A/N - Hey, guys - I realized, after I added those Alison scenes, that I would have to update the last two chapters to address them. I updated chapter 6 ("Gin & Vomit"), and I'll try to update chapter 7 ("No More Lonely Nights") next week.

Here is the new/revised content from chapter 6. It fits right after the Alison scenes and before the Caleb scene. (If you read that chapter after November 3rd, there's no need to read this chapter.)

Sorry for all the rewrites - I'm still very much an amateur at this writing thing! :) Thanks for sticking with the story! 3


Paige considered staying away from Hawkeye Hank's for a couple of weeks, until she was certain that Alison was out of town - probably with Emily following behind her. In the end, though, she decided - fuck it. She wasn't going to be pushed out of Hank's the way that she had been pushed out of so many other things in her life. She wasn't the same kid she was back in high school. Not that she had been a pushover in high school. Even then, she always knew that she could stand up to anyone. Well, everyone except for one person.

Emily.

Paige could never go against Emily. She would never allow herself to. In the end, she always stepped aside - even if that meant taking a break from swimming, when they were both vying for the captain's spot.

Even if it meant letting Alison think that she had won.

But those days of stepping aside were over. The previous night was an anomaly. Paige had been caught off guard, so she fell back into those old patterns automatically. But, once she knew what she was up against, she was back on track. She was ready to stand and fight.


"Why, if it isn't Paige McCullers!"

Paige turned in the direction of the woman's voice, her head swimming as the room swirled with the movement.

"Where the hell have you been? I haven't seen you here since forever!"

"I had a little… I had a little…" Paige's words were slurred and her eyes unfocused as she tried to form coherent thought. "I went through a little…" She burped, all of a sudden, and, all of a sudden, it was the funniest thing in the world. "Pardon me," she said overly dramatically, straightening her back up. "What I was saying was…" She furrowed her brow in confusion. "What was the question?"

Paige didn't usually go to Hank's to get drunk. Usually, she went for the companionship. This night was different. She had only one goal: To get drunk and forget all about Emily and their fight. She was tired of trying to find a way to get past Emily's final words about a bitter, old woman.

The woman who had greeted her was sitting on the barstool next to hers with a coquettish grin, coyly tucking her hair behind her ear, letting her hand remain on her neck as she twisted a strand of her blond locks between her fingers. Her face was blurring in and out, just on the fringes of discernibility, as Paige tried her hardest to get her eyes to focus. Tammi. That was it. Tammi with an "i" - and she certainly had an eye for Paige McCullers, though, for various reasons, they had never hooked up. Paige's face contorted into a half-smile, which her drunk mind thought was sexy but actually looked a little creepy. Maybe tonight would be the night. Maybe a substitute, to get her mind off of the real thing, was just what the doctor ordered.

Doctor... doctor... Tammi was a doctor of some sort. Not a medical doctor, but a doctor of humanities or letters, or some silliness like that. No matter, Paige thought. Doctor Tammi is definitely going to earn some extra credit in anatomy tonight.

Paige raised her finger towards Madisyn, who obligingly came over to refill her glass. Vodka. Paige preferred gin, but whenever she got drunk on gin, she ended up spending the night with her head in the toilet bowl, giving back everything she'd eaten or drunk that day. It took her a while, but she eventually took the hint: No matter how much she loved the way it tasted, her stomach couldn't stand gin, and her stomach got the final vote. You can only go back to the same old destructive patterns so many times before you're forced to admit what they're doing to you.

That doesn't mean that you don't miss the old patterns. Paige loved gin, and, of course, she missed it, but, when it came down to it, vodka could serve the same purpose. Drunk is drunk. In the end, it doesn't matter how you get there.


Emily bit her bottom lip as she stood in front of the doorway at Hank's. She was already fighting back tears. But she knew that she had to tough it out and go inside. She didn't even think that Paige would be back at the bar so soon, but she was desperate. Paige wasn't taking her calls, and she really needed to explain the situation with Alison. She needed Paige to know that she had sent Alison packing - literally.

Emily pushed open the doors and scanned the room. When her eyes caught up with Paige, her heart stopped. She tried to swallow, but there was a huge lump in her throat. Paige was talking to some woman Emily hadn't seen before. She looked slightly familiar; maybe from the early days, when Paige used to post pictures from Hank's on Instagram. Whoever the woman was, it was obvious that she and Paige knew each other. Watching them interact, Emily had flashbacks to the hoedown, when she watched from a distance as Paige chatted and laughed with her other friends. Paige was so confident and comfortable with them. Emily wasn't used to seeing her that way back then, except in the pool. Outside of the swim team, whenever Paige was with Emily, she was always deferential; tentative. It had been a shock for Emily to see her with those other girls, so self-assured.

Emily wanted to go over, as she had done back at the hoedown, and claim her girl. She wanted it with all her might, but her legs wouldn't move. Her body swiveled a couple of times as she tried to make herself go over, but, in the end, she turned around and exited the bar. She had hurt Paige so much - so often - back in high school. Who was she to step in and interfere this time, when Paige had a shot at happiness?

