She'd just finished closing up the bar when her phone buzzed against the bar top. Her gut instinct was to ignore it and spend the rest of her night numbing the still ever-present pain in her chest not even two years backpacking the world had been able to heal with a bottle of top-shelf whiskey and rewatching the live actioned version of her favorite storybook character.
Alice made everything better.
Even heartbreak.
She'd thought she could handle it. Seeing her ex in a more solid form rather than the frozen images of the pictures she'd foolishly chosen to carry around with her. Each one tucked away within the pages of her secondhand copy of Alice's adventures.
Oh, Wonderland had she been wrong.
Even in the two separating years since she'd last laid eyes on the woman herself Tilly still held the sole power to re-break Margot's heart all over again with only a single surprised glance.
Or maybe it was the fact that at the time Margot had inadvertently caught her ex in the middle of a very heavy-looking kiss with Margot's raven-haired replacement when the newly returned bartender had stopped by her favored food truck on her lunch break. Margot clenched her fist so sightly so as to not punch that smug yet genuinely surprised look right off Ivy Belfrey's face when the couple had eventually separated Margot had needed to clean the resulting blood from her palm as soon as she'd gotten a safe enough distance to shake the feeling back into her hand.
Not that Margot had ended up buying anything edible after that. Only dropping far too much cash on the small landing and snatching up a chilled bottle of water before Sabin or even Jacinda could ask what she'd wanted after giving similar plead greetings at her return.
Lucy's mother had stopped by the bar later in the day to rectify the heartbreak-induced error with a soft "If you ever wanna talk, I'm always around." In that protective sibling kind of way, Margot had always cherished Jacinda's company.
Her phone was still vibrating annoyingly across the other side of the bar giving Margot's wandering mind at least something to grab onto in the haze of uncomfortable pain as she finally sets aside the beer glass, she was pretending to clean to grab the buzzing thing before the call could be dropped to voicemail.
Much to her disappointment the message waiting for her wasn't any of the ones she'd been hoping for.
Roni offered another 'welcome back' party after Margot had declined the first attempt. Also as an apology for cutting out on her earlier in the night and leaving her to handle the stragglers as the night dragged on.
Jacinda or Lucy suggested she stop by for a hastily thrown-together game night.
Heck, even her mother or Chad offering an awkward zoom dinner would have been something to occupied her mind.
But it wasn't any of those.
It was only a prerecorded message about the silent alarm being triggered at her mother's gym.
"Sorry Alice, rain check." She sighed running her fingers longingly over the battered cover of her favored book she'd stashed away underneath the bar.
Margot does stay long enough to properly close the empty bar and change into some comfier clothes before heading out in the direction of the broken into gym uptown. The fact she also barrows Roni's motorcycle to make the trip is a matter for another time.
