TAKE IT EASY • TC ✔️

50. Acerbic

Nadia was insistent.

"Come on, Lu, you've had this job a whole month and we haven't even celebrated it yet," she said emphatically, spinning around on her chair. It seemed that the books she was cataloguing were not nearly enough to hold her attention. They weren't enough to hold Lu's attention either, but nothing really seemed to these days.

Lu hummed, stamping the library's logo onto one of the new arrivals and slipping on the corresponding barcode sticker. "I don't know, maybe the novelty's worn off a bit," she sighed. Closed the cover of the novel and reached for another.

"Okay, but it's still an excuse to dress up and get drinks," Nadia bargained. "Look, I'll even pay for you. As long as it's not Grey Goose or something."

"No, don't be silly. I'll pay for you," Lu replied, smiling.

"I don't drink," Nadia replied, whizzing around in her chair three times in quick succession.

"Nads, you're not...pregnant?" Lu gasped, looking up from the front page of the book she was cataloguing.

"Muslim," she laughed, and Lu's mouth fell open at her own stupidity. She sputtered for a few seconds, rolling her eyes and trying to work out what to say.

"It's fine," Nadia giggled. "Just let me get you drunk. You look like you need it."

Lu didn't know what to say to that. She would much rather get blackout drunk than go to bed with that empty feeling she had become so accustomed to, but she knew that getting drunk drunk would just make things worse in the long run. It always did.

So she told herself to have one drink. Two at most. Not only because Nadia was paying, but also because she needed to start making decisions that would benefit her. Like saving on groceries and investing herself in her work and not getting shitfaced and Talking To Timmy.

That was a smart decision; she knew that. Had known it since last week when Timmy had cornered her in the corridor. In fact, she'd known it since getting back, known it since she spoke to her dad, known it before she'd even gotten on that stupid plane and ran away from her problem.

Timmy: her problem. (And was it even fair to call him that? Was it even fair to call him the problem when it was really her fault all along?)

If Lu was being really honest, she'd known that she should talk to him from the moment she'd left his apartment a month earlier. Known that nothing good would come from distance, much less silence. And she knew now that she would have to talk to him, would have to cross that boundary that she'd put up between them.

It was all a matter of time.

So Lu decided to enjoy herself while she could. Just so, in the event that everything went to shit, that talking things through with Timmy was the worst decision she'd ever made, she could safely say that she'd at least been happy for a time before it.

And maybe if she felt happy before they talked, it would radiate into the conversation and everything would turn out magically.

Right.

So at nine o'clock, Lu was not in her pyjamas watching the news, as had become her routine over the past three weeks. No, at seven o'clock, Lu was standing in front of her wardrobe in despair, eyes scanning over all the clothes that weren't hers, looking for the ones that were. She reached forwards and zipped a few hangers along the rack, trying to ignore the scent of Timmy and the fact that his shirts outnumbered hers in what was most likely a three to one ratio.

She pulled out a skirt. Too long. Pulled out a jumpsuit. Too short. She pulled out three more items of clothing, each more inappropriate for drinks than the last. Still, she tried them all on, stepping back to look at herself in the full-length mirror. Lu turned to the side, her legs twisting around so she could look at her bum in the dress.