Amanda has barely had time to get home and shower when there's a rhythmic knocking on her front door. Remembering the wet shirt incident with Rick, she grabs an oversized t-shirt off her dresser to tug on over her tank top to hide that she's not wearing a bra. She's almost to the door when she winces and realizes it was on top of the dresser because it's Rick's, not hers, left behind when he stayed the weekend.
"At least it's not one of the fucking King County shirts," she mumbles. An Atlanta Braves logo isn't going to tip off the average visitor that it's not her shirt, but the rural deputy logo would. Then again, her visitor is probably her elderly neighbor, who wouldn't clue in if she wore a shirt that said 'property of Rick Grimes'.
That thought pisses her off, even though it's such a silly one. It's been four days since she tossed the key card at Rick and left, and this week has been worse than when Luke moved out. Maybe it's because the relationship between her and Luke had been slowly dying out anyway, so his leaving was as much relief as distressful. Things between her and Rick had just begun to take off, so it feels like she started a really interesting book, only to have someone burn the remaining pages.
But of course, her visitor would be someone who knows either damn way, because it's Beth standing outside her door when she checks the peephole. When she swings the door open, the perky blonde beams at her, before her gaze goes to the t-shirt and one brow arches. She doesn't say anything, at least.
"Get dressed, Amanda. We have reservations," Beth announces, her smug expression making her look like the cat that got the canary and cream both at the same time.
"Reservations?" Amanda blinks in confusion, wondering if she missed a text from Beth sometime this week.
Honestly, the relationship was still so hush-hush even among those closest to them that Amanda isn't sure who knew and who didn't, much less who knows things ended. She's gotten the usual amount of chattery texts and memes from Beth. Carl texted her twice, once about school and once about his upcoming birthday lunch for the family. She also heard from Lori and Carol both about the birthday lunch, because apparently, her sisters-in-law think she needs a keeper.
Both brothers texted about different things; Daryl with a question about taking the Harleys out in a week or two, and Merle with a half dozen off-color memes like they usually share. She'd sent him back just as many. It's a contest between them, finding the weirdest things on the internet they can share. Where in the hell Merle found a picture of a UPS truck with a dildo on the hood like a perverted unicorn, she just doesn't want to know.
Her mother called twice, but the conversations were brief, and Amanda hadn't told her what went down between her and Rick. Mama McGinley's never been the type to pry, so the elderly woman changed the subject when Amanda balked about talking. The fact that Mama met with Rick behind Amanda's back still rankles, but she's not willing to butt heads with her mother over it, so conversation stayed bland and mundane.
Hell, she's even heard from Shane once, asking if he could pass her number on to Michonne.
The absolute silence from Rick except for one single text yesterday apologizing that everything with the case was still in limbo isn't unexpected. Even her sanctuary is no longer just hers. All week she's been finding small clues in her apartment of the two days Rick spent with her. At first, she missed the physicality of feeling his body against hers. As the days passed, she misses his friendship more, and her feelings are such a mess she can't define if she's angry, depressed, or relieved. Sometimes all three at once.
Not seeing him hurts, festering inside the softer, vulnerable parts of her like a slow-acting poison. This is not what it felt like after Luke, as if excising her guts with a melon baller would feel better than living with this eerie lack within her.
"Yep. Reservations. Six p.m., so make haste. Put on something nice and sleek. Show off what you hide under those uniforms for a night."
Amanda's astonishment allows Beth to propel her away from the door and all the way to her bedroom. She stares as the blonde begins sorting through the closet with the same sort of efficiency Amanda watched her go through clothing racks while shopping.
"Don't you have to work tonight?" Amanda knows that Beth normally works both weekend days, but it's usually Saturday night and Sunday lunch shifts.
"I traded with Laura when I got the reservations for tonight. I did her lunch shift, so I'm done for the day." Beth hums, pulling a shirt from the closet and studying it before shaking her head and putting it back.
Glancing over her shoulder, she gives Amanda a kind look. "I know you worked today, so I didn't set up to go clubbing. It's just a dinner show. Great food, good drinks, and lots of entertainment. Ah-ha! This'll work nicely." Plucking a mini dress out of the closet that Amanda wore once for a bachelorette party for a college friend, who'd gifted all the girls with glitzy little dresses so the whole group matched, Beth hands it over with a grin.
"Beth, I don't know that this is a great idea," Amanda mumbles, still unsure if Beth's doing this because she thinks Rick and Amanda are still a couple.
The blonde huffs softly, hands on her hips. She's definitely dressed for something a little glam, wearing a pink flapper style dress replete with fringe. "It's a wonderful idea, Amanda. Friends take other friends out to party, drink, and bitch about men after a breakup."
