Briget

This is a long one by way of warning!

Briget

Hi, my name is Vincent Flaherty but everybody just calls me Vince. Anybody who calls me Vinny I simply ignore. I’m no mafia hoodlum. This story is about my best friend Briget Dougherty and I and how that all changed rather suddenly.

We’ve known each other forever. I know, I know, everybody says that about their best friends, and I guess it’s as true for us as it is for anybody. We actually met on our first day in kindergarten. Where we went to school, preschool wouldn’t arrive as anything more than a foreign concept from the big city until we were both in the sixth grade. That was also the year she and her family moved out of town.

You see, we haven’t always been best friends, since we were so efficiently separated at that point. Unlike a lot of kids our age though, we somehow managed to keep in touch. I guess it was both our parents’ promiscuous allowance of phone usage by us kids that made it possible, or even likely. We even managed to keep in touch from across an ocean, as they were in France for a couple of years when her father was sent over there to head up a new and growing department in his company. Actually, I guess I should say the company he worked for, since he didn’t own it.

Anyway, they spent five or six years over there and Briget sent me a couple of pretty cool souvenir goodies for Christmas and my birthdays. In return I sent her some stuff I’d made in woodshop classes at school and some stuff I made on my own. We’d always joked that we were born and raised in Nowheresville, BFE. It was true enough that there wasn’t really anyplace I could go to find what I considered a decent gift, even though I had the money. I wasn’t lazy after all and I did everything I could to earn a few extra bucks for when I wanted something. My parents were of the opinion that children appreciated things they earned more than those they were just given, so my brother, sister and I earned our allowances with actual work, and any extra we wanted from our neighbors by doing chores for them as well. I at least, I don’t think I can say the same for my little brother or little sister, learned the value of a dollar very quickly, and I was never a wasteful type. Most of that money ended up getting deposited in a savings account.

Needless to say, I was shocked when my first Christmas gift of a cute little two drawered jewelry chest was greeted with a phone call with a fourteen-year-old Briget blubbering tearful thanks to me from across an ocean and over forty-five hundred miles away! She loved the fact I’d made her gift with my own hands so much, that I decided that not being able to buy her stuff was actually cool. So it was that the next Christmas followed with a matching Hope Chest and the next birthday with a silver wire wrapped amethyst heart pendent because as an Aquarius and born in February, it was her birthstone, and for her eighteenth birthday with a handmade ring I’d designed and wove in a Celtic pattern with the aid of one of our neighbors out of sterling silver wire, both meant to go into that jewelry chest,. All three of those gifts were greeted with tearful thanks as well. Needless to say, that made me feel good. That became our gift giving tradition. She would buy me interesting little things that made her think of me when she found them, and I would make her things.

Both our lives went along the usual paths for American kids our ages. So it was, that when I graduated highschool I found myself making plans to move down to Florida with a cousin where he was planning to go to college at the university of Florida in Gainesville and I was planning to find a job. Probably doing something in construction or building maintenance or something along those lines. I’d always liked that kind of work and knew enough to get my foot in the door at most places, even if I didn’t have any education or certified training. It also helped that Florida is a right to work state, which meant that the unions wouldn’t be an issue in getting a job.

Of course, real life rarely takes one’s plans and expectations into account. Thus it was, that things didn’t go exactly as I’d hoped they would. First of all, my cousin Drew was going to school on a sports scholarship, so that was paying for his schooling and provided a small housing allowance as well. That housing allowance was enough to cover the athlete’s part of a shared dorm room, or it could be used instead toward off campus housing. This was the plan I’d agreed to, not knowing that Drew had no plans at all for how to pay the rest of his part of the lease agreement.

Fortunately for me, the apartment complex was meant and set up for accommodating the University Students and was thus subsidized by the state and the college and was therefore far less expensive than a two-bedroom apartment like that would otherwise have been. Also fortunately, the apartment was furnished, although sparsely, so we wouldn’t have that expense either. Unless of course we wanted to upgrade anything or add to what was there for our own use. Drew’s parents had made sure he had a healthy ten-thousand-dollar safety net in his savings account, and they’d verified that I had the same, though I’d earned every penny of mine through my own efforts, before they’d approve our plan. They figured this would be enough to keep us out of trouble.

