Chapter Text
When Lucy used Google Maps to find the closest bar she’d never been to with Marcella, it did not in any way indicate that it was a karaoke bar.
After four strawberry daiquiris, Lucy decided that was a good thing. Because they had Chappell Roan on the karaoke list.
It's fine, it's cool
You can say that we are nothing, but you know the truth
And guess I'm the fool
With her arms out like an angel through the car sunroof
As Lucy warbled through her heartbreak, several people got up and left, and she couldn’t even blame them. Even so drunk she almost fell off the short little stage twice, she knew she was a terrible singer. If nothing else, her pain might teach a few people about the evils of karaoke and to not try to drag their singing-averse friends to any more karaoke bars.
One woman didn’t look too off put by her singing, however. She was sitting at the bar alone, eating a burger and sipping a glass of red wine. While Lucy wasn’t in her direct line of sight, she kept looking over her shoulder at her, and her expression looked less annoyed and more … something else. Lucy wasn’t sober enough to know what, exactly, but she was sober enough to see that this woman was stunning - blonde, big brown eyes, beautiful smile. When the song was over and she had done a very dramatic bow, she decided to sit next to her.
Lucy was very drunk, but she was at least aware enough to know that going up to a woman and telling her she was gorgeous wasn’t smooth. So she said, “Hey. Hey!”
Gorgeous turned to look at her. “Yes?”
“I’m Lucy,” she said. “You’re pretty.”
Nailed it.
Gorgeous blinked. “Oh. Thank you.”
“Mmm-hmm, no problem. Have you had one of these?” she asked, pointing at her newest daiquiri. “They’re amazing.”
“I’ll bet. And how many have you had?”
“This is number four plus one. So that’s …” She counted on her fingers. "Five, I’ve had five.” She held up the fingers for Gorgeous to see.
“Wow,” said Gorgeous. “You said it’s Lucy, right?”
“Yeah. I like Chappell Roan. And I’m drunk.”
“Neither of those things are news but thank you for telling me. Lucy, can you do me a favor?”
Lucy shrugged. “If I don’t have to get off of this stool.”
“No, you definitely need to stay seated. But I’m going to ask this nice lady - hi,” she said, waving to get the bartender’s attention, “to bring us a water?” The bartender nodded and Gorgeous turned back to Lucy. “I want you to drink the whole glass of water before you drink any more rum, okay?”
She pondered the offer for a minute. “Can I have fries?”
Gorgeous snorted then pushed over her plate. “They gave me too many anyway.”
“Yay!” Lucy clapped before taking three fries and stuffing them in her mouth all at once.
Gorgeous shook her head at Lucy, but she was smiling. “So why are you drinking several daiquiris on a weeknight?”
“Got dumped.”
“Oh,” Gorgeous said, mouth twisting up. “I’m sorry.”
“Why? You didn’t do it. And I shoulda seen it coming.” The bartender put a glass of water in front of Lucy who obediently drank some. “My high school girlfriend, Mar-cel-la. Huh, that’s kinda hard to say. Mar-cel-lel-lel-lel-la.” She giggled.
“You’ve been together since high school?”
“No,” she said with a laugh, pushing at Gorgeous’s shoulder, “that’s silly. No, we broke up before college and got together when she moved back to town. And then she got a job in Hawai’i so I moved here for her. I was being all supportive, y’know? But now she says she brought me here because I was her … whaddaya call ‘em? Safety blankets. Like when she was a kid and scared, like her blankie.”
Gorgeous frowned. “I think you mean security blanket. She thought of you like a security blanket. Which is not very nice.”
“Whatever. But she says she wishes she hadn’t ‘cause she met someone else. I’m scared of the ocean and I moved to Hawai’i and she met someone else.” She waggled her finger at Gorgeous warningly. “Never move anywhere for anybody.
“I think my girlfriend learned that today,” Gorgeous said sadly.
Lucy squinted up at her. “… I’m not your girlfriend. I’m Lucy.”
Gorgeous laughed. “No, I know, I mean … um, I broke up with my girlfriend Cara who moved to Hawai’i to be with me. And I think I knew it wasn’t going to work before I even got the job.”
“So you did do it, just not t’me.” She scowled at Gorgeous. “Why’d ya do that?”
Gorgeous sighed, swirling the wine in her glass around morosely. “I suppose because I have trouble connecting with people. I was worried about losing the one person I was close to and being in a completely different place and doing an new job at the same time, so when she said she’d be open moving to Hawai’i with me, I let her.”
