#anon buddy

Road Trip

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They’re on a road trip. Julien’s dad had asked if they were coming home for Easter and Julien had agreed, and Lucy had suggested a road trip and she’d agreed to that, too. 

She’s regretting it now. 

They’d stopped at a diner somewhere near Needles for lunch a couple hours earlier, which was fine - the atmosphere had been nice and the food had been mediocre - but Julien has spent the last half hour feeling increasingly nauseous, and she’s starting to think it’s probably more than just motion sickness. 

“Lucy, do we have Gravol?” she asks through gritted teeth when the winding highway leaves her stomach gurgling unpleasantly. 

“Mm…” her girlfriend shrugs in the backseat. “I’ll check.”

“What, you nauseous?” Phoebe asks, glancing over from the driver’s seat of her honda civic as Julien nods in affirmation. 

“I don’t think lunch agreed with me,” she murmurs, hands fisted in the absolutely enormous hoodie she’s wearing (it’s one of Lucy’s. Probably). 

Lucy passes her the Gravol and Julien brings it to her mouth with trembling hands, downs it with a swig of water from Phoebe’s bottle, and tries to ignore the feeling of her stomach twisting itself into knots. 

Another hour after that, she’s not faring any better. In fact, on top of the nausea pulsing in her gut, her head is pounding and her whole body is trembling, overheated and achy. 

“I feel gross,” she whispers, when they reach a rest stop and Lucy asks if she‘s coming as Phoebe runs for the bathroom. “Like, I think I might throw up.” 

“Well, now’s a good time to do it, I guess,” Lucy shrugs. “We’re literally at a bathroom.” 

Julien shrinks in on herself in the passenger seat, trying not to cry with how awful she feels. “I won’t do it in a shitty trucker bathroom,” she murmurs, “I refuse to puke in a toilet that’s barely more than an outhouse.” 

“Fair enough,” Lucy shrugs again, and turns to follow Phoebe into the bathroom. Julien takes another Gravol while she waits for them to return. 

After another 20 minutes on the road, Julien’s feeling absolutely miserable. The winding highway leaves her hunching over and whimpering, clutching her stomach as if that will help the waves of utter  yuck sloshing around inside her. Phoebe drives slowly, glancing over at her in concern every time she lets out a soft whine of nauseated embarrassment, and Lucy reaches over the seat to rub her shoulder gently. 

“If you need us to pull over, let us know, okay?” She tells her, “it might take a second to find a place.” Julien nods, and then her eyes roll shut as her stomach lurches violently.

It’s a mere five minutes later that Julien whispers a soft, “okay, maybe pulling over would be a good idea,” because she’d be an idiot to spend another moment ignoring the pressure building against her epiglottis. 

Phoebe curses softly under her breath. “We just passed a place to pull off, like, thirty seconds ago,” she explains. “Should I speed up to get to the next one sooner, or slow down to try to avoid… y’know.” she gestures vaguely at Julien, who nods. 

“Uh, slow, I think.” Julien’s not sure she’ll be able to avoid disaster if Phoebe speeds up. At least with the slow pace they’re going now, they have a hope of making it off the highway before her control completely crumbles. 

They almost make it. 

Julien can see the turn-off when it happens, less than a minute down the road, but she suddenly can’t breathe as her stomach twists violently, and she gags hard against the back of her hand. 

“Do not throw up in my car-” Phoebe warns, but it’s too late. Julien’s throat bobs and her stomach constricts, and then she’s vomiting into her lap.

It burns as she coughs it up, and then it stinks when it hits her jeans, and she blinks rapidly against the tears welling in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs. Her stomach gurgles. 

“Shit,” Phoebe sighs. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Julien’s in the kitchen washing dishes and dancing around to some Shania Twain song on her Bluetooth speaker when Mackenzie texts her. 

Hey, new song for your consideration! This one’s heavy so I won’t even be a little upset if you’re not comfortable putting it on the album. Think it fits the vibe, though.

Julien taps into the attached file, titled, simply, “Tuesday.”

She presses play. 

The demo is just Mackenzie’s soft voice backed by a quiet acoustic guitar, as most of the demos she’s sent have been, and Julien pauses her work as the first verse begins, giving the song her full attention.

It’s sweet. At first it’s a song about falling in love, about being grateful for those who choose to love you in return, and Julien smiles softly as she thinks about Mariah. Her mind drifts briefly to Lucy, though she shakes the thought before she has a reason to feel guilty. 

The chorus hits like a gut punch. “Now I wish that I hadn’t stepped down and lied,” Mackenzie croons, and Julien sucks in a deep breath. She grips the counter behind her to steady herself, a little dizzy with how blunt her friend’s words are. They hit like daggers as Julien psyche drudges up memories of her teenage self, trying desperately not to read into the feelings she had towards her female friends. By the time the second verse starts, she’s already fighting back tears. 

Of course, verse two is somehow even more raw. It feels like Mackenzie is inside of fourteen-year-old Julien’s brain, and the emotional lyrics make Julien’s chest ache. Mackenzie continues, “instead of backing me up, Tuesday melted right down,” and Julien lets out a small whimper as her stomach clenches, because that was her. She was the one begging her girlfriend to lie to her parents.

Mackenzie says, “to emphasize how much I loved Jesus and men,” and Julien feels sick. 

She grips the counter behind her with one trembling hand as the second chorus starts, the other coming up to press against her mouth as she tries to process the words she’s hearing. Bile sprays into her throat as she realizes that what Mackenzie’s recounting is a suicide attempt, and she shudders, half-gagging into her palm at a line about ‘paper-thin’ skin. 

Tears track steadily down Julien’s cheeks as she listens. Part of her is upset that her friend went through something so awful. Part of her is horrified and disgusted at the possibility that she’d ever caused pain like this. 

Oh, God, what if she’s someone’s Tuesday?

Her fist flies up to her head and knocks harshly, and as the verse comes to a close Julien spins, grips the edge of the sink not currently full of soapy dishwater, and throws up. The sound of it splattering into metal rings in her ears in time with Mackenzie’s voice starting in on the next verse. 

“Oh, my God,” Mariah rounds the corner at a jog, and Julien is silently grateful that the next line is drowned out. “Did you just throw up?”

Julien can’t bring herself to meet her girlfriend’s concerned eyes, so she reaches for her phone with violently shaking hands instead, and pauses the demo just in time to hear the word ‘shame’.

Mariah seems worried and confused as she washes Julien’s vomit down the sink, and Julien soon finds herself being pulled close, Mariah running a hand through her hair and asking, “what happened, JB?”

 Julien swallows against the lump still sticking in her throat, and croaks out an astonished, “Mackenzie’s a fucking good songwriter”.

It’s another week before she can convince herself to listen to the song again, and this time she makes it all the way to the end. She cackles at the last line - telling Tuesday’s mom to ‘go suck an egg’ - and shoots Mackenzie a text.

We have to put this on the album.

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Inspired by this moment from the JBTorres virtual listening party last April: