Chapter Text
2004
“So, you kind of came out of nowhere during the 2000 Summer Olympics.”
Natalie fights the urge to roll her eyes, but she’s never been good at multi-tasking, so she can’t be bothered to bite her tongue too when she replies. “I guess, if you know nothing about the running world.”
Next to her, Jackie clears her throat. When Natalie turns to look at her, Jackie glares at her. Natalie turns back towards Shauna.
No one else’s coach invites themselves to these kind of interviews. A press conference, sure, but an interview with the New York Times, no. It's a simple sit down chat. Natalie has time to answer the questions and ask for things to be off the record. It's the exact opposite of a live interview or being stuck in a room with a dozen journalists, flashing cameras going off every second.
She doesn't need Jackie's help, and more importantly, she doesn't need her input here. She’s meant to tell Nat how far and fast to run and what to eat. She doesn’t have any room to tell Nat how to answer a question in an interview, especially when it’s a stupid question.
Ever since they broke up, it's been difficult to find the perfect middle ground. Natalie knows Jackie is just trying to help, she's just doing what she's used to, but it's not necessary anymore.
“I was one of the best in my distances at Princeton. Lots of people thought I could make it to the Olympics,” Natalie continues.
“Right, but you weren’t established yet,” Shauna rebuts.
“I was pretty established for someone in college.”
“So, what’s the question here?” Jackie cuts in. Now it’s Nat’s turn to glare at her.
“This is my interview.”
“Yeah, I know, just — were you going to ask something?” Jackie asks Shauna.
“Yes,“ Shauna sighs, looking down at her notepad. “Do you feel more pressure this time around? Now that the expectations are higher after your performance at the last Olympics and World Championships.”
“Not really,” Natalie says with a shrug, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms.
“Care to elaborate?”
Ever since she qualified for her first Olympics, Natalie has always hated this part of the job. Sharing things about herself, having to put on a smile and socialize with people she would never otherwise hang out with. Without this part, though, she would still be taking freelance work from Mari to be able to pay her rent.
It was only after her success at the World Championships last year that anyone started to pay her any real attention. She became one of the United States’ best bets at getting gold in any track and field competitions in Athens this year, so naturally sponsors suddenly became interested in her too. To make them happy, though, she has to play her part, instead of keeping her head down and focusing on running, the way that she’d prefer.
The simple truth is that Natalie feels no more pressure now than she did in college. The problem is that pressure has always felt like the weight of the world on her shoulders. It’s her own fault, she knows, and no one else’s. Aside from a brief moment in her life which she tries not to think about often, she’s always felt a suffocating competitiveness. After that respite passed, her competitive streak returned tenfold. She likes to win, because if she doesn’t win, what’s the point?
Whether the American people or George W. Bush himself suddenly care about her winning now doesn’t change the amount of pressure she feels. She’s not trying to win for them, she’s trying to win for herself.
But she can’t exactly say that to the New York Times. The CEOs at Adidas and Gatorade wouldn't be happy reading that in the newspaper tomorrow morning.
“I want to win just as badly as I wanted to win in college. That hasn’t changed.”
In the corner of her eye, she can see Jackie nodding her head in approval for once.
“Okay,” Shauna says, a reluctant smile on her lips. “Speaking of college, you’ll have a familiar face with you at this year’s games. Charlotte Matthews qualified for both your distances last month. Are you excited to be running next to her for the first time since Princeton?”
Nat’s jaw clenches. Her arms crossed over her chest suddenly feel more like a protective hug, but her nails dig into the skin of her arms as a painful reminder to herself to stay present. She can feel Jackie’s eyes on her still. She doesn’t think they ever left, but now there’s a weight to Jackie’s stare that wasn’t there before, a silent question of whether Nat wants her help or not.
For a moment, Natalie wonders if Jackie knew this question was going to come up. She brushes the thought off, though, because of course this question was going to come up. Worse, it's going to continue to be brought up until the Olympics begin.
She just needs a moment to gather herself before she answers. Across from her, Shauna stares in wait, tapping her pen against the edge of her notebook. Instead of returning her gaze, Nat focuses on the notebook, focuses on her breathing, tries to loosen the knot that's formed in her throat, tries to untie the twist in her tongue. She fights the urge to bite one of her nails, instead digging them deeper into her biceps.
When she finally looks away from Shauna’s notebook she’s been staring a hole into, she’s not sure how much time has passed since the question was asked. Nat blinks a few times and then looks up in a way she hopes appears casual despite how long it's taken her to answer.
“Yeah, I’m super excited.”
“She appeared uncomfortable at the mention of Matthews, though she refused to elaborate when questioned. It seems safe to assume Scatorccio is not excited to see her collegiate rival again, despite what she has said.”
The newspaper goes slack in Jackie's hands as she finishes reading, her eyes moving to watch Nat pace across the apartment.
Nat knows there's more to the article, but Jackie knows she doesn't want to hear it.
There's a long, pregnant pause, any hope of speaking lost by what feels like an invisible hand around Nat's throat. When she finally manages to speak, it all comes out in a rush of loud, accented vomit.
“What the fuck, Jackie?!”
When Nat finally stops and looks at her, she finds Jackie looking back at her with impossibly wider eyes than usual. Nat stares back at her, eyebrows raised in question.
“I thought you said —” she was a friend, Nat wants to say but can't. Jackie waits like always, until Nat diverts and says instead, “you're friends with her.”
“I mean, we were close in high school together,” Jackie stumbles over her words.
“Did you fuck her?” Nat can’t help but ask. The thought has been on her mind since the interview. It was odd enough how Jackie insisted on being present during it. What was even more odd were the constant looks she sent Shauna’s way, the way their handshake lingered when they first arrived, how Jackie insisted Shauna continue with exclusive follow up interviews throughout the games.
Nat knows what sexual interest looks like on Jackie, considering she'd been on the receiving end of it for some three years or so.
“No!” Jackie answers too quickly. When Nat’s eyes narrow she continues. “I mean, in high school, yes. Not recently, though.”
“I wouldn’t care, if it was recent,” Nat shrugs. “You don’t owe me anything. I just thought she’d have been a little nicer to me if you guys were sleeping together.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I called her when I first saw the article. She said she couldn’t let her personal life get in the way of her integrity as a journalist.”
“Integrity?” Nat laughs. “Where’s the integrity in making assumptions about me? This is like, the biggest fucking newspaper in America, not fucking Teen Vogue or something! Where does she get off writing this shit about me?”
“It was bound to come up in some of these interviews, whether it’s with someone we know or not.”
It being Charlotte Matthews.
Nat thought she’d been mad because it was the New York Times, which meant Lottie was probably bound to read it. But Jackie had a point. Every interview going forward would probably mention her.
Interviews were the least of Nat's worries in reality. Soon enough, she would have to see Lottie.
Though, it wouldn’t be the first time since Princeton, of course.
Shauna Shipman, in all her journalistic professionalism, hadn’t been right about that.
Aside from the Olympic qualifiers, she and Lottie had shared the same track just a year ago, when Lottie had beat Nat out for bronze in the 3000 meter race at the Indoor World Championships. It wasn’t even Nat’s primary distance. It wasn’t even a distance they raced at the Olympics. Yet thinking about it now, Nat finds herself biting the inside of her cheek in a mix of frustration and bitter resentment.
Even still, those races had been different than the Olympics. There was obviously more weight to the Olympics, but it was also a matter of time. Their two main events, almost a week apart, meant a week of waiting in Athens, unable to run home until they were both over and done with. It meant a week of doing everything to avoid Lottie in the athletes' village, which without even seeing it, suddenly felt much too small for Nat.
The stress of it all is starting to give her a headache. Maybe it had something to do with how hard she'd been clenching her jaw for who knows how long now.
Jackie is in front of her, and Nat doesn’t remember her standing up and walking over. Her arms wrap around Nat’s waist, pulling her into a hug. Nat’s forehead falls to rest on Jackie’s shoulder, and Jackie’s kisses the side of her head.
“It’s going to be okay.”
Nat doesn’t believe her for a second.
1999
Natalie has been running her whole life.
If people wanted to get technical, she’s only been running competitively for seven years or so, but in her own eyes it has been her whole life. She had been running for as long as she could remember when Coach Ben coerced her into joining the Wiskayok Track and Cross Country team, promising it would be beneficial.
Of course she knew running was beneficial, that's why she did it in the first place. It was beneficial to get away from her trailer in a moments notice, and it was beneficial to run from house parties when the cops arrived.
Nat learned just how beneficial running was when it failed her. Or really, she failed herself.
Another house party, another neighbor calling the cops as soon as it hit midnight.
If Nat had just been ten seconds faster she would have disappeared into the woods without a problem. She had already outrun three of those pigs, leaving them a hundred yards back closer to the house, hands on their knees while they tried to catch their breath.
It really wasn’t fair. Bringing a car to a footrace? There should be rules against it.
She felt targeted, honestly, and she said as much the whole way to the station. One of them saw Joseph Scatorccio’s kid in the crowd and they put half the Wiskayok police force in grabbing her over anyone else.
So what if they were right to assume she had some weed on her?
Thank God her dad had already been dead for a few months and didn’t have to pick her up from the station. If he’d been alive, he’d be picking her up from the station and dropping her off at the morgue.
Instead she got to sit in an interrogation room for six hours while her mom slept through all the phone calls from the police. Her mom not being present didn’t stop them from trying to find out where she bought her weed from, but she kept her mouth shut.
