Jennifer Jareau was sure she would never see the woman at the bar again. Having poured her heart out to her - and thrown up in the back of her car - she was uneasy even thinking about the concept of seeing the woman again. However, luck isn't on JJ'...
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Jennifer's divorce had been finalised for three hours and twenty-seven minutes, and no one beyond her husband - ex-husband - and son knew. Of those three hours and twenty-seven minutes, she had spent twelve minutes sobbing in the bathroom of the lawyer's office, forty minutes explaining - to the best of their ability - what had happened to Henry, twenty three minutes driving to the bar and the remaining one hundred and thirty-two minutes drinking her feelings to oblivion. After her fifth shot of tequila, she had forgotten why she was drinking and fixed her attention on the almost perfect tan lines that had formed on her left ring finger.
She held her hand out before her, trying to work out why such a small thing had changed her entire life in so many ways. The wedding ring she had once worn had been an anchor, or - more correctly - Will had been an anchor. In the years they had been married, he had given her no obvious reason to doubt him, yet she had always felt that her ring and her marriage had been an inevitability in the eyes of Will. He had moved his life across the country for her, then he had almost died before her eyes, then - and only then - had she agreed to marry him. Thinking back, she had married him because she felt she had to, that she owed it to him.
After her sixth shot of tequila, Jennifer began to wonder how she would tell her friends. Emily would be supportive, take her out drinking once more and most likely convince her to go crazy and hook up with some guy who approached her at the bar. It wasn't that she hadn't considered this - in fact on a quick glance around the bar she had seen a handful of men she would happily approach - but she knew that when she woke up she would regret it. Jennifer was not drunk enough to make decision she would regret, not yet at least.
No matter what Jennifer was feeling, she wasn't alone in her sorrow. Beside her, another woman sat staring into her soft drink; cleaning her face of any despondency that dared try and weave its way to the surface. However, Jennifer hadn't noticed that women, not until the bar tender had made a joke about feeling as though he had walked in on the lonely-hearts club. Then, she raised her shot - the woman mirroring with her lemonade - and did a silent toast to new beginnings for the both of them.
The woman crossed the bar, taking the seat behind the new divorcee, "I wish I was you right now."
"Divorced or pissed?" Jennifer queried, a laugh escaping her lips as she displayed how hilarious she had thought herself.
"The latter." The woman explained, shaking her head slightly. "I start a new job tomorrow, and - while I don't mind turning up heartbroken on the first day - I don't fancy being hungover. Even sober, I've never been great at first impressions."
Jennifer shook her head, snorting at the notion, "I'm going to be so hungover and everyone's going to think I had an exciting night in with my husband - ex-husband. I just, I keep replaying the years in my head, but it doesn't make any of it any clearer. Not why we're divorced, but why we got married in the first place."
"Are there kids involved?" She asked, Jennifer nodding in response. "That always make it tough."
"You too?" Jennifer questioned, raising her brow at the dark-haired woman beside her.
"No, I didn't marry him." The woman didn't know why she was telling this to anyone - let alone a perfect stranger she had met just moments before. She was sure the blonde wouldn't remember the conversation the next day, nor was she likely to see her again, but that wasn't why she was telling the tale. Something about the woman at the bar - drunk on tequila and misfortune - made her want to open up. "He asked, when I found out about my daughter, but I didn't want to get married just because I had a baby. I wanted him to want to marry me, and maybe that was the biggest problem."
"My son was three."
She was puzzled by Jennifer's - slightly slurred - statement, "What?"
"When me and his father got married, and he never once let me forget that he moved away from his family and childhood home for me." Jennifer rambled, causing the woman to glance her way sympathetically. "And I used to love his accent, but after a while it became another thing to remind me. Then, he decided that I was away too much with my job, and I wasn't going to compromise myself for a man, no matter how much I loved him." She paused, a loud and uncontrollable laughter erupting from her chest, "You're heartbroken because you didn't get married because it was the right thing, and I am drinking because I did. No matter what happened, we would have both ended up in this exact position, divorced or just dumped."
Holding back her own laughter, the woman picked Jennifer's keys from before her, "Look, give me your address and I'll drop you home, you are not driving."
"Why would I give you my address? For all I know you're a serial killer."
"Well, I've worked with a lot of them." She mumbled under her breath, and Jennifer believed her mind had made it up. There was very little chance of her meeting someone in the similar line of work in a bar, and she had drunk more than she would normally have. It wouldn't be a surprise if she had made up this entire conversation.
The woman let out another sigh, "Look, if you won't let me drive you, at least let me call you a cab. Or you can sleep on my couch, if you're scared your cab driver may also be a serial killer."
"I don't even know your name, why would I sleep on your couch?"
"Anna, now you know my name." She declared, having picked her bag from the counter and finished her lemonade. "So, cab or couch?"
