to love in all this mess, part one

[forcedmovement]

who tonight will change your life
to jump on a plane and land a thousand miles away
just to see what we came to be

*

soon my face will be on every magazine
and then my voice will be on every frequency

* * * * *

Audrey's fairly certain none of it would have happened if Tom hadn't flaked out again.

If Tom hadn't blown them off for work (work of all fucking things, like a shitty retail job even matters when you're in a band) then Pete wouldn't have tried to find a replacement guitarist, and he definitely wouldn't have gotten into a Guitar Hero battle that had ended with him spinning into the television and fracturing two fingers.

"Are you actively trying to ruin everything? Were you just that stupid? Or is this some sort of fucked up revenge? Fuck, Pete. What are we supposed to do tonight?"

Pete rolls his eyes, waving his cast in her face. "Yeah, breaking my fingers was a plan to get back at you for rewriting my lyrics. That makes perfect fucking sense. And the pain was definitely worth seeing your face right now, of course. I think my next plan is going to involve a car crash. It'll be a fucking blast."

And okay, maybe Audrey deserves that a little, but that doesn't change the fact that they are totally and completely screwed tonight. She glares down at the life-ruining cast, which Chris has attempted to scribble "I <3 dick" on already, but his handwriting is crappy enough and the surface is small enough that it just looks like it says "I <3 duck." Dumbasses.

"Okay, yes, obviously it was an accident," Audrey admits, trying to sound apologetic and understanding and ending up more in the realm of pained, "but that doesn't change anything. We're out a guitarist and a bass player, and we still have to play."

Pete shrugs. "Why? Can't you just cancel on account of injury? I can get a doctor's note." He starts to grin his stupid, gigantic horse-toothed grin and Audrey is pretty sure she's going to slap him. Or break the rest of his fingers. Or both.

"I can't cancel. Last time I cancelled on show day Alicia bit my head off for an hour. And I know she's already pissy this week because she's interviewing new bar lackeys or monkeys or whatever they're fucking called."

"Alicia's not that bad," Pete says, avoiding Audrey's gaze steadily.

She has to choke down a bitter laugh. "Bullshit. You're more scared of her than I am. All of you douchebags ran off last time she started in on us for breaking that table and I had to deal with it by myself."

Pete gives her his best puppy dog look, his stupid emo bangs falling in his eyes, and Audrey feels herself soften. Just a little.

"Look. Pete. Her bar is one of the few places that still gives us a steady job and I'd rather not lose that. We need the exposure. We need the fucking money."

The sound of a door slamming upstairs distracts both of them for a second, and Frank appears at the top of the basement stairs. Audrey's always kind of amazed at how much noise such a small dude can make. It's not like she's exactly quiet herself, but the kid clomps around like he weighs eight hundred pounds.

"What's with the emergency band meeting?" he asks, hopping onto the couch.

"I'm not canceling the show tonight," Audrey snaps, feeling her anger bubble back, "even if Pete's out of commission for the next like, six hundred weeks."

Frank glances at the cast of jackassery on Pete's fingers, then back at Audrey. "Okay," he says, drawing out the word for about five more syllables than necessary, "but...how is that going to work? Pete's injured, I assume Tom isn't coming. That leaves us with a three member band-"

"And one of those members isn't even here," Pete interrupts. "Chris is still at work."

"Yes, and even if he does show up, that still only leaves us with a singer, a drummer, and a rhythm guitarist. We're going to look like idiots."

"It's not like that's ever stopped us before," Audrey points out. "We play without a lead guitarist fifty percent of the time."

"I thought that gave us charm," Pete says, looking hurt. Which, whatever, it's not Audrey's job to protect Pete's fragile fucking feelings. And it's not that she wants to admit that they suck. They don't, usually. Sometimes they're even pretty fucking good when they rehearse and Tom bothers to show up, but it's not like she can just live in some fantasy land and ignore the fact that they get booed half the time.

Frank sighs loudly, and runs his hands through his hair. He only fiddles with his hair when he's working on a plan, and it soothes Audrey's nerves a tiny bit. She can only hope the plan involves some wizard shit that'll pull a guitarist and bassist out of midair.

"Okay. Okay. Here's what we're going to do," Frank says, standing up and pacing around the room. "I've got this back scratcher thing that kind of looks like a hand? Yeah, shut up, it was a gift from my mom. Pete, maybe you can use that as your other hand. To strum, you know? It'll be easy enough to hold, even with the cast. I mean, it's not ideal, but it probably won't make you sound much worse than usual."

"Funny, coming from the guy who spends more time on the floor than he does playing guitar," Pete shoots back.

"We both do that, and whatever, it's worth a try. And if it sounds okay, you can do that for any gigs we've got while your fingers are still in that casty splinty thing. And even if it sounds like shit, it'll at least distract the crowd. And I'll take over bass for the next show and Tom can do guitar by himself. So we don't have to miss any gigs, really." He punctuates his speech by folding his arms, hugging himself tightly and nodding his head. "It could work."

Pete looks as intrigued as Audrey feels, but he plasters on a petulant frown and says, "Have you ever even played bass before? Can you play at all?"

Frank glances up at him with a bemused smirk and Audrey can feel what's coming even before it gets said. "Uh no, but hey, it's never stopped you, right?"

And that's it, she's done. Audrey literally pushes herself in the middle of it, stepping in between them and spreading her arms out. It's not like they have any fucking time for this. "Okay, pissing contest is over. Pete, call Chris and ask him why the hell he isn't out of work yet. Frank, you do know we're going to look like even bigger idiots on stage with someone using a back scratcher to play bass instead of just having no bass player at all, right?"

Frank shrugs. "Yeah, but who the fuck cares? It's the sound that matters."

Audrey can't argue with that. Well, she can, but not without looking like a douche. She sinks down onto the couch and rests her head on Frank's shoulder. "This is not our best day ever," she says, headache already pounding in her ears.

"We'll make it work. You're our strong Amazon woman, Audrey. You can get through anything," Frank says, smiling brightly at her, and Audrey can't help but laugh. She doesn't know how he manages to do it, make her laugh and feel brave even when she wants to tear out bits and pieces of her hair, but he does. He always does.

Pete walks back over from the corner where he'd been carrying on a completely unintelligible conversation with Chris, their usual secret language of inside jokes and half-sentences. It's probably a sign of having the same best friend for so many years, but Audrey wouldn't really know.

