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It felt like hours had passed as Lucy stared at the front door, in reality it was bare minutes, perhaps even seconds. She could hear the clock on the wall ticking slowly and tried to get her breathing under control. Hold your breath for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven seconds, then slowly breathe out for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven seconds. She closed her eyes and felt the growing panic attack slowly but surely disappearing or at least she was able to get it under control. As always it was still there, threatening to surface but her upbringing with her therapist parents taught her how to hide her anxiety in a maybe not so healthy way but still hide it for others to see and for herself to deal with it when she needed to.
As she slowly opened her eyes she stared at the feast she had just minutes ago been so excited about. Why oh why did she keep doing this to herself, why did she ever make herself believe her parents would actually be proud of her? To accept her? Instead she felt like always felt after trying to bond with them, like she was a disappointment, someone to be ashamed of. The hunger she had felt while preparing the dinner was suddenly gone and she quickly without thinking poured down the soup in the kitchen sink and threw the scattered ingredients in the trash along with the cake she had bought from her mom’s favorite bakery.
She thought about pouring out the champagne too. She hesitated as she graced the cooling bottle in the refrigerator but decided against it. She closed the door and leaned against it. It was her parents’ favorite, they had it on their wedding day. Lucy had after a lot of research and hunting found a bottle from the same year and had planned to surprise them with it. Instead she stood alone in her apartment with a tear dried face and an empty feeling in her stomach. Not because she was hungry, it was a hollow feeling, a feeling of not belonging or having someone to belong to. She glanced at the clock on the wall, it was almost 8 pm on a Friday night and while she should probably stay home given how the evening had turned out so far she couldn’t stay in the apartment. It suddenly felt small, as it was consuming her and she could feel another panic attack slowly rising from within. Lucy took a deep breath and swallowed as if trying to bury it and before she could change her mind she grabbed her wallet and keys on the counter and was out the door.
About an half hour later she found herself sitting in a dark bar nursing a beer while scrolling her phone – bad move Chen. Her feed was filled with her friends from the academy out and about celebrating with their family and friends. She sighed heavily, put her phone down and looked up to get the bartender’s attention. Beer wasn’t going to cut it, she needed something stronger. Before she had the chance to wave at the man behind the bar however a familiar voice startled her from behind.
”Chen, what are you doing here?”
She jumped slightly and in the process spilled her beer all over the dress…just great. She really shouldn’t have been surprised considering how her evening progressed so far. She turned around on her bar stool and came face to face with a half concerned and half amused Tim as she looked down at her beer drenched dress.
”Isn’t it obvious? I figured I would participate in a wet t-shirt contest…or wet dress contest I suppose…” Lucy muttered as she leaned back and grabbed some napkins from the bar and half hearted tried to soak up the sticky liquid from her dress.
Tim raised an eyebrow as he took her in, his eyes narrowing as he studied her pale face. Her eyes that had sparkled with excitement just hours ago when she had finished her first shift as a police officer were now slightly puffy and he swore that even in the dim lighting of the bar, he could see dried tear stains along her cheeks.
“I figured you would be home toasting in some fancy champagne about now”, Tim said as he nodded towards the bartender signaling that he wanted two beers. “You wouldn’t shut up about it the last couple of weeks when you finally found the bottle”.
Lucy simply shrugged, avoided meeting his eyes and shuffled her feet against the sticky floor.
“Change of plans” she muttered. Tim raised an eyebrow as he took a sip from one of the bottles he had just been handed from the bartender and offered the other one to Lucy.
“You’re here alone?” he asked and looked around for a familiar face, it wasn’t a sketchy place by any means but not the place he could imagine Lucy would bring her parents.
“Something like that,,” she answered quietly, almost ashamed, taking a swig from the bottle. Tim furrowed his eyebrows at her quiet demeanor, something he had never experienced from her in the year he had known her. She had been annoyingly happy and upbeat, just plain annoying, combative, terrified but never….this quiet. Before he could say something however she stood up from the stool and reached for her phone from the bar.
“Thanks for the beer but if you’ll excuse me I am just going to head home again. Being here alone is sad enough but being here alone in a beerdrenched dress is borderlining pathetic.”
Lucy made a move to leave but stopped as a warm hand grabbed her elbow gently, she looked up at Tim and could see the slight concern in his eyes, worrying for her. While it gave her a slight warm and fluttery feeling in her stomach, she didn’t want him to ask her why she was alone in a bar when she should be out celebrating one of her biggest accomplishments. She didn’t have it in her to deal with it right now, she just wanted to go home and throw herself into her bed but another part of her didn’t want to be alone. Tim could see the conflict in her eyes, he briefly looked over shoulder before meeting her eyes again and seemed to make a decision.
“Listen, I’m here with some friends…you could stay and have a drink or two with us” he said while gesturing to a small group of people behind her. Lucy hesitated, she didn’t want to impose nor did she want him to pity her. Sensing her hesitation, Tim gave her a small smirk.
“I also figured you owe something since you kind of ruined a perfectly fine shirt with your little powder stunt the other day. Buy me a beer or two and we'll call it even for now” he said with a raised eyebrow and relaxed slightly when he saw a glimmer of light in Lucy's eyes as she mimicked his smirk back at him.
“Fine, but the first round is on you and no, the current beer in my hand is not included in said round”, she replied before looking down at her dress again and frowned at the beer stain still visible on her dress.
