Chapter Text
Regina gets into the car, frustrated.
“What’s the matter, babe?” her mother asks, fixing her lipstick in the mirror quickly.
“She made me make a list,” Regina holds up a folded piece of paper, “of things I want to do.”
“A bucket list?” her mother inquires, going to grab at the paper only for Regina to keep it out of reach, “What’s on it?”
“Stupid shit,” Regina shakes her head and shoves it in the pocket of her jean shorts.
After getting hit by a bus back at the end of February in front of the whole school, Regina’s mother put her in all of the necessary physical therapies to heal, and then in talk therapy after realizing her mental health had taken a toll with the incident. (It’s probably the most attention her mother has ever paid to her.)
Her therapist - a woman by the name of Erica in her mid-thirties with an almost-funny sense of humor and an ability to call Regina out on her shit that would be admirable if it weren’t so annoying - came up with the idea today to make a bucket list. Something about almost dying has apparently resulted in Regina having a lot of wants and Erica suggested that putting it in a written form would help her commit to getting some of them done.
Regina thinks it’s dumb. Erica has a copy of the list, and they sorted it into two categories by the end of their session. One column is things she wants to do before finishing high school, and the other is more long-term life goals.
“Do you want to get food?” her mother asks as she turns the car on, only for Billie Eilish’s LUNCH to blast through the speakers.
“Oh my god?”
“Sorry, babe,” her mother quickly turns it down and then changes the song. Regina cringes at the idea of her mother listening to that song and finds herself thinking again that she can’t wait for the day that her mom will stop insisting on taking her to all of her appointments.
She maybe shouldn’t be so rude, it’s been nice to have someone in her corner after not having that for so long. However, her mother is still a bit overbearing and learning each other’s boundaries is taking longer than she’d like.
“Want to get food?” her mother asks again.
“Um, yeah,” Regina glances at the Apple Carplay display as her mother pans through her playlists, finally landing on one that’s called Regina Approved. Regina can’t help the smile that shows up on her face at that one.
“Want to go to that little place off six?” her mother asks next, pulling out of the parking lot as Raise Your Glass by P!nk plays on the speakers.
“That’s, like, twenty minutes away,” Regina responds, fidgeting with her phone in her hands, “Don’t we have to pick up Kylie in an hour?”
“Christina’s mom called me this morning, she said the girls wanted to have a playdate after camp,” her mother replies, “so we can have a girls’ afternoon. If you want to. You could even get your nails done if you want, I know it’s been a while.”
“No, I’m good,” Regina says softly, not bothering to look at the almost disastrous state of her nails, which have been nearly bitten raw. “We can go to that place for lunch, though. They’re nice there.”
“Alright,” Regina’s mother reaches over and gently squeezes her wrist.
Regina fusses with her fingers as she stares ahead at the road, “Erica thinks I should try and make up with Karen and Gretchen. Said it would maybe clear my conscience.”
“Has Karen still been texting you?” her mom asks.
“Yeah,” Regina can’t help but think about the last text that Karen sent. It was maybe a week ago and clearly sent from Gretchen’s family cabin on the lake, something Regina wasn’t invited to. She tried not to let it hurt, even with the text reading mssing uuuu!!
“You know, babe, I think she’s right,” her mother says, “you have to have people in your corner.”
Regina knows that. It’s not exactly rocket science. But it’s hard to feel like she could fit Karen and Gretchen back into her life when she tortured them for years just because she had a hard time dealing with her own insecurities. She’s the one that hyper-criticized their outfits, who warned them about being perceived as “lesbos” when they sat too close, who encouraged their “healthy eating choices” that were really just thinly-veiled attempts to starve themselves - christ, she led them around like her fucking lackeys. She doesn’t know if the word friends ever fit them.
That doesn’t change the fact that she misses them, though. Maybe it’s trauma bonding, but she misses them.
“I’ll reach out,” Regina says, grabbing her phone out from its spot under her leg and checking to see if anything’s happened since she turned it off prior to therapy.
It’s not news to find her phone without notifications these days. Today isn’t any different, but she opens Instagram anyway and she can’t help but feel a little queasy at the first image to pop up on her feed.