“But you didn’t love her,” Lucy concluded, the ache that she'd felt in her chest ever since her conversation with Marcella intensifying.
“No,” Gorgeous agreed, her eyes fixed on the bar. “And I let it go on for too long, until she was talking about our future and I realized that I never thought we’d have one, not really.”
“She was your safety blanket.”
“Security -“
“HEY!” Lucy reached up and grabbed Gorgeous by the face with both hands, squishing her cheeks so her mouth made a little fish mouth, and stared her in the eyes. “People are not safety blankets! We’re people! We make plans and we have ocean-phobia and we fall in love and … and …”
And then she had to let go of Gorgeous’s face so she could wipe the tears that were running down her cheeks.
“She didn’t love me,” Lucy stuttered through hiccuping breaths, crying so hard she couldn’t see. “Why didn’t she love me?”
“I’m sorry,” she heard Gorgeous say. A few seconds later, she felt a hand lightly rub her shoulder.
She turned and threw her arms around Gorgeous, burying her head in the other woman’s shoulder.
The last thing she remembered was Gorgeous hugging her back.
*
Morning dawned bright, painful, and with mortifying clarity.
And a mouth that tasted like pink Starbursts and vomit.
She looked around and saw that she was on a couch, one that looked very familiar in a room that looked equally familiar, but she couldn’t quite place why. Next to her was a coffee table with a glass of water and Tylenol on it, which she took immediately.
She could hear rustling in a nearby room and followed it into a kitchen, and almost fell over in relief when she saw Ernie at the counter, mixing eggs in a bowl. He glanced over his shoulder and smirked. “Hey, Luce.”
“Thank goodness it’s you,” she said , sinking down in the closest chair. “I think I met a woman last night and a one night stand was the last thing I needed on top of everything else.”
“I heard,” he said, his expression turning sympathetic. “I’m sorry about Marcella. Never liked her, by the way.”
“Would’ve been good to know that earlier,” Lucy grumbled; then the other thing he said caught up to her. “Wait, what do you mean you heard? Also, how did I get here?”
The smirk was back. “Apparently last night you made a friend. She told me you gave her my address and she took an Uber with you to make sure you got here safe.”
Lucy thumped her head onto his kitchen table. “Noooooo.”
“She was cute. A little buttoned up and awkward, but cute.”
“Ernie, I got dumped less than a day ago, I don’t care if she was cute,” Lucy said, muffled by the table. “And even if I did, that only makes it worse that I made an idiot out of myself last night.”
“Don’t think she thought that. She gave you her number.”
“Probably just so I can tell her I didn’t die.”
“So tell her you didn’t die,” Ernie said, shooing her with his spatula. “I’ll call you when breakfast’s ready.”
She looked up from the table. “You’re making me breakfast?”
“Of course,” he said, turning back to the bowl. "You're hungover with a broken heart, the least I can do is make you some eggs."
She stood up and went to go hug him sideways, resting her chin on his shoulder. “You’re the best, you know that?”
His face screwed up and he gently pushed her off him. “Your breath is awful.”
“Thanks a lot,” she huffed, and swiveled away to go find her phone.
“Mouthwash’s in the bathroom! Use it!” he called after her.
She found and used the mouthwash as instructed, then picked up her phone. She laughed when she saw the contact name.
Gorgeous Red Wine Supernova
Hi, it’s Lucy, the drunk woman you saved last night, she typed. I’m alive and very, very sorry for being such a mess last night
To her surprise, the reply was almost immediate. Glad you survived. And you weren’t such a mess.
I was though. So thank you for making sure I was safe
Anytime.
Lucy’s thumbs hovered over her phone, trying to think of what to say next. Today was not the day to start anything with someone new, especially with someone who had done to her ex what Marcella had done to Lucy; plus, Lucy didn’t even have a place to live right now. Besides, Gorgeous RWS probably wasn't even interested and was just trying to be kind to the heartbroken mess who glommed onto her in her drunken stupor.
So she went back to the kitchen and ate breakfast with Ernie, and tried not to think about either Marcella or Gorgeous RWS for a while
But halfway through her eggs, her phone buzzed again. Btw, I liked the name you used for me in your phone, but you can just call me Kate.
And okay, maybe she wasn’t ready for anything right now. Probably wouldn’t be for a while. But there was no reasons she couldn’t make a new friend, right?
Nice to meet you, Kate
Then she ate the rest of her eggs, and if she kept catching herself humming Chappell Roan quietly, it didn't mean anything. Red Wine Supernova was just very catchy, that's all. And Kate was a very nice name. She looked forward to using it the next time she saw her.