Amanda actually wouldn't know, because she's never done it for herself or a female friend after a breakup. For whatever reason, her name just doesn't rise to the top of the list when women want to sit around and bitch about men. But it means that Beth very much does know that Amanda and Rick broke up, and the kindness in the girl's eyes makes Amanda want to squirm.
Instead, she resists the urge, staring at the strapless silver silk lame mini dress and figuring why the hell not. Hanging out with Beth the day they shopped had been fun, and whatever she has planned has got to be better than sitting around avoiding her favorite shows on Food Network because Rick likes them, too, right?
Once Amanda is dressed, Beth takes charge of hair and makeup, too, breaking out a bag she brought with her. Bending to the inevitable, Amanda lets the younger woman craft her face into something flashy, including the brightest shade of lipstick Amanda's ever worn in her life. Her hair ends up in a messy topknot that somehow feels as nicely done as Beth's elegant hairstyle with its beaded flapper headband.
They make a stop along the way, and Amanda meets Tara for the second time when the undercover deputy settles into the backseat of the car that she belatedly realizes is Tara's. She'd momentarily forgotten Beth doesn't own a car.
Tara grins broadly at them both. She's ready for something fun, wearing barely-there makeup with her dark hair sleek and loose, and her black cross wrap top bares her midriff and emphasizes her chest. When Amanda spots the honest-to-God leather pants, she turns back to Beth. "Where are we going?" she asks, because Beth said it wasn't clubbing, but how Tara is dressed screams loud music, dancing, and copious amounts of alcohol.
Beth just gives her a sly grin. "You'll love it, I promise. One of my friends works there, and I've been promised a good table."
Where their reservation turns out to be at the cabaret-style restaurant in Atlanta that's most unique feature is the dinner theater. Beth is greeted quickly by an elegantly dressed drag queen who air kisses her cheeks before leading them away, chattering about an exercise physiology exam coming up. Tara follows them, tossing an amused smile at Amanda.
"They're classmates in college," Tara explains. "Beth works at Merle's bar. Jack works here. Apparently, the tips are pretty damn amazing."
They're at their table, and their escort overhears, laughing coyly. "Oh, honey, amazing doesn't even begin to cover it, and far fewer assholes grabbing my ass compared to what poor Bethie gets to deal with." She offers a hand to Amanda, poised elegantly. Like Beth, she's dressed in the style of the twenties, although her costume is finished off with a pretty felt cloche hat. Amanda can easily picture her in a film like The Great Gatsby. "I'm Fonda Leaf. Any friend of Beth's is bound to end up a friend of mine."
Amanda introduces herself, her dour mood of the week drifting away in the energy exhibited in the room as guests are seated for the first show. Fonda leaves them to attend to other arrivals after taking their drinks and appetizer orders.
Beth smirks at Amanda. "So, worth getting out of your jammies to come with us?"
"Yeah, Beth. Worth it." For the first time since the doctor's visit on Monday, Amanda realizes that she doesn't feel weighed down or depressed, so she smiles at her friend and settles back to enjoy the show.
Rick watches Carl and Andre's hijinks at the campfire with tired amusement. He and Shane and the boys had left after work on Friday, driving up to Cloudland Canyon for the weekend. Originally, the trip had been something Shane and Andre had planned, but after watching Rick quietly all week, Shane extended the invitation to him and Carl. Even though it meant a weekend entirely away from Sophia, Carl pounced on the idea with enthusiasm.
"You know, when you said camping, I honestly figured we'd end up in a tent on some backcountry site," Rick muses, taking a sip of his beer.
Shane chuckles, his beer in hand as he flips the steaks on the charcoal grill. There is a platter with grilled vegetables already grilled on the picnic table, just waiting for the steaks. The boys opted for hot dogs, which they're dangling over the campfire on long metal skewers. Izzy is waiting patiently at their side, the little dog trolling for a hot dog of her own, but Athena is stretched out near Rick's feet, sound asleep.
"After the first two or three times I took Andre camping on a weekend and got an emergency call back to town, I learned that it's not about setting up a tent and snoozing in a sleeping bag. I stick to the cabins or cottages most of the time, but he likes the yurts in the parks we've gone to."
Being two hours away from Atlanta, Rick guesses he sees the point since it wouldn't take them ten minutes to be on the way home with just generally packing up. Not to mention how easy Friday night was when they arrived. They'd stopped for dinner at a pizza place in a nearby town, where all Neapolitan wood-fired pizzas all had Italian girls' names. Carl hadn't been able to resist snapping a photo of the pizza he ordered to send to Sophia that bore her name.
