AN: Here we go, another little chapter because you're all so nice to me and give me reviews…which are essentially like fanfiction money, you know? LOL
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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"Pay attention to me," Andrea demanded. Carol heard it as she was walking over, bringing the last of the orders. "Do…you…think…I'm…fat?"
Alice looked at her like she'd just asked her what her opinions on the Lochness Monster or Bigfoot were.
"No…" Alice responded. "You're not fat…I'm the one that's going to be fat…I'm eating pie for breakfast…"
"No one is fat," Carol said, sitting down.
She'd needed to come in this morning, early…and she was there before anyone. She'd sent out texts to anyone who was looking for a ridiculous hour coffee and or breakfast break, and it appeared that Michonne and Jacqui were the only two who didn't have the desire to show up at the café long before it was time to open.
But Carol had woken up and she'd realized, though she wasn't sure what she expected exactly, that Daryl had left some time in the night. She thought she remembered hearing him get up, but she'd excused it in her mind as a bathroom break…and when she'd woken up for her own trip to the bathroom, she'd realized he'd actually left.
And it bothered her more than she wanted to say and it bothered her more than she would dream of letting on…and part of the reason that it bothered her so much was because she couldn't put into words why exactly it did.
"That's easy for you to say," Andrea said, her mouth full of the waffles she'd ordered, easy enough to make since that's what Carol had wanted too. "I mean…you're like…ughhh…it's not even fair. It's never been fair…if I didn't love you…I would hate you."
Carol chuckled and shook her head.
Apparently she'd needed some early morning, before the sun, consolation from her friends…but clearly she wasn't the only one.
"What happened?" Carol asked.
"Shane…" Andrea said.
Alice made a gagging sound. It was no secret how she felt about Shane Walsh and Carol could second the emotion.
Shane Walsh was an asshole of the greatest degree. Unfortunately her own record wasn't clean of the man entirely. There'd been that one time…but Carol preferred to think of it as a stark lack in judgment on her part.
With Andrea, though, he'd become something of a recurring theme. Everyone in the group knew it, and everyone talked about it, but they pretended for Andrea's sake that they hadn't recognized her pattern. It seemed important to her, for whatever reason, to keep up the façade that she was still turning men over like hotcakes…like she had when she was twenty or thirty…and that nothing at all had changed.
Certainly nothing had changed that would be dramatic enough to land her with a man like Shane on more nights of the week than she was without him.
And Carol wanted to support Andrea in whatever it was that made her happy, but she didn't believe that Shane made Andrea happy at all. In fact, they had far more evidence to the contrary. Still, no one was quite sure how to pull their friend away from this man who was, potentially, a toxic pairing for her.
"Did he call you fat?" Alice asked. "Ugly ass, goat nosed mother fucker that he is?"
Carol chuckled.
"Goat nosed? Goat nosed…Alice?" Carol asked.
Alice shrugged.
"I don't know…it was there…I used it," Alice responded.
Andrea sighed and put her fork down, wiping her mouth and swallowing the food that she was chewing.
"Yes…and he's right…I am fat," Andrea said. "And I'm sitting here at…is it even after five? I'm sitting here eating waffles with syrup and whipped cream like that's going to make my ass any smaller…"
"Fuck him…you're not fat," Alice declared. She looked at Carol and waved her hands at her, an incredulous look on her face. "She's not fat!"
Carol shook her head.
"You're not fat…and Shane is an asshole…and not a very good lay," Carol said.
Andrea laughed at that and Carol was glad to at least get a laugh out of friend.
Her therapy session…which was apparently also a therapy session for Andrea…was going just like she needed it to go. She didn't need, not really at least, to even talk about what was going on with her…she just needed to be around her friends. And making someone else feel better always seemed to make Carol feel better by default.
"Come to the dark side," Alice declared. "I'll make you waffles…in bed…and I the whipped cream will already be right there…load up as much as you want and all that we had leftover."
Andrea chuckled and looked at Carol.
"She's serious," Carol said, running her fingers through her hair and washing down the bite of food she'd just swallowed with some of her coffee.
"Why can't I be a lesbian?" Andrea asked with a chuckle, returning to the waffles that Carol knew she hadn't really abandoned.
"Lack of personal effort," Alice responded blankly.
"Shane is bad for you," Carol said, screwing her courage up for it. "He is…he's bad for you. He's bad for any woman, really. No one even pretends that he wasn't what happened to Lori and Rick…"
Andrea looked at Carol blankly.
"Lori is what happened to Lori and Rick…and she's not even…she doesn't even see Shane anymore," Andrea said. "She sees…well hell, I don't know who she sees, but it isn't Shane."
"Shane had a lot to do with it," Carol said. "The blame isn't all Lori's, you know. And he's bad for you, Andrea. You can do so much better than Shane Walsh…so much…"
Andrea sighed and shook her head, but she didn't offer any words.
After Andrea chewed through another bite of pie, she spoke again, but this time she was redirecting the conversation in an obvious effort to draw attention from herself.
"What about your mystery man? Daryl? What happened with the thing?" Andrea asked.
"What thing? There was a thing?" Alice asked. She faked a cry. "I work too damn much and I missed the thing…"
Carol chuckled at Alice and shook her head.
"You didn't miss anything, really," Carol said. She shrugged. "I invited him over…we had a few drinks…he told me this really long story, really, really long story…about this woman named Janice…"
"Janice who?" Andrea asked.
