Christmas at Rock Bottom
Rika brought her old Toyota to a stop in front of the venue and reached over to open the door on the passenger’s side. “Do you need any help, Naomi?”
“No thanks… Watch the head, Lilly!” Naomi half-led, half-dropped the barely conscious Lilly into the passenger seat.
Lilly raised her head slightly. “Where’re we goin? ‘mething to drink?” She mumbled almost unintelligibly.
“Sure, Lilly, we’re going to a nice quiet place to drink something.”
Naomi rolled her eyes. “Are you certain you’re going to be okay on your own? I could…”
“Yes, I’m certain. We can’t both leave, you know. You’re going to have your hands full, too.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ll try to be back by ten or so.”
Naomi glanced over her shoulder to see Natsume approach. “Nako is on the phone with her sister. She also sent you the contact info so you can text her where you’re going .”
Rika pulled out her phone. “Got it.” She entered an address and hit send.
“She also told me to thank you again and that she’d make it up to you somehow and that Lilly would not be sick all over your car…” Natsume’s sceptical gaze came to rest on Lilly. “Probably.”
“Tell her not to worry and to enjoy the evening. If Lilly has an accident in here, I’ll just bill her for some new upholstery,” she laughed.“Family’s loaded… Hand me the belt please?” She reached over to take the buckle from Naomi’s hand and secured it. “Anyway, I’ll be on my way. See you later!”
***
Exhausted, Rika sat down on the armchair. Luckily she’d found a parking space close by, but it had taken longer than expected to get Lilly out of the car and through the double door at the entrance.
She put three fingers on her throat to check her pulse – a bit faster than normal but nothing problematic. Relieved, she let herself fall back into the cushions and glanced over at Lilly - who was slumped forward over the table - before waving at the waitress and placing her order.
***
Just a few minutes later the door-chime rang again, and a tall, blonde woman entered. She glanced around and then headed straight to their table and sat down in an empty armchair.
“Hey, you must be Rika. I’m Akira. Thanks for looking out for my sister,” she waved to the waitress. “One iced coffee for me, please!”
Rika glanced out of the window. A light snow had started to fall. “Isn’t it a bit cold for iced coffee?”
“Only outside, right? In here it’s nice and toasty. Nice place by the way,” she added gesturing at the dozen or so cats lazing around the room. “Good thing we don’t have allergies.”
Rika shrugged. “It’s close. It’s warm. And at this point I couldn’t care any less about her allergies.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Well, bad enough that she had to go. And by this point Hisao and I were about the only ones who could safely drive, and obviously he couldn’t leave.”
“You don’t drink at all? Not even on this occasion?”
“No. Given the meds I have to take, I’d probably be dead long before I reached the condition she’s in now.”
Akira’s grin vanished for a second. “That must suck.”
“On the one hand I don’t know what it’s even like, so I don’t know what I’m missing – on the other hand there are certainly times when I wish I had an easy way out.” Now it was Rika’s time to grin mischievously. “On the Gripping Hand, your sister just provided a powerful disincentive.”
Lilly stirred slightly. “Moootieees, tehehehe,” she giggled, still half-asleep.
Rika shook her head with a wry smile. “I don’t know what I should be more surprised about – that she knows the book or that she’s conscious enough to react at all.”
The waitress approached the table with the orders. “One hot chocolate, one iced coffee and one house special. Can I bring you anything else?”
“No thank you,” Akira answered, suspiciously eyeing the champagne glass in front of Lilly. After the waitress had left, she looked at Rika questioningly. “What is that?”
“Oh, just something I ordered specially for her: raw egg, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper – and a dash of cream, so I can tell her it’s a White Christmas.”
Akira grimaced. “You’re evil… What did she do to deserve this?”
“You mean besides getting clingy with the groom at his own wedding?” Rika started carefully sipping her chocolate.
“Ouch.” Akira contemplated what to say next, while Lilly began snoring silently. “You know, leaving Hisao is something she has regretted for the last four years. Isn’t there anything you wish you had done differently?”
“Plenty of things. Sometimes I even wish I’d made a move on Hisao before Nako did. But I know it’s better this way. I know he and Nako are perfect together, and that’s why I’m here today as his best man, and not drunk at the wedding reception telling all the guests how perfect we were together.”
“Double Ouch… I guess Lilly will have some apologizing to do tomorrow.”
“I don’t know… It might be better if she didn’t show her face around Nako for a while… It would probably be okay if you said hello sometime. She was looking forward to seeing you again, and it looks as if that won’t be happening tonight.”
Akira glanced at Lilly’s still snoring figure. “What about you? Aren’t we keeping you from the reception right now?”
“Nah. Naomi and I planned this thing together, and she will just have Natsume sub in for me for an hour or two. We planned for that anyway in case I needed a break somewhere along the line. I can’t keep running around all evening like that.”
“Yeah, you mentioned your meds…”
“It’s okay to ask about it. In fact I try to make sure as many people know about it as possible just in case something happens. Since you already know Hisao, I’ll keep it short. I have something similar. Not the same, but close enough for non-doctors.” A cat jumped on Rika’s lap, and she started slowly stroking it as she continued. “In fact that’s how we met. After Lilly was gone, he was pretty down, but Nako got him to start out a training regime in the gym. The nurse scheduled us to always be in there together so we could look out for one another… We still do.”
Rika finished off her chocolate and sat up with a sigh, careful not to scare the cat on her lap. “Except I messed up this time. I should have protested more when I learned that Nako wanted to invite her groom’s Ex…”
“Hey don’t beat yourself up about that. Even I didn’t know she’d react this way, and I’ve known her all her life. In fact, I should feel guilty that I wasn’t there, but I haven’t been back to Japan in four years, and there were some friends I wanted to catch up with, so I thought coming fashionably late wouldn’t hurt.”
“It’s okay.” She glanced at her watch. “Anyway, I’d best make my way back soon, before the snow starts falling any harder.” She grabbed the cat and gently put it down on the ground. “You know the bill’s on you, right?”
“Certainly. Least I can do. Please tell Hanako I’m sorry and that I’ll be around sometime tomorrow afternoon to say hello and give her my present…” She buried her face in her hands.” That reminds me, I probably should get a new one. I don’t think those two bottles of Scottish Whiskey would go over well…”
***
Prompt:
And now for some author’s notes. Feel free to skip if you’re not interested.”Brythain” wrote:Akira, Lilly, and Rika walk into a drinking establishment and each has a different drink. The phrase 'White Christmas' is involved. It needn't be snowy.
So, the first thing I knew was this wouldn’t be a story about a typical drinking establishment like Akira would usually frequent. At the opposite end of the spectrum were a maid- or a cat café, so I decided on the latter.
Next how to get those three together. In all but Lilly’s own route she would be gone to Scotland, so there needed to be a reason for her and Akira to come back to Japan and meet Rika. Then a reason why they would not be at the place of that occasion.
From there it was pretty straightforward. I found that Rika and Akira had surprisingly good chemistry together.
I decided to be a bit more experimental with this one. It’s not the usual first person, present tense story; instead I decided to go with limited omniscience, past tense.
Also, I decided to use descriptions and inner monologue very sparingly, instead revealing the backstory piece by piece with the dialogue.
)
