A/N: looking for a beta. This prologue-esque thing is a really speedy introduction to the main part of the story, which will be updated with no real beginning and end. I am unsure where I plan on going with this exactly but I have big, big plans. This fic is holding a special place in my heart. Thank you for reading, please enjoy!
Our story starts off with two high school sweethearts, Liz and Soul. Recently engaged, they live in Liz's parent's old house, though she doesn't speak to them anymore. It's right outside of New York and it's nice. Liz's sister, Patti lives with them and goes to school, while her and Soul work. Her, a 9-5 secretarial job during the week and every other Friday and Saturday night serving or bartending at the local dive.
Then the most peculiar thing happens where her and Patti get this letter stating they've been left the deed to the bar their great uncle has in LA. A great uncle they never knew, the rights to a business they've never been to, and a check for ten thousand dollars. It feels like reality television, or a too good to be true dream. Things like this don't happen in real life, let alone to a humble, disjointed family in Smalltown, USA, right outside of everything they've ever wanted.
Next, there's all this thinking to do, discussions to be had, plans to be made. Arguments, lots of those, because Soul is rational and says they shouldn't drop their lives here to move across the country for a what-if, possibly, maybe. He's right, in ways, Liz knows, but she can feel an excitement in her bones she's never felt before. This town is too small, memories too stale and foul; everything she's ever dreamed of is anywhere but here. It's weeks of stress and strain; days of radio silence turned into nights of stereo screaming.
In the end, he relents; because he loves her, he does, and opportunities like this are once in a lifetime. A lifetime he plans on spending with her, and it should be where she deserves.
So they move; it isn't hard for Patty to transfer schools, and LA is filled with tattoo studios dying for the story of an up and coming stranger from a dusty place in the middle of nowhere. People always want to turn a nobody into a somebody.
Like even more magic; and it is magic, what is happening to Liz and her family, they find an apartment not too far from the restaurant, and with only a brief close of the already established business where they renovated a bit, updated - Patty is, after all, going to school for interior design - they reopen and find easy success. Liz can hardly believe this incredible luck they're having, for the first time in their lives. She almost can't believe how things are falling into place, pinches herself every morning, but it's happening and it's amazing, even more amazing then when Soul proposed to her. Of course, Liz would never tell him that, not even jokingly because she knows Soul hates it here, in this city. He hates how bright it is, how loud. It's constant movement, a buzz of relentless noise, high heels, drugs and parties. Soul hates their street, his boss at the tattoo parlor he started at, he hates the public transportation; it's a city of suffocation. But he supports Liz, endlessly, he's happy for her, truly. Even if he's unhappy where he's at, his fiancee is getting everything she's ever deserved and they're together and it'll work out, somehow.
All this change, the leaps and bounds forward her family is making for themselves; there's nothing like the rush she gets when she's busy at the restaurant. She misses being home with Patty and Soul, is always doing a million and one things a day, but she's doing this for them. She's traded her lowcut jeans and combat boots for little black dresses and high heels, sipping cocktails instead of swigging beers. It's for us, she thinks every night she comes home and settles in bed next to her fiance, who is already asleep. When everything is settled, they will get married, have a successful business. It can only go up from here.
She should have known that just because something may have meant to happen, doesn't mean it comes without a price.