margot henderson

"You remember that time I tried to go by Jake in the second grade?" He asked, recalling a slight obsession with Sixteen Candles when him and his sister got a hold of the VHS as children. Milo figured it was easier to be this way. Pretend like there wasn't something in the air between them. Betrayal. Hurt. He never tried to dwell too much on it, especially now that she was here. Back in the flesh.

"You good, Mar?" She was drunk, that much was obvious and not exactly a massive surprise. Not only in the Stone basement, but he had seen the magazines, the photos, the headlines. He never bothered to pick them up, choosing to keep his memories of Mary as they once were. "Because we have Advil, water, blankets. Won't make you raw dog the hangover." Since that was sure to come.

These days, Margot spends more of her nights at the bottom of a bottle than not. The hangovers are rolling at this point, an annoyance more than anything. She's a stark contrast to the girl she'd been growing up. That girl was a rule follower, so put together, so sure of herself. She was gone now, Margot had made sure of that, personally hammered the final nail in her coffin years ago. This new version was never meant to end up in Atlantic Landing.

"'m fine," she pushes herself into a sitting position to prove her point, though all that does is slump her forward instead, "I should go home. I just gotta... wait for the room to stop spinning."

There was a customer whose taste in music—for reasons completely unknown to Bunny—bewildered them entirely.

Every time she came in—apparently her name was Margot, but Bunny didn’t really know her—she would look at something or ask about something or do something that would skew Bunny’s impression of her taste wildly. (Bunny’s way of understanding taste was different than most people’s, so for all they knew she could be normal; but their individual problem remained.) One visit, her preferences would be almost understandable to them; the next, Bunny would have no clue how to pin her down.

And pinning down people’s modes of self-expression was what Bunny usually did best.

This visit, Bunny had had enough.

“So I have to ask,” they said, spotting her on the bottom level as they stepped off the staircase. “Keep in mind, this is coming from the record store employee you barely know as a means of helping you buy music better, so you are not obligated to tell me. I probably wouldn’t.

“But could you describe your taste in music, in your own words?” said Bunny, visibly defeated. “Maybe my brain can be normal then. Maybe I’ll finally get it.”

"Um... I don't know that I have much of one? I'm into good lyrics, I guess. I like Bob Dylan," she shrugs with a short laugh, "Does that answer your question?"

She didn't squeal, or even blink weird, a giant attempt at trying not to seem like a total psycho. Instead, she casually shifted a seat closer under the pretense of needing a better view of the Specials board, ignoring the tiny voice reminding her that she was a twenty-something year old and not a twelve year old girl.

When it was Margot that spoke to her, Austen nearly tipped over in her chair. She forced a feature of neutrality; the kind of look she shared with Moosh whenever he would say, well, anything. "Oh, depends on what scale you're grading on. Technical? Probably not. Overall vibe? Still probably not."

She continued, "Can't be any worse than the group from last week. I think their drummer was playing an entirely different song than the rest of the band." Her eyes flicked to the menu Margot was looking at, and then to Margot herself. Always the polite girl, she held a hand out. God, Jenny would geek if Austen told her she got to shake the Margot Henderson's hand. "Austen."

"I couldn't really care less about the technicality," she admits with a chuckle, "I'm more into the lyrics and the... vibe, I guess. I don't know a whole lot about music, which seems to be some sort of crime around here these days. I agree about the drummer though. You don't need to know shit to know it was distracting."

"Margot," she's uncharacteristically warm as she takes Austen's hand, maybe because she wasn't making a huge deal. She pivots away to finish her drink before looking back over, "What are you drinking, Austen?"

Merritt lets out a long breath - the kind that has both sound and weight as it trills her lips at the end.

"Honestly, I'm not even sure I'll stick around through the whole thing. My shifts over in an hour and if these so-called musicians don't play at least one non-suck song before I punch my card, I'm booing them on my way out. Totally harsh, but. They need to learn somehow."

There's only one table she's supposed to be serving right now and they're fresh into their meals so she's not worried about stopping by; she has other priorities. Namely Margot, whose arrival had sent Milo and Merritt directly to their old treehouse to debrief the situation. She's a little more forgiving - call it her feminist ideals - but standing here next to someone she barely knows anymore still feels like some sort of test.

"I'm sure there's someone with their finger on the pulse of good music around here, he should consult with them," she doesn't really know much about music outside of the poppy record she'd been all but forced to put out as a teen, which is to say she knows almost nothing. And she'd so prefer to forget that ever happened.

"I guess I'll do the fried pickles then, with that new sauce you wanted him to try, if you have it," she does her best to keep her tone light, "I remember it being really good though, why'd you want to change it?"

The first nudge is met by obstinate silence, and in all the ways the shenanigans from the night before hold heavy to his body, Zeke doesn't want to move.

Move, make a sound, react — none of the above.

But he is met with a second nudge, this one more insistent than the last, and first comes out the sleep-slurred mumble, "M'up." It takes another ten seconds for him to push himself up from the itchy rug beneath him, and Zeke blinks bleary eyes.

When his vision comes into focus, albeit tilted with vertigo in the slightest at the last remnants of booze clinging to his cerebellum, he silently mouths the word 'oh' followed by the verbal, "This isn't my apartment."

She thought she'd cleared everyone out last night, but evidently she'd missed one partygoer, and she'd probably be more alarmed at the sight if she didn't recognize him as one of Sloane's losers. "Sure isn't," she deadpans, unimpressed arms crossed against her chest, "Time to go."