"He's coming. He got sidetracked with some emergency hair situation," Pete says, tossing the phone onto the table.

"What the hell is an emergency hair situation?" Frank asks, half to Pete and half to Audrey, who shrugs. There are about sixty possible hair emergencies she can think of off the top of her head, but if she starts listing them she knows the boys will get all fascinated and sidetracked and they'll waste an hour discussing the horrors of salon life, an hour they can't afford to lose right now.

"That new girl fucked up a haircut and Chris had to fix it," Pete tells them, carefully avoiding Audrey's eyes as he says it. Frank coughs and looks away from her too, and Audrey glares at both of them.

"What? I'm not going to rant about her again. I'm really, really fucking done talking about the whole thing," she says, pursing her lips. But the assholes are still not looking at her, and Audrey throws her hands up, defeated. "Okay, fine. She's an incompetent little bitch who's only there because her daddy is a big fucking producer and she knows half the clients. Whatever. It's out of my system. Can we just deal with the band?"

Frank and Pete exchange a smile that they think she can't see, but she lets it go. They've got bigger problems to deal with than annoying hairdressers who apparently learned to cut hair on their goddamn Barbies. It's just four hours until the show, and their fate rests in a wooden hand.

Yeah, they're living the fucking dream.

* * * * *

It was Frank's band first, with Pete screaming out the lyrics unintelligibly until they'd decided they needed someone with a real voice, and that was when Frank found Audrey. She'd been living in some ratty little apartment and working at a fast food restaurant at the time. He'd come in to buy what looked like his entire weight in food during the dead time just before closing, a tiny little tattooed boy with bad hair and a Misfits t-shirt. She'd been humming some stupid song that had been on the radio at the time, she can never remember what. It doesn't really matter, she supposes, because Frank liked it and Frank took her out of that place and gave her a better job at the hair salon where Chris worked, all on the condition that she would sing in his shitty little local band.

They had been shitty, when she'd first met them all. They're probably pretty shitty now too, but Audrey likes to hope that they're somewhat less shitty, and definitely on the road to becoming awesome.

But she'd agreed to do it because she was tired of grease in her hair, and besides, after six days of his incessant pleading, she'd realized that he probably wouldn't give up. It was a good decision, and he'd taken care of her ever since. Frank picked her up when she was too drunk to see straight, and Frank always let her bitch about her failed relationships (a loose term, admittedly, considering she's never dated anyone longer than a few weeks) and most importantly, Frank let her move in with him when her lease expired and she still hadn't found a place to live.

It was temporary until it just wasn't anymore. He threw out any newspaper with listings she'd circled, and eventually she'd stopped looking for somewhere else to go. She reminds herself that it's not charity, that it's good for Frank too. She can cook all the meals that Frank can't, and she's never late with rent or bills, and she's even handled a phone conversation or two with Frank's mother while he was too hungover to talk to her.

She doesn't say it out loud (can't say it out loud, for reasons that are probably tied back to some childhood issues she's too poor to pay a shrink to figure out) but she's pretty fucking lucky to have Frank in her life. She's pretty fucking lucky to have all of them, really.

Wooden hand and all.

* * * * *

"We are Shit Family and we're going to rock your fucking faces off," she says as an opener, the way she always does, despite the fact that tonight is clearly not a normal night at all and it's highly doubtful anyone's face is going to be even slightly rocked. It's not the lack of the lead guitarist, which is something the regular crowd is pretty used to by now. But the fact that Pete (who would normally have jumped off something at this point in the show) is sitting on a stool and using a massage tool to strum his bass pretty much throws the entire performance off.

"It didn't suck that bad," Frank says, coming down off the stage after the show. Audrey knows it did, but Frank is their self-appointed morale booster and she figures she should just let him boost.

"There were eleven pirate jokes. I counted," Pete replies, glowering at the crowd. "That's a wooden leg, assholes."

Chris claps him on the back, steering him towards the bar. "Maybe you shouldn't have worn a striped shirt, dude."

"It's the complete opposite of a leg," Pete snaps, but he's grinning and glancing at his shirt now, and Audrey figures he's going to get over the whole thing pretty fast.

She hears him say, "Maybe I should get a sword," before he disappears out of earshot with Chris, and she's left pushing through the crowd with Frank, who automatically reaches out and squeezes her arm.

He leans into her as they walk and starts into his typical post-show recap, detailing all the high points of the show and generously skimming over the low points. Audrey still feels crappy about the whole thing by the time they reach the bar, but she's admittedly feeling slightly less crappy. It was, amazingly enough, not their worst show ever (that honor goes to their second show they'd played together, where they'd somehow gotten it into their heads that getting wasted before performing was a fantastic idea) and Chris had actually done some of his tightest drum work in recent weeks.

She orders a shot of vodka anyway, because bright side or not, the image of Pete and the wooden hand is still burned into her brain.

"Tough night tonight," Vicky-T says, sliding the shot across the bar to Audrey and giving her a sympathetic smile.

Audrey groans loadly. "Don't talk to me about it. I'm thinking about spending the next few weeks in a drunken stupor until Pete's fingers are fixed." She downs her shot quickly, making a slight face. (Whether it's for the burning in her throat or the idea of more shows played with the wooden hand, she's not sure.)

"Because that's the surefire way to improve our performances," Frank says, rolling his eyes. He orders drinking a Shirley Temple like he always does, the poster boy for responsible designated drivers everywhere.

Audrey ignores him completely and focuses on a shiny new distraction. There's a girl with blindingly blonde hair behind the bar, leaning against the sink and raptly listening to Jon point out the distinction between martini and margarita glasses. She stands out because she's a completely new thing in a place that hasn't changed since Audrey's known it, but Audrey also gets the feeling that she's just generally conspicuous. "Is that the new meat?"

Vicky-T smirks and glances down, hair falling in her eyes. "That's Jac."

Jac. Audrey lets the name roll around a bit on her tongue. Jac. One syllable, no bullshit, the kind of name that's easy to scream out during sex. "Jac," she says out loud without realizing it, and the girl glances over at her. Fuck.

She walks over a few steps, stopping next to Vicky-T and staring at Audrey. "Uh, yeah?" she asks, bewildered. She's got a pretty face and her eyes are heavily lined in black. Audrey used to do her eye makeup that way too, when it matched the dark circles under her eyes from never sleeping. Jac's complexion is crystal clear though, and Audrey would have written her off as a typical California girl if she wasn't so deathly pale.