When it was all said and done, she had two options, thanks to Ben Scott's little brother, Officer Rick Scott of the Wiskayok Police Department.
Juvie and drug counseling, or join the Wiskayok Track and Cross Country team (and still go to drug counseling).
“How about instead of the drug counseling I join the swim team too?” she’d joked.
No one had laughed but her.
It was just supposed to be till the end of freshman year.
But Natalie had liked it.
Wanted to chug a bottle of vodka? Go for a run. Wanted to punch a hole in the wall? Go for a run. Wanted to scream at Vera till she lost her voice? Go for a fucking run.
She liked to run fast enough that she couldn't think about whatever was causing her anger or anxiety. There was no room left in her brain to think about anything else besides breathe.
But it’s not like she didn’t do both things sometimes, yet by the end of freshman year, Nat was much more on the straight and narrow than she thought she’d ever be.
And now somehow, seven years later, she is two semesters away from graduating from Princeton.
And somehow, after seven years of running competitively, Nat has still never learned to stretch properly.
Most days weren't so bad, since the team usually did their stretches together, forcing Nat to join in and follow their lead. Thanks to her shift at the bar the night prior, she'd slept through her alarm and barely made it to practice in time for the warm up mile around the track. Somewhere between the eighth or ninth repeat on the 400m Coach assigned them, Nat's hamstring locked up till all she could do was hobble on one leg onto the grass.
Left leg in the air, Nat now lays on her back in the grass that surrounded the inside of the track. Taissa's hands are wrapped around her ankle, her body pushing Nat's leg back till it burns. As much as it burns, it feels good, like a hot shower after a run, like relief, or like finally stretching properly after straining your hamstring.
"You know if you just stretched before, this wouldn't have happened?" Taissa lectures.
Nat rolls her eyes even though she knows Taissa pointing out the obvious is just her way of showing concern.
It's not like she is seriously injured anyway. Sure, Nat could barely walk the last twenty meters of her last lap, but she can already feel from the way her muscles are loosening in her hamstring that she'll be fine by tomorrow.
"Eight hundreds, you're up!" Coach Bill calls. “That’s you, Turner!”
Taissa drops Nat's leg like dead weight and jogs to the starting line.
Their first meet of the school year is in two weeks. To end practice, Coach is having them each run their assigned distances against one another. Nat hopes to have her hamstring in shape before her turn comes around.
She starts to lean forward to stretch on her own when a shadow appears above her, taking Taissa's place. Before Nat can say much about it, Lottie props her leg back up. Standing over her, Lottie's big, stupid head keeps the sun out of Nat's eyes, which in turn keeps the rays of light from interfering with Nat's view of Lottie's chest in nothing but a sports bra. Nat looks away, watching sideways as Tai sprints from the starting line at Coach Bill's whistle.
It wasn't like it was anything revolutionary to Nat. For the last three years, she's had to watch Lottie run around in the shortest shorts and the tightest tops, each article of which probably cost more than Nat's entire wardrobe combined. Yeah, she had the longest legs of anyone on the team, and she had this dip down the middle of her stomach that teased at a hint of abs — whatever, after seeing her like this close to a thousand times, it was boring. Watching people run in circles was much more entertaining.
What kind of asshole only wears a sports bra to run in New Jersey during the fall, anyway?
"You're gonna tear something one of these days," Lottie says.
"Eh, I'll just run it off like I did the shin splints."
Lottie pushes more of her weight against Nat’s leg. A searing burn shoots up her hamstring, causing Nat to let out an embarrassing moan. She looks back towards Lottie with a glare.
“Too much?”
“Trying to take me out for the season, Matthews?”
“You’re so dramatic.”
She dials her weight back, though, and one of Lottie’s hands remains on Nat’s calf while the other moves down to her hamstring. With surprising gentleness, she works the muscle with her fingers. Nat bites her lip and looks away again. It feels good, but she isn’t about to admit that to Lottie.
"You know shin splints isn't even a real injury?” Lottie continues. “It's just an umbrella term for a pain in your shin, but it could be anything causing it."
"Wow, thanks for enlightening me," Nat says. "Where'd you learn that? Your private physical therapist?"
"She's a physiotherapist, not a physical therapist," Lottie scoffs and drops Nat's leg.
"There's a difference?" Nat sits up and moves into a half butterfly pose to continue stretching on her own.
"Yeah, shouldn't expect you to know that, though, huh?"
"There's not a difference," Jackie says through heavy breathes as she walks over from the track. Her bangs cling to her forehead with fresh sweat. "They're the same thing."
Nat smirks.
"No, they're not. Physical focuses on exercise, physio focuses on stretching and massage."
"In the medical world, there's no difference," Jackie says matter-of-factly. Her dad is a sports doctor, after all.
A triumphant bark of a laugh escapes Nat's lips. "You just have a masseuse, Matthews. God, as if you couldn't get any worse."
