Everything in Threes

By Olivia Brooke

 

Patricia, Kat, and Valencia were completely different, and yet, one in the same.

 

One was quite quaint, she had an eye for detail and loved shopping for designer brands. Up in Brooklyn, it was easy to spend loads, but spending loads didn’t mean much to Patricia since she made loads. Kat bounced around the city; ran marathons and got up at six in the morning, even on a Saturday. Not a sip of wine in her personality’s system, she was clean as far as she knew.

 

Valencia was a different sort of case, the type that dominated a corporate business yet was hated like a wicked witch. She strutted the city’s Midtown, made her way up Madison Avenue and back to the office faster than Kat could sprint from the east to west borders of Central Park.These women had never met and would never meet. They would never coexist despite the obvious fact that they lived in such close proximity to one another. Same age, same hair color, same height.

 

Oh, for heaven’s sake, they are the same person.

 

This would explain why Patricia knew the managers on duty at specific stores on Monday, Wednesday, Fridays. Why Kat could only train on Tuesday and Thursday mornings or sign up for marathons on Saturdays. Or the fact that Valencia was a hybrid worker, in office on Tuesdays and Thursdays, though only truly hybrid on Sundays. When one rose, the others packed away in a strict filing cabinet of time. A sort of concept the three, or one, of them would never understand, but that it made perfect sense as to how Patricia had the money she did not work for. How Kat was able to wake up so early and feel refreshed, and how Valencia always had sore thighs but nevertheless held the stamina of a triathlete.

 

An issue among these women was not identity theft, as the city was so large and they each lived divisional sectors of lives, but that they would not ever be able to have a partner in life. No matter how hard Patricia flirted with a man sitting alone with a newspaper at Breakfast at Tiffany’s or the Plaza, and no matter how many men Kat ran in tune with across the city, their weekly disappearances led to short-lived situationships.

 

Men bowed to these women for how niche and unique they were. Never understood why the women would flirt and then flee. The women, quite honestly, never understood why they disappeared for days at a time either.

 

The only one of them who never bothered with a relationship was Valencia, though that was not a surprise. Her hustle of maintenance in and out of the office consumed her time. It caught business men’s attention, no doubt, but Valencia was quicker than the wind and had the attention span of a frog.

 

Until Jason entered the picture.

 

Jason, rest assured, was a man frugal with his money and his women. Too many laughs, too little characteristics to dish on, and not enough surprise in a woman made him leave in a flash. So, when Valencia zoomed by him in a flash and out the corporate doors on a random Tuesday’s lunch break, Jason found himself following the lady. Out onto the busy streets and straight to the coffee shop around the corner he knew she always ordered an oat milk cappuccino from with an almond croissant slightly warmed on the side. She would nibble on it for fifteen minutes while only taking two minutes to down the coffee, and then briskly walk back to work.

 

Not even looking up from her phone as she went for her usual table, Valencia practically jumped from her skin at the sight of Jason in her seat.

 

“Do I know you?” Her territorial voice countered his odd, but innocent, choice of action.

 

“Maybe, no. Probably not.”

 

Valencia sat at her table anyways, despite the stranger taking stake in it already. Jason eyed her but didn’t say a word. His face remained expressionless, his voice monotonous as the city would never be. And just as he remembered, Valencia crumpled the paper holding her croissant and began to pick at it for fifteen minutes on the dot while never glancing twice at the man across from her. The coffee was gone within two minutes.

 

The next day, Jason decided to buy a new suit. He walked up Madison on his lunch break because he knew Valencia never came to the office on Wednesdays. With work allowing discounts from paychecks to shop at specific stores, he made the hike up to Dolce & Gabbana, despite his beliefs on how much a man should pay for a suit.

 

One, two, three suits tried on before a familiar voice filled the room. Closer and closer it became, that familiar pinpointed voice which now had a tinge of valley girl petals dropping from its edges.

 

Jason handed back the “no” suits before making way to the cashier, but more so the voice.

 

“Valencia?”

 

The woman with the same hair, same height, yet completely different attire paid no attention to the call.

 

He tapped her lightly on the shoulder. “Valencia?”

