Bottles clack and clink as they cluster like bowling pins on the trailer table, and somehow more than any other time, something isn't remotely right.
Dread starts to bite nails into the bottom of Mia's heart - gripping it balanced at their very tips at first, and then starting to dig in - as she looks over at Zoe, who's moving to set yet another stolen beer down, with weary eyes gone powder-soft, and a side-to-side swat through the air at a mosquito; Mia feels herself smile and hears herself laugh like a bubble rises to the top of a champagne glass, and even as she hears words like Mama and Daddy and Lucas through soft-breezy accounts of small-town memories, the whole room changes around her, and it's a bar in Texas, and she's got Ethan on one side and some of their couple-friends on the other, and she's surrounded by laughter, and music.
She's in two places at once.
Neither of them is anywhere Eveline is, and she knows that that's a lie. The nails bite deeper, until she feels them pierce and shear through something in herself, as she, too, reaches over to grab another drink, it only half-occurring to her that it's Ethan's bottle she's reaching for, and then that it's also Zoe's; she takes two deep gulps, and then the nails are so sharp that she can't even feel them anymore as they tear away.
Something is very, very wrong, and she embraces that.
She embraces Ethan, too, an arm around his shoulder; she thinks that it's her other arm around Zoe, but either way, she embraces her, too, feeling her weight leaned against her as she tells her how she and Ethan met, through laughter, first, then tears, and breaths that hitch and wheeze - Ethan and Zoe put their arms around her back in kind, and pat it, and let her lean, and she shuts her eyes tight, getting enough of a hold of herself to hold herself still, grimace, make herself think and will herself to feel the ache she's brought on herself.
She isn't being careful.
Everything is wrong, and yet she isn't being careful; Ethan and Zoe know everything now, and none of them are safe yet, and she doesn't care, because for once in much too long she doesn't hear or feel Eveline at all - she's somewhere they can listen, and is only with them (and the bar full of laughter, back somewhere that feels like home), and she's thankful for it; she loves them, and kisses them.
She wakes up, eventually, and barely.
Or did she even fall asleep?
She feels heavy, and feels weight on her side, and under her arm.
She doesn't want to open her eyes just yet; she frowns at herself for it, presses a small little stung sound out through her nose while she stiffly squirms in place, but she'll take her chances - see how much longer things stay quiet and how surrounded she can stay in thoughts that are entirely her own before she's forced to correct her perception of what's actually going on. She does hear someone beside her - a small wincing noise for hers - and she takes that, wrapping her arm tighter, shutting her eyes tighter, and wriggling herself in closer to them.
When she is forced to wake up, it's not by Eveline, but a male voice, slip-sliding oily, light-yet-sour.
"Wah-hell, well, well...! Looks like somebody had just a li'l bit too much fun last night, hah...?"
She furrows her brow; she hears the bottles tinkling again. Like broken windchimes.
The voice deepens, and blusters louder.
" - Don't worry, none; don't go gettin' on outta bed on my account in any kinda rush! Evie runs a tight ship 'n all, but I ain't gonna tell a soul...!"
It's having to hear her name, she supposes, that shifts time and place back into the one.
She lands in it, re-shifted and new, air coating her skin dusty and slimy. The fall's still pulling her down; the sounds of chiming have grown dull, and tinny, and further away.
She lifts her head, the glow of evening light just a memory - she realizes that she was half-asleep, thinking about something that had happened perhaps last night. Perhaps before. She blinks once, sight in comparison still far thinner.
The basement's light catches in lines on the bars of her cell. Lucas has begun whistling as he strolls away from the door, spinning a ring of keys on his finger in a loop at a time - untidy shakes of his hand in the air. She blinks again, heavy - everything blurred and requiring fresh refocusing on the opening.
She looks down to herself and the empty space on the mattress next to her.
Something not quite an ache and not quite a sting in her head rises over the distant sound of a child's laughter; she takes a long, rushing breath out through her nose and lays herself back down, draping an arm over the edge and holding it, seeing if she can make it feel like a body.
Either one.