From Here To The Moon

3J restaurant...

"Hello, you're welcome to 3J restaurant. May I have your orders, please?" The waitress beamed and welcomed the two ladies as they made themselves comfortable at one corner of the restaurant, their usual spot, near the floor-to-ceiling glass wall that gave a view of the bright, busy midday world.

"Okay, I'll have chicken sandwich and orange juice, please", Janet said, her eyes still glued to the menu in her hand.

"Mushroom risotto for me, please", Miriam ordered. "And cranberry juice" She added and the waitress left immediately.

"Don't you get tired of that?" Janet said, finally lifting her head from the menu. She was trying to check on the other dishes to know which one to try the next time they visited the restaurant. "You order that almost every time. Don't you want to try something else?" She asked Miriam, who was reading a novel at hand. 'Bookworm', she sighed inwardly.

"Then how would you know that's my favourite? That's why we choose a favourite. I don't get tired of eating it. I can have it for breakfast, lunch, supper, snack, whatever" Miriam shrugged without lifting her head. "Plus this is the only restaurant here that makes it better apart from myself, so..."

"Tsk, tsk, so conceited. And must you read everywhere?" Janet asked with a frown when she realised she wouldn't even look up.

Miriam sighed and rolled those big, attractive eyes of hers and looked up.

"I have to finish reading and return it to the library on our way back. You know I couldn't finish it because of the project I had to do." Janet opened her mouth to say something but Miriam beat her to it."Don't worry, just a few pages to go. I'm on the last chapter." she said with smile, gesturing with one hand for Janet to calm down.

Janet sighed defeatedly. She knew nothing she said right now would change anything. How did she even choose a bookworm as a friend in the first place?

"Here's your order, please. Enjoy your meal." the waitress came with a trolley containing their food and arranged it on the table. She bowed slightly and left. The two best friends enjoyed their meal, talking about random stuff and laughing along their jokes.

----

Miriam Hammond and Janet Hamilton were inseparable. They were worlds apart in terms of social class, but they vibed in so many ways. Janet was from a rich family, a lone child who didn't know the use of money and spent anyhow just because she had the money to spend. Well, in Miriam's case, she was from a middle class family, who had a strict budget to follow everyday.

Unlike Janet, whose parents were making it big in the business world, Miriam's mom was a cook in one of the mansions in the estates. Her father also worked at the packaging unit in a beverage company. Both their jobs weren't very high-fetching, but they were able to cater for the whole family's needs, making sure both Miriam and her kid brother never lacked basic necessities in life, especially when it came to their education.

Miriam was two years older than Lordy, but he had outgrown her, was about 5.9 inches taller than Miriam, who was about 5.6 inches, and his smartness and eagerness to make his family proud had made him seem older than Miriam. He had the notion that he was the man of the house, and he was supposed to take care of them. He was very protective of his family, especially his elder sister.

Miriam and Lordy were two years apart in education as well. During Lordy's final year at high school, he decided to compromise and wait till her sister completed university since the financial strength of the family to cater for the both of them was very weak. Miriam was getting to her second year by then. Lordy decided to wait after completion of high school till her sister was done with university, and promised to do part-time jobs to earn money on that regard.

However, after high school, Lordy blew up with tremendous results which earned him a full-time scholarship to study in the university. He had no hard time gaining admission to study Art Education and minor in photography, as he was fond of art and painting.

Miriam was studying Food and Hospitality, as she was planning to open a restaurant or hotel and manage it with her mum, and probably put her father in charge of something. She really loved cooking, just like her mom, and didn't like eating out, but that changed when she met Janet at the university. She was the outing type and had convinced Miriam on so many occasions to eat out with her.

Miriam's life was quite boring. It was just reading, cooking, listening to music, and nothing else. She didn't even like watching movies. Tsk! Such a bore, Janet would usually say whenever she refused to go out or watch a movie with her.

"This is just the same as watching a movie. The story is amazing," Miriam would usually say to refute Janet's taunts. To her, movie directors base on stories like what she read to shoot movies. But they had come to understand each other.