Chapter Text
Contrary to what most would believe, this honestly isn’t the worst date Nat’s been on.
She doesn’t even know why she tapped the heart on the profile in the first place. It’s not her usual type - far from, if we’re being specific, but Van had told her to “broaden her horizons” or whatever that’s supposed to mean, and she certainly hadn’t expected to be her type either.
So, when she gets the message that she and little miss Jackie Taylor are a match, she’s a little surprised.
Okay—a lot surprised. Fine. Sue her, okay? She’s never exactly been at the top of the list for preppy femmes at school, and she didn’t think it’d start now of all times.
The conversation over the app is another pleasant surprise; Jackie turns out to be sweet, charming, with a sass that makes Nat’s mouth twitch with a smile when returning her texts. They agree to meet up a week later over coffee, just to test the waters as online dating goes, and Nat feels a little bit of a promise hinting at her heart at the thought.
One slow week passes, and Jackie Taylor pulls up to Wilderness Coffees & Cakes with every single blonde strand perfectly curled, a beaming grin, and two huge cardboard boxes of her ex’s things in the back of her trunk.
She doesn’t outright say it’s her ex’s things, just lets Nat know that she needs to take a small little road trip and it’d be really, really nice if she had some company - but Jackie Taylor is far from a good liar, and Natalie Scatorccio is more of a pushover than one needs to be (she’s working on it, alright?), so she shrugs her shoulders and says: “What the hell, sure.”
That’s how she finds herself, on a Saturday afternoon, staring at her own reflection in the glass entrance of—Nat glances over to read the sign—Scott Residence Hall.
Jackie stumbles into sight some minutes later (when Nat is teetering the paperthin line between patience and impatience), rolling her shoulders back with a dramatic flair that Nat doubts will be a one-time thing.
They have to wait for a student to let them into the building, which is way less embarrassing than it sounds; they just look like they’re moving in late, two transfer students in the middle of the fall semester, without their key cards from the main office. Nat thinks about it more when they’re lugging in the cardboard boxes, giving thanks to their savior - probably not the best safety precautions from this university if she and Jackie are allowed to waltz in with little question.
She prays to God, or whoever it is with some kind of power over her fate, that Jackie isn’t that kind of ex. Nat hadn’t signed up to be an accomplice to anything past package delivery.
The halls of the dorm building are adorned with all kinds of RA bullshit: cork boards with maps attached, dumb poster designs about safe sex, sticky notes of stars and the like - and Nat follows Jackie’s lead, since she seems to know exactly which door she’s heading to, making a determined beeline without a skip in her step.
When they come to a stop (thank fucking Christ for that, since Nat’s arms are about to fall off from whatever’s stuffed inside these boxes), Jackie sets her package down to the floor and knocks as Nat reads the whiteboard hanging off the knob of their destination.
LM & SS are the only recognizable letters, floating above a sea of flower doodles and previous colored dry erase marks. She thinks she spies a drawing of a dick somewhere in the fading distance.
Before she can get a closer look at the artistry, the door swings open, and Nat is now even more confused that Jackie matched with her of all people when she looks at the person greeting them on the other side. If this is Jackie’s type, Nat checks absolutely zero of these boxes.
Not tall. Not brunette. Not deer-in-head-lights eyes.
“Hey,” the girl says, hand stretched over the door frame as she peers down at blonde #1 and (fake) blonde #2. Her tone is soft, a little hesitant, but there’s a kind note to her expression that makes Nat a little less tense under her dark gaze. “What’s up?”
Not a bad start. Maybe Jackie can just say Hey there, ex, here’s your stuff! Okay, thanks, we gotta go now! and they can be on their merry way. There doesn’t seem to be many strings attached from the opposing side, so maybe the split was more amicable than assumed. Or maybe Nat’s mentally crossing her fingers for this to be true.
“Hey, Lottie,” Jackie says, sweetly. Nat can’t tell if it’s genuine or not - she barely knows the girl as of now, and even if Jackie has been sweet to her, she also seems incredibly capable of being not so sweet to others. “Sorry for the interruption.”
One of Lottie’s shoulders rise in a half-hearted shrug. “It’s fine.” She twists her body slightly, facing away from them for a second. When she meets their eyes again, her brow is an inch raised. “Do you need me to get Shauna? She’s in her room.”
