Two Years Ago in Vegas
Our trip to Las Vegas started as a belated bachelorette party and eventually turned into a quadruple-date vacation with two of my college roommates, one of their best friends, and all of our significant others.
Raquel’s friend Whitney very casually mentioned that she wanted to go to Las Vegas to see Britney Spears’ show sometime and I think we all surprised her as we very aggressively purchased tickets, booked flights, and found an Airbnb in what we later learned from multiple Uber drivers was an rather unsafe neighborhood.
We had never actually been on vacation together, but it ended up being one of the most fun trips ever because we’ve basically done everything else together, so a spontaneous check off of our collective bucket list (spoiler alert: Britney really is that good) seemed as good a time as any to start a new tradition. And while I had definitely been coming down with a case of baby fever for several months, I don’t think any of us knew at the time that we were basically getting together for one more rager before we all became mothers.
Raquel, Caroline, and I lived together for as long as we possibly could in college—I literally fled from my freshman roommate into Caroline’s empty dorm room the moment her randomly-assigned roommate pledged a sorority and bailed. Raquel and I grew up together at the same K-12 school in Roanoke, Virginia; so when she joined us at Longwood the following year we cobbled together a lease for an on-campus apartment as quickly as possible.
We shared a home and clothes and makeup and made cupcakes on a really oddly regular basis. We laughed, we cried, we studied and read and wrote papers and went to class and the gym and got tattooed and drank a lot of really cheap booze. We blasted Britney out of our laptops every weekend and watched a lot of Food Network in each other’s beds and hardly ever wore pants.
We graduated and fell out and got back together again, literally years later.
One of the best things I ever did was decide to work on these friendships—the ones that started so easily and almost slipped through my fingers through the tumultuous transition from college to “real life.” Caroline and Raquel have seen me at my best, my worst, my most anxious, most triumphant, saddest, happiest. It’s an honor to know someone as well as we know each other.
And now, two years later I wake up to a string of texts about all things motherhood—pumping and tummy time and baby sleep and diapers and clogged boobs and by the way where did my abs go and what the hell are we supposed to make for dinner tonight? And even though I’m a three hour time difference and a whole country away from them, I’ve never felt closer—maybe not even when we all lived in the same apartment.
Whether it’s Farmville or Nevada, a fraternity or a first birthday party, they are my people. Life might look different for us these days, but Vegas remains—and we’ll always have Britney.