Work Text:
“So, what do you do for work?”
Sophia finds first date chatter to be such a high degree of tacky.
She knows the man sitting opposite her— Cole From Hinge, the contact in her phone reads— has no regard for where her job is or what it entails. He’s running lines off of a preset in his head for occasions like these, to pretend to be interested in hopes of scoring a way into her pants by the end of the night if he pulls it off well enough.
She has more class and respect for herself than that. She’s only really here because of Megan’s insistent nagging, not because she truly desires to go home with this guy tonight.
Sophia doesn’t do casual relationships or anything under that umbrella, and that’s likely exactly why she’s where she is tonight.
“You can’t just be stuck on her forever.” Megan advised over her bowl of cereal a few short days ago. “She was terrible for you, and she’s my best friend, so that’s honest. Go on dates. Meet someone new. Girl, I’ll set up your Hinge profile right now.”
And so, she’s here, the words “Oh, I’m a model.” rolling off her tongue a bit wrong.
Not to Cole From Hinge’s dismay, however, he just turns his lips and forks another piece of his steak. Rare. It juices when his teeth pierce it and god, why did she agree to this?
Sophia thinks he’s waiting on her to make the next query, to keep the small talk running smoothly, but she doesn’t. She takes a long sip of the Riesling in her glass. She does not want to be here any longer than she has to.
As Cole From Hinge goes to speak to her again, probably about to ask another dumb question that will just make this an even more extravagant waste of her time, Sophia’s phone chimes where it sits face down against the table cloth.
If this were a date she was enjoying, she’d have the mind to ignore it. That isn’t the case with this. She picks it up hastily and presses it to her ear
“Hello?”
Some higher pitched giggles and whiny breathing that can only belong to one person come from the other line. She knows that laugh, that even in- and exhale. She’d spent the better part of most of her nights trying to commit it to memory.
“Hi, Fifi.” Lara slurs. Drunk. Very obviously. “What’rya doing?”
Cole From Hinge is raising a confused brow but Sophia ignores him, instead responding, “I’m just eating. What are you doing?”
“I miss you.” The younger drags out the last word for emphasis and makes some kind of sniffle-laugh. “I was supposed to call an Uber but I really wanted to hear your voice.”
The words burrow in Sophia’s knife like a white-hot blade. She maintains her composure, surprisingly, as though her drunk ex-girlfriend isn’t interrupting her very attempt to move on with a drunk dial.
“Who told you to get the Uber? Are you alone?”
“Manon and Dani were here but they left me.” She can hear the pout in Lara’s voice. “Assholes. They probably went home to fuck. And didn’t even invite me!”
“Do you need me to get you?” Sophia presses (not truly) agitated fingertips to her temple.
“Mm, no. I’ll be fine. I jus’ missed you.”
She’s clearly too inebriated to be by herself. Sophia’s heels clack against expensive linoleum as she stands up, phone still wedged between her shoulder blade and the underside of her jaw. She digs in her purse and lays a fifty dollar bill beside her barely-touched plate.
“Sorry, it’s an emergency. This was fun.” She rattles off to Cole From Hinge, who scoffs and rolls his ugly eyes. Not even a sore loss on her part, at least.
“‘Phia? Are you still there?” Lara’s voice comes from the speaker as she’s weaving through people to find the exit out to the parking lot.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming. Don’t go anywhere.”
-
After much hassle and compromise for Lara to send her location, Sophia’s car comes to a halt in front of some skeezy dive bar on the west end. Definitely a downgrade from where she had just been.
She’s not all that worried about the date now, though. The restaurant and the wine and Cole From Hinge have become an afterthought when her passenger’s side door opens and in slides Lara.
With her comes the overwhelming smell of fresh vanilla perfume and strong liquor, stinging and soothing Sophia’s senses all at once. That particular perfume bottle used to sit on her nightstand, the heels on Lara’s feet stashed away in her closet. It’s a reminiscence that brings about an ache in the space between her ribs.
“Hi.” Sophia greets, and the girl pulls her sunglasses up to sit atop her somehow beautifully unkempt waves of hair.
