Sometimes, or so Jacqui swore, there really was a God (or some other great, cosmic force) that hovered somewhere beyond the Nevada skyline and existed solely for the purpose of fucking up her life.
She stared at the text message in disbelief, her eyes roaming over the two words again and again, trying to understand them. (Or did contractions count as two words on their own? She couldn’t remember.) Even with English as her first (and second) language, she suddenly felt as though someone had just handed her a grocery list typed entirely in WingDings font and told her to buy every item on the list. Only this wasn’t a grocery list, this was a text message. From her boyfriend.
Boyfriend. She scoffed inwardly at the concept as she leaned her shoulder against the door to her locker, still flabbergasted at her cell phone display. She was Jacqui Franco, strong-willed, independent, thirty-something (ew) woman with her own house, car, two cats (though, in her defense, one was a stray she just happened to take in) and a good collection of close friends. This wasn’t high school, when she was the only girl in the marching band without a prom date.
(Not, of course, that she’d been the only girl in the marching band without a prom date. Ellie Vicksburger hadn’t gone, either.)
Strong-willed, independent women didn’t need boyfriends. They didn’t need attractive college admissions counselors who had grown up in Reno but moved to Las Vegas in their twenties to sweep them off their feet. And they certainly did not need a date to the annual LVPD auction and charity ball, no sirree. This was not being thirteen years old and desperately wanting the cute boy to take you to the sock hop. This was being thirty-something and being able to stand on your own, even if that did mean hanging out with your two (only two now? Sheesh.) single friends and being wall flowers all evening.
(Sadly, Ellie Vicksburger hadn’t been her friend. They hadn’t even gotten along. And Amy Torez had forced her to hold her purse all evening. No wonder it “accidentally” ended up in the punch bowl, sans box of Trojans. On the plus side, Trojans made excellent water balloons, or so Jacqui and her brother had discovered the next day.)
Still, or so Jacqui reasoned, that didn’t mean that strong-willed, independent women couldn’t be informed of their relationships’ end without a little dignity. She knew a lot of avoidant, anti-social, cranky people in her line of work, and even more socially awkward, friendly-but-too-shy-for-words people in her line of work (coughArchieJohnsoncough), but she was fairly sure that none of them would have the absolute gall to dump their strong-willed, independent girlfriends with a text message. Maybe this was a bizarro universe, and they were all in high school, and any minute now, Catherine and Sara (the popular girls) would come around the corner giggling about how cute that Gil Grissom is.
(…ew.)
And besides, “We’re over”? Who even said “we’re over” anymore? That was so, like, the year two thousand, and where in the world did that water on her cell phone display come from? She wiped it away hastily, but there was another drop, and –
Oh.
Oh.
Fuck. Strong-willed independent women did – oh, who was she kidding, anyway? She wasn’t a strong-willed independent anything. She was a thirty-something laboratory technician who couldn’t even keep her own cats interested in her without a can of tuna. She could cry about this. She could cry about anything, if she wanted to, because she certainly wasn’t really succeeding in any other field, and really, didn’t sobbing quietly in the locker room fit her modus operandi of sucking at life?
“Jacqui?”
Jacqui glanced up from staring at the floor and blinked once, frowning. Standing in the doorway was Bobby Dawson, the poster boy for sweet, sensitive, queer Southern boys. Between him and Stokes – his boy-toy of choice, though he hated it when Greg used that phrase (which meant Greg did use it, unrelentingly) – the Las Vegas Crime Lab could really stage their own Brokeback Mountain. Sidle would make a great Alma – not like she wasn’t still shooting doe-eyes at Nick, as subtle as she tried to be – and hey, Jacqui wouldn’t mind casting herself as Loreen if it meant she got a house that nice. And Ecklie’d be great as the dude-who-owned-the-sheep, come to think of it.
Whatever the case, Bobby was staring at her and she wiped her eyes hastily on her sleeve before rising to her full height (nothing too impressive) and straightening up her clothes. “Hey, Bobby,” she greeted, and snapped her phone shut. “I was just leaving.”
He stared at her. Oh, not a good sign. She had a theory about boys from Georgia: they all had mind-reading capabilities. Of course, Bobby was her entire testing sample, but hey, he was pretty typical (except for the gay Democrat thing, but she could overlook that in the name of scientific progress).
“Guess so.” He, too, stepped into the room and moved towards his own locker, shedding his coat as he went. “Rough shift?”
“Something like that.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
“No. I don’t.”
There. She said it. She said it firmly and tugged off her lab coat, tossing it into a heap at the bottom of her locker. She knew she should have cared that it’d be a wrinkled mess the next day, but she didn’t.
“Gonna keep abusin’ your coat?”
“Gonna mind your own damn business?” She turned around and glared at him, and Bobby’s half-smile disappeared immediately into that confused-bunny look he tended to get when someone snapped at him. Of course, being as he was Bobby Dawson – Mr. Sweet and Sensitive – he usually didn’t get snapped at. Hell, even Hodges was pretty nice to him, and that was Hodges. Hodges wasn’t even nice to his own grandmother. She sighed and turned back to her locker, reaching for her purse. “Never mind.”
“Jacqui – ”
She grunted. “I said never mind, Bobby,” she interrupted. “In most cultures, that means drop the subject.”
“Huh. Musta missed that in my Southern-to-Yankee translation classes.”
“Good thing you’ve got me, then.”
The zipper on her purse, damn her luck, was stuck, and she tugged futilely at it. By the time she’d gotten it even remotely loose (and that was a very liberal definition of “remotely”), Bobby had closed his locker and stepped over the bench to stand at her side.
She could practically feel him frowning down at her. “Let’s get a drink,” he suggested after a moment. “Nick’s goin’ out with Greg and Sara. It’ll just be us.”
She snorted more loudly than she intended to. “Thanks, but no thanks. Not in the mood to be your fag hag tonight, bucko.”
“C’mon, Jacqui,” Bobby encouraged, nudging her in the arm. She batted him away and kept fiddling with her purse. “One drink. It’ll make you feel better.”
“Wanna bet?”
“Yeah, I do,” he said, and reached around her to close her locker. She glowered up at him, and his knowingly concerned expression. She hated that expression. She hated men, actually, and he was a man. Even if he did sleep with other men.
(Did that mean she should hate him double?)
“‘Cause I know you, Jacq.”
“Sadly,” she muttered.
He sighed. “C’mon. It’s a beer.”
She allowed him a moment more of staring down at her, and waiting, but then her zipper came loose and slid shut, traitorous thing. Finally, she sighed, her expression softening. “It’d better be good beer,” she warned him.
Bobby smiled and looked an arm around her waist, pulling her into the most comforting half-hug that she’d probably allow herself in a public place. Strong woman or not, she had some dignity.
“The best Vegas has to offer,” he promised, and led her out of the locker room.