Carol shrugged and shook her head.
"He didn't give me her last name," Carol said. "But she cheated on him and he was really torn up about it…and then I asked him if he wanted to stay…"
Alice leaned up almost to the point she was going to have pie all over breasts if she wasn't careful.
"But he didn't stay? He turned you down?" She asked, her eyes going wide.
Carol groaned a little, not wanting to admit the whole truth but knowing now that the lid was off the can of worms and there was really no turning back.
"He stayed," she admitted. "Long enough, I guess…and then he left."
"Oooh…" Andrea hissed, drawing her face up. "Did he leave a note? Send a text? Anything?"
Carol frowned and shook her head, reminding herself that it didn't bother…or rather, reminding herself that she had the full intention of pretending that it didn't bother her.
"No…he probably…" she paused. The bad thing about this moment was that she was going to try to defend him and she was going to try to pretend that everything was perfectly fine and had a perfectly rational explanation to it, but she wasn't sure she believed it and she wasn't even sure what she was going to offer as that explanation. "It was probably too much…too soon," Carol said, improvising as she went along. "He was really shaken up about this Janice woman. And…you know…it doesn't matter…"
When she paused for a moment, Alice sunk back in her chair a little, a baffled expression on her face and Andrea looked at Carol like she'd just suggested that another World War wouldn't matter.
"It doesn't matter?" Andrea asked, raising her eyebrows. "You don't care that he left?"
Carol shook her head gently.
"No…I mean he didn't owe it to me to stay," Carol said, ever amazed at her ability to come up with things on the spot that she really didn't even mean…at least not entirely. "I asked him to stay and he stayed…and it was…"
She stopped again. She felt like she was losing the war with herself now that she was talking and she wasn't sure how long she could keep talking and also keep up the show that it didn't bother her at all.
Because it had bothered her.
It had bothered her because when she'd been listening to him talk…when she'd been listening to his heartbreak over what this other woman had done to him…she'd felt sorry for him. She'd felt, even though he was the only one talking, like there'd been some connection between them.
She could see the hurt in him and she could understand it because she'd been hurt before. And at that moment, he'd seemed different than so many men that she'd known because he hadn't seemed ashamed to admit that he'd been hurt. He hadn't seemed ashamed to admit that he'd put higher hopes and expectations into a relationship than it merited. He hadn't seemed ashamed to share with her the fact that he'd had someone make him feel…less than.
And it was a feeling she could immediately connect with. It was a feeling that tugged at her heart and made her feel, in the moment, like she knew him much better than she did.
And it had been that feeling that had sealed the deal with her in her mind. It had been that feeling that had made her invite him to stay.
Stay with me…because we've both been hurt. Stay with me because I think that you're not less than…and I hope that you see that I'm not less than…so stay with me.
And even though she'd questioned herself in the moment, it had felt right. So she'd done it. She'd simply taken the chance that the feeling wasn't one that she was making up, one she was imagining, one she was projecting onto him.
But he had left in the middle of the night and something had made him leave. And as much as she fought against them and as much as she forced them back with her own mental chairs and whips…the insecurities bubbled up inside of her that she had been the something that had made him leave.
Because even though she had thought, when all the feelings were churning around inside of her, that he wasn't less than…like the woman had made him feel…maybe he thought that she was.
And maybe she was.
"It was what?" Andrea asked, drawing Carol back for the moment.
Carol shrugged and shook her head.
"It was nice…and that's all it needed to be," Carol said.
"What the fuck is wrong with you heterosexuals?" Alice asked. "Some asshole calls you fat…some asshole wants you to talk to him about his poor little broken ass heart and then leaves in the middle of the night…I can't even with this shit…"
And Carol was grateful for Alice at that moment, like she often was, because although Alice's rant was indeed a rant, she knew that her friend could tell that she needed to draw the focus away from her. Alice had always been pretty good at telling whenever anyone needed the attention drawn away from them…and she was always good at stepping in at the right place and coming up with a diversion.
She distracted Andrea and bought Carol the time she needed and desired to get her feelings under control. They hadn't been processed yet. They were too fresh…and she was sure that once she sat down, went through them with the detachment that a little time would bring, and really thought about them, she wouldn't feel the same way that she felt while the wound was new and open.
"Yeah? We're the ones with problems? What about you, Al? Let's hear about your love life?" Andrea challenged, a smile crawling across her face with the newfound distraction.
Alice snickered and scraped up the rest of the pie from her plate, dramatically eating it and licking her lips slowly, leaning toward Andrea, before she spoke.
"My love life might be picking up…because I have a date…and she is…you two aside, of course…the hottest woman around…" Alice said.
Alice laughed, breaking the somewhat serious façade she'd created with her dramatic pie consumption.
"Seriously…she's pretty damn hot," Alice said. "And I have no idea why in the world she said yes…but thank goodness she did!"
"Who is it?" Andrea asked.
Carol smiled and nodded her head, sucking in a breath and already feeling better.
"Professor of Gender and Women's Studies over at the college…if it goes well, you'll meet her," Alice said.
"It's been a while," Carol offered.
And it had been a while since Alice had been in anything that might even be considered a steady relationship. She'd had a few set ups and a few blind dates here and there, but mostly she'd been married to her work for the last longest.
"Don't remind me," Alice declared. "Just don't…"
