[July 20]

[everyone_takes]

Kate was still pretty pissed off. The conversation she'd had with Harry earlier in the day was still more than fresh in her mind, but she had no idea what to do about it. A part of her wanted to go to Hermione, get her to talk sense into him, but that felt wrong in a way. It wouldn't be fair. Hermione didn't need to be put in the middle of something like this and Kate didn't want anyone to have to talk sense into Harry. He was supposed to have his own sense.

A part of her wanted to go find some random dude to make out with, just so she could prove to Harry that she didn't care. If he wanted to pretend he'd forgotten her, she'd just move on and forget all about him, too. But even after putting on some makeup and one of the cuter outfits she owned, Kate found it wasn't that easy. The vengeful part of her was convinced it would be, but she was hurt and even the idea of getting back at him just made her feel worse.

She was still wearing the cute outfit that evening -- adorable red shorts and a polka dot tank top -- but there was no one who cared. Lionel would have complimented her, she was sure of it, or even Jeff, but neither of them were around. Marshall would have gotten stoned with her, but he was gone, too. Effy was dealing with her own stuff and Kate felt bad about giving her anything else to worry about, so she was wandering aimlessly. When she spotted Carla Jean, though, her eyes lit up and she picked up her pace.

"Hey," she said brightly, though it was forced. "Wanna come to the Winchester?" It was a last minute plan, but right now, Kate really didn't want to be sober.

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[refusedtocall]

"Well, alright, then," Carla Jean said with a grin, lifting her drink in some approximation of a toast before taking a sip of it, glad it was strong. "Might as well go all out, huh?" She, for one, wasn't going to complain, though she was sure Kate had plenty of reason to right about now, given what had brought them here in the first place. That was part of why she thought it was better to drink with company, though. It was bound to be a lot less miserable that way, and she would never have done this on her own. "I can't even remember the last time I did shots."

[everyone_takes]

Kate had to think about it for a moment, lips pursed thoughtfully, trying to remember the last time she'd done shots. At one of the parties. Probably with Harry, though she was outright refusing to think of any good memories she had with him at the moment, which was tough, because pretty much all the memories she had with him were good ones.

"I think the last time I had a shot was at one of the raves," she said. "One of the first ones, I think. Down in the caves." Sometimes, she just wanted to do that again. Get completely fucked up and not think about anything else.

[refusedtocall]

"I never went to any of 'em," Carla Jean said, shrugging. For that matter, she couldn't really remember anything specific that had happened in the time she'd been here, but she didn't usually pay attention to that sort of thing. She never had, not even when she was in school and some of her classmates were. There had just always been too much else to do. Now, though, the chance to relax for a while was too good to pass up. "So that in itself makes it a long time."

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"I'd say you should totally go, but I get how they're not for everyone. Sometimes I'm not sure they're really for me anymore," she admitted. A lot of shit had changed in the time since she'd arrived on the island. Princess Valhalla Hawkwind had pretty much been retired, for one, and she'd been without her parents for nearly two years, without her brother for a big chunk of that, too. As much as she wanted to kill everyone most of the time, family had always been important to Kate and learning to live without them had been hard.

"I mean, I love parties and all, but parties when you're nineteen are different from parties when you're sixteen."

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Carla Jean huffed out a laugh, brow raising in emphatic agreement. That, in her opinion, was putting it mildly, for any number of reasons. "A lot of things when you're nineteen are different from a lot of things when you're sixteen," she pointed out. Parties, of course, were no exception in that, but it was difficult not to think about herself some. At sixteen, she'd met the love of her life, gotten married, moved away. At nineteen, she'd become a widow, lost the woman who'd raised her, and been killed herself, all within the span of a few weeks. It didn't get much different than that. "Maybe that means your taste in parties changes."

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"Maybe your taste in everything changes," Kate agreed, pausing to take a long sip from her drink. "Maybe your taste in men changes." Or maybe it didn't. She'd thought it had, that she'd gone from chasing after fuck-ups like Ben and creepers like Gene to actually finding someone who'd been good to her. It was like nothing at all had changed, after all. Harry'd done the same thing that the others had done.

Maybe he wasn't as creepy as Gene, but he'd still been a dick.

"I once fooled around with my manager at my job at this stupid restaurant," she admitted. "And he totally stalked me. He like, got into my house and sent me weird poetry videos and stole a picture of me when I was a kid. Total creeper."

[refusedtocall]

Carla Jean made a face, shuddering exaggeratedly, before she took another sip of her own drink. Though she wasn't any stranger to guys acting creepy — hell, even just at work, she had seen her fair share of it — breaking into a house and taking things was on a completely different level. Briefly, she hoped that they'd called the cops or something, but it didn't seem worth spending too much time on, especially when they were here because of another guy being a jackass.

"Sounds like creeper's an understatement, you ask me," she said, brow raising. Absently spinning her glass between her palms, she smiled a little, something she could do now, not quite so caught up in the past. "Far as men go, though, there's only ever really been one for me."

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"Really?" Kate asked, surprised. Carla Jean was ridiculously cute, the kind of cute that attracted all sorts of guys, she figured. "Like only dated one guy 'cause your parents wouldn't let you date for ages or like, true love, one person for your whole life kinda thing?"

It wasn't impossible, she knew. Her parents had been together since they'd been kids, practically, married and pregnant with her before they were even out of their teens, but it was still something completely different than what she'd had herself.

[refusedtocall]

"The second," Carla Jean answered, just the slightest bit sheepish, lifting her left hand, plain gold band sitting around her ring finger just as it had for over three years by now. "I met my husband when I was sixteen, an' we got married that year." Sometimes a person was just sure. Even now, knowing how everything ended, she wouldn't have done any of it differently, at least not where that part was concerned. It was all worth it to have gotten what she did.

