nishka//loki (nishka) wrote in paxletalelogs, @ 2017-05-03 15:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | hel, loki |
Når du ved helgrindi står skal eg fylgje deg
Who: Nish and Jocelyn
What: Old friends reconnect over alcohol and dreams.
Where: Nish’s apartment, 502
When: Evening, May 3, 2017
gdoc complete!
Once they’d devoured their takeout and finished stowing the last of Josie’s possessions in Nish’s office, she cracked open a bottle of wine for the two of them. Nearby, her pure white cat Bear was sitting on the counter, watching the two wineglasses being filled with the deep red liquid.
“My boyfr- ex-boyfriend gave me this bottle, while we were still dating,” she said, correcting herself with a little sigh of frustration. “I’d been saving it, but...I think it’s time to let go.” She lifted one of the glasses to Josie, a sad smile on her lips, “to making the same mistakes all over again,” she said, tapping her glass to her friend’s and downing the whole thing at once, pouring herself another glass right away.
Jocelyn winced internally at Nish’s toast, and raised her glass again after the first toast. “To making better mistakes.” She took a long drink, savoring the deep red wine. She glanced at her friend, whose glass was already refilled. “If it’s going to be that kind of night, I should get comfortable. Mind if wash up and get into pajamas?”
Nish smiled and nodded, “sure,” she said, setting her glass down, “I’ll do the same. Bathroom’s over there; there’s extra towels in the linen closet if you want a shower,” she said, pointing across the dining room. “Be careful of Bear, he likes to watch,” she added with a wink.
“I should have known. If anyone was going to have a voyeur for a cat, it would be you…” Jocelyn commented as she disappeared into the bathroom, shutting the door firmly behind her, just inches before Bear could slip into the room with her.
Nish headed to her own bedroom and got changed into a more comfortable outfit of tank top and pajama pants, tying her hair back in a ponytail and then padding back out to the kitchen on bare feet to retrieve the wine and set it on the coffee table in front of the TV. She took a long bracing drink from it, draining half of her glass again, and then got up again, seeking out another bottle of some other red and bringing it and the corkscrew out to the livingroom with her.
Ten minutes later Jocelyn was clean, makeup scrubbed off her face, and hair washed and braided. She slipped into her pajamas, a silky spaghetti top and matching shorts in chocolate with a pattern of teal and salmon swirls. She smiled, enjoying the feel of the fabric against her skin. As it usually did, the moment of joy only lasted until she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.
She sighed, and hung the towel over the bar, then took a deep breath and went to rejoin her friend.
“All right. Now I’m ready to get serious,” she said, reclaiming her glass of wine.
Nish watched her coming, shifting on the sofa so that she could sit down next to her, crossing her legs and turning towards her. She couldn’t help her eyes from roaming her face, tracing the horrible scarring that marred her once flawless skin, a frown coming out that she didn’t try to hide. “Yeah,” she said, lifting her glass as if in salute, “now we get to compare notes on the terrible relationships that left us both scarred, in different ways.” She took a long sip of wine as a delay tactic, and then met her eyes. “You got a good settlement, I hope,” she said, falling back on thinking like a lawyer, when thinking like a friend hurt.
“Settlement?” she frowned, momentarily confused, “Oh...the restitution.” She shrugged. “It’s a decent amount, but I’ll never see most of it.” She drained her glass and reached over to snag the bottle. “His assets aren’t enough to cover the whole thing, and now that he’s in prison, the rest’ll piss in little drops and dribbles out of his prison pay for the next 20 years before I have a prayer of seeing another big chunk. They don’t pay their workers for shit, and 50% of shit is still shit.”
“Bastard,” Nish muttered. “That's the trouble with assholes,” she grumbled, draining her glass again. “They so rarely have any money.” She paused and set her glass down, shrugging with a wry grin. “At least the ones I represent at least have enough to pay me.” She reached for the bottle and drained the rest into her glass, taking the second bottle from the coffee table and opening it with the expertise of a functional alcoholic.
“I didn't get much out of Stephen either, besides his ass in prison,” she said, sitting back with her newly filled glass. “And nightmares.” One of the most frightening had been just after she'd moved to Pax, that ended with him burying her alive.
“Yeah… when Rob came to visit me, he did ask if there was something in the water back home, because the two of us were making such ‘braindead choices’ when it came to men.” She took another deep drink. “I love him like a brother, but Rob can be a real ass sometimes.” She smiled. “He was grinning when he said that, so I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean it. Good thing, too. It’d have been a real pain to get out of bed and beat him up.”
Nish laughed and drained half of her glass again, starting to get the slightest buzz, though one shared bottle wasn't nearly enough to get her even tipsy. “I think I'm swearing off the whole gender,” she decided all at once, smiling at her. “So far, all of my bad relationships were caused by dick. I think I should find myself a nice girl-toy and settle down for a while.” She was only half serious, grinning as she said it, but the more the idea took root the better it sounded.
“Although, I swore off relationships after James, and look where that got me,” she said bitterly. “I just got dumped about two weeks ago,” she added in explanation, an ironic smile tugging at her lips. Rafe had been...she was still puzzling out what that was. She'd fallen so fast and so hard for him she practically had whiplash from it. And the inevitable crash at the bottom had left her almost as broken as James had, though they'd been together for almost two years. She finished her glass and poured another from the new bottle.
Jocelyn silently held out her glass to be topped off as well. “I guess I should be happy. I only had one shitty ‘relationship’ - if you can even call it that. We’d gone on like...6 dates?” She sniffed. “Should have trusted my gut and gone home, and damn the weather.”
“Jesus,” Nish muttered, “that was after six dates? Thank god it didn't go on any longer than that. That's messed up.” She'd been with Stephen for years. It had started out good, great even, but the last year or so of their relationship had been hell. She could at least take some comfort in the fact that Josie had been spared the prolonged agony of an ongoing abusive relationship, even if it had ended in agony of a completely different kind.
“Well, at least we're both still here,” she said, raising her glass at her in salute. “To exes in prison,” she said, downing her third glass like it was water.
“To exes in prison,” Jocelyn echoed, drinking most of the glass. “And may they rot there.”
They killed a third bottle between them, Nish drinking most of it, and then she set up the futon in the living room for Josie to sleep on before dragging herself to her own bed and passing out.