"She's not a masseuse." Lottie crosses her arms over her chest, covering the view of her sports bra.
Taissa walks back over to their circle, sucking down water from her bottle like a freshly caught fish just returned to the ocean.
“Who’s not a masseuse?”
“Lottie’s physical therapist,” Nat says, “is actually just a masseuse.”
“She’s a physiotherapist,” Lottie sighs.
Coach Bill’s whistle shrills across the field. “Fifteen hundreds, line up!”
Standing up, Nat shakes her left leg out. It is still a little tight, but she’ll be fine for a few laps. Maybe she’ll scratch the three miles she was planning to run after classes tonight.
Across from her, Lottie walks backwards towards the starting line, her eyes never leaving Nat’s.
“You sure you shouldn’t sit this one out?”
“You wish I would,” Nat says.
Lottie shrugs. “Your funeral.”
Ever since freshman year, Lottie and Natalie had been placed in the same distances — the 1500m, 3000m, and 5000m. Freshman year passed by without many issues. Some might even say Lottie and Natalie liked each other. They ran in the same circles, naturally, playing the same sport, sharing most of the same friends.
It was impossible to avoid each other and it was easier to be friendly. It wasn't to say they weren't friendly anymore though, but their sarcastic bites at each other held more venom than either of them were willing to admit. Something deeper than friendly competition weighed down on both of them.
It was all fun and games, funny quips and back and forths, until they stepped on the starting line. Or more importantly, when they crossed the finish line. After that point, it was no longer fun and games to whoever finished behind the other.
When they got back from summer vacation after that first year at Princeton, Lottie was different. She was more serious, more critical, and more closed off.
Beyond that, Nat had always had her reservations about Lottie anyway. As much fun as she was to be around in freshman year, Nat found herself rolling her eyes all year long when she was in Lottie's presence. From the expensive clothes and shoes, to the bougie supplements and powders Lottie swore by, she is everything Nat isn't.
It was fun to mock her about it, though. Nat would wave a pack of Skittles in her face after she'd outrun Lottie at meets — who needs magnesium pills and energy gels when candy is cheaper anyway? Lottie would laugh and shrug it off during freshman year, before lecturing Nat on the poison that was red-40 and how gels were a worthy investment for competitive athletes like them. But sophomore year came, and Lottie stopped laughing when Nat beat her, even in practice.
Outside of a few verbal disputes, they never outright fought. But Nat got used to Lottie giving her the silent treatment for a few days after meets, a cold shoulder and a lingering glare. So, Nat got just as good at giving it right back when Lottie beat her.
Maybe that's just how it is meant to be with the people in your distances, even if they went to the same school. When it comes down to it, unless you are running relay, track is an individual sport. Fuck the school and their points. What's important is which of them ended up with a medal and which of them didn’t. Nat supposes if Taissa or Jackie ran in her distances, they might not be as close as they are.
The worst part about her rivalry with Lottie is that Nat can't help but respect her, at least a little bit. For all her unnecessary matching outfits and her holier-than-thou mentality on self-care and wellness, Lottie worked hard. In all their years at Princeton, Lottie was the only other girl who ever offered Nat any real competition. As much as Nat resents her, there's a big part of her that feels fueled by her rivalry with Lottie. Despite the way Lottie treats her for days after losing, it's exactly the weird satisfaction Nat gets from these reactions which makes her so much more determined to win.
Lottie hating her guts only proves to Nat that Lottie respects her just as much, despite her seeming judgement towards Nat for her choice in fueling or her lack of stretching. They're equals on the track, even if they don't look it at the starting line.
As Nat walks up to the starting line, Coach Bill gives her a once over. "You're up for it, Scatorccio?"
"Always, Coach."
It isn't even four full laps. Nat could do it in her sleep.
She lines up, nearly elbow-to-elbow with Lottie.
Lottie seems to think all her money reserved her the prime position on the track too.
Coach's whistle blows, and Nat knows as soon as she takes her first stride that her hamstring is still too tight. Not fucked, but too tight — too tight to keep up with Lottie's stupid long legs.
Despite the strain on her hamstring, despite knowing she should hold back and save it for the meet in two weeks, Nat pushes through for the first lap. They pass Coach, and Nat can feel Lottie looking over at her. Nat is falling behind.
Shoulder to shoulder only a moment before, Lottie is somehow a foot in front of her now. She doesn't need to look in the corner of her eye to see Lottie looking at her this time. Lottie has to look over her shoulder to see her instead.
Nat's form disintegrates like a crumbling sandcastle at high tide. She pushes all her weight forward with her right side, jaw clenched through the pain.
The other girls start to pass her too. They circle around for the second time, and Nat stutters to a pathetic stop. Lottie looks back one more time and keeps running, several feet between her and the next girl. There is no doubt who would win it, even with two laps to go.