 

She whipped her head around, bob cut hair whooshing like a broom. “No, Patricia!” She exclaimed in a quaint yet authoritative voice.

 

Jason couldn’t help but laugh. And all he heard himself say was, “ok.”

 

Twenty minutes later, after Patricia convinced him to purchase the two other suits plus four belts and new socks, Jason was rushing back to the office.

 

When Thursday rolled around, he met Valencia, to her surprise, at the coffee shop table once again. “Patricia or Valencia?” He asked.

 

“What?” The razor sharp voice returned and Jason got his answer.

 

So, he pursued bland conversation and called the woman Valencia on Thursday.

 

Jason ran. So did Kat. On Saturday, the semi-annual Manhattan marathon commenced, in which they both attended. Kat showed up in purple leggings, white leg warmers, and a black tight tank top with an arm band full of fruit chews and caffeinated mints. Jason showed up in all black, similar looking attire for work but for… running.

 

Aside from the ridiculous Barbie outfit Kat had on, Jason couldn’t help but to think Valencia, or Patricia, would somehow and somewhere, be there. He walked straight up to the woman when her neon bubble exploded in his shadowy presence. “Who are you today?” He asked, jokingly.

 

The woman’s eyes lit up as she looked down at her outfit. “Oh no,” she laughed, “it’s not a costume.”

 

“No, no, I meant, what’s your name?”

 

“Kat.”

 

For the first time in ages, Jason smiled. Barely a smile, but enough to consider it so. He liked these womans (women, woman, womens… he could not decide).

They ran the marathon side by side, in step with one another like every other runner on the planet would happily acknowledge they hated doing. Kat’s presence was enough. She radiated nothing of the sorts of Patricia or Valencia, but gave Jason a sense of ache to be near her. Them.

 

The end of summer turned to fall and before he knew it, snow began to fall. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday’s were dedicated to lunch and dinner detours with Patricia. The office was the most fun on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Exercise became more exhilarating on the other split times in Jason’s week. Things were easy. Jason never considered himself a cheater. He wasn’t, was he?

 

Though when Valentine’s Day rolled around, one of the many holidays the three personalities spent alone, they stayed confined within themselves and felt the other’s presence. What was once a longing for a partner on a special day, turned into each of them staring at their calendars on their applicable days of the week to see if the holiday would fall on a day they did not disappear.

 

Valencia was the lucky winner; chocolates and roses. Her almond croissant and an extra large cappuccino awaiting her at the coffee shop. Dinner in the Upper East Side and an invitation to come over to Jason’s place for the first time. How could she resist? Silk undergarments and a lace top, it was a special occasion that she had never indulged in. Jason seemed content, why couldn’t she be? The logistics could be solved later.

 

A night to remember; indulgences indeed. Valencia fell asleep happily in this man’s arms as the sun had already begun to rise. But when the sun was at its peak, and Patricia woke up beside Jason, the longing for loneliness surged back up in her throat.

 

Patricia stared at the man lying next to her; was she drugged? How did she get here? In a city full of indifference, the possibilities were endless. So, she did what any plausible femme fatale would do. Out of fear or panic, she didn’t know, it just had to be done to stop this madness.

 

An hour later, Patricia sat at a table in the middle of morning high tea at the Plaza. Dolce Gabbana skirt hanging low on her waist with a certain man’s tie tied loosely around her neck, Christian Louboutin shoes painted red on the bottom for the world to see. This was a woman’s world, and she was only partly living in it. But she would keep it that way.

 

Olivia Brooke from US is a masters student in the Rhetoric and Composition program at Florida State University. Starting in 2021, Olivia has worked towards building her business, Chronicles & Coffee ,to promote authors on her blog and podcast. She extended her experiences into the publishing industry by working as a story editor at a comic book publishing house, an editorial assistant at Thin Veil Press, interned on the editorial team at Southeast Review, and is the Managing Editor at Black Thoughts Editorial and Second Realm Publishing. Olivia loves to read and write equally and is super excited to publish her debut urban fantasy novel, When Midnight Strikes, in 2025. When she is not spending time writing or reading pages of a book, Olivia is finding new routes around town to go on long runs or is spending time with friends and family.