Mollys always has the best atmosphere. It doesn't matter how bad a mood you're in, once Herrmann had given you a beer on the house in the hope of cheering you up, and you were smiling at the argument between Cruz and Dr. Halstead about who knows what, it felt like the rest of the world was just melting away. That's how Hailey Upton always felt the second she walked in. Everything felt a bit better when she was sat at the bar with Jay, laughing at some stupid joke Adam was telling, or hearing the stories Kevin was telling about Jordan and Vanessa. In all the years she had been going to the bar, the detective had never know the place to lower her mood, let alone hurt her as much as it did, that night.
It was just a typical night after work. Hailey wasn't feeling great, in fact she hadn't been for a couple of days, but they had just solved a big shot case with the FBI and she wanted to go and celebrate with the rest of the team. Despite the frequent headaches she'd been experiencing for the last few days, right now, she felt really quite good. Her and Kim were laughing about something Makayla had done at school. Jay had just gone to the stock room to grab a couple of cases of IPA since they were short staffed, but Hailey's headache was coming back, and she was starting to think about getting out of there.
"Hey I'm gonna run to the bathroom really quick," Hailey said to Kim and Stella Kidd who had joined the detectives to hear Kim's story.
"K be quick though, Blackhawks are on in a minute!" Kim called after her cheerfully. Hailey spun around and gave them a sarcastic thumbs up, resulting in a big laugh from the pair of girls still at the bar.
She rounded the corner into the dark corridor leading off to the bathrooms and the stock room. There was a silhouette of two people standing intimately close at the end of the hall, which confused her, as the bar was fairly empty and pretty much everyone there was outside. The door of one of the bathrooms swung open and as the person walked past her, the light spilling out onto the corridor illuminated the figures with out their knowledge. There was a man there. Jay. It was Jay kissing someone. A woman. They had their eyes closed and arms wrapped around each other. Hailey's heart stopped, or sped up to a million beats a minute, she wasn't sure. She tasted sick in her mouth and heard herself shakily saying: "Jay?"
The taller of the pair pulled away and turned to look at Hailey, and sure enough, it was her fiancé.
"Wha...Hailey...Wait!" Jay shouted after her, but she didn't. All she could think was run. Run as far and as fast as she could and not look back. She ran past the girls she had left at the bar and Kim turned around confused as she ran past
"Hails..."
But Hailey didn't stop, not even to grab her jacket. She got outside and sprinted to her car. Her eyes were so full of tears it was a miracle she didn't crash into the building getting out of the car park. Then she just drove, drove away from it all, from the place that she used to go to, in order to escape from everything.
