LCU, landslide, part 3

November 2083 - LCU, fall semester (part 3 of 4) - Vicky Garth is 19, April Hutchins and Beau Jackson are 20. (Heather Huffington is 37.)

* soundtrack for all parts, "Landslide," by Fleetwood Mac *

April doesn't think she's ever had a friend, male or female, who she didn't want to sleep with. And Vicky? No, April doesn't want to get in bed with Vicky. Not in the least. The girl has a stick up her butt the size of an oak tree! But there's something in this poor, friendless girl, that April feels drawn to. She can't help but reach out to her. And honestly, she doesn't see why nobody wants to help the girl. She's in college, not a freaking nunnery! She needs to be saved!

So she digs her new friend out of her biology books and brings her to work with her one night. "So, you're not drinking because you're allergic, or because you're studying to become a nun?"

"Drink?" Vicky says. "I don't know, I've never had one before."

"Oh, geeze, you've probably never had sex before either."

"Sex? Well, if you mean, all the way-"

"Oh my God, I was right!" April says. "We gotta get that taken care of!"

Heather comes around the bar then. She has ears everywhere in this place. She hears everything. She knows everything. "Nah," she says, pointing to Vicky. "Don't listen to her, a girl's got to lose her own virginity."

"What," April says. "Like your first time was special?"

"Sure, it was," Heather says.

April laughs. "Oh, ha! Was it with Max?"

"I said it was special," Heather says with a smirk. "It was Joel Harris, my freshman year. He was a senior. Lord, what a fine lay that was!" She sighs and entertains herself for a moment in a memory. "But see, you girls both have it wrong, if you want the truth. You don't have to wait for true love if you don't want to, but at the same time, it should mean something."

Even long after the conversation has ended, in April's mind, Heather's words stick sharp: a girl's got to lose her own virginity. She swallows these words down, deep. She buries them further any time they try to resurface. It doesn't matter, what's done is done and it can't be undone. Thinking about it only makes her feel angry and cheated, and she doesn't want to feel angry and cheated all the time. So she won't. It's so much easier to just brush it all behind her and carry on, with a smile on her face and a spring in her step. It's easy to forget. If you try hard enough, you can forget anything.

Heather corners April behind the bar for a moment. She has that look on her face, like concern. "April, honey," she says. "Do your parents know you work here?"

"My parents?" she says. "Seriously?"

Her parent, in the singular, is a joke. Her mom with one failed boyfriend, after another, after another, all these slimy pathetic men, none of them being her actual father. If her mother even remembered a dozen of the men she'd been with that year she was conceived, he could be any one of them.

"My parents are no concern here," April says. "What, you want a parent-teacher conference or something?"

"No," Heather says. "You know that's not the way it works around here."

April pulls her arms tighter across her chest.

"I just wondered is all," Heather says. "You know you're always welcome here." She pats April on the shoulder. "Why don't you go hang out with your friend for a bit. There's nobody here tonight anyway."

Some nights are just slow. There's really no way to predict how it'll turn out. So this job, more often than not, ends up being more hanging out than it is actual work. She knows all of their customers now. She knows their drinks and how strong they like them. She knows how they play their poker, and she's even learning to beat some of them. They know her by name and they love her. They love her. They can't get enough. She reminds them of bubblegum, they all say. She lifts their spirits in even the darkest of places.

It's sort of an undefined part of the job, Heather explained to her once - entertaining the customers, the pretty smile, the sparkling conversation, the uplift. Nothing more, no funny business. If Max isn't here himself, then he always has one of his men here, to make sure they're kept safe.

So Heather pours drinks for their only customer tonight, and April joins Vicky at the card table. James is here tonight, her first favorite customer. His was one of the first drinks she ever made here - Jack and Coke, short glass, not too much ice.

"Hi, James," she says.

He doesn't really look up to meet her eyes, but just sighs and says, "Hi."

She turns to Vicky then. "So you met James then, isn't he adorable?"

He looks at her then. He almost smiles, but he doesn't. As if remembering he was mad at her, he gets up, and says, "What planet are you on?"

She gets up to go after him, before he makes his way out of the bar. "Are you still mad about that?"

"Mad? No, that's not the right word for it."

This is still about Max. Max scared her at first, but it was an exciting kind of scared. He scares her still, but for some reason, he makes her feel like she belongs. It's a reciprocal relationship - she takes care of him, and he takes care of her. One night, she only mentioned to him that she couldn't afford to buy one of her school books, and when she got home, she found $500, cash, slipped into her purse. James told her she couldn't trust him, but she's only going by instinct.

***

Coming home to Beau is like stepping through a portal to another world, where the cartoon channel is still playing at 3:00 in the morning, and the kitchen smells like pepperoni hot pockets. She doesn't know which world she belongs in. Beau would have taken care of her without asking for anything in return, but that was what she didn't trust. Eventually he'd wise up, that she was no good for him, that she was too much trouble. Eventually he'd leave her and move on. The good ones always do.

She comes home late most nights. He's up watching TV when she tiptoes into his room. She's alone tonight, she isn't always. Beau is awake tonight, but he isn't always, or even usually lately. Sometimes he used to wait up for her, but it doesn't seem so much like that anymore, but just an accident if he's still awake.

She taps on the open door. He says, "Come in."

She eases herself onto the end of the bed. There was a time she'd just crawl underneath the covers, but that was what got them into this mess. She never meant to be malicious, she just likes to feel close to people. She loves to feel close to him, which she hasn't felt for a very long time. She never meant to break them up or anything, but she's too touchy-feely for a friend, and Evie didn't like it.

"It smells like girl downstairs."

"Yeah, so?" he says. "Maybe there was a girl here."

"Tell me you don't have a new girlfriend already."

"What if I did?" he says. "You kind of pissed off the last one."

"That wasn't going to work out anyway," she says.

"It could have," he says. "It's not your place to say."

"I'm sorry," she says. "Do you want me to go?"

"I don't care," he says.

"Do you want me to stay?"

"I don't care," he says.

She gets up to go. Behind her, he lets out a sullen huff. "Stay if you want," he says.

She pauses on those words. She does want, very much. But it's almost too broken. She's too much trouble, and has been from the moment she was born.

"No, it's okay," she says. "I'm kind of tired anyway."

*******

(footnotes: why James is mad at April // why Beau is mad at April // and a time before anyone was mad at April)

notes: I felt like splitting this third part into two, not only because it was getting long, but because the tone was just too different. I felt like they needed space from each other, even if each of them isn't very long on its own. So part 3.5, featuring Vicky, will be coming up next ;)

I was really hoping, for my own peace of mind, to finish the current chapter of stories before my vacation, but it's not looking likely. That's like, six updates in two weeks, which is a LOT! I'll at the very least finish up the current set of LCU stories before we break, and then there are three stories to end the chapter when we resume again. And I'm very excited about starting the next chapter too!

Heather, by the way, is another one of my side-characters that is so interesting to me that she really deserves her own story some day. I've got so many stories to tell here as it is though! Maybe she'll get a real short story instead. She never wanted to marry any of her boyfriends, and never wanted to have children of her own, but I also see her kind of "mothering" these lost kids Max tends to pick up, like April and James. That, and she apparently has a thing for much younger men ;)

But she just fascinates me, particularly her "friendship" with Max. Did I tell you before that Max bought her that house she's living in now?