"Go stretch that hamstring out and take the afternoon off, Scatorccio," Coach Bill says.
Head lowered, she limps into the locker room and tries to enjoy having the showers to herself for once.
Disappointment still clings to her despite her best attempts to wash it down the shower drain.
Although Lottie might argue otherwise, Natalie has changed a lot since freshman year. Sure, she doesn’t get enough sleep, and she still hasn’t cut out processed food from her diet. But she takes her easy runs a little easier now, and she eats every carb in sight and drinks water all day long just like Coach tells her to. When she manages to arrive to practice on time, which was most of the time, she even stretches with everyone else and sometimes she stretches before her solo runs too.
It was just an off day, but the meet next weekend is the first of the season — her last season — and she doesn’t want to fuck it up. She has no expectations to go to the Olympics or anything, that is reserved for people like Taissa and Lottie, but she wanted to end her time at Princeton on a high, if she can.
Taking her time in the shower to wallow in self-pity means everyone is back in the locker room by the time she gets out.
She stands in front of her locker to finish changing and feels Lottie’s eyes on her two lockers down. When the weight of her gaze doesn't go away, Nat turns towards her with a glare.
Lottie’s eyes dart down her body quickly, like she’s been caught with her hand in the cookie jar, and they land somewhere around Nat’s legs.
Before Nat can call her out for staring, Lottie says, “How’s your hamstring?”
“Great,” Nat says with an overly sweet smile.
“Great,” Lottie parrots.
Without waiting for Lottie to offer some remedy in her usual condescending tone, Nat limps out of the locker room. She has three classes today and still has to find time to have breakfast before her first one starts.
Despite its rundown nature and the local clientele which usually frequents the bar, business has certainly seen an uptick in the first few weeks of classes, especially on the weekends. The liquor is cheap, so even though it's juke box might be full of outdated music and one of the pool tables has a slight lean, when classes roll around, Princeton students come in droves to pre-game before heading to the more well equipped bars and clubs in town. By midnight, though, it's mostly locals left.
Without a meet this weekend, Nat finds herself behind the bar on Friday night. She tries to work at least one day on the weekend every week, usually Sundays, but with some meets being too far to come back from in the same day, Nat picks up extra days whenever her school and track schedule will allow her to. It's still early enough in the semester that she's yet to be buried underneath a mountain of homework and projects, so here she is.
Her feet and calves hurt from a week of increased mileage, coupled with the time she spends running across campus, which she's still getting used to again. Now, after practice on Thursday, her hamstring is sore too.
She bounces on her soles, rolling her ankles around and shifting where the majority of her weight falls on every few seconds in a vain attempt to ease some of the aching in her feet.
Over the sound of some seventies rock song Nat can't remember the name of, despite hearing it played by her father hundreds of times, Nat hears the door open.
It's less the door being opened that draws her attention, as it is the clacking of a dozen pairs of heels storming through it.
Nat turns her head to see, a frown immediately falling on her face at the sight.
A dozen or so obvious sorority girls stumble in, each of them already halfway to being blackout from the looks of it.
Towering over the rest of them in her own heels is none other than Lottie Matthews.
Eventually, miraculously, the group finds their way to a booth without tripping over their own feet. Nat’s eyes never quite leave them, even as she pours another drink for one of the locals sitting at the bar. As the night had wound down for everyone else, her coworker had clocked out, leaving her as the one to close up. She can’t pass it off to anyone else when Lottie and a friend wobble over to the bar to order.
Her friend is halfway through slurring out her request for a round of shots when Lottie yells out her name, like her vision is so gone she didn’t recognize Nat until she was three feet away from her.
“I didn’t know you worked here!” Lottie yells, far too loud for how shitty the speakers are.
“Yes, you did.”
“No, you've only ever said a bar.”
Nat has definitely said which bar, but of course Lottie never actually listens to a word anyone else says.
“You two know each other?” The friend asks. They both ignore her.
“What are you doing here?” Nat asks.
“Drinking,” Lottie says with a giggle.
“Yeah, but why here? Doesn’t your sorority have their own bar in that mansion of theirs?”
“It’s not a sorority, it’s an —"
“Eating club, I know. Same difference. You didn’t answer my question.”
Jackie and Lottie had joined the Cap and Gown Club in their sophomore year. It was all they would talk about in the locker room for weeks. Nat didn't think it could get much worse, but she was proven wrong last November, when Jackie and Lottie were elected President and Treasurer of the club, respectively. They ended up talking about that for what seemed like the remainder of junior year.
“We’re doing a bar crawl,” Lottie answers.
“Instead of a party?”
“That’s tomorrow. You should come. All students are welcome to this one.”
“I’m good, I have work,” Nat lies. As if she would want to spend one of her nights off with these people anyway. “Where’s Jackie then?” She looks over Lottie’s shoulder at the booth they’ve colonized, not recognizing any of the faces sitting at it.
