"Are you sure you don't want to stay one more night?"

"I'm sure, Mom," I say, slipping on my shoes.

"I worry about you sometimes, you know. All alone in that apartment."

"Well, it's been like that for a while. Besides, I'm not all alone. I have Spark."

"Sparky can't talk to you. He can't... know how you're feeling." With her hands on her hips, she looks at me in that overly-concerned way that's natural to most mothers. My mom picked it up twenty-one years into parenthood. Better late than never, I guess. "I'll see you on Saturday, then?"

"Yeah." I hold out my arms for a hug.

"Happy Thanksgiving, dear," she says over my shoulder.

"Happy Thanksgiving."

On my way back to the apartment I cut across town with Spark and head into the woods. With unrelenting excitement he leads me to the edge of the lake, giving my arms a good workout just trying to keep him under control. I let him off his leash and sit on the muddy shore, watch him wade out into the water and dive for sticks and plastic bottles and whatever else he can find.

About fifty feet down the shore, the old fishing dock sits still in the water. I don't want to go over there today. It's been three months without Mabel in town, and predictably, I miss her. More than I did when we were younger, in fact. As promised she has come back twice to help me train Spark, but she never stayed for a full weekend. I feel guilty even mentioning that she should visit; she's been so busy with college and searching for an evening job. And cheerleading. And volunteering part-time at the special needs school. Quelling my loneliness doesn't really compare to any of that.

And that's exactly what I am, again. Lonely. It takes me fifteen minutes lying back on my couch to realize that my mom was right. I have three days off work ahead of me and nothing to do but attend an AA meeting. These are the moments that I'm at my weakest. These are the moments when moseying on over to the little cupboard below the sink, where the bottle of scotch is hidden behind the pipes, becomes so much more tempting.

I can have one drink, right? I paired my turkey with lemonade. I watched my mom get sloshed on wine without even trying to manipulate her into pouring me a glass. I've been good. One drink and I'll relax the rest of the day away.

Spark is in the spare bedroom, minding his own business. I walk quietly into the kitchen without his judging eyes on me, and reach past the cleaning products under the sink, past the pipe. Out comes the bottle. Glenfiddich. Fifteen year reserve. It's depressing how just the label and the feel of the bottle in my hands inspires comfort.

But I turn the bottle around and on the back, there's a yellow post-it note: Freeze! Before you open this bottle, go look in the shoe box in the bottom of your closet.

Ruling out the possibility of the bottle having become sentient, my understanding settles in on the third read-through of that sentence. In the closet, I throw long-forgotten shirts and bras over my shoulder and eventually retrieve the shoebox, the hiding spot for my vodka. I kneel on the floor and pop it open and the vodka is still in there, but there's a sheet of note paper lying underneath.

Hi Pacifica,

It's me, Mabel. Well, not really. It's a piece of paper. If you're confused, you can just read this with my voice in your head.

Listen, if you need to drink this, I won't stop you. But hear me out, because I don't think you do need it at all.

Sober Pacifica is the nicest person I've ever met. She helped me get a job in the most fun place I've ever worked. She worked day and night to help me carry out my uncle's dying wishes. She helped me leave a boy who wasn't good for me and she let me live in her apartment so that I wouldn't be alone. When I woke up from nightmares about him she was there to calm me down.

I love Sober Pacifica. Like, a lot. I've never met Drunk Pacifica, so I can't say much about her, but I know that she's not the person you want to be. You want to be Sober Pacifica. The person that I know and love.

Just my two cents. x

I sit back and sigh through my nose. Spark comes in and sits next to me with a blank look on his face. I reach up to pet his head. "What am I gonna do, Spark?"

He tilts his head.

"Don't do that," I groan. "She does that all the time."

I check the cabinet under the bathroom sink, at the back, underneath my collection of hotel shampoos. There's a small bottle of whiskey bearing an identical post-it note to the one on the scotch. I'm not surprised or upset that she rummaged through every inch of my personal space - she cleaned the apartment so thoroughly and often that it was inevitable she'd find whatever I had to hide. Finally, I go to the end table by the front door. In the drawer, underneath the diary I don't use, my hip flask has also been tagged. She found every hiding place I restocked over the summer.

I call her up. I don't feel so bad about interrupting her manic life because I know she'll be at home today, giving herself a break. It rings five times.

"Hey, you. What's wrong?"

I sit at my kitchen counter and frown. "Nothing. Why would something be wrong?"

"Because you never call me. I call you. That's how we do it. That's how we've always done it."