Drew of course, not having learned the lessons I had growing up, decided this was a license to live large. He put off finding a job and went immediately into party mode. The only thing saving him was the fact he was smart enough to know that drugs were the road to nowhere and he wanted no part of them. Still, alcohol could and did do its fair share of damage to his finances, as did the women he favored. It seemed like most of them were only interested in what he could get for them, either in status, or what he could and would buy for them. Needless to say, his party fund soon ran out and his safety cushion vanished.

I of course was looking for a job the moment I finished unpacking my stuff, and I found one within my first week of looking. So it was that I was working full time and not doing too badly in keeping up my end of things. Within the first three months of our residency though, Drew was no longer contributing to groceries, paying his share of the utilities or the phone, internet and cable bills. Since the cable and phone bills were in his name, I simply let them lapse. The internet was in my name though, so I locked the account so that no service increases or other purchases could be made from it using my credit information. Drew didn’t seem to notice any of this until he got a call on his cell from his coach asking why his home phone was telling him it was disconnected. Then he noticed that the cable service was no longer working as well and he confronted me about it. I laughed at him and told him I wasn’t paying for services I didn’t want or need anyway, especially if he wasn’t paying his share! Those services were in his name after all.

That didn’t shut him up for long though. Somehow, he managed to talk his parents into footing the bill for a couple of more months until he could find a job. Then he was making excuses about how little time he had to look for work with his busy class and sports responsibilities. Since I was well out of it, I didn’t bother worrying about it either. They harped and complained at him, then at me, to which I replied that I never gave out the home phone number because I considered it his and I’d never had any use for cable TV, so I didn’t see any need to pay for them, and that was why my name did not appear on those accounts and I would not be held responsible for said accounts.

They were not happy about this at all, and couldn’t believe I had no use of those services. My response was to send them a shot of his phone bill with a text pointing out that all the recorded outgoing calls were to numbers he called, and none to any of mine. Whether they believed I didn’t use his cable service for anything other than free programming or not really didn’t matter to me. That was between him and them., and that’s the way it would stay as far as I was concerned. There was a bit more drama on that subject before everything finally got straightened out of course, but that’s not what this story is about so I’m done with it.

When our lease ran out a year later, Drew wanted to move his girlfriend in instead. By this time, I too had a steady girlfriend and she too wanted to move in with me. So, my girlfriend Jackie and I began looking at apartments while Drew and Sheri planned to stay in that apartment. It seemed especially appropriate since they were both students at the University and I wasn’t. Jackie was, and on a cheerleading scholarship, but her parents were willing to fund her share of the lease. In my case, by this time I’d established myself well enough in the area that my job was secure and my income enough that I could, if necessary, afford the apartment on my own. I made sure that none of the units we were seriously considering were beyond the point where I could support it on my personal income. That caused a few arguments between Jackie and I, but I refused to back down on that point and she finally agreed it was a good idea. Interestingly, her parents approved of the idea as well. Probably because it would help limit their own costs.

We ended up in a single-story relatively luxurious condominium with two bedrooms, two baths, access to a large pool and gym facilities, a spa and sauna, and a two-car garage. How this place was affordable was a mystery to both of us. As it turned out, it was because the maintenance was far below par. It didn’t take long for the maintenance job to become mine once the landlord found out what I did for a living. My pay for that job was free rent, basic utilities and full cable service and internet. This basically meant that all of my income was mine to do with what I pleased. I wouldn’t have accepted the job, except that it also came with a company Home Depot ®credit card for use in acquiring needed parts and materials for repairs and service along with a firm promise that as long as I could prove the part or purchase was necessary for a needed repair, I wouldn’t be argued with over any purchase. With this guarantee of being allowed to do the job, I was willing enough.