"I just wanted to wish you luck on working here. Most people don't last a week," Audrey says, adopting an indifferent smirk. It's not a bad cover-up, and Jac's eyes narrow defensively.

"You're the singer, right? Shit Family? Nice name. Very descriptive. I'm actually not working tonight, but Vicky-T told me I had to come down and witness this band. She said it would blow my mind."

Audrey's eyes snap to Vicky-T accusingly, who suddenly appears incredibly interested in another customer at the bar. Bitch. She looks back at Jac and swallows, tilting her head to acknowledge that she may have deserved that.

"So did it? Blow your mind?" she says, baring her teeth in a way that might be mistaken for a smile in the dim light of the bar.

Jac bursts out laughing. Audrey thinks for a moment that she ought to be offended, but Jac's laugh is distractingly throaty.

"You know what? I think I can officially say that my mind was blown," Jac says, leaning over the bar and flashing Audrey a smile.

Audrey shrugs. "Well that's something, I guess. We may be an assault on your ears, but we'll also blow your mind."

Frank nods, startling Audrey. She'd completely forgotten he was there after Jac's sudden appearance. "Maybe you can start saying that after introducing us," he says. "It would be more truthful than the whole face-rocking thing."

"I don't know, my face was also kind of rocked. In a painful way, sure, but…rocked," Jac tells them. It's clear she's only saying it out of pity but Audrey is charmed anyway.

"Well, I can promise you we don't always suck that hard," Frank says, and Audrey agrees, clinking her glass with his.

Jac nods like she believes them. "I guess I'll have to make sure I'm around the next time you guys play." Her eyes flicker to Audrey as she says it, and her cheeks start to color slightly. Audrey can't help but feel amused. She's barely started flirting with this girl and she's already got her blushing. Girls are so fucking easy.

"I'm Audrey, by the way," she says, switching easily into her patented flirt mode: head slightly tilted, staring up through her eyelashes, smile hovering around her lips. "So bartender girl, since you're off duty and all, why don't you come and hang out in front of the bar like the rest of the customers?"

"Do I get a drink out of it?" Jac asks, but she's already started walking around the bar. Of course. Audrey's pretty sure she's got this one in the bag.

"Depends on what you drink," Audrey shoots back. "As glamorous as the rockstar lifestyle is, we're surprisingly broke. Like, all the time. So, no Long Island Iced Teas for you."

Jac slides into the stool next to her. "Feel free to consider me a cheap date. If it's got alcohol in it, I'll drink it."

Audrey bites back a smile. Jac might as well be wearing a "Fuck me" sign, seriously.

Frank stands up quickly, grabbing his drink and making some excuse about needing to make sure Pete isn't endangering lives somewhere. It isn't a graceful exit, and it's definitely an obvious one, but it doesn't really matter. Jac barely notices, her gaze still focused on Audrey.

"I love your hair," Jac says after Audrey orders their drinks. "Is it all real?"

Audrey's confused for a second before she remembers that her hair is actually a bright bubblegum shade of pink usually only found on children's toys. "God no. Some of it, yes, but there are a ton of extensions. I like to change shit up. What about yours?"

Jac scratches at her head, looking suddenly uncomfortable. "Yeah, it's real. Not natural, though. I mean, it's blonde, but not this blonde. I don't know, though. I kind of hate it."

"What do you hate about it?" Audrey asks, utterly confused. Jac's hair is to fucking die for, the brightest shade of blonde she's ever seen.

"Everything?" Jac laughs, but there's a bitter edge to it now. She stares down at her drink and says, "The color, the length. Everything. It's boring. I can't really explain it. It's been the same for years."

Audrey knows she shouldn't pry. All of her instincts tell her to back away from the subject if she wants to take this girl home tonight, but the hairdresser inside of her is too far into this to resist. Fucking curiosity.

"But you're still dying it the same color? Even though you hate it?"

Jac glances at Audrey, expression blank. It's kind of unsettling, coming from the girl whose emotions have been plastered all over her face all night. "Yeah. Like I said, I can't really explain it. I guess it's just part of me, now."

Audrey stares at Jac in exasperated confusion, twirling a strand of her own hair and trying to find the right words. She's trying her hardest not to come off as a bitch, or worse, some kind of psychoanalyst. "I get that, kind of. The hair being a part of you thing, anyway. But if you want to change it, change it. If it's really such a part of you, then it should change. That's what I tell my clients when they're afraid to do something different. I mean, are you the same person you were a few years ago?"

Jac looks like she's torn between laughing or crying. "Not even a little bit," she says finally, and her voice is surprisingly even.

Audrey takes a quick gulp of her drink and tries to recuperate. The night is rapidly unraveling, turning into some kind of sharefest that she's not equipped to handle. She's not talking to Jac so she can cry all her troubles away on Audrey's shoulder. What the hell kind of fucking troubles can she even have? She's some Southern Californian girl, probably in college and living off her daddy's money. Audrey's fucked her type before, and usually the only problem is getting them drunk enough to think that sleeping with a girl is a grand idea.

But Jac came onto her, and Jac is clearly not drunk. There's something off in the whole equation and it's making Audrey severely uncomfortable.

"Well, I can personally say that years ago I would never have expected to wind up in a band called Shit Family," she says. Resorting to a joke is probably transparent, but Jac falls for it anyway, grinning at Audrey.

Everything goes click into place at that point. Jac replies with something witty and mock insulting and Audrey pretends to be offended. They drink until everything is just rosy and no one feels the need to ruin the buzz with stupid personal traumas. Jac keeps making excuses to touch Audrey, and at just the right time Audrey leans forward and whispers in Jac's ear "Do you want to go someplace less crowded?"

Jac nods (like they always do) and Audrey grabs her hand, pulling her out the door. When they get outside she pushes Jac up against the brick wall of the bar, hard, and kisses her until she's out of breath.

"My place is actually really close. Do you want to just go there instead?" Jac says, suddenly and unexpectedly. It's a diversion from the formula. All of the other girls have let Audrey take the lead completely, all the way to her apartment.

"Uh, sure," she replies. She doesn't want to go to Jac's place, doesn't want this to feel any differently than any other one night stand, but she's too surprised by the question to think of a good excuse. And her place is really far.

The cab ride to Jac's is awkward, like they always are, and this is usually the part that's a gamble. Girls get second thoughts when they finally have time to think. Audrey's only weapon against the goddamn cab ride is to keep contact with them at all times, even if it's just a hand on a leg, but even that's not a guarantee. But Jac makes a reassuring squeak when Audrey touches her, and the ride is mercifully over quickly.

