Alexa B-Side: #26 – Katie in London

Katie sat there and watched as her two roommates and their two friends strolled up to the stage to begin their latest alcohol laden performance. As this trip to London had neared, Katie began to get a bit apprehensive over the whole thing. The idea of being a fifth wheel started to weigh on her. She had been around when the four had talked via Skype and remembered that night a year ago when she found the four of them. The four were a perfect match. Nikki had been a great help to Katie’s ‘little sister’ and Sarah had been a wonderful supporter of both Alexa and Jenny. A strong bond had been formed amongst the four. Katie started to worry that she would put a strain on that dynamic when she came over with her two roommates.

But that wasn’t what had happened. Katie had found a group of people she could bond with. Not only the couple known as Snikki, but their friends. Katie (Hendo), Lauren, Jacinta and even Ophelia had proved to be the kind of friends that neither she nor Alexa had growing up. Sure, they had ‘friends’ or more accurately there were people they spent time with, but no one they were really close to. They had each other and that was it. Then the world changed. First Katie and Jenny had been assigned as roommates. And then came the events of a year and a half ago. Alex became Alexa, and then came Jexy. The oddest couple at the beginning and now a couple that Katie couldn’t comprehend life without. And a life that Katie couldn’t even have comprehended came to be that night she came home from work and found her two roommates drunk, singing along with two girls she had never met. And because of that night Katie had more friends than she had ever dreamed of.

She was now able to see the closeness that Jenny and Alexa went on about when they came back from London last fall. She was skeptical of the stories that the couple had shared about how accepting and kind the people had been over here. And now she saw it firsthand. She still was trying to wrap around her mind that one of the most popular groups in England could be so kind to a couple of abnormally crazy American fans. But it wasn’t just kind, there was a friendship there, and it wasn’t just because of the similar circumstance that Stephanie and Alexa shared. It was something stronger than that. It was a friendship based on something that Katie completely understood, the mutual teasing of one another. Almost as much teasing as went on between Jenny and Alexa and the two flight attendants, Jessica and Paige. Paige wasn’t the one who teased her roommates as much as the blonde American. And Katie liked that. Someone who could keep her little sister in line.

But even those two groups were nothing compared to the warmth and generosity of the group of supermodels who had welcomed all three of them into their lives. Jamie Lee and her best friend, Charlotte had not even blinked an eye when they brought the three Americans into one of their famous parties. Jamie seemed like the big sister to all these people. She may have been the biggest star but was also one of the kindest. And the husbands and boyfriends had been just as welcoming to Katie. Most of them had meet Jenny and Alexa on the last trip but they had shown just as much interest in Katie’s life as anyone ever had.

Katie sat back for a moment and realized how that one fateful day, at of all places the Mall of America, had led Katie this moment. In a pub in London with a group of people she would be friends with for a long time. A group that was cheering on her two little sisters and their partners in crime as the stumbled around on stage to the song Venus. One of that group, Hendo as she had been called this week as to not confuse the two Katies, came up and handed her a pint of beer. “Isn’t this great!” the British Katie said. Katie looked around and smiled at her new group of friends.

“Yes, it is”