"Relax," I tell her. "I just... I don't know." I nervously crinkle the letter between my fingers. "I wanted to hear your voice."

"Aww, you're sweet. Did you have a good Thanksgiving?"

"Yeah, it was nice. Just me and Mom. And Spark and Toby, causing trouble as always. How was yours?"

"It was good. Pretty standard. I ate too much turkey and now I'm insecure about my weight. I'm sitting here pinching my belly and flapping it up and down."

"You're not fat, Mabel."

"You say that, but I'm putting on weight. Must be 'cause you're not here to coax me in to running. And Stephanie had trouble lifting me last week in practice! She claimed that her shoulder was aching, but I don't buy it."

"Well, why don't you let me be the judge next time I see you? I have a feeling you're exaggerating."

"Maybe. Speaking of which, it's about time you came to see me, isn't it? Maybe we could plan something around Christmas?"

A tear drips onto my arm before I even feel them in my eyes. "Yeah."

The line is silent for a moment. "I knew something was wrong," Mabel says softly. "What is it?"

"Nothing," I say, wiping my eyes. "I love you."

"I love you too, Pacifica, but what's wrong? You can tell me."

"It's nothing, really. I'm fine. I'm gonna call you later, okay? I, um... please don't worry. I'll call you later."

I hang up the phone before she responds and tap my foot on the floor at sonic speed. Mabel calls back but I decline it. I did need to hear her voice. Now, I need to make a level-headed decision.

Wendy meets me at Lookout Point just before sunset - a plateau overlooking town and the vast stretches of woodland surrounding it on every side. I'm sitting on a low fence, dangerously close to the steep drop-off, but the height doesn't terrify me like it once did. Wendy pulls up to my right in her van, and as usual we're the only people up here.

She jumps out and glares at me, hands on hips. "The hell, P? D'you walk up here?"

"I ran," I call back. "Needed the fresh air."

She approaches me warily, because it's a long run up the mountain. Took about an hour. And I'm well aware of the sweat patches visible on my shirt, below my pits. She probably thinks I've gone insane. "Are you insane?"

See?

"Just come sit," I tell her.

She squirms on the fence post for a moment, trying to find a position that won't bruise her butt. "What's in the bag?"

I pick up the black trash bag that I carried up here and hold it out to her. "A present."

Again with the wariness. She peers into the bag like I've booby-trapped it, then pulls out one of the bottles. "You've been drinking?"

"No. All those bottles are sealed. You can have them." I hadn't planned on giving a full explanation, but it begins to roll off my tongue nonetheless. "I hide them around my apartment. It's like a compulsion. I hide them in case I ever need them, and this afternoon I thought I needed them, and... I pulled out the bottle of scotch from the kitchen cupboard and there was a note on it. Mabel had found it, and she'd written a note on it telling me not to drink it. A really nice note. She found all of them. All of those bottles."

Way above the cliff on the other side of Gravity Falls, an eagle soars silently across my field of vision, a black silhouette against the orange-blue sky.

"I'm in love with her," I say, only vaguely aware that I'm talking out loud. I turn to Wendy and her face is sympathetic, like I'm a little lost lamb.

"Oh, P." She puts an arm around me and I let my head fall on her shoulder. For a few minutes I soak in the view. Wendy's shirt smells faintly of cigarettes but it isn't even unpleasant, it's familiar and comfortable. As the adrenaline from running fully wears off and my eyelids fight to stay open, Wendy says, "what do you think she's doing right now?"

"I don't know." What I hope she's doing is sitting on her parents' porch, watching over the heights of San Francisco, thinking about me. I'll ask her later, when I phone her. Here, in a far more remote part of the world, I watch as the lights in town flicker to life - the street lamps on Main Street, the town mall. The apartments surrounding my own, my mom's house. Way off in the distance, even the doors of the theater cast out a yellow glow - maybe there's a show on tonight, and the dead, dusty rooms we explored in the summer will bustle with aspiring performers. "It's a pretty town," I say.

"Yeah," Wendy says. "It has its moments."

"But sometimes I'm ready to leave it all behind."

She hums in agreement. I wait for a minute but she says nothing more, maybe she didn't even hear me properly, I don't know. I sigh quietly and shut my eyes. It's what we've been saying for years, in variations - this town is too small for us; we've gotta get out of here; we're not the elderly homesteaders this town was built for. Wendy has no way of knowing that this time is different. I made up my mind hours ago.