“Hey.” Lara seems to have some remorse at least, if the gloss in her eyes is any giveaway. “Sorry. You didn’t have to come.”
Sophia knows how she is when she drinks. The cycle her moods go through like clockwork: this is sad, guilty drunk Lara.
“Don’t be sorry. I came because I’d rather take you home and know you’re safe, okay?”
She still looks unconvinced, bottom lip trembling, and out of force of habit Sophia reaches down and rests her palm against the swell of her thigh. She brushes her thumb up and down and it seems to be soothing enough.
“…Okay.”
The rest of the ride is relatively silent. Still, Sophia doesn’t move her hand.
-
She still knows the code to Lara’s apartment. The realization stings like a loose tooth after she punches it out instinctually.
Sophia pushes it open and lets the girl stumble in first, unsteady in her stilettos. Lara kicks them off and collapses on the couch, but Sophia marries the heels and sets them on the rack before she clicks the door closed behind her.
Lara’s already whining again, this time into her throw pillow, seemingly out of her gloomy-guilty stupor but still just as intoxicated.
“My head hurts.”
“Do you want Advil?”
She nods, face smushed against the cushion. She’s already managed to get the television on and clicked on an episode of some cartoon. At least her tastes haven’t changed since they broke up. Sophia thinks she’s seen every episode of the Amazing World of Gumball that’s ever aired through this screen.
“I’ll get you some.” She says, ventures off towards the bathroom. Lara’s apartment hasn’t gotten any different since she used to spend her days in it. There’s a few new pictures nailed to the drywall in the hallway. One of Lara and Manon, a few of her parents, and an old one that Sophia is surprised to find that contains… herself.
It’s from the evening of Lara’s twentieth birthday. She had scraped together the leftover from her rent money and loaned a hundred from her parents to get reservations at the restaurant they’d always wanted to go to: a high end steakhouse in the fancier part of the city that cost a fortune to get into.
Sophia’s lips are pressed into the apple Lara’s cheek, the girl smiling widely and holding up her petite little cake that Sophia’s mother had made for the event.
The sight of the photo still hanging here, almost a year after they’d ended things splits a soreness through her chest that bubbles up her throat.
She walks away before any tears can spill, makes quick work of grabbing the bottle off the counter and dashing by the pictures just as fast back to the living room.
Lara accepts the medication in true drunken fashion, whining and nearly choking on it as she tries to dry-swallow it. Sophia fills her a glass of water, too, sets it on the coffee table; then she isn’t really sure what to do with herself.
The girl is content now, her purpose is fulfilled, but she doesn’t have any drive to leave. The only thing waiting on her at home is countless emails to sort through for upcoming shoots and a lukewarm bottle of rosé she popped open last night. It just seems… depressing.
So, Sophia sits on the cushion that isn’t taken up and allows herself to relax into the leather. Lara isn’t phased by it. She tucks her feet up a bit to make further room.
“I don’t like this episode.” Her speech is still a bit hazy, slurred.
“I’ll change it if you hand me the remote.”
Lara sniffs. “‘S fine.”
Sophia doesn’t know why, but she says, “Our picture is still hung up in your hallway.”
And for a moment, the air goes still. The influence of alcohol seems absent in Lara’s gaze as she locks eyes with her, shifts slightly in her place.
“I tried to take it down and I couldn’t.” She sounds so fragile she could break. “I dunno, I thought if it was gone then that meant… you really were too. If I left it, that there was a chance. That maybe you’d come home.”
The silence that manifests after is so loud that Sophia thinks she can hear the cracks forming in her heart.
“I’m sorry for calling you.” Lara speaks up again after the pregnant pause. “I should’ve just got a fucking Uber. Spared you from putting up with me and whatever this is.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for, I told you that already.”
Sophia doesn’t know if the words serve more as comfort or ailment. They sit in the quiet and the leftover feelings that still fester all these months later. The air tastes like salt and a little bit like guilt.
She stands up and doesn’t say anything until she reaches the door, fingers loose around the knob.
“Lar?”
“Yeah?”
“I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t want to.”
Sophia steps out and tugs it shut after her.
When she returns the next day to find it unlocked, though, she knows that anything closed always finds its way open again.