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“Sounds like a you problem,” he says. He cracks one eye halfway open, smacks his dry lips. “Where are my pants?”
“Wes—”
“I’m wearing a shirt and no pants,” he says. “I’m Winnie the Pooh-ing it.”
“Your pants are in the window by the TV,” says a voice, much too clear and much too loud for the hangover bog. August looks up, and there’s Lucie, glitter lingering around her eyes, glowering into the cabinets. “You said, ‘They need to get some air.’”
“Why,” August says. “Here. Why are you. Here?”
“You really don’t remember inviting me to Popeyes,” Lucie says flatly. “You are lucky Isaiah knows about the service elevator. Would have left you there.”
“Yikes.”
“Anyway,” she says. “Winfield helped me get you home.”
“Yes, but.” August finally manages to dislodge her arm from Wes’s and gingerly begins to de-crumple herself into an upright position she immediately regrets. “Why are you here? Why didn’t you leave with him?”
“Because,” she says, emerging triumphant with a skillet, “it was funny. I love to watch people with hangovers. Half the reason to stay at Billy’s.” She points the pan at August. “Slept in your room.”
She turns to the fridge and withdraws a carton of eggs, and August remembers her first week at Billy’s, when Lucie made sure she’d eaten. There’s another pinched smile in the corner of her mouth, like the one she saw last night.
“Making breakfast,” Lucie says. “Thankless job, being your boss, but someone has to do it.”
Another memory comes back at that: Wes, three drinks deep, lipstick marks on his cheek, Isaiah in his full Annie glory, wig and all, saving him from slipping in a puddle of vodka on the bar floor, and Lucie laughing. It was supposed to be Niko’s birthday thing but ended up a five-drinks-and-where’s-my-pants thing. Apparently only Lucie made it through intact.
At least August’s stomach has stopped threatening an Exorcist live show. She rolls onto the floor, and Myla and Niko start to stir.
She runs through everything she can remember: Lucie’s fur shrug, eggnog, water falling from the ceiling, being in love with Jane, Myla’s lipstick, Niko’s bandana—
She’s in love with Jane.
Shit, no, it’s worse than that. She’s in love with Jane, and she wants Jane to stay, and what she thought was her emergency emotional escape hatch for when Jane goes merrily back to the 1970s is just a trick door into more feelings.
Niko’s voice echoes in the back of her head from the first time she kissed Jane, Oh, you fucked up.
She fucked up. She fucked up bad.
She feels around inside her chest like it’s the bottom of her jeans pocket, grasping for anything less life-ruining than this. The harsh light of a sober morning should dull it, turn it back into a crush.
It doesn’t.
It was never a crush, if she’s being honest, not since she started planning her mornings around a girl she didn’t even know. Her last shred of self-preservation was pretending it was enough to have Jane temporarily, and she shoved that like a twenty-dollar bill down Annie Depressant’s tits last night.
“I wish I were never born,” August moans into the floor.
“Retweet,” Wes says solemnly.
It takes twenty minutes, but eventually they extricate themselves from the couch. Myla, who slithered across the floor to the bathroom and threw up twice before army crawling back out, looks half-dead and altogether unlikely to partake in the scrambled eggs. Niko has already chugged a full bottle of kombucha in an impressive show of faith in his intestines to work things out on their own. And Wes has dislodged his pants from the window.
August manages to smile blearily at Lucie as she dumps eggs out of the frying pan and onto a plate before throwing a handful of forks down.
“Family style,” she says, and man. Everything is a disaster, but August does love her.
“Thank you,” August says. “Don’t you have a morning shift?”
Lucie pulls a face. She’s wearing one of August’s T-shirts. “Billy is reducing my hours. Told me yesterday.”
“What? He can’t do that; you’re basically the only person keeping that place together.”