She kisses Jac's neck while Jac fiddles with the keys to her apartment, which is probably not the best idea since it takes like, a fucking year to get in, but she can't help it. Jac smells good. Jac tastes good.

The door finally, finally opens and they practically fall in, all tangled and drunk. Jac twists around to kiss Audrey, thankfully not even bothering with offering her a drink or a tour. She just kisses her, hands pressing desperately into her hipbones.

Jac fumbles with the light switch in the bedroom while Audrey's hands slide up her shirt. The light is surprisingly bright when it turns on, some kind of fluorescent shit, and Audrey almost wishes it had stayed off. She can't look good in this light, but fuck, Jac does. Her skin under her shirt is so pale it nearly glows, the kind of skin that hasn't seen sun in ages. It doesn't make sense. Fuck, it doesn't matter.

They fall onto the bed in a mess of limbs, Audrey on top, and she doesn't waste time. She slides her fingers up Jac's leg and under Jac's skirt and it feels like forever until she finally slides inside of her.

Jac moans and it's perfect, it's exactly how she thought it would be the first time she heard Jac's laugh. It's raspy and deep and Audrey wants more than anything for Jac to say her name right now.

She doesn't. Not while Audrey fucks her, not even when she comes. She doesn't say it when she pushes Audrey down on the bed and takes control, kissing her ears and neck and stomach and sliding her underwear off and fuck, suddenly Jac's tongue is on Audrey and she doesn't care about anything else anymore.

It's over too soon. That's all she can think about after, panting and exhausted. They both came too quickly; it wasn't enough. Maybe it was too much, Audrey doesn't fucking know. Her head feels like a cloudy mess.

"Audrey," Jac says, flopping next to her on the bed. It's not a question or a prelude to another comment, just her name. Just Jac, saying her name, with a happy sigh in her voice and contented smile on her face.

"Jac," she replies, echoing her tone. Her name still feels good in Audrey's mouth. "Is that your full name?" she asks, suddenly curious, and Jac laughs.

"No, it's short for Jacquelene. But I fucking hate Jackie."

Audrey thinks about that, about how Jacquelene would sound coming out of her mouth. It's so long, longer than her name even. It sounds delicate, nothing like the girl next to her with the leather boots and bracelet covered arms. "I like Jac better," she says out loud.

Jac makes an "mmm" noise in response, moving over a little on the bed until her head is resting on Audrey's shoulder.

Warning bells start to go off in her head. This is girlfriend behavior, snuggling and talking about Jac's fucking name when she should already be forgetting it. She knows she needs to get up, needs to make some excuse about working in the morning, get dressed, and go. But she's tired and halfway drunk, and her apartment is so fucking far.

She closes her eyes and thinks, in five minutes I'll go.

She's asleep in three.

* * * * *

The first thing she notices when she wakes up is that the walls are white. Not pink and yellow striped, the way her walls at home are. It's a mindfuck that sends adrenaline coursing through her veins almost immediately.

But after a few seconds of panicked confusion she notices the blonde lump beside on her the bed, and everything from last night comes rushing back. Fantastic. The kidnapping scenario she'd been envisioning a few seconds ago would be far less awkward.

She tries to make a clean getaway, sitting up slowly and looking around for her purse and clothing, but she hasn't had to sneak out of anywhere since high school and clearly she's out of practice. The bed squeaks as soon as her foot touches the floor and Jac lifts her head, blinking the sleep from her eyes.

"Audrey?"

"Hey, yeah. I was just…getting up," Audrey says, vowing in her head never to have sex at someone else's apartment ever again. It's not fucking worth it.

"Oh," Jac replies, still out of it. Her hair is a complete mess and there's a little bit of dried drool on her face. She kind of resembles a zombie, actually, but a pretty hot one. She reaches up and scratches at her head absentmindedly, looking around the room like she's just as confused about waking up here as Audrey, like she doesn't belong here either. Honestly, Audrey didn't imagine her in an apartment this tiny and boring and shitty.

"Are you hungry? I don't really have any food here, but we could grab coffee or whatever," Jac says, and she looks so hopeful it almost hurts. Getting coffee with Jac is one of the lowest things on Audrey's to do list today, actually, right next to a fucking root canal, but her stomach knots up with sudden guilt.

"I can't. I mean, I don't think it's a good idea. I'm busy, and. It's just not going to happen," Audrey blurts out. Fuck. Straddling the line between gently letting Jac down and firmly telling her no is too fucking hard for this early in the morning. It's not like she has a lot of practice dealing with this crap, considering most of the girls she sleeps with start regretting it less than an hour later and rush out of her apartment babbling stupid excuses. (The best one she'd ever heard was, "I have to go feed my fish." It's cute how they try.)

Jac just stares blankly at her for a minute, silence filling up the room as loud as it possibly can. Audrey isn't sure if Jac's confused or angry or what, but she finally snaps, "So, just to be clear then, this was a one night stand."

Angry, then. Okay. "I don't know if I'd...I guess. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't think it would be a problem. I thought you knew."

"I just want to make sure. So no one's disappointed," Jac says flatly.

The knots in her stomach tighten, and Audrey thinks that this is officially one of the worst mornings of her entire fucking life. Whatever. It's not her fault if Jac couldn't figure out that the girl picking her up at a bar wasn't looking for an engagement ring.

"Right. I'm just going to go," she says, picking up her purse and turning to walk away. She hesitates at the door, looking over her shoulder. Jac is staring down at her bedspread and scratching at her arm purposefully, angrily, and it's almost tempting to go back and kiss her, to make her smile again the way she did last night. Almost.

But she regains her senses before she does anything stupid, and she opens the door without another word.

* * * * *

Audrey ignores Frank's teasing, curious questions about what happened for a full day until she breaks, spilling out every detail in the hopes that it'll give her closure. He mercifully doesn't bring Jac up again, but he doesn't stop dropping hints about the paycheck still waiting in Alicia's office from Friday night.

She'd feel guilty for not picking it up right away, but it's not her fault the boys are too fucking scared of Alicia to pick it up themselves. It's not like she's anxious to talk to Alicia either after Friday's fiasco, but it's really the thought of running into Jac that keeps her away.

Still, she knows she can't avoid the bar forever. The money burns in the back of her brain all weekend and she sets out Monday afternoon resolved to pick it up.