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"Holy shit!" Kate burst out, probably louder than necessary, but she got up onto her knees on her chair and leaned over the chair to look at the ring. Here she was, the same age as Carla Jean, and the only thing she'd managed to do was have a boyfriend for over a year before he'd pretended to forget about her. That was as good as her track record got.

"You've been married since you were sixteen," she said. "Wow. Pretty much the only thing I was doing at sixteen was getting stoned and hating my parents."

[refusedtocall]

It wasn't an entirely uncommon reaction, and even if it had been, Carla Jean wouldn't have been all that self-conscious for it. So she hadn't done things entirely conventionally. She also hadn't been the only one. Plenty of girls back home got married young; she had just done so a little sooner than most of them, which was fine. She'd finished school early, too. Sometimes it just worked that way.

"I think that's what most people are doin' at sixteen," she pointed out, one corner of her mouth twitching a little higher. "But I met him and... I knew."

[everyone_takes]

"Wow," Kate said, sitting back in her chair again, her legs still tucked under her body as she thought about that. With Harry, she'd been pretty sure herself. She'd just known that he was good for her and good to her and then this had happened. Apparently she'd been wrong.

"So I guess it must suck that he's not here with you, huh?" she asked, frowning a little. "My parents got married pretty young, too, and it would be weird if only my mom was here."

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"He was here," Carla Jean replied, more thoughtful than melancholy, lifting her glass to take a sip before she continued. "Years ago, apparently. Before I got here. I guess technically he still is, he's buried out by the church." She really hadn't meant to make any of this about herself, but then, if the point had been to distract Kate, then this would probably do it, regardless of how much she didn't see the need to go into details without prompting.

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"Wait, seriously?" Kate asked, feeling guilty for having brought it up now. "He was here before you and he died here? That's... fuck, I'm sorry." She'd gotten dumped and that sucked enough, but at least the person she'd loved enough to marry hadn't died before she'd even hit twenty. That had to suck more than pretty much anything else Kate could think of. "That's super shitty," she said, shaking her head.

[refusedtocall]

As far as Carla Jean was concerned, that was putting it mildly. She'd been here close to a year, though, which meant she'd been a widow for the same amount of time, and though it had taken her a while upon arriving to learn about what had taken place when Llewelyn had been here, she had started to come to terms with it, inasmuch as a person could. She wasn't about to fall apart over it now.

"It wasn't like losin' anything I hadn't lost already," she said simply. "He'd died back home, too, not long before I got here."

[everyone_takes]

"It's still shitty," Kate said, frowning deeply. Even as pissed off as she was at Harry right now, the very thought of him dying made her feel sick, like her stomach was tying itself in knots. That wasn't supposed to happen. People weren't supposed to meet someone and fall in love and marry them and then lose them like that.

It made the whole thing with Harry seem a lot less terrible, even if it was still terrible in its own way.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I totally shouldn't have brought any of that up."

[refusedtocall]

"It's fine," Carla Jean said, and she meant it. The fact of it being the truth at all wasn't, and never would be, no matter how calm she may have been, but there wasn't any harm to be done in Kate's having brought it up. Truthfully, it was never all that far from her mind anyway, especially not these days, when each flicker of movement out of the corners of her eyes seemed to be Chigurh. "You don't have to be sorry, I don't mind."

[everyone_takes]

"We need more drinks," Kate said firmly. There was no doubt in her mind that if the both of them got totally shit-faced, they'd probably feel a little better. Not that Carla Jean seemed to be totally upset or anything, but sometimes getting drunk just helped.

"Like, a lot more," she said. "I wish there was someplace to go dancing without having to wait for the raves. That'd be fucking awesome right about now."

[refusedtocall]

"It'd be fun," Carla Jean agreed, mouth pulling to one side. Even if it wasn't the sort of thing she did usually, it seemed like it would be entertaining enough, and right now, a distraction definitely wouldn't go awry. In the absence of that, though, they were just going to have to work with what they had. Tipping her head back to drain the last of what was in her glass, she nodded once when she straightened again. "But since there's not, definitely more drinks."

[everyone_takes]

"More drinks!" Kate said in a voice that was a hell of a lot more cheerful than she actually felt before she got up and headed back to the bar. She returned a few moments later with another drink for the both of them as well as the shots she'd promised earlier and had completely forgotten about.

"One for you," she said, putting the drink down in front of Carla Jean. "And one for me. And two for you and two for me." With the drinks and shots in front of them, she grinned, leaning back in her chair. "So what should we drink to?"

[refusedtocall]

"Hell if I know," Carla Jean laughed, grinning at Kate's return. Even if this wasn't what she usually did with her evenings, it really was beginning to seem more and more like something they both needed, a way of unwinding that she wouldn't have thought of herself. It didn't matter that the subject of her husband probably wouldn't have come up otherwise. That it had was all the more reason to drink. "You got any ideas?"

[everyone_takes]

Holding her shot between her fingers, Kate considered the options. She could make it about Harry or Carla Jean's husband, but the point of this whole night, she thought, was to not be thinking about that. "We should drink to the two of us being hot and awesome and all those other things that we're not supposed to say about ourselves because it makes us look arrogant, but I usually have no problem saying anyway," she said. "Sound good?"

[refusedtocall]

Carla Jean laughed, surprised by the warmth in its sound. It wasn't that she hadn't been having a good time — she clearly was — but even for her, it was a quick rebound. She didn't know if that was the company or the drink she'd already had setting in, but she also didn't care. Right now, she was glad for it, nodding in genuine, if amused, agreement as she lifted her own shot. "Sounds good," she agreed. Normally, she wouldn't have even thought like that, but right now, the situation called for it, and maybe Kate had a point.