But that put them right at dark reaching the park, so being able to pull up into the parking spot next to the yurt and unload? That was just perfect.
"Doesn't hurt that you have electricity and a heater, either, does it?"
"You honestly think Michonne would let me make off to the boonies with our boy in the winter and sleep in a tent?"
No, Rick can't imagine, at least not for the northern half of the state, so he shakes his head. With the low temperature dropping into the low fifties tonight up this close to the Tennessee border, they've turned on the heater in the yurt. It wouldn't be a miserable night in a tent, but you'd definitely want high-quality sleeping bags, not cheap ones.
"Andre's badges make me wish I'd done something like that with Carl."
Shane eyes the little vest and its colorful embroidered Junior Ranger badges with a wistful look on his face. "Think we'll be slowing it down for a little while now, but we got halfway there already. He wants one from all the parks, and that's a full fifty-nine badges just for the parks. At least we've completed the activity ones now."
"He was quite proud of turning that page to the ranger, wasn't he?" Rick can still picture the little boy's beaming smile as he attested that the six miles they'd hiked today beyond the waterfalls to the mouth of the canyon and back qualified Andre for his 'Blaze a Trail' badge at last. The ranger had been suitably impressed at the seven-year-old's accomplishment, considering the Sitton's Gulch Trail is one of the hardest in the park. Hell, Rick's impressed that Andre's still awake and mobile because all he wants to do is crawl into the bottom bunk inside the yurt and sleep a good ten hours.
"Yeah." After taking the steaks off the grill and piling both their plates high with vegetables, his brother bypasses the picnic table to offer Rick a plate where he's sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs on the little deck. "You know you've done a good job with Carl, right?"
The low pitch of Shane's voice carries so much understanding that when Rick looks up from his food, he really shouldn't be so surprised by the sympathetic look on Shane's face. Something must show Rick's discomfort with the fact that Carl turns eighteen in three days, and it feels like he's done nothing special in raising his boy. The news the doctor gave him on Monday has been eating at him even more since he broke things off with Amanda.
No more. Just the one child. It aches in a way he didn't expect it too, because, for years, he's been completely content with Carl as his sole offspring for so long. It just doesn't make much sense.
"Seriously, brother. C'mon, man. He's a good kid, growing into a good man, and that's every bit as much on you as Lori." Shane leans in, food forgotten, his expression turning intense in that way that used to precede one of his 'sermons' back when they were partners. "What Carl needed growing up is entirely different than what Andre needs, just like you and me needed different things."
Rick knows that, damn it, or at least he should. Shuffling his feet, he accidentally bumps Athena, and the big Dutch shepherd rouses from sleep, moving to lay her scarred head on his knee as if she understands he's upset, too. He reaches out to pet her, fingers running across the undamaged side of her face, before offering her a piece of grilled zucchini as a thank you.
"I'm so damned tired of being alone," he mumbles softly. "I thought… I thought it would be different, finally, with Amanda. And it shouldn't feel as bad as me and Lori that it's over."
With the despairing feeling that led to the breakup, Rick now thinks he understands why Lori seemed so exhausted every time he saw her during the time between their split and the divorce becoming final. Maybe he didn't have thirteen years of history with Amanda, but being the one to say that a relationship is no longer viable or healthy for both parties? He wishes he'd understood his ex-wife better back then. He'd have resented her less.
Shane is quiet long enough that Rick looks up from Athena to catch the other man's assessing look. He offers Rick a ghost of a smile. "I knew I was in love with Michonne two dates in, Rick. It would have hurt as much then to let her go as it would now."
Considering how his best friend's playboy ways had screeched to a halt after meeting his fiance, Rick supposes Shane just might understand. "Did I do the right thing?"
"As much as I thought the two of you would be good together, yeah, you did. If she's always going to be expecting you to let her down, and you're always expecting her to run? That's just leading you both to a terrible paranoia and heartache. Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt like fucking hell, I know, but you did the right thing."
They let the conversation lapse because the boys run up to return the leftover hotdogs and buns to their respective secure storages. The park might not get black bears often, but the raccoons are menaces if anything is left out to attract them. It isn't until they disappear with the bag of marshmallows, Carl grinning like he's Andre's age instead of nearly adult, that Shane speaks again.
"Gonna sound like one of those stupid suggestions, Rick, but maybe you should just get you a dog."
Considering Rick's food is going cold while he takes comfort from a retired K9 officer's company, he supposes Shane just might be right. Dogs had always seemed a little too much work back in King County, but here, there's a lot of services to help, and he honestly doesn't work as much.
