#pls accept my garbage

To say that it had been a shit twenty-four hours was, in a sense, putting it very fucking lightly. It was like a sitcom laundry list of things gone wrong, every bad decision Alec had ever made coming back with a vengeance to bite him right in the dick. He’d slipped his last twenty into Oli’s things, had walked the mile back down the road to find his van had been towed, and on the way had found out through texts that, oh yeah, deja fucking vu, Flynn, you’re gonna be a dad! 

So the ten minute drive to Charlie’s had taken well over an hour and he’d arrived in no mood for talking about any of it. So he’d slept on it, Damaris stopped by, and his life as he knew it was absolutely obliterated once more.

Sitting on the couch beside Charlie now, Alec rolled the joint between his fingers, eyes on the end alit in amber. “On a scale of one to not-at-all, how surprised would you be if I said I fucked up?”

There was a small smile on Emily’s lips, an upward curve at the corners of her mouth. Brady was sat in the passenger seat next to her, Redwood Bay a blur of gray and green out of the car window. The city as a whole felt as if it were in mourning-- and Emily herself, whom had no personal connections to the people they’d lost, not really, had been feeling that loss too. She’d canceled this week’s session out of respect for Lily and locked herself away for several days with as many bottles of wine. But she was tired of being sad. So she’d texted Brady, told her to get dressed-- casual, nothing she didn’t mind getting a little dirty-- and told her she was taking her out. And she wasn’t taking no for an answer. Emily’s intended destination didn’t make for a long car ride, and being horrible at surprises, she took it upon herself to fill up the time between the here and the there to yammer on mindlessly. Otherwise, she was likely to spoil it. “Thanks for coming with me,” Emily beamed, though she’d really given Brady no choice. “It was either this or I was going to sit through my seventh rewatch of Onward and I’m pretty sure I’ve cried so much that my body physically can’t do it anymore. If I could see my insides, they’d probably look like Spongebob out of water.” The building was coming into view now and she cast her eyes to Brady to gauge her reaction. She offered a small shrug as she pulled into the parking lot of the animal shelter. “So, I figured what’s better than puppies and kittens after the week we’ve had?”

She hadn’t called first. She had a really bad habit of just sort of... popping in on people in times of dire need. It was her way of asking for help without having to actually ask for it. So, armed with several grocery bags full of junk food ranging from salty to sweet, she found herself in front of Sirena’s door. A break from the beach house with someone more likely to roast her than try to offer advice sounded like exactly what Emmy needed. 

So when she knocked on the door and took a step back to wait, the very last person she expected to see as it swung open was Jaime. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she heard herself groaning, rolling her eyes heavenward as if to say really, God?