On Monday morning Lindsay is in high spirits, Beth is singing absentmindedly in her low, angelic voice, every breakfast patron I serve greets me with a smile and asks me about my weekend and everything feels so, so normal, that I almost - almost - don't tell Lindsay that I need to speak to her.

Two weeks later, I sit opposite her in a booth by the window, bright and early, before we've opened up.

She straightens the sheets of paper that took five minutes to churn out of the fossil of a printer we have in the back office. She clears her throat. "Well, then. Since your first day working here you have been an outstanding example of..." Her freshly made-up face contorts and she lifts a hand to her eyes.

The waterworks. She lasted longer than I expected, honestly.

I sit still, board up my own tears. No need for two soppy messes at this table. "Come on," I say gently. "You can get through this."

She gasps in air and dabs her eyes; with a flick of her hand she has converted back to pure professionalism. "You have been an outstanding example of dedication, maturity, and camaraderie. Outside of the workplace, you have been both the daughter that I never had, and a true, reliable friend. In accordance with the guidelines of the Oregon Better Dining Association, I will now conduct your exit interview, in which you are free to express your opinions of how the work environment at Greasy's Diner could be improved for future employees. Question one: If you were to relive your time working here, what would you change?"

"Nothing."

"Oh. Okay. That was an easy one-"

"No, wait. I'd throw out that computer. I wouldn't be surprised if it caught fire any moment now."

Lindsay scribbles something down. I can tell that she isn't going to throw out the computer.

"Question two: Is there anything about the managing staff that you feel is inadequate?"

"Inadequate? No. No way. If I had to say anything, I'd say... you set an unrealistic example of what to expect from a boss. You're more like a mother that's been stripped of all the annoying parts. Um... you care too much about me? Can I say that?"

She chuckles and again, jots down something I can't see. When she looks up I can tell she's on the verge of tears again and she says, "um, question three: Do you have any plans to visit Greasy's Diner in the coming months, even if you are relocating to a different state or country?"

"It doesn't say that on the bit of paper," I tell her, my voice breaking.

She lets out a sob and we both stand. She hurries around the table and hugs me tightly. I clench my eyes shut but it doesn't stop me from crying.

"Of course I'll come to visit," I say. "I'm going to come back at least once a month for the next year. Then we'll see how we go from there." I draw back and hold onto her arms, meet her bloodshot eyes. "And you are going to come see me in California. We'll go to the beach and get wicked tans and maybe I'll even let you talk about guys."

Lindsay laughs. "You don't want me down there, cramping your style."

"Cramping my style? Lindsay, you have more 'style' than I'll ever have, believe me. And you look younger than I do. No, my mind is made up. In the spring, you will close this place up for the weekend and we'll live the good life for a few days. We'll be beach babes."

"You're going to thrive down there. I can feel it."

I smile. "I'm finally doing it."

And I finally do it in the middle of January.

Granted, it takes a full week of second-guessing myself, resisting the urge to sprint to the diner and ask for my job back, and at one point, spontaneously exploding in tears halfway through packing up a box of my stuff.

But I do finally do it. My apartment shows evidence of me having lived there for three years, and then it doesn't. It isn't until the last box is out, until the place is bare, that the weight of my decision sets in.

"It's sad, isn't it?" Nina says from behind me.

I didn't hear her coming up the stairs, over the voice in my head screaming I DON'T LIKE CHANGE.

"I don't like thinking that a couple of strangers will be walking around in here soon. Making it their own."

"It's just an apartment," I say, trying to suck all the sentimental value out of the place so I don't end up in tears. "A temporary living space."

Nina stands where the couch used to be and looks down. "Wine stain," she says.

"Mhmm." That's from one of our drunken late-night trysts - she straddled me without warning and I dropped my glass. We moved the couch forward the following morning to cover up the red stain. Strangely, this is the first time I'm noticing that I don't think about those days a whole lot anymore.

I usher Nina out and head downstairs to her car, because I could stand around in the empty rooms and reminisce for hours, but it would only make leaving that little bit harder. Mom is in the back seat, Spark on her lap. I clamber into the passenger seat of the two-door Ford something-or-other that a few months working in a donut shop has bought Nina.

"All locked up?" Mom asks.

"Yep. All done."

Nina gets in the car and faces me. "Any word from Wendy?"

"Nope." It's been almost a full week since I told her I was moving, and she hasn't spoken to me since. I haven't tried speaking to her either, but, come on, she stormed out of the diner on me. It's her responsibility to mend things. I don't see how she went from being my own personal cheerleader behind courting Mabel, to resenting my decision to finally do something about it.