(And if she's honest with herself, a part of her wants to see Jac. There's a voice in her head whispering things like you could apologize, you could make it right, maybe she'll forgive you, you'll have to see her sometime and she wants to listen to it, wants to be selfish.)

The club is empty when she gets there and she doesn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved. Her heels make clacky noises across the floor as she walks, echoing across the club in the loudest way imaginable, and Alicia opens the door to her office before Audrey even gets there.

She shrinks back automatically, waiting for the yelling to start. Alicia doesn't look pissed, but she does look surprised to see Audrey. "Audrey? Oh, you're here for the check. I thought you were Jac."

Out of all the sentences that could have come out of Alicia's mouth, Audrey's pretty sure that was the last she expected to hear.

"Is Jac supposed to be here?" she asks before she can stop herself. (She probably would have asked the same question even if she'd taken ten minutes to think about it, but whatever.)

Alicia peers at her, confused. "Do you know Jac? Why do you look so shitty? Audrey, you know my policy on cocaine. Don't fucking do it or I'll slap your ass into rehab."

Audrey rolls her eyes. "I'm not doing coke, Alicia. I just haven't slept much lately. And I met Jac on Friday."

She involuntarily swallows at the mention of Friday, but Alicia still doesn't look angry. Which is possibly even more terrifying, reminding Audrey of a cat toying with its prey.

"I just had something to ask her, it's not a big deal. It doesn't matter. Don't worry about it," she continues, and she could not sound stupider if she tried. Alicia's staring at her, skeptical, and Audrey would pay to have this conversation be over. "Right, so, the check. That's what I'm here for."

Alicia keeps her gaze on Audrey as she reaches into the folder she's holding and pulls out the check. "Get some sleep, Audrey," she says, handing it over. "And I might need to book you guys in two weeks, so keep that Friday open, okay?"

Audrey stares down at the check like it's a trick, like it might jump out and bite her. "And…that's it? You have nothing to say about…the show?"

"Jon was supervising Friday, I had shit to do," Alicia says, and immediately narrows her eyes. "Why? Did something happen?"

Audrey really doesn't know what to say. On the one hand, she could get away with the whole thing right here and now and Alicia never has to know about it. On the other hand, if they're hired to play a few weeks from now, Alicia will be even more pissed at getting a surprise attack of suck. "What did Jon tell you?" she asks hesitantly, figuring it's her safest bet.

Alicia shrugs. "He said that despite Pete's best efforts to destroy the entire future of your band, you guys played fine. And I left a strongly-worded voicemail on Pete's phone, so as far as I'm concerned you're off the hook. Are we done now? I'm behind on half of my paperwork. I hate hiring new people."

Audrey feels a surge of relief course through her. This is the first good thing that's happened in days, and it feels like a fucking rainbow just snuggled her and told her things are going to be okay. Even the vague mention of Jac doesn't spoil it.

So when she leaves the bar and literally bumps into Jac in the parking lot, it really shouldn't surprise her. The universe is a bitch.

"Hey," Audrey says. She doesn't know what else to do, considering there's no greeting that says "Haha, this is super awkward, remember when I pushed you up against that wall right there and then abandoned you in the morning?"

Jac looks around at the parking lot, staring at something that is decidedly not Audrey. "Hey."

Audrey knows she should just take off now and spare them both any further conversation, and ordinarily that's exactly what she would be doing. But Jac works at the place she spends half of her weekends at and she braces herself, resolved to make this work.

Audrey takes a deep breath. "About what happened Saturday. Uh, it sucked."

Jac snorts with derisive laughter, but she turns her head to face Audrey and that's progress. Hopefully.

"It's just, we're probably going to run into each other a lot. I don't know how to avoid it. So maybe we can just cut all the awkward shit and get over it."

Audrey realizes how bitchy it sounds a split second too late, but Jac doesn't walk away or explode at her or anything. She just nods.

"Yeah, okay. You're right," Jac says, running her fingers through her hair (which manages to look even blonder and shinier in the sunlight.) "I sort of dumped my issues on you, which wasn't fair. I just dealt with a lot of band guys back home, and they were mostly using me, and I thought it would be different with a girl. Which was stupid, and not your fault, and I'm sorry for freaking out."

Audrey completely gives up on trying to anticipate anything the world is going to throw at her, because clearly she has no fucking idea. "If it helps at all, I thought you were just a drunk straight girl," she says, holding up her palms and shrugging.

Jac laughs openly and sweetly this time and it's like music to Audrey's ears. "Really? Even with the blatant hitting on you?"

"Okay, not at all. I wanted to think it, though. You were hot and I wanted to get laid. What was I supposed to do?" Audrey says, smiling despite herself.

"It's understandable. I am hot," Jac replies with a nod of mock sympathy.

They both laugh a little and Jac cocks her head to the side, giving Audrey a calculating look. "I liked talking to you, Audrey."

Audrey's breath hitches in her throat unexpectedly. She shakes it off and replies "Yeah, I liked talking to you too. You're...surprising."

Jac looks puzzled, scrunching up her nose adorably. "I would have preferred awesome, but I guess surprising is a compliment too."

"It is," Audrey says, nodding seriously.

They both stare at each other in silence for a minute, smiling, which by all conventional rules should be intensely awkward. It's not though, not really. Words don't seem necessary and Audrey feels comfortable, secure. She screws up whenever she opens her mouth but this, this is safe.

But Jac clears her throat and snaps them out of it, moving them back into the dangerous zone of conversation. "So, Alicia is going to kill me if I don't get inside. Um. Where does this leave us? Friends?"

Audrey didn't even consider the possibility of being friends with Jac, not even once in her entire secret, distant hope of coming over here to set the record straight or make things right or what the fuck ever. But as soon as Jac says it, she knows it's what she wanted to hear the whole time.

"Yeah, friends. That sounds good," she says, and Jac grins at her.

"So, I'll call you?" Jac says, walking backwards towards the entrance of the bar.

Audrey feels lighter than air when she agrees, and when Jac disappears behind the thick black door she grins so wide it hurts.

It's not until after she gets in her car and drives off that she realizes that she's never been friends with someone she's slept with before. She doesn't know what the rules are, doesn't even know if they're just friends, or friends with benefits, or what the fuck those benefits would even entail, exactly.

There is, however, a comfortable stability in knowing that eventually she'll just screw it all up.

Lucky fucking her.