Ah.
She gets it now.
This one’s not her ex; this one’s just the ex’s roommate.
Back to square one.
Jackie bites her lips, fighting an internal battle of Should I, Should I Not. Eventually, one of these sides wins - she straightens her back, rolls her shoulders (Nat rolls her eyes) again, and lets out two quick exhales, like she’s preparing herself for a battle. “Can you let her know that I’m here,” Jackie asks smoothly—as if she didn’t take part in a whole ritual before this for two pairs of eyes to witness—hands gesturing to the boxes, “and I’ve got her things?”
Lottie gives a small nod, stepping back to invite them into the place, before she disappears behind a corner in the hallway. One awkward silence later, another brunette comes to slot into the space she’d once filled.
So, this is Shauna.
Nat gives her a onceover, thinks that maybe she is in fact Jackie’s type if she likes relatively short girls with a resting bitch face and (plausibly, possibly, most likely, based on the narrow of Shauna’s eyes at the sight of Jackie) an attitude, and watches everything unfold before her very eyes.
This is how it proceeds, not unlike a 2000s teen drama:
Jackie greets Shauna, not genuinely—it is less nice than the one for Lottie—and Shauna doesn’t bother with her own false smile before her face scrunches inward and, all of a sudden, they’re both fighting with each other about something or the other, Nat has no idea because she’s tuned out and god damn, this might be the worst date she’s ever been on by far now - she shouldn’t have pushed her luck earlier.
The conversation gets so heated, in fact, that roommate Lottie comes back into the shared space with concern etched on her forehead, and then she’s trying her best to calm Shauna down while she’s still arguing back at an equally stubborn, if not more, Jackie.
Nat probably should do the same for Jackie - hold her back and all, but she can’t muster enough will or comfort to put her hands on this practical stranger so she lets out an exasperated sigh and says, “Come on, Jackie, let’s just go home,” in the background of all the noise.
Lottie and Nat are ignored. Hard.
Lottie’s actually shoved a little to the side in the commotion, and Nat’s hit with a wave of relief that she hadn’t tried to do the right thing a second ago or else she’d have suffered the same fate of being knocked out of the equation.
That’s not to say she isn’t suffering, though.
Nat’s spending the rest of her Saturday afternoon in a university dorm tens of miles away from home, with a close-to-complete stranger she’d met on a dating app only a week prior and her angry ex (at least Nat’s confirmed the bad breakup thing, huh) and two boxes of the heaviest shit she’s ever carried in her life laying directly at her shoes. And all because she couldn’t say no to huge, blue eyes and a jutting perfect bottom lip.
This has to count as some sort of penance.
Jackie ends up storming out of the dorm (remember that dramatic flair Nat noted earlier?), Shauna tailing directly behind her, and their voices don’t drown out completely until a good minute later.
Nat can’t exactly leave Jackie here, since Jackie had been the one to drive them this hour road trip in the first place, so she adjusts her jacket and moves to leave and find where the hell the two of them disappeared to.
Before she can make it out of the door, Lottie’s voice pierces through the air, still soft, still hesitant, still kind. “Give them some time,” she says, arms crossed against her chest. It’s not a stern look she’s giving off in the pose—she just looks like she’s cold. “They’ll be back.”
“This happen a lot or something?” She sounds so definitive that Nat can’t help but quirk an eyebrow.
Lottie lets out a small breath, the ghost of a laugh. “Something like that, yeah. I just moved in a couple months ago, and Jackie’s been here…” she trails off, eyes rolling up like she’s in thought, “four times. Um, well. Five times. Counting this one.”
Nat scoffs. “Jesus. So, I did end up in the middle of messy lesbian breakup. Great.”
Lottie blinks, looking a little surprised. “Are you and Jackie, like, a thing?”
There’s a slight tone of judgement between the lines, and Nat feels her walls rise for no particular reason on the opposing side of Lottie’s stare. “Does it matter? They’re broken up,” is her clipped response. Honestly, Nat won’t call Jackie up after this - but, seriously, it’s not like she knew this was going to happen when she agreed to a cup of fucking coffee. She’s the victim.
Lottie’s eyes study her, dark and imploring, and Nat’s discomfort grows in her skin every beat that the silence steals between them. “I was just wondering how you knew her.” A cool, collected reply. Nat thinks that’s the last of her thoughts, but then: “Why did she bring you here?”
