Marietta, Cho, and Katie: A night of ice cream and honesty WHO: Cho, Katie & Marietta WHERE: Marietta's flat, as usual WHEN: Late Friday night, January 4th, after Katie's shift is over WHAT: The girls gather to discuss the rather extraordinary fallout from the New Year's game of I Never, and end up spilling secrets about their past and present romantic predicaments. Status: Complete
After reading Katie's journal, catching up on what she'd missed by having Roger take her home, Marietta was horrified and saddened by how the innocent gave of I Never had turned into something so vitriolic. Between Ben's remarks about Fred, and what he said about Katie and George, Mari couldn't believe it had been nearly a week since this had happened and she hadn't comforted her friend.
Well stocked with ice cream, fudge cookies, and every imaginable kind of comfort food, Marietta's fridge was next to overflowing. But given everything that each of the three girls might want to get off their chests - Katie's split from Ben and her current standing with George, any new developments between Cho and Jonas, or Oliver for that matter, and Marietta's Draco/Pansy/Ginny/Roger drama - she figured they'd need at least that much sugar.
When Katie reached the door to Marietta's flat, she was determined not to let the conversation revolve around the bloody I Never fight. Talking to Cho and Angelina and Mari and Leanne and Lee had been great, but her ongoing argument with Quinn regarding the whole non-existent George situation had her completely fed up with the subject entirely. He just didn't get it. Now, every time she thought about it, she thought about what Quinn had said, and her blood started to boil. She knew both Mari and Cho had tons of things going on in their own lives, so hopefully it wouldn't be too hard to direct things toward other topics.
Holding a bottle of Odgen's in one hand, Katie knocked on the door with her other one. "Oi, Mari! Open up!"
Marietta got herself up off her sofa and sighed, wandering to the door and flinging it open. "Have I not told you a million times that you don't have to knock?" she said with a wry smile. Her eyes then found the bottle in Katie's hand, and she nodded appreciatively. "Well chosen! One of the few things I don't have in this bloody place tonight. Come in; it's freezing." She stepped aside to let Katie in, noticing but not mentioning how tired and vaguely annoyed her friend looked. "I expect Cho will be here shortly, but we can start on the ice cream immediately, if you've had a tough night."
Katie shook her head quickly and smiled at her, forcing the smile to reach her eyes no matter how right Mari was. "It wasn't all that bad," she said, handing Marietta the bottle and unwinding a fuzzy pink scarf from around her neck. "Though this one table completely stiffed me when it came to the tip. The holidays are over and suddenly everyone's playing Scrooge."
Mari took the bottle into the kitchen and set in on the counter, nodding as she went. "Yeah, well, I think most people generally are pretty tight with their money, aren't they? Although you'd think that the boys would be tipping you hand over fist, being a cute little blonde behind the bar and all." She turned her head and threw Katie a smile over her shoulder. "You should open your own, you know. Keep it all for yourself." She grabbed a couple of glasses and poured two drinks, deciding to wait until Cho arrived to get anything set up for her - who knew how late she'd be? - and then rejoined Katie in the living room. She sprawled back across her sofa and motioned to the cushy loveseat across from it, inviting Katie to do the same.
"So," she said, handing over the glass before taking a sip for herself, "are there topics of conversation that are forbidden tonight?" This was, after all, meant to be an evening for them to enjoy themselves, at least as much as they could, so Marietta thought some ground rules couldn't hurt.
Katie sank down into the loveseat and got comfortable, lounging with her feet up on the arm of it and her drink balanced on her stomach. "If I name a couple of them, can I hold you to them?"
"Of course you can," Marietta said, frowning slightly. "I didn't drag you over here to turn this into the inquisition or anything. I just... We can discuss whatever we like. But I kind of figured there would be some things that would be...shall we say, counterproductive to discuss?" She raised an eyebrow and took another drink. "Lay down the rules, and then I'll start unloading all of the incredibly sinful food I have in my kitchen."
Katie smirked a little, like she was getting away with something. "Good. Then I have two: Ben and George," she said, and then frowned. "And Quinn. I bloody hate that bastard." She felt a twinge of her usual guilt at having called him that--not that she minded saying it to anyone else, but technically, secretly it was true of him, so she tried to avoid it--but then she remembered that he was evil, mean, and completely delusional, and didn't feel bad at all. She took a sip from her glass. "But I'm perfectly happy to talk about anything else. Name your topic."
"Those were...a few more off-limits subjects than I'd expected, actually," Marietta said with a laugh. "It sort of cuts out, oh, maybe 80% of what we can discuss, doesn't it? But I'll do my best, anyway. If you change your mind and want to vent, you'll have to bring it up first." Mari was a little surprised to hear Katie calling Quinn a bastard; she wasn't entirely sure what that was about, but because she'd been stupid enough to agree to this rule, she couldn't even ask.
"I don't think I have anything off-limits tonight," she continued, setting her glass down and getting up again, heading back to the kitchen and filling her arms with the many evil items of food she'd collected over the afternoon. Chocolate, marshmallows, ice cream in six different flavours, whipped cream, cookie dough, fudge...it was all there, and she managed to get it back to the coffee table without dropping any of it. Once she was sure it would all stay put, she sat back down and smiled at the cornucopia of sin. "Yeah, I think I did okay for us today. And as I was saying...I think I'm finally in a position where there's nothing I feel I can't talk about." Except the whole Tulip situation, but she doubted Katie would ask, and was certain Cho wouldn't bring it up. "So...we can either gossip about Choey until she gets here, or you can go after me with any question you can think up, or we can just stuff our faces."
"Bloody hell," Katie said, eying the spread before her with an amazed expression, distracted from the conversation by the sheer amount of sugar in front of her. "I thought I was at your flat, not at I Scream, You Scream. Are we going to eat all of that or cover our bodies in it and roll around in the toppings? Because I brought my camera."
Marietta giggled as she reached for a piece of fudge. "Well, if you think there's a market for it, we could probably do quite well for ourselves, couldn't we? I can think of a number of people who would pay top dollar to see that." She took a bite, closed her eyes and sighed, enjoying the instantaneous sugar rush. "Not that I can mention some of them," she added slyly. "But yes, it's all meant for consumption. Well, I mean, not all at once. We don't want to ruin our girlish figures. But I think we've all had a rough enough week that we deserve to take a walk on the wild side, don't you?" She finished her piece of fudge and licked her lips happily. "And if your camera should happen to come out, so be it!"
Not bothering to knock, Cho let herself into Marietta's flat, her own arms laden with sweets. "I guess I didn't need to bring these," she said, laughing. "Sorry I'm late. Did I miss much?"
"We were just ogling the all-you-can-eat ice cream buffet over here," Katie said, jumping up to go over and relieve Cho of some of her load.
"I can see that," Cho said, her eyes flicking over to the table. She handed Katie a can of whipped cream. "You even have marshmallows? How did you know?"
"How did I know what?" Marietta asked, reaching to throw one of the little white puffballs at Cho. "Is there some special significance to these? I just figured they were a universal part of a girls' night in!" She eyed what Cho had brought and gave her a thumbs-up. "There's no such thing as too much. You did the right thing. And no, all you've missed so far is the laying of ground rules - what we're not allowed to discuss," she added witha pointed glance in Katie's direction. "Do you have any you want to add before we hit our sugar high?"
"I missed that? Good!" Cho said, plopping down onto the love seat and dodging the marshmallow. "That only means I don't have to follow them."