* * * * *

She goes home torn between the sinking feeling in her stomach and the floating feeling in her head. She's determined to ask Frank what it means, but the sight of him as she enters the apartment stops her short.

"I thought you weren't working tonight," she says confused, taking in his white shirt, black pants, and undone tie. It's his uniform for his day job (or bill paying job, as he refers to it,) as a waiter for a catering company.

Frank nods, adjusting his collar in the mirror. "I'm not, exactly. It's a preliminary meeting for an event we're doing next Sunday. It shouldn't take long. How did it go with Alicia? Was it bad? How much did she dock us?"

Audrey waves the check around triumphantly. "Actually, and you're not going to believe this, I think the universe got bored with constantly beating us up. Alicia wasn't there Friday and Jon didn't tell her how bad it was, so, we're fully compensated."

"...are you joking?" Frank asks, smile already spreading across his face. "Holy shit. I didn't know that kind of thing could happen to us."

"I know, right? It sucks that you've got the meeting, though. I thought we could rent a movie and discuss of all inventive new ways we're going to get screwed over when the balance of the world is restored."

"Yeah, it sucks," Frank replies, absentmindedly fiddling with his tie. The fidgeting is enough to put Audrey on guard, and the way he won't look at her eyes seals it.

"Frank?" she asks, trying not to smirk, "The event on Sunday...where is it?"

He looks at her with what he probably thinks is a blank expression, but it actually just makes him look like a ferret. A ferret with a secret. "Downtown?"

"That's not even close to an answer. Where downtown?"

Frank shifts, guilty, and Audrey knows she's got it. "Some…art gallery or another."

Audrey puts her hand to her lips in mock shock. "Really. Imagine that. This wouldn't happen to be that gallery Alicia's boyfriend runs with his brother, would it?"

Frank glowers at her. "I hate you."

"You love me," Audrey says, breaking into a gleeful smile. "Not as much as you love Gerard, but whatever. I try my best not to get jealous."

"Maybe you should try your best not to be a pain in the ass," he says. He's scuffing his shoe on the floor adorably and as much as Audrey thinks relationships are stupid and painful, she wants this for him. (Okay, part of that is selfish, because every time Frank comes back after seeing Gerard he bangs his head against the table and whines for an hour, if not longer, and it's starting to really get on Audrey's nerves.)

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't tease you. Even if you do make it really fucking easy. No, I'm sorry, I'll stop. I have my own insane shit to worry about. Guess who I ran into coming out of the bar?"

Frank bites his lip. "Oh god, was it awful? Did she yell at you? Did she cry?"

"Why would she cry?" Audrey asks, baffled. "No, she didn't. It was actually...okay. We're going to be friends. Or try, at least."

"Friends," Frank says. He looks skeptical and Audrey can't blame him.

"Mmm-hmm. Friends. You should set up the betting pool with Pete on how long this'll last before I fuck it up."

Frank cocks his head to the side, looking sympathetic. "We wouldn't do that, Aud. Well. Pete might, but I wouldn't."

Audrey opens her mouth to contradict him, memories of a twenty dollar bet on how long she could keep a goldfish alive dancing in her mind, but a yawn comes out suddenly instead. She collapses onto the couch, the exhaustion she'd been fighting all day catching up to her in a huge wave.

"You should go to sleep soon. I have to get going anyway," Frank says, glancing anxiously up at the clock above the fridge. She tries to make a teasing comment but another yawn stops her from saying a word.

She vaguely remembers Frank kissing her on her forehead before leaving, but she's asleep on the couch before he even closes the apartment door.

* * * * *

It turns out that she shouldn't have worried about being friends with Jac, because apparently "being friends" is code for "not contacting each other at all."

Really, she should be happy about it.

Really, she's not at all.

"It's not that I expected her to invite me out to a movie or brunch or fucking whatever, I don't know what friends do together. I just thought she'd send me an email or a text or something. That's a friend thing, right?" Audrey snaps. Her client, a regular who's been coming to Audrey since she started working at the salon, murmurs an absentminded "Mmm-hmm," while flipping through a magazine.

Chris shakes his head. "She probably just feels awkward about it. And I hate to point this out because I'm pretty sure you can kick my ass, but you haven't initiated anything either."

Audrey glares at him in the giant mirror on the wall in front of them. "She said she'd call me."

The insipid little brunette, Haley Beth or what the fuck ever her name is, interrupts them then, calling Chris away to help with some issue she'd had mixing hair dye. Audrey imagines setting her hair on fire and it helps her get through the day, for the most part.

Frank tries to cheer her up with candies on her pillow all week. She doesn't tell him that it makes her feel worse, that the fact that she needs cheering up at all is more infuriating than the ignoring itself.

She doesn't know Jac and it shouldn't matter. It shouldn't affect her like this.

"Come to the art gallery tonight," Frank tells her on Sunday, playing with his hair in the mirror for the eighth time in the past hour.

"Why?" she asks, completely confused.

"You need to stop sulking and get out of the house."

"I'm not sulking," she says, burrowing deeper into the couch with scowl on her face. "And I get out of the house all the time."

Frank sighs and sits down on the couch next to her. "Yeah, for work. And band practice. That's it. And okay, maybe I just want you there for me. Is that so wrong?"

She rubs her neck irritably, weighing her options. "Why do you even want me there? I'm not going to play Cyrano with you, if that's what you're after. Ask Pete, he's the fucking poet."

"It's not about that, I just need moral support. Aud, I haven't talked to him at all beyond like, stupid small talk. I'm going to do it tonight, but I don't know if I can do it alone. Please?"

Audrey bites her lip. She owes Frank big time for pretty much everything in her life, but she's a selfish bitch deep down and she really, really does not want to deal with pretentious artists and ugly art that she never seems to understand. She loves art, paintings and sculptures and music, of course music, it's the stuff that she lives and breathes. But art galleries have a way of making her feel small and clumsy and stupid. She's had a bad enough week without dealing with that too.

But it's Frank and he's giving her the puppy dog eyes. Fuck her life, she's doomed.

"Will there be free food?" she asks, rolling her eyes.

Frank lets out a decidedly girly squeal. "This is going to be awesome, okay? You can wear whatever, seriously, it's an exhibit on comic book art so it's not some fancy black-tie affair or anything. I have to be there early for all the catering shit, but it doesn't start until 7. You are the greatest. Even if it sucks, I'll make it up to you. Swear to god. Okay, the address is on the flier thing on the counter. You can Google it, but it's easy to find. It's right next to that coffee shop we played in that one time? Yeah, I tried to block it from my mind too, but it was apparently not a group hallucination, sorry. I'll see you there later, okay?"