“Planning the party. You know how she gets.”
Nat nods. "So, uh, what are you guys getting?"
"Shots of vodka — thirteen," the other girl says.
"Tequila," Lottie corrects. They share a long look before the other girl gives in. Lottie, the winner of their silent argument, slides her card across the counter.
"Tequila."
"Any preference?"
Lottie shakes her head, clearly too far gone to care about the taste of her drinks anymore.
"You can go sit," Nat says. "I'll bring it over."
Lottie's friend walks away, but Lottie remains, half her body leaning against the bar languidly.
"You can go," Nat says again as she places the shot glasses on a tray.
"It's a lot of shots," Lottie slurs. "You look like you might need a hand."
"I'm good," Nat says. "You'd just drop them all."
Lottie shakes her head. "No, I'm very athletic... very dexterous."
Nat rolls her eyes. "Not right now."
As soon as Nat has the shots poured, Lottie picks one of them up off the tray and knocks it back like it's water. Clearly her taste buds have been numbed beyond recognition sometime earlier in the night.
"You should do one," Lottie says.
Nat actually laughs at that. "I'm working."
"So? Doesn't every bartender drink on the job?"
"Not this one."
"What time do you get off?"
"I'm closing."
Lottie frowns at the statement. If she really thinks Nat would ever want to join her sorority friends crawling from bar to bar until sunrise, then she's much more far gone than Nat realized. She should probably cut them all off sooner rather than later.
Nat walks out from behind the bar with the tray of shots. Lottie trails behind her over to the booth. Once she sets the tray down on the table, she feels an arm wrap around her shoulder and smells Lottie's liquor soaked breath in her face.
"I'm going to get you to do a shot with me before I leave," she slurs.
"Sure, Lottie," Nat says.
With one hand, she lifts Lottie's arm up off her shoulder by the wrist. It drops like a sack of bricks to Lottie's side as soon as Nat lets it go.
The girls attack the round of shots, reminding Nat of those evil gremlins eating chicken wings after midnight. The glasses are all empty in a second, and just like that, they're all up out of their seats and wreaking havoc on the bar. It's not like they can do a lot of damage in a boring dive bar past it's peak hours, but there's enough of them to put on a show for the unfortunate few who still remain in the bar.
They're the loudest in the bar by a mile, hooting and giggling as they crowd around the juke box, picking out a litany of bad songs before they move to more open space, a makeshift dance floor in the middle of the room, and act like they're in a nightclub in the city instead of a hole-in-the-wall bar in Princeton, New Jersey. Slowly but surely, the people who just wanted one last quiet drink for the night begin to disperse until Lottie and her friends are damn near the last ones left.
The only good thing to come out of the group is their choice in drink. Nat serves them a couple more rounds of tequila shots and a few of them order a couple of martinis. It could be worse in that regard. Even earlier that night, Nat had to deal with her fair share of college kids, asking for some dumb layered shooters, only to ask for another round five seconds after knocking the first ones back. Besides the noise, Lottie's friends aren't that bad. The only other downside is Lottie's continued insistence that Nat have a drink with her every time she orders her own drink.
Of course, Nat refuses each time.
Then, all at once, the girls disappear, barreling through the front door in the same manner in which they arrived, the clacking of their unsteady heels announcing their departure. Nat doesn't watch as they leave, the sound evidence enough. She's too busy trying to catch up on cleaning the bar down before they close.
It's only at the sound of a nearby bar stool scraping across the floor that Nat lifts her head.
Lottie sits in the stool directly in front of her. Her head is barely held upright, both arms resting on the counter in front of her. Nat sighs, having hoped she was free of Lottie for the rest of the night.
"Where did your friends go?"
"Another bar."
Nat's eyes flit over to the clock on the wall — 1:32AM. She nods her head, not sure whether she should be impressed or concerned.
Despite the fact that a part of her is relieved Lottie isn't continuing with her friends on their expedition towards alcohol poisoning, she has to ask, "Why didn't you go with them?"
"I want to do a shot with you," Lottie says, words barely intelligible, but Nat has a knack for understanding this type of speech by now.
"You've had enough, Lottie." Nat pours her a tall glass of water and puts it on the bar in front of her. "Drink that."
"If I drink it, you — you'll have a shot?"
Nat sighs and then finally shrugs. "Sure."
There's no way she's actually going to drink with Lottie, but it's not the first time Nat has had to deal with an insistent customer.
Lottie chugs the glass like it's the end of a long run, and yeah, she's definitely going to throw that up pretty soon, but she did do what Nat asked her.
"Let me get the good stuff," Nat tells her.