At least that's what Emily told herself as she walked back to her car. They were noble thoughts, but they weren't reality. The reality was that she was afraid. The reality was that their roles had reversed since high school. This time, Emily was the one who lost her confidence around Paige. The new Paige had shown that she could stand up for herself; that she could say no to Emily. And Emily didn't think that she could handle being rejected by Paige a third time. She sobbed a couple of times in the driver's seat, shaking her head. She had to let go. Wiping her eyes and letting out a pained sigh, she backed out of the parking spot and headed home.


"Tammi," Paige burped out after slamming down the vodka. She leaned towards Tammi's barstool with her hand extended to caress Tammi's cheek. The movement was too much for her in her drunken state; the angle a bit too severe. She tumbled off of her stool and onto the floor.

In a second, Madisyn had athletically jumped over the bar and lifted Paige off the ground by the belt loops on the back of her jeans. Paige put her hands up, to show that she was okay, and then pointed at the object in Madisyn's hand. "Um... excuse me, barkeep, but I believe that's my phone," she said, trying to sound amusing and clever.

Maidsyn turned the phone around and showed Paige the screen. "I got you an Uber," she said in a soft, soothing voice. Paige raised her finger to protest. "Go home, Paige," Madisyn urged her, sympathetically but firmly.

Paige put her hand down and nodded her head slowly, embarrassed, but not too drunk to know that Madisyn was right. She wasn't the first drunk patron whom Madisyn had sent home in an Uber. Paige turned in the direction of Tammi, who was standing behind her with her hand on her back, to make sure that she was all right. Paige shrugged her shoulders and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

"Bye," Tammi said softly, drawing out the word, her eyebrows raised hopefully.

"Some other night, perhaps," Paige mumbled. She fished a roll of mints from the inside pocket of her jacket and popped one into her mouth.

She really didn't like the taste of vodka.

Deep down, she was happy that nothing had come of her minor flirtation with Tammi. It wouldn't have been fair to Tammi - or to herself. She quickly adjusted her hair and her jacket and stumbled towards the door.

Madisyn looked at one of the busboys and tilted her head in Paige's direction. He nodded and set off, following Paige at a discreet distance (so as not to injure her pride even more) until she was safely inside the car.

It had been stupid of Paige to get drunk. It was even stupider of her to get drunk over Emily. She shook her head, grateful, at least, that she hadn't done anything even stupider. She sighed heavily, thinking how much easier her life had been when Emily was three and a half states away.

The Uber driver had some sappy radio station on, playing sappy love songs. Paige supposed that it was a deliberate choice on her driver's part, as a way to generate bigger tips: Picking up couples on a Friday night; if the music puts the girl in the mood, the guy might feel a little more generous.

The station was doing a dedication – Paige didn't know that radio stations even did those anymore. She listened as some woman kept going on and on, making a dedication to her high school sweetheart, with whom she'd reconnected after thirty-four years.

Thirty-four years? The thought alone was almost enough to sober Paige up. That's a lifetime! Strictly speaking, it was more than a lifetime for Paige, who was still a couple of years shy of her thirtieth birthday. She couldn't imagine wasting all that time in bars looking for someone like Tammi to distract her for the evening.

And the night hadn't even been about Tammi. It had been about Alison. Paige kicked herself. How long would she let herself be caught up in that trap? Maybe Caleb was right. Maybe she - not Emily - was the one who needed to get over Alison. After all, Emily had left Alison at the table and run after her. Paige had never seen that before. It wasn't like Rosewood, after Alison reappeared, and Emily tried to convince the two of them that they needed to get along. This time, it was obviously another one of Alison's tricks, and Paige knew that she shouldn't punish Emily for Alison's shenanigans.

Nor should she punish herself. She could hold onto her pride and tell herself that she won - that she put Emily in her place - and go on with her life, settling for a series of Tammis instead of taking her shot with the real thing - the one and only true love of her life.

The choice wasn't hard.

"Stop the car!" Paige screamed urgently.

The driver glanced at her in the rear view mirror and then whipped his head around purposefully. "You going to throw up?" he asked, panicked. He took a peek at the road and steadied the steering wheel before returning his accusing gaze to Paige. He really hated these drunk-runs from Hawkeye Hank's. Every time that address showed up in the app, he swore to himself that it would be his last pick-up from there.

Paige waved her hand at him weakly. "No, no… I…"

"Don't you dare throw up on my brand new upholstery!"

"No, I'm fine," Paige assured him, trying to sound sober. "I… I caught it. I'm good."

That moment of panic by the driver was enough to knock Paige back into her senses. She wasn't going to show up drunk on Emily's doorstep, in the middle of the night. Emily deserved better than that.

All those years in high school, she wanted Emily to be the one who came to her. And that's exactly what Emily had done. She had made the effort. She had humbled herself. And, despite a total lack of encouragement from Paige, she had persisted.

Paige was going to go to Emily. That much was decided. But she wasn't going to stumble over there, drunk out of her mind, and babble some incoherent make-up speech. She was going to do it the right way. The only problem was, she didn't have a clue what the right way was. She only knew that she needed to figure it out, quickly.