Audrey's brain can't process all the information he's just thrown at her before he kisses her goodbye on the cheek. "You're a princess," he tells her before he runs out, and Audrey's sure he's only leaving now to prevent her from changing her mind.

A comic book exhibit. Audrey's really not sure if that's better or worse than a run of the mill art exhibit. No pretentious art snobs, just…pretentious comic book nerds. She might fit in more, at least, passing as some kind of superhero or anime girl.

But if someone tries to role play with her, she's booking it out of there as fast as her legs will carry her and Frank won't be able to do a damn thing to stop her.

* * * * *

It doesn't suck.

It's actually kind of pleasant, in a Revenge of the Nerds kind of way. The people are friendly and mostly normal looking, although there are a few costumed guys wandering around that Audrey stays far, far away from. She doesn't know a damn thing about comic books but the informational booklets lying around are useful and funny, without any of those goddamned art history words that all the other exhibits she's been to have thrown around like candy.

The food is freaking delicious. Tiny, but delicious. Audrey finds herself hovering around the caterers, even when it's someone other than Frank.

Actually, she tends to gravitate to any server other than Frank, who's slacking on his caterer duties in favor of alternately stalking Gerard and reporting back to Audrey.

"He's been near the Watchmen wall all night," Frank moans as he passes by Audrey. "It's like the most intimidatingly awesome thing I've ever seen."

"So what? You like Watchmen," Audrey says, grabbing a stuffed mushroom from his tray.

Frank stares at her like she's suddenly grown two heads and suggested that he tries jumping into a pit of fire. "The guy's an expert on comic books. I liked the movie. I'm going to sound like an idiot if I try to talk to him about it."

It's tempting to roll her eyes but she doesn't, because it's Frank and he manages to make nervous tics look endearing. "Did you offer him the stuffed mushrooms? Because they're fucking delicious. It's an association thing you know, delicious food, delicious Frank. It could help."

"My mom has a similar philosophy," Frank says, slowly nodding his head. "Without the delicious Frank part."

"And your mother is never wrong," Audrey replies. Which is mostly bullshit because Audrey knows very little about Frank's mother, but it sounds good and she feels certain he'll listen to that reasoning.

And he does, putting on a brave smile and making his way over to where Gerard is standing in the corner. Audrey can't stop herself from watching them even though she's halfway sure it's going to be a train wreck. But Gerard lights up immediately when Frank gets there, straightening his posture and moving his arms around animatedly.

They look happier than she's seen two people look in a long time.

She's feels awkward watching them suddenly, awkward and sad and stupid and she doesn't know why. She lowers her gaze and tries to mingle with other groups at the gallery, but everything they say sounds like gibberish. She doesn't belong here.

She puts down her pamphlet and napkin on a nearby table and heads out of the gallery, wrapping her arms around herself immediately to shield from the chilly night air. Audrey's pretty sure Frank won't miss her now, and she's got her phone in her purse if anything happens. She gets into her car and drives out into the streets, not ready to go home yet but not sure where else she wants to go, where else she even can go at this time of night, alone, without feeling like an utter loser.

The answer comes to her in the form of a Guitar Hero sticker on some dude's car. Audrey suddenly knows exactly who might be awake right now.

She pulls over to the side of the road and texts Pete, asking if she can come over. The reply comes in two seconds, unsurprisingly. Fractured fingers or not, Pete's never far from his sidekick.

Y rn't u here already? its a sausgefest w/o u audrey. :(

Audrey snorts and puts her car in drive.

* * * * *

Pete answers the door with a giant hug and a compliment about how vibrant her hair looks. She glances over at Chris, who gives her a tiny, nearly imperceptible nod. Pete's having one of his nights.

Audrey and her high school friends (if you can call them that, the lot of stoner burnouts that hung out together behind the school and bitched about how much life sucked and kept an endless chain of cigarettes going) had always thrown the term bipolar around easily. "My mom is such a bipolar cunt," and "I feel so fucking bipolar today," but the whole thing was bullshit and Audrey knows that now.

As long as she's known Pete, she's seen him scribble obsessively into a notebook for hours and not sleep for days on end and she's seen him crash down, hard. It's not all the time. Sometimes the meds do their job, but sometimes he just doesn't take them.

They don't talk about it, which is fine by Audrey, but they deal with it. Chris stays up with Pete for as long as he can when Pete's not sleeping, and Audrey takes over as many of Chris's early appointments as she can to help him out. Frank usually spends a lot of time with Pete when he's depressed. He's quieter than Chris and a million times more patient than Audrey, and Pete can pretend he's not there if he needs to. Hell, even Tom changes for Pete. He always ignores half of his calls, too busy doing whatever the hell he does when he's not around, but he always picks up the phone when Pete calls. Just in case.

It's not like they're compassionate people. She knows herself, and she knows her boys, and other than Frank none of them would do this for anyone outside the band. Audrey wouldn't even put up with this kind of shit from most of her family members. It's different, when it's one of them though. It just is.

She makes a snap decision not to stay long. They don't need to deal with her shit, not tonight.

"I locked myself out," she lies. "Frank's coming home soon, but I didn't feel like sitting outside waiting for him."

Pete launches into an entire list of reasons why she should totally stay over, and she shoots an apologetic look at Chris.

"I can't. Sorry, Pete, I just promised Frank I'd be home tonight. Uh, there's still a bunch of my clothes sitting in that box in the bathroom, right?"

Chris nods. "Yeah, and speaking of that, it's a bitch to explain why we have a box of girl clothes in our bathroom when dates are over."

Audrey rolls her eyes. Girls are such jealous fucking idiots. "Maybe I should just attach a sign to the top that says "Property of Bandmate Who Is A Giant Dyke, Don't Worry." Whatever, I'm going to change. My shirt smells like alcohol."

When she comes back in a fresh shirt and leggings, Pete's sitting on the floor, scrolling through her phone. She doesn't bother yelling at him for going through her purse, not tonight. It's not worth it. She ignores it instead and settles down at the kitchen counter to toy with a peach in the fruit bowl.

"Did Jac ever call you?" he asks, seemingly out of the blue, and Audrey stares at him for a minute. Everything in her fucking life is coming back to this girl.