"She'll come around," Nina says, starting the engine. "It's just how things go in Gravity Falls. We're all in it together - the small-town boredom - and then somebody leaves and the rest of us are like, now what? The more friends that escape, the less reason you have to be there yourself."

"I don't understand it," my mom says, with a trace of condescension. "Gravity Falls is a beautiful little town. I think sooner or later both of you are going to realize what you're missing." She waits a moment before leaning forward and adding, "but I can see how Sacramento will be better suited to your lifestyle, honey. Plus, I've heard California is swarming with lesbians. I'm sure in a few months you'll have somebody to introduce me to."

I turn in my seat and frown, but my mom's smile tells me that that was at least an attempt at being supportive. "Thanks, Mom."

Nina casts me a sideways glance that says something like, you haven't told her about Mabel? No, Nina, I haven't told her about Mabel. I've barely been able to come to terms with the fact that I'm moving to a different state in pursuit of a girl. In what kind of story does that ever end well?

My new one-bedroom apartment is in East Sacramento, a couple of miles from Mabel's college. It's on the ground floor of a three-story building, with light coming in on three sides. The front door leads directly to my living room, with the kitchen on the right, both needlessly huge, whereas the bedroom and bathroom on the left are a bit more cramped than what I had before. At the far end of the living room a sliding glass door opens up to my own fenced-in back yard, though I estimate that it could fit about five people shoulder-to-shoulder at maximum capacity. I'll probably plant some flowers out there, not bother to water them for a few months, and then dig out the crumbling remains one sunny day while scolding myself for planting them in the first place.

Still, since moving my furniture in yesterday, the place has already begun to feel like home. I seem to have subconsciously matched the layout of my old living room as closely as possible. And the only downside I've noticed so far is that my upstairs neighbors are a little loud. Yesterday when I was moving the couch around I could hear a man and a woman trading obscenities that even Wendy wouldn't utter out loud. Oh well. In all likelihood one of them will murder the other before long, and then I'll be back to peace and quiet.

It's only after I've let Mom and Nina into the apartment that I notice the piano in the corner of the room, which certainly wasn't there yesterday. "What the hell?"

"I hope you don't mind," Mom says. "I had a moving truck bring it down here yesterday afternoon. With the key you gave me."

"Mom, I haven't played in years," I say, approaching the thing like it's a wild animal. I lift up the cover and run my hand along the keys; it's so clean that it sparkles in the sunlight.

"I know that," she says. "But I thought now might be the time to start again. New city, new inspiration. You used to make such beautiful music. I know I never... supported you, in that regard. I really should have."

I look up at my mom. There it is again - the belated warmth and love. "Thank you, Mom. I think that's a great idea."

When we've unloaded Nina's car, I'm faced with the fallout of my haphazard packing, finding that the things I need right away are at the very bottom of boxes. I try not to make this obvious to Nina, who will slap me across the face with an I told you so.

"I think I'll go check in to my hotel," Mom says.

I stop rummaging for my deodorant and frown at her. "Hotel? What hotel? I thought you were staying with me." She arranged to stay for a week to both help me settle in and to soak up some sun, which has been hiding away from Oregon all winter.

"You don't want me here all week. I'll only be getting in your way and nosing into your business."

I shake my head. "It's fine, I don't mind-"

"Well my hotel is already booked." She cups my cheeks and kisses my forehead. "You need your space. We'll hang out during the daytime and I'll get out of your hair in the evening."

Ultimately, I'm grateful. Mom and I have been getting along better than I would have ever dreamed, but a week in close proximity could definitely take a toll on that. "If you say so."

"Besides," she says. "I might get lucky."

I grimace. "The words every daughter longs to hear from her mother."

She shoulders her bag and moves to the front door, hugs Nina goodbye, pats Spark's head. Then to me, "call me tomorrow and we'll go explore, 'kay?"

"Okay."

"Love you."

"Love you too."

Nina and I head out to get some lunch shortly after, and on the way there I pull out my phone and text two world-shaking words to Mabel:

I'm here.

Thirty seconds later I receive a stream of party hat emojis followed by:

woo woo! we still on for dinner?

I text back, 7pm. BE THERE, and then spend two minutes wondering if the capitalization was too much.

The clock on Nina's dashboard reads 2:04 P.M., so I know I have a solid five hours ahead of me that I'll be a nervous wreck.

A/N: Almost forgot to post two weeks running. My head has not been in the writing world lately, which SUCKS.

But thank you guys for reading, we have two chapters to go, and I hope you all enjoy the holidays!