and in much less time, when the light bulb suddenly went on. Friday night. As in, the time of the week when Kimmie and her little friends went on their outings. The outings you’ve been crashing for the past month. A month wasted because it was all for the boss’ son, and you just heard from Richard himself that he’d met a nice British girl last week and they were equally infatuated with each other.
Why had Richard felt it necessary to tell her that anyway? She hadn’t been that obvious in her pursuit of him, unless you counted her climbing onto a piano during a performance by Kimmie Boubier, Pop Icon. Which okay, Richard probably had. At least she’d gotten a trophy out of it . . . which she’d tossed in a dumpster on her way home that night.
Kimmie had to know. She was still just as much Richard’s “chum” now as she’d been last month. That had to be why she was here. She probably wanted Kendall to stop showing her up every Friday night. It wasn’t Kendall’s fault that she was prettier, smarter, and more talented at everything. It was only Kendall’s fault that she’d obviously wasted four perfectly good Friday nights in the first place.
“Right, Friday night,” Kendall parroted. “I guess you’ve got big plans with Marika and Helen-Alice.”
Kimmie brightened, and Kendall sighed. You’ve memorized her loser friends’ first names. Why did you even go to that damn piano bar in the first place?
“Yes, we’re going to a Dave and Buster’s,” Kimmie told her.
Swell. Kimmie had found a more appropriate level of competition for her, eleven-year-old boys.
“And I was wondering if you wanted to know what time we’ll be getting there?”
Kendall had been reaching into her desk drawer for her bottle of Motrin, but her hand froze in mid-air. Wait. “What?”
“Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever been there,” Kimmie said, ignorant of the way Kendall’s brain synapses had just overloaded. “But apparently it’s the size of a warehouse. I figured trying to find someone inside, even three someones, would be rather difficult compared to simply meeting them – “
This couldn’t possibly be happening. “You’re inviting me along?”
Kimmie tilted her head slightly and looked directly at her. Kendall was shocked by the sudden thought that her coworker’s eyes seemed awfully observant. “Well, you’ve been doing a good job of inviting yourself for the past few weeks. I figured, why not just make it official?”
Kendall flushed just a little bit. She’d been caught off-guard by her office rival, something that almost never happened. She did NOT like it. She also didn’t like Kimmie having this idea that Kendall would WANT to hang out with three social lepers like them. “Didn’t you ever ask yourself why I’ve been showing up each week?”
“Well, duh, yeah, I asked myself that at the piano bar, and then I was like, obviously she’s trying to get her hooks into Richard,” Kimmie said casually, and this time Kendall definitely felt the blood rushing to her cheeks.
“It wasn’t like that,” Kendall said, on the defensive now. “Richard wasn’t even THERE two times.”
“Which you couldn’t have known beforehand,” Kimmie replied.
“And then I stayed even after I found out he wasn’t there,” Kendall said triumphantly.
“Which is why you’re invited,” Kimmie said. “Because obviously you don’t mind spending time with just the three of us.”
Kendall opened her mouth, and then shut it again. Fuck, sometimes she could almost forget Kimmie was a lawyer too. She wanted to say that she did mind spending time with them, she minded it very much, but she couldn’t for two reasons. One, it would require speaking to a coworker so rudely that even Kendall would call it unprofessional. And two, what other explanation could Kendall give for her behavior?
Kimmie then surprised her yet again by stepping inside, closing the door, and sitting across from her. “Look, I know why you stuck around at the miniature golf course and the gallery opening. You couldn’t risk Richard showing up after you left, and even if he didn’t, you couldn’t risk me or my friends telling him what you did the next time he DID show up.”
Kendall rubbed the back of her neck. That had been . . . part of it.
“And,” Kimmie sighed, “you seem to be fixated on beating me. Which I wish you weren’t, because it’s really stressful. I don’t even know why, I’m probably the most harmless person in the building.”
And that had been the other part of it. “Are we speaking frankly here?” Kendall finally asked, fed up with the direction this conversation had taken.
Kimmie nodded.
“I don’t know if you realize this, Kimmie. Hell, you probably have no idea, because you ARE the most harmless person in the building.” Kendall was willing to bet Kimmie had been picked on as a child. The fat ones always were. At Kendall’s high school, if the fat girls had been strong-willed enough, they were just outcasts. If they hadn’t, then they were victims. She’d seen girls bully other girls twice their size and get away with it. Possibly . . . she’d been the bully a time or two. “But you’re also friends with the second-most POWERFUL person in the firm. And that puts you on the fast track to partner.”
“Who, me?” Kimmie asked disbelievingly. The almost freakish confidence with which she’d been speaking to Kendall vanished in a flood of low self-esteem. “That’s crazy, I’m not – and even if I was, why the hell would you try to antagonize me?”
Kendall rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t trying to antagonize you, Kimmie, I was trying to take your place!”
Kimmie stared at her. Then she shook her head. “You were going about it a funny way then.”
And Kendall was just big enough to admit that yes, she HAD been going about it the wrong way. Every time the competitive drive that helped her be a great lawyer, had kicked in so fiercely that she’d lost sight of the true objective. The idea had been to win Richard over, not offend him by trying to humiliate a friend of his. All she said, though, was “I like to win”.
“Hm,” Kimmie said. “Well, in that case, I withdraw my invitation. If you like to win so much, you wouldn’t want to be there.”
Kendall stiffened in her chair. “Excuse me?”
“I’ll have you know, Kendall, that I am unbeatable when it comes to worthless trivia. Helen-Alice and Marika have been trying to beat me for years, and they’ve never done it,” Kimmie told her. “If you came, you’d have to learn how to enjoy losing.”
That night, Kendall would shake her head when she thought back to this moment. She had just been thinking about how she’d let her ultra-competitive streak do all her thinking for her. And yet she let it happen all over again. “I bet your girlfriends would enjoy watching you lose.”
Kimmie shrugged. “I suppose, but it’s never going to happen.”
“What time are you getting there?”
“Eight o’clock.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Didn’t I say your invitation had been withdrawn?”
“When have I ever been invited before?”
Kimmie scoffed and got up to leave. Or at least she tried to. “Um, I seem to be – why are your chairs so small?”
Kendall sighed. Right, Motrin.
To be continued . . .