"Uh, no?"

He shrugs. "I just wondered. Her number's in your phone, you know. You could call her instead."

Audrey rolls her eyes. "I told Chris I wasn't going to do that."

"And I told Pete you were being a pussy," Chris says, picking at his fingernails with a toothpick.

"This girl could be your soulmate, Audrey. You could be letting something great slip out of your hands."

Audrey laughs out loud, harsher than she means to. "I doubt that. I really fucking doubt that. And anyway, we're just friends. Or we're supposed to be."

Pete grins at her, holding up the phone. "I'm calling her."

"What?" Audrey shrieks, lunging toward the phone before she can stop herself. But he holds her at bay and it's too late, it's dialing and she can hear it, oh god. She prays to anything that Jac won't pick up, but of course she does, and her voice comes through crystal clear. "Hello?"

Pete puts the phone to his ear, batting Audrey away with his free arm. "Is this Jac? I'm calling on behalf of your soulmate, Audrey Kitch- fucking hell, those are my broken fingers fuck fuck fuck."

Audrey knocks the phone on the floor and recovers it quickly, holding it up in triumph. Her elation fades when she hears Jac, still on the line and calling out "Hello? Is this Audrey? Hello?"

She presses the end button before she can stop herself.

"Oh shit," she says, staring at the phone.

Pete glares at her, rubbing his cast. "You're a bitch."

Audrey takes one deep breath, summoning everything she ever learned in anger management classes. She tells herself that it's not his fault he's out of his fucking mind. Shoving the phone down his throat would be a bad idea.

"I have to leave before I kill you," she says out loud. Maybe it's not the best thing to say, but it's honest.

She makes it to her car before her phone rings.

Audrey stares at it in disbelief. She doesn't know what the fuck she did to deserve any of this. She's not a particularly great person, but she doesn't steal or do drugs and as much as she really wants to hurt people, she rarely does. Her karma should be solid.

She ignores the call and turns off her phone. She knows she could just call Jac back and tell her what happened, but something about that idea gives her a headache. It's not like Jac ever called her. And honestly, she's just not drunk enough to deal with this.

Besides, for all Jac knows, it could have been some other Audrey calling her. Jac has no reason to assume it would be her.

Frank's not home when she gets back, but she's too exhausted to think about it. She falls asleep with her phone in her hand, still too scared to turn it on, still knowing deep down inside that she needs to.

* * * * *

When Audrey turns her phone on the next morning, she has a voicemail from Jac.

"If you had your friends call me to make me feel like shit about trusting you, congratulations. It worked. You're a bigger bitch than I thought."

Her stomach sinks down into her feet.

* * * * *

She wakes up again an hour later hoping it was all a particularly nasty dream, but the voicemail is still there. She listens to it eight more times, wishing each time that Jac would say something different, anything at all. Jac doesn't even sound angry, just detached and listless. It's worse than anger.

Audrey's not sure why she cares so much. Sure, it's more convenient to be on friendly terms with Jac, but it's not like she really knows her. It shouldn't feel like she's losing something.

But it does.

She spends another twenty minutes in bed toying with her phone, picking it up every few minutes resolved to call Jac and fix this, and freaking out just before she presses the call button, dropping it like a snake on the bed. It's all so stupid. Audrey could just slap herself. She's never gotten this way over people she's actually fucking interested in dating, so she has no idea why it's affecting her so much now.

The voicemail replays itself in her head over and over again, and she picks up the phone one last time, finding Jac's name in her contacts list. This time, she lets herself call.

She half expects Jac not to pick up, but the ringing stops after just a few seconds and Jac is there, sounding like she just woke up. "Hello?"

"Hi," Audrey says, feeling suddenly out of breath. "It's Audrey. I got your message, and I'm sorry. That's not what last night was about."

Jac doesn't respond for a minute, but Audrey can hear strange rustling noises like she's sitting up in bed or something, or possibly pulling out an Audrey voodoo doll to stick pins in. Audrey really can't tell. "It's not," she says, finally, and Audrey breathes a sigh of relief. Jac's not hanging up on her and that's a good sign.

"No," Audrey insists. "Not at all. Pete called you because he found your number in my phone, I don't know why he did it. He thought he was helping, I guess. Or maybe he was just doing it to be a jackass. I don't know. I didn't ask him to do it."

"Helping what?" Jac asks. Audrey can't tell if Jac believes her, but she sounds less annoyed and it's a chance.

"Helping me. Or us. Not that there's…I mean, because we hadn't talked all week. You said you'd call me, and you didn't," Audrey says, and she's trying her best to sound contrite but her hurt feelings are nagging at her, wriggling around in her heart and brain.

"Audrey, I tried. I had the wrong number in my phone. That's what happens when you program it in drunk, I guess. I thought you didn't have my right number either until you called last night."

Audrey pauses, feeling incredibly small. "Oh."

Jac sighs then, her eye roll practically audible. "Why didn't you just call me back last night and explain everything?"

"I don't really know. I get awkward about shit, sometimes. I have anxiety issues. And I was kind of hoping you wouldn't know it was my phone."

Jac snorts. "You're kind of stupid."

It's normally the kind of thing Audrey would bristle at, but Jac sounds like she's joking and besides, Audrey's supposed to be apologetic here.

"Are we okay?" she asks, aware of how stupid she sounds but unsure of what else to say.

Jac sighs. "Yeah, we are. But your issues are one time only get out of jail free card. Next time you fuck up, I expect a present."

"Thanks for being so confident in my ability to fuck things up," Audrey says, rolling her eyes. And okay, Jac's probably (definitely) right, but that doesn't mean Audrey has to agree.

"You're welcome," Jac says sweetly. "And I like gummy bears and flavored vodka. Just so you know."

Jac is easy to talk to, which is surprising. She'd been easy to talk to at the bar, but flirting isn't really a conversation, just a lead-up to sex, and Audrey's a pro at that. But she can't just talk to someone she's not planning on fucking without feeling supremely awkward, forgetting words and nervously laughing at things that aren't funny. Adding a phone to that mess only makes it worse, but Jac fills in all the silences with jokes and Audrey finds herself actually knowing what to say for once.

They hang up an hour later and Audrey feels better than she has in a week. Maybe being friends with Jac won't turn into an utter disaster. Maybe they were better suited to being friends in the first place.

Or maybe she's just kidding herself and the whole thing will implode within a month. Knowing her, that's where the safe money is.

Part Two