Chapter 18
They touched down, and Chicot had all but chewed through her lip.
Elijah noticed immediately, his brow furrowing as he gave her his lip balm.
He didn’t pry when Chicot asked him not to, each of them slipping into their respective bathrooms again for a post-flight pee and handwashing session.
She understood now why the people that had flooded the bathroom she’d been in at the previous airport were so ornery. Being on a plane just did that to you.
She had her phone out as she waited by a kiosk in O’Hare Airport.
They’d decided to land in a larger city so they could have a direct flight each way, but this meant Ken had to drive them about an hour and a half back to the faire.
Worse off, it was Friday and they needed to be ready to perform in the morning.
Chicot took a few deep breaths, scrolling through the dating app inbox for a while before she closed it again.
She didn’t want to read the messages from Monty yet.
Elijah joined her, his eyes tired and sagging, but he smiled at Chicot. “We did it. We made it.”
“Not completely yet.” Chicot smiled. “Don’t jinx us.”
“You’re right.” Elijah said. They didn’t say anything else until they had their checked bag. When they were standing in the vestibule, the summer heat and humidity encroaching on them, Elijah nudged Chicot.
“You okay?” he asked. Chicot didn’t know where to start.
Elijah was so protective of Chicot at times, she didn’t to tarnish Monty’s image in his head before she knew what happened.
She just didn’t understand why Monty wouldn’t have just said something about it.
It felt like she was waiting to see how long it would take Chicot to realize who she was, which Chicot hated. So, she just nodded.
“Yeah, just tired and ready to be home.”
Elijah accepted that answer, squeezing her shoulder and waving Ken down when he arrived from the cell phone lot.
He asked them a million questions once they were in the car, and even if Chicot was still feeling bad, it did help to be excited about the audition.
She answered with Elijah, slowly coming around until she was deep in the conversation, pushing down all the thoughts of the person she’d been distracting herself with for weeks.
When they got back to the faire, they set their luggage in the RV since Ken offered to take them to The Final Frontier for dinner.
Chicot was tired all the way down to her bones, the marrow assuredly screaming for sleep just like the rest of her was, but she agreed.
She wanted fried cheese curds and good beer.
It was Friday, so the bar was loud and a band played on one side of the room, but Chicot relaxed the moment she could smell the stale beer and heard a country cover of “Pink Pony Club” by Chappell Roan playing.
This place was an extension of Albion, it felt like it was part of their home, and she had never been so happy to be pressed into a booth alongside Elijah, half asleep and drinking beer at nine at night.
Chicot got herself up to order more drinks somewhere around ten.
She, Ken, and Elijah had been joined by some of the other workers from the food stalls, a few of which Chicot could sort of recognize from Ken’s party.
Most of them, she wasn’t able to place and now she found herself thinking about Monty again.
She had been so sweet about Chicot not being able to recognize people easily.
Chicot felt her stomach flutter as she remembered the feeling she’d had in the back of Monty’s car, and it quickly turned to roiling.
Her hands hit the bar and she steadied herself, trying to straighten up so she could ask for another round, but her stomach hurt thinking about Monty secretly laughing that Chicot hadn’t realized she was from the dating app.
Though, maybe she wasn’t. Chicot knew it was possible that she was just being unreasonable.
But after years of people mocking her for this exact thing, it was hard for her to think otherwise.
At least she had an explanation now for how annoyed Monty had been with her at first. Chicot looked at her feet.
This wasn’t even Monty’s fault. If she could just recognize people when she saw them, then maybe she wouldn’t have put her and Monty in this situation.
She huffed, her face pinched as she tried to force herself to make eye contact with the bartender.
She came to her quickly, taking Chicot’s order and handing over the beers in quick succession after she popped the pull tabs open.
Chicot thanked her, handing over cash and telling her to keep the change as she gathered everything up.
She spun around, expecting the crowd to clear slightly so she could get away from the bar.
Instead, there was a woman with black hair and sharp blue eyes staring directly at her, a White Claw in hand. She frowned at Chicot immediately, shaking her head.
“God, why do you always look at me like you have no idea who I am?” Brewhilda’s voice was sharp, but some of her words came out slurred. She was drunk, more so than Chicot had ever seen her.