Oh, so she could make me her ex’s delivery bitch. Duh.
Instead, Nat gives a tight smile and her own cool, collected reply. “Road trip. I wanted to be here.”
Lottie doesn’t believe her. That much is obvious in the crease above her perfectly knit brows. Nat hates that. Sure, she was lying, but that doesn’t mean Lottie shouldn’t just not believe her lie. She doesn’t know anything about her. Nat hates, hates, hates it.
“Okay, we’re not really a thing,” Nat admits after a minute, when the air is so thick that she feels like she needs to get something off her chest or else her body will collapse in itself. Like she’s in a confession booth with the pastor or something stupid. The truth comes spilling all out of her before she can stop it. “We matched on Hinge, and she wanted me to help her drop something off, but she didn’t say it was for her fucking ex, so—yeah. That’s pretty much it. I found out her name, like, a week ago.”
“I would’ve felt bad,” Lottie starts, moving towards the kitchen island to sit down. It doesn’t do much to minimize the height difference between them—Lottie’s really, honestly one of the tallest girls that Nat’s been in the presence of—but it reminds Nat that her feet are killing her too, and she inches closer to a matching chair, eyes peering like she’s asking for permission. Lottie’s mouth pulls into a side smile at the sight. “You can sit. I don’t bite.”
The fang that peeks out from her mouth is giving Nat mixed signals. “Thanks.” She takes a second to adjust on the stool, hands tucked under its seat as she leans forward. “You would’ve felt bad?”
Lottie nods, carefully. “Not because there’s anything wrong with you, but—I don’t know. Jackie’s just for Shauna, and Shauna’s just for Jackie. Do you get what I mean? I’d feel bad for anyone else who tried to get between them. That’s all.”
“Have you know them for a while?” Nat’s curiosity gets the best of her. Maybe it’s just how Lottie is, but there’s a finality to her way of speaking that makes Nat feel like her genuine questions are rhetorical.
“Just from high school,” she explains with a small shrug. “We were all on the same soccer team.”
“So, you’re close to them or something?”
Another shrug. “I talked to Jackie more back then, but Shauna and I got into this school, so we just became roommates. It was easier that way. Like, we’re friends, I guess, but they’re best friends. Which is why it’s a whole thing with them now, if you’ve noticed.”
“I’ve noticed.” Nat lets out a dry chuckle. She takes a small glance at the closed front door. “Are you sure they’ll be fine?”
“Yeah,” Lottie says, same tone as before. “As long as they still have each other, they’ll be fine.”
Nat squints her eyes just a bit. She doesn’t know why she says what she says, but she does. “You’re a little weird, you know that?”
“I’ve been told.” Lottie doesn’t seem to take offense to it, lip still quirked up. “But not weird enough to agree to return my Hinge date’s ex’s things with her.”
Nat rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling, too. “Ha ha, very funny, asshole.”
Lottie laughs, face crinkling in a pretty expression. She calms down after a second, fingers tapping against the table before she speaks next. “You know, I don’t even know your name.”
Huh.
She didn’t really have the chance to introduce herself before Jackieshaunagate opened.
“Natalie,” she says. “Scatorccio. But just Nat works.”
“Natalie Scatorccio,” Lottie sounds out. There’s a lilt at the end of her pronunciation of Scatorccio. “Nice to meet you, Nat. Even if these circumstances are a little weird.”
“The pleasure is mine, Lottie…” she trails off, head tilting like she’s welcoming an interruption from Lottie.
“Lottie Matthews.” A pause. “Charlotte Matthews. But just Lottie works.”
-
Nat thinks about the day over and over again when she’s in her bed that night, music playing all around her head. It doesn’t do much to still her racing mind, but she likes the sound of it, so she keeps it on despite everything.
Jackie had dropped her off with multiple profuse apologies about the whole thing after sundown, saying that she doesn’t think she’s looking for anything romantic right now but she’d love to be friends if that’s okay with Nat, and Nat had left her off with a wave, a small smile, and a Yeah, maybe.
Objectively speaking, it has to be the worst date she’s ever been on.
But for some weird, honest reason, she doesn’t really think so.
She might want to do it again another time.