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Say No

It had been almost a month since Freddie last went out with Cher and her friends, what with the stresses of work and spending so much time with Harry since their impromptu makeout session in their kitchen, but at last, the time came when Freddie really didn't want to say no again. She felt bad for always being so busy, but Harry kept asking her to dinner just before Cher would ask her, so it really was just a perfectly inconvenient coincidence. This time though, Freddie set aside her Friday night with the intention of getting shitfaced with Cher and her old sorority sisters.

There wasn't much of an occasion, only that Cher's friend Maria was going through a really rough breakup and needed a night out. Thus, the plan was to have a drink or two at Cher's place, make their way to a club down the street, and hopefully get just drunk enough to walk home without issue.

Freddie made sure to eat a decent meal before leaving for Cher's, so when the drinks started flowing, she didn't start to feel it a bit later than Cher or any of her friends. It was a thing they did in college where they wouldn't eat much for the sake of getting drunk on the cheap, and Freddie would have joined them in that if she felt like throwing up that night. But of course, she didn't, so she braced herself for a bar tab that would inevitably shock her.

They went to a dance club with a DJ and lots of strobe lights, definitely not Freddie's place of choice, but certainly somewhere she could survive if she had to. She wasn't much of a dancer herself, but if the music was good enough and she had enough liquor in her, she could be convinced to grind it out on the dancefloor. Thankfully though, she did have those two things, so she ended up being able to be a good sport about it. After all, Maria was the one who wanted to go there, and since she was so upset, Freddie really just wanted to help her have fun as much as she could.

Cher felt the same way, though she showed this in a perhaps less helpful way by buying Maria a drink whenever her cup was empty. But that, of course, had some unintentional consequences that led to many tears and a challenging walk home where Freddie had to sling her arm around Maria and keep her upright enough to walk. Cher and Kaylee weren't really all that much help during that portion of the night, since they had nearly matched Maria drink for drink, Kaylee more so than Cher; nonetheless, they could both walk on their own, and that was all Freddie could ask for given the circumstances. At least she didn't have to carry two of them.

When the four of them made it back to Cher's apartment, Freddie landed Maria on Cher's bed and gave instructions for the two others to acquire some equipment, which consisted of water, a makeup wipe, and a trashcan. After taking off Maria's makeup that had been smeared by all the tears and force feeding her water for an hour and a half, Freddie finally deemed that it was safe to let her sleep alongside Kaylee, who had fallen asleep maybe half an hour earlier. That left the couch for her and Cher, but given how okay Freddie felt by the time she wandered into the living room, she wasn't so sure she wanted to stay the night. She was exhausted from all the babysitting, and she sort of just wanted to sleep in her own bed. Whether Cher would let her do that though, Freddie was sort of doubtful.

"Is she alright?" Cher asked, standing at the fridge to refill what would be her fifth cup of water. "She didn't throw up, did she?"

Freddie shook her head as she sunk down into Cher's white couch, wondering to herself why anyone would ever purchase a white couch. They just get dirty so quickly; there's really no reason to have one.

"No," Freddie sighed, picking up her own water cup from the side table and lifting it to her lips. She really didn't drink that much, so the water wasn't really necessary, just a good idea to avoid any headache the next morning. "No, she said she still might though, so I left the trashcan next to her."