She walks away from Lottie's side of the bar, grabbing two rocks glasses for the ease of carrying them back. Setting them down, she looks back at Lottie, who remains drunkenly oblivious, head in one of her hands and eyes unfocused. She turns back around and in one of the glasses she pours water, while in the other she really does pour a shot of the nicer tequila they bother to stock in this dive. It's not like Lottie will be able to appreciate it anyway, but Nat feels a little less bad about playing her this way.
A wide smile spreads across Lottie's face as soon as she sees Nat coming back with the glasses. She passes the one with the tequila in it to Lottie, who raises the glass up to toast her.
"Cheers," she mumbles. Without waiting for Nat's participation, she clinks her glass against Nat's and then knocks her's back in one gulp.
"Um, for what?" Nat asks before she takes a sip.
"Mmm," Lottie starts, thinking, "the new season."
"Right," Nat says. She grabs a rag and starts wiping down the nearby counter space. There's no one else left sitting at the bar but Lottie now. In twenty minutes, she'll be able to kick out the last handful of patrons still sitting around and sipping on their last drinks. Out of sheer boredom, trying to make the minutes tick by faster, she continues. "I didn't think you drank like this, with running and all."
Most people assumed Nat drank a lot because of her job, as well as how she dressed. People who knew her from high school were even worse with their assumptions, even though she would be a graduate of Princeton in less than a year. All because of the choices she made in freshman year of high school, bordering on sophomore year. But the truth was she barely drank now. Running almost everyday made that difficult. She never liked to drink when she had to run the next day, but even when she knew she had the following day off, she was usually too tired from the events of the current day to drink.
It was a domino effect and there proved to only be a few times a year, when there were breaks in Nat's running routine, where she felt like she could let go. Most of the other girls on the team seemed to feel the same way, though it wasn't uncommon for them to go out after a meet every once in a while — Lottie among them, for all her preaching. Nat had only gone with them a couple of other times, and she never saw Lottie drink this much before.
"I don't," Lottie answers eventually. She runs a hand over her face like it might wake her up. "Last week and all. Of freedom. I'll be good... after this weekend."
"You know, you always have your freedom, Lottie, year round. You can drink all season if you want. Make it easy on me."
Lottie laughs harder than she should. "I can't," she's interrupted by a hiccup, "make it easy on you." She seems to sober then, eyes falling down to the bar, a finger landing on her empty glass and tracing the rim. "Anyways, I'm not really free."
"What do you mean?"
"You — you wouldn't get it."
"Why not?"
"You just like to win," Lottie says. "Right? No one expects anything of you. You just want it for yourself."
Nat shakes her head, trying not to think too deeply into Lottie's ramblings. "Everyone likes to win."
“Not like me,” she says, then quietly, she adds, “Knew you wouldn’t get it.”
Nat looks away, watches a middle-aged man crawl his way out of his corner booth and out the door.
“I’ve gotta start cleaning up,” she tells Lottie after a moment. Before she walks away, she refills the glass of water Lottie had emptied earlier and sets it back down in front of her.
She walks around the room, picking up abandoned glasses as she goes and trying not to think about what Lottie has said.
It’s human nature to want to win. Everyone is competitive in some way or another. Even when it came to her friends outside of track or sports in general. Just last year, Nat had to talk out of Mari spreading a rumor about Regina Wilkes having chlamydia, just because Regina got a higher grade than Mari in their Introduction to Robotics class. That was wanting to win, in its own way, and there is no deeper meaning behind Mari’s desire to be the best. There doesn’t have to be, just like there doesn’t have to be with Nat’s own desire, or even Lottie’s, despite her speaking in a code which said otherwise.
When she gets back to the bar, Lottie is still slumped on one of the stools. By now, though, she’s the only one left in the bar besides Nat.
“How are you getting home?” Nat asks.
Lottie slowly lifts her head from where it rests on her chin. She looks like she was halfway to falling asleep right there. It takes several seconds before the question registers through her liquor soaked brain.
“Cab.”
For a moment, Nat pictures Lottie tripping on her way into her apartment, falling down the stairs leading up to it, or not even making it into the taxi, instead passing out on the sidewalk. It’s all it takes for Nat to decide otherwise.
“I’ll just drive you,” she says with a sigh. “Give me a few minutes to finish closing up.”
Lottie doesn’t say anything, and Nat wonders if she ever fully woke up for their brief conversation.
By the time Nat finishes the rest of her closing duties, Lottie really is asleep at the bar. Nat shakes her awake, and Lottie wakes with a jolt, almost falling out of her seat. One of Nat’s arms catches her just in time.
She leans her entire body weight into Nat as she stands and once her two feet are firmly planted on the ground, the weight doesn't let up. Her body is wrapped around Nat's. To Nat, it kind of feels like she's trying to hold up a freshly cut down tree.
It only takes one step for Lottie to trip and nearly fall face first into the hardwood floors. Again, Nat catches her, and she can already tell her shoulders and back are going to be sore tomorrow from practically carrying this fucking giraffe of a girl to her car.