It’s a photo of Gretchen, Karen, Cady, Damian, and Janis. They’re standing on the shore of the lake, all in different poses and in their bathing suits, and all smiling. When did Janis and Damian become a part of that group? Regina assumed Cady stuck with being friends with all of them, her heart is too big to not, but to combine the two groups? And for them to all go to the lake?
Gretchen’s on the far left of the photo, with Karen’s arm wrapped around her waist. She has a towel around her shoulders, which makes it hard to tell, but Regina can see her arm wrapped around Karen’s waist. Karen’s off in a distant land in the picture, looking off at something out of frame, and Gretchen’s sunglasses are perched on her head.
Cady’s in the middle, looking completely at home with her friends, and Damian’s arm wrapped around her shoulders. She’s holding Karen’s hand tightly and Regina can’t help but remember how Karen would always hold her hand. It brings up that sour feeling of resentment of being replaced.
Janis looks the most out of place in the photo, tugged into Damian’s side with her hair in tight french braids that she taught Regina to do in sixth grade (Regina can’t do them now, but she remembers being enchanted by the way Janis would do it so effortlessly). Regina has to stop herself from staring at the dark red bikini that Janis is wearing, how it dips down her chest and highlights literally every bit of her. Her eyes land on a tattoo on Janis’ bicep that she didn’t know Janis had and she closes the app, frustrated. Janis is a problem that she doesn’t even know how to begin solving.
The little restaurant is quiet when they pull up with only a couple of tables’ worth of customers. They’re seated pretty quickly and given menus, even though Regina already knows what she wants and her mother probably does, too.
“School starts soon,” her mom points out after they order their drinks and food.
“It does,” Regina nods, sipping on her water.
“My baby’s going to be a senior,” there’s a wistful smile on her mom’s face.
“Mom, Kylie’s your baby,” Regina doesn’t meet the other woman’s eyes, still painfully aware of the list in her pocket. There are still amends she has to make in the next couple of weeks before school starts, and a frustrating AP Literature summer assignment waiting for her at home.
Thanks to the whole lack of friends thing, Regina’s already finished most of her other summer work, which is never something she thought she’d say. She also finished Glee and The Good Place and is currently on Season 4 of How I Met Your Mother. She’s had way too much time on her hands.
“Yeah, but you’re my first,” her mother shakes her head when she sees Regina cringe, “Sorry, that sounded bad. I’m proud of you, baby. I can’t wait to see you walk the stage next year.”
Regina smiles politely, “Thanks, Mom.”
“Honey,” her mother reaches across the table and grabs her hand, “I know it doesn’t look like you thought it would last year, but your senior year is going to go well. I’m sure of it.”
Regina doesn’t have to worry about responding because their waitress drops off their drinks with a promise of their food coming out soon.
“Thank you,” Regina says.
She can’t help but notice how pretty the waitress is. She can’t be much older than Regina. She has long brown hair and green eyes, and even though she can tell that the smile Regina’s seen is a customer service one, it’s still pretty. She wonders what her actual smile looks like.
Her eyes must have lingered because her mother is giving her a look when she finally zeroes back in on the fact that they’re at this restaurant together. Regina ignores it. She doesn’t know how to put her realizations about her attraction to women to words.
“What ever happened with Aaron?”
Well, at least it’s not about women.
“I cheated on him,” Regina says bluntly, thinking offhandedly that he should probably also be on her list of people to make amends with, but she doesn’t even know where he is. She thought he and Cady were together, but the lake photo begs to differ.
“Oh…”
“It’s… old news,” Regina pulls the paper off the top of her straw and takes a sip of her Starry, the Pepsi version of Sprite. It’s kind of fucking nasty, but not enough to discourage her.
The conversation dissolves into silence and Regina can’t help but circle back to the photo of them all at the lake.
She wonders if she’d still fit into that group, if they’d let her in. She wouldn’t let her in, even though she’s changed so much in the last eight months. Regina can’t help but think that her six months ago would be horrified at the t-shirt wearing raw-nailed makeup-less faced person she is right now. She’d probably die at the thought of going to therapy twice a week and talking out all of her trauma.
Her thoughts linger on Janis and she has to zap herself away from those thoughts again. She has to start with Karen and Gretchen.
It’s the first thing on her list, after all.