“Not sure I will make much of an impression though, i kind of look like a mess” she sighed lightly, “maybe i should just go home..” she started when Tim interrupted her,
“Just wait here”, he said before walking up to his friends and grabbed his backpack. He rummaged in it while walking back to her and pulled up an old LAPD-hoodie. She raised her eyebrows in question but he just shrugged and put it over her shoulders.
“Just borrow this, i don’t need it”, Tim said and once again signaled the bartender. Lucy quietly put her arms through the big sleeves as Tim ordered a few drinks and asked to have them delivered to their table and to put them on his tab before putting his hand on Lucy’s back gently and guiding her to a table in the corner, “Come one, let’s go and get you responsibly drunk Officier Chen”, he said while trying not to notice how ridiculously good she looked in his jacket.
An hour later Lucy was on her third beer and fourth tequila shot while wolfing down a veggie burger Tim had ordered for her when she let it slip that she hadn’t anything to eat since lunch. She narrowed her eyes when Tim once again stole some fries from the plate and gave him a glare which he returned with a smirk while taking a sip from the beer he had made her buy after refusing the pink sparkling cosmopolitan she had originally ordered for him. Tim had been speechless when the waitress had put down the drink in front of him, noticing the humorous glances and snickering from the tables near them.
It also didn’t help that his friends quickly snatched up their phones taking pictures with him and the drink in front of him. He just knew he would soon see t-shirts with said pictures on them in the near future, however seeing Lucy giggling and having fun was for some reason worth it, even if it was at his expense.
The discomfort he had felt when he walked up to her was still there. He was curious about what had transpired earlier to leave her alone in a bar when she should be celebrating with her close ones, but he had decided against pressing her on it. For now, she just needed an escape, and if he knew one thing about Lucy Chen, it was that she wouldn’t run from it forever. She wasn’t a coward like him, she had no fear when it came to showing her vulnerability or dealing with her issues head on. Sooner or later she would face whatever was bothering her—if not with him, then with someone else. He was brought back to the reality when a hand waved in front of his face and then he heard a familiar giggle.
“Are you still with us Bradford?” Tim blinked at her question as he reached over to snatch a couple of more of her fries and smirked as she narrowed her eyes at him.
“You know, you could have ordered a plate of your own?” Lucy said as she moved her plate away from him as he reached for a couple of more.
“They taste better when it comes with you being annoyed about it”, he deadpanned, which made her roll her eyes but didn’t say anything when he reached across from her and pulled the plate back to him.
It was weird, just a short while ago she had felt like the most pathetic and lonely person in the universe but for the past hour or so that feeling had been replaced with something warm, a sense of belonging. It was not a feeling she was used to, her upbringing hadn’t been necessarily bad. She knew that her parents, in their own way, loved her but there had always been a distance between them and it wasn’t until she stepped inside the doors of the police academy that she had felt the freedom to be herself. She shivered slightly and pulled Tim’s hoodie tighter around herself.
“So… first shift as a P2 officer..” Tim stated bringing her out of her thoughts, ”how was it?”.
“I mean..I think I’m a natural”, she smirked before taking a sip of her now lukewarm beer. “I mean… you had a excellent teacher” he replied, mirroring her smirk
“You had a excellent student” she quipped back before continuing, “...but to be honest…while I was nervous as hell it still felt right? It’s like I finally found something I can see myself excel at and actually love doing…like I remember when I was in college, I could never really feel the same excitement that my classmates felt..but now I can actually understand what they talked about…or even what my parents meant when they talked about their work…” she finished softly looking down at her fingers that were peeling off the label from her beer bottle.
Tim looked at her for a minute before leaning in closer and lowered his voice so only she could hear, “You are an excellent cop Chen and you deserve to celebrate and be celebrated.. and I meant what I said before..you don’t let anyone ever tell you can’t do something”
She felt his words down to the core but instead of feeling pain like she had before, she felt something warm and a sense of pride rose through her body. She wasn’t used to other people praising her and while she wasn’t exactly comfortable with it, she still believed him and took his words to heart.
By the time they got up to leave it was pitch dark outside and the air was cool and crisp. Lucy shivered slightly and pulled Tim’s jacket tighter around herself, it smelled faintly of laundry detergent and something that was just him, solid and familiar.
“Thanks… for not letting me go home,” she said softly as they waited for her Uber to arrive.
Tim shrugged, but his eyes were gentle. “Thanks for staying.” Lucy shuffled her feet looking down. She started to pull down the zipper and shrug off his hoodie when he stopped her.
“You can keep it, it’s kind of cold outside and I have a few more of those at home”.
For a moment they stood in silence, the street almost empty around them. Lucy felt a new kind of warmth rise within her, not the sparkling, fleeting rush she had once imagined for this night, but something steadier, grounded. She opened her mouth wanting to say more when she was interrupted by her ride home stopping by the curb. She hesitated before wrapping her arms around him giving him a quick hug, before he could hug her back however she stepped back, gave him a small smile and got into the car.
The next day, before her shift, Lucy quietly carried the champagne bottle to work. She made sure the men’s locker room was empty before she let herself in and placed the bottle into the back of Tim’s locker. She didn’t leave a note and neither of them mentioned it, until a few years later when the exact same bottle resurfaced, on the night when they celebrated Tim’s proposal in their bed with Lucy only wearing a certain worn out LAPD-hoodie.
The end.