“I just wasn’t paying attention,” Chicot said. It wasn’t a lie. She had been zoned out, thinking about something else.
“You’re not better than me, bitch.” Brewhilda scoffed. “Quit acting like it.”
Chicot rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
“Anyway, where’s my sloppy seconds? She’s not with you?” Brewhilda asked. Chicot bristled, a bolt of anger running down her ribs and making her skin crawl. “You two have been out together every Friday for the past few weeks, so what? Trouble in paradise over there?”
“Shut up,” Chicot snapped. “And leave me the fuck alone. I never did anything to you.”
Brewhilda snorted. “Like fuck you haven’t. Took my spot on stage then locked down my usual fuck buddy in a relationship that’s gonna fall apart the moment y’all leave Albion.”
“We didn’t take your spot!” Chicot’s voice was loud enough that people were looking now. “For fuck’s sake, I saw your audition. You’re lucky you have a job at all.”
Brewhilda’s eyes narrowed, her teeth bared at Chicot as her hand rose.
She took a single swipe, her coffin-shaped nails scraping Chicot’s skin painfully.
Chicot stumbled backwards, her legs giving out from the shock as she hit the sticky dive-bar floor.
Beer cans dropped around her, froth and foam flowing all over her clothes and the tile.
“Don’t ever say anything like that again, you shitty little clown.
” Brewhilda raised her hand like she might hit Chicot once more, but someone caught her arm.
Brewhilda’s eyes were blown wide, black lipstick smudged as she tried to pull away from whoever had grabbed her.
Chicot just touched the marks on her cheek, looking up at her as she tried to figure out what had happened.
Before she could, some burly, bald man wearing a Harley Davidson jacket picked her up, setting her on her feet.
He was asking her questions, though Chicot couldn’t really hear them.
She wanted Monty to wrap her up in a hug.
The thought quickly soured worse than the beer would on the floor as she remembered the dating app profile, her smiling face and wet hair laughing at Chicot in her thoughts.
Chicot curled in on herself as Brewhilda was pulled away into the crowd, but the large biker man was leaning down to Chicot, trying to speak more gently to her.
The bartender was right beside her across the bar, asking the biker questions as Chicot’s eyes swam over the people in the room.
Her gaze met a jean jacket, basic and unfamiliar until she saw a bunny charm hanging out of the pocket.
Chicot felt something coming up, turning on her heel and dipping under the biker’s arm.
He tried to yell for her, the bartender doing the same, but Chicot pushed through the crowd to the bathroom.
She knelt on the dirty tile when the girls waiting let her pass, losing all the fried cheese curds and beer she’d been drinking that night.
Her ears rang when she finished throwing up, keeping her on the floor for another minute while she wondered if Monty had followed her or if that had even been Monty in the first place.
Chicot wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, and that left her shivering.
When she got out of the bathroom stall, there were three drunk women fawning over her, telling her that she’d be okay and just to rinse her mouth out.
No sign of a plush bunny charm or jean jacket.
If that had been Monty in the bar, she hadn’t followed.
One girl handed her one of those toothbrushes that was basically just a wipe that went over your finger.
She took it, the minty flavor washing out some of the sour beer that still lingered in her mouth.
“You okay, sugar?” The woman’s voice was low and soft, the muffled sound of the bar outside making it seem even quieter.
Chicot recognized her leopard print vest, a trans pride flag pin on the pocket next to a pin that proudly stated “Trans Women are Women” with an angry cat on it.
She was one of the bartenders, her arm gently going around Chicot’s shoulders as tears started to stream down Chicot’s face.
Chicot wanted the comfort she knew Monty would have brought before Chicot had seen those text messages.
Now, she wasn’t sure if it would even make her feel better to have Monty there.
“I’m having a bad night,” Chicot sobbed. The woman rubbed her arm, hugging her tightly against her chest as the gaggle of drunk girls all tried to make Chicot laugh. It didn’t really work, but the woman holding her squeezed Chicot tightly and let her cry.
“When you’re ready,” the bartender said. “I have your friend Elijah outside. He’s going to take you home. He came running for you.”