"I thought about it, after the dogfighting ring, but the building doesn't allow the breeds they needed homes for," he admits.
"You could always try the shelter where we got Izzy. They had all sorts of breeds there needing homes."
Letting the idea settle, Rick nods and turns his attention to his food, laughing a little at himself. He supposes he wouldn't be the first person to ever soothe his heartache by getting himself a pet, and he certainly won't be the last. It won't stop him from reaching for Amanda in the night, or the mix of ache and anger when he gets halfway to texting her out of habit. But at least he won't be alone in an apartment too big for one person once Beth returns to her normal life and Carl goes off to school, right?
Waking up on a Sunday morning with a fairly mild hangover and an ache on her left shoulder makes Amanda try to figure out which concerns her more. Turning her head, she sees there's a bottle of water and some ibuprofen on the nightstand, and as more and more of the night before returns to her, she thinks she may owe Tara flowers or something. Wiggling to reach the water and meds, the ache on her back intensifies.
Everything after the show is a little foggy, memories coming in spurts and flashes. She lays there for a bit, sipping water and trying to rehydrate, before reaching for her phone. There's a text from Tara that makes her both groan and smile.
The Red Headed Slut is your nemesis while singing karaoke. Don't worry about the tattoo. That was before the slut, the Liquid Marijuana, and the two Vegas Bombs. I'm never letting you and Beth near peach schnapps ever again.
The capitalized letters make Amanda rummage in her memory a bit more, only to giggle softly despite her still existing headache. Jesus Christ, if she managed four drinks after the one she'd had with their meal at the dinner theater, it's a wonder she's not hugging the toilet. She checks the time on Tara's text and reconsiders. Sent right at three a.m., four drinks across the fuzzy hours isn't too bad.
Why the hell she imbibed anything containing peach schnapps, she'll never know. She'll never live it down if Daryl hears she actually got drunk on the liquor. Scrolling up in the texts, she sees one from Beth, but this one is a picture.
Tara or Jack must have taken the picture since the young man had joined them after the show since his shift ended. Beth is standing with her back to the camera, her dress discretely half unzipped to expose the space between her shoulder blades, and Amanda is posed to show off her left shoulder. They're both exposing tattoos with the reddened edge of fresh ink. Blinking at the image, Amanda zooms in, wondering why she doesn't remember the tattoo process. She couldn't have been that soused at the time, or the artist would have refused the commission.
Beth's back has a nice little tattoo of two delicate hands that appear to be playing cat's cradle with a string of stars, with a crescent moon and a ringed planet dangling as the string's ends. Something about the star pattern niggles at Amanda's memory, so she scrolls the image to look at her own. It's got stars as well, and she's seen her own zodiac sign enough to recognize the constellation. A sleeping cat curls among the stars, a crescent moon on the feline's forehead.
Glancing back to Beth, Amanda suspects if she looks up the Libra constellation, she'll find it matches the pattern on the blonde's back. Part of her wants to be a little embarrassed at getting themed tattoos, but as bits and pieces of last night trickle back in now that her headache is retreating, she can't bring herself to regret it. Beth is her friend, and Amanda is fairly certain now that the girl won't be leaving her behind once the investigation is complete.
Texting a response to Tara to thank her, she adds, Did you get inked, too?
The reply comes back fairly quickly. Nah. Needles aren't my idea of fun. Beth wants to do karaoke again sometime soon, though.
Amanda's first instinct is to say no, but she stops herself. Vague as last night may still be, the sensation of carefree fun does linger. Going out with Beth, Tara, and even Jack, if the young man is interested, actually sounds like fun in its own right, not just as a method of avoiding her too-quiet apartment and its echoes of Rick.
Sure. That sounds like fun.
Her entire relationship with Rick had happened because she let herself step outside her comfort zone and take a few chances. As much as it hurts now, she doesn't think she can go back to the reserved, cautious Amanda she used to be. Maybe things are fouled beyond redemption with Rick, but she can at least enjoy the good things that came from it, like her two new friends.
The hollow ache where Rick should be? That'll just fade in time, she's sure.
A/N: Since FFN doesn't allow links, alas, I can't share the tattoo images. They're on the AO3 version of the chapter (DarkTidings).
Important note! Beth's pairing has changed. There was supposed to be something in this chapter about it, but it didn't fit just yet. It'll come up later. I can't remember if I mentioned it in earlier chapters, and it'll be a background pairing like Shane/Michonne or Daryl/Lori, but there will be hints of Beth/Tara in this.