"Take those fucking things off." Nat nods towards the heels still on Lottie's feet. If Lottie trips again and breaks her ankle, ending her season before it even started, she's not about to be blamed for it. Though, considering Lottie probably won't remember any of this tomorrow, she'd probably find a way to hold it against Nat anyway if it were to happen.
Lottie does as she's told, gripping onto the bar with one hand as she pulls the heels off one at a time with the other. When she's done, she shoves them into Nat's arms, completely missing the what the fuck look Nat gives her. She's already carrying Lottie herself, and now she wants Nat to carry her shoes too?
Once they're off, though, Lottie seems much more stable. She can't walk in a straight line to save her life, but at least if she does fall, it'll be from a somewhat shorter height.
They make it outside and then into Nat's rusted pickup truck she inherited from her father. Nat tosses Lottie's heels into her lap, interrupting Lottie's struggle with the seat belt. With quiet amusement, Nat watches as the seconds tick by until Lottie finally manages to click it on. As soon as she has it on, she rests her head against the cool glass window.
"Are you staying at your little clubhouse tonight?"
In the passenger seat, Lottie is already passed out, or too far gone to string any answer together, it seems. Her eyes are closed and all that leaves her mouth are a series of groans and moans, failed attempts at forming words.
"Lottie, come on, where am I taking you?" Nat shakes her shoulder only for Lottie to swat it away.
"Fuck off."
This is what she gets for trying to be nice. Yet, as annoyed as she is, she finds some relief in the fact that she was right to assume Lottie would never have made it into a cab on her own.
For all the years she's known her, Nat has no idea where Lottie's apartment in town is located. She drops by Nat's own apartment more often than Nat would like, ever since Taissa started dating Van and moved her and Lottie's study sessions from the library to Nat and Van's living room.
But Lottie and Nat themselves aren't friends, and Nat has never found a reason to visit Lottie's apartment. Without Van or Taissa in Nat's life, she imagines Lottie wouldn't have a reason to visit her apartment either.
So, the decision is made for her. After three years at Princeton, it's impossible to not know where The Street is. Nat starts the car and begins heading towards campus, only a few minutes drive away. It might not be where Lottie wanted to end up tonight, but at least she'll be safe with a roof over her head. Odds are someone else is still up nursing those other girls Lottie arrived with too.
They drive in silence, Lottie comatose in the passenger seat. Once Nat parks her truck on the street in front of the Cap house, she shakes Lottie's shoulder again.
"Lottie, we're here."
No response comes, so with a sigh, Nat gets out of the car and walks across to the other side. She opens the passenger door, and Lottie nearly slumps out of the seat. Nat curses as she pushes Lottie back into a sitting position.
"Can you help me out a little?"
Lottie shakes her head, so at least she's semi-conscious. "Wanna stay here," she mumbles.
"Well, that's not an option and you have a nice bed just a few feet away. Come on."
With little help from Lottie, Nat drags her out of the car, once again finding herself carrying Lottie's shoes and most of Lottie's weight.
When they make it to the front door, Nat gives Lottie a once over, realizing there are no pockets in her dress and no purse or clutch on her person.
"Do you have keys?"
Lottie hums in place of an answer, like she has to think on it. Nat rolls her eyes, impatient, and rings the doorbell instead. Hopefully she's right in her assumption that someone might still be up. When no one comes after a few seconds, she rings it again.
The door swings open a moment later and with it Lottie seems to awaken.
"Jackie!"
She throws herself into Jackie's arms, and Nat feels a wave of relief wash over her now that Lottie is someone else's problem.
Jackie's eyes are wide, her nose wrinkled in confusion as she glances at Nat.
"She was on a bar crawl with some other girls," Nat begins to explains, and Jackie nods like she's already aware of it. "She ended up at the one I work at."
Nat holds out Lottie's heels for one of them to take before she can wipe her hands clean for the night. Before Jackie can take them, Lottie turns back around. She pulls them free from Nat's hand and in the process, seems to lose her footing again and falls into Nat's arms instead. A loopy, drunken smile stretches across her face and before Nat can push her back towards Jackie, she leans down to press her lips to Nat's cheek. Immediately, Nat feels heat rise to her cheeks.
"Thanks for the ride," she mumbles just loud enough for Nat to hear. The next second, she's back in Jackie's arms, seemingly oblivious to the still open door and Nat still standing in the doorway as she says to Jackie through a series of giggles, "I made her do a shot with me."
"Sounds fun, Lot." Jackie turns around to wave goodbye. "Thanks for getting her back."
Nat returns the wave before walking away and wiping Lottie's lipgloss off her cheek. It smells like a mix of cherries and tequila. She rubs her hand on her jeans to try and get rid of the smell, but it lingers on her hand and cheek the whole ride back to her apartment.