Chapter Text
Angela woke up in her own dorm, in her own bed, head pounding and mouth dry. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't remember what happened last night. She had a faint memory of an argument, but she wasn't sure if she was the one arguing, or if it was someone else she was watching. Waving a hand wildly around outside her covers, searching for the old glass of water she thought she had left on the side, her fingers brushed a piece of paper. Pulling herself onto her elbows, she reached over to grab it, alongside her glasses. She struggled to read without them on the best day, let alone when it already felt like she had been hit over the head with a brick the night before. Squinting, she read the note.
“Don't ask me what happened last night. I don't want to ever see you again, or hear from you. Well done on fucking everything up.
Samantha”
Oh shit. She knew it was bad when her girlfriend used her full name, and this was definitely one of those times. Probably the last, she thought to herself. She needed to find out what happened last night, even though she knew it would hurt. She reached for her phone, and checked her notifications. One from Facebook - not looking at that one, she thought to herself. One new email, and seventeen missed calls. SEVENTEEN MISSED CALLS???? Oh this was so much worse than she thought. A good number of them were from Sammy, her now-ex-girlfriend, she supposed. The rest, she realised, were from her best friend, Chanse. A new text pinged, disturbing the haunting silence of the room.
[Chanse
2:36 pm
gonna come to your dorm room. not convinced you're alive rn, just wanna make sure.]
Angela quietly laughed to herself, appreciating the reminder that she wasn't completely alone in this shitshow.
The knock on her room door came a few minutes after the text, Chanse not waiting for a response before opening the door and walking in. He looked tired, more than usual, and Angela had an awful suspicion she was the reason for at least part of that.
“Good to see you're alive after everything. I was gonna stay here with you, but Olivia was actually in for once so I couldn't steal her bed.”
Angela turned to look at the bed across from her, where Olivia, her roommate rarely slept. She was an “out and about” type person, and seemed to always be on the move.
“She's not here any more, dummy,” Chanse said, breaking Angela out of her thoughts, “It's half past two in the afternoon; most people aren't only just waking up, y'know.”
She groaned, shifting herself to be sitting up properly in her bed.
“Wha-,” she started, before her voice gave up on her. Chanse looked at her with a mixture of pity and disappointment, and silently handed her a cup of water.
“I'll tell you what happened once you drink something other than alcohol and have a shower. You stink, bitch.”
Angela gasped in mock offence, but downed the water and got up, heading for the shower. Chanse was right. She smelled of alcohol, vomit, and tears. Gross.
Once she was clean and in a change of clothes, she sat down next to Chanse on her bed, feeling guilty for a reason she wasn't sure of yet, but knew she was about to find out.
“You want to know what happened last night, right?”, Chanse prompted when Angela stayed silent for a few minutes, avoiding his gaze.
“...Yeah. All I have is a note from Sammy telling me to never talk to her again or she'll come hunt me down and kill me,” Angela started.
Chanse let out a sharp laugh, “I doubt it was that extreme, but yeah. In short she's pissed. In long, you managed fuck everything up so badly last night that it's honestly kinda impressive.” He pinched his temples, letting out a sigh.
“What did I do? All I remember is an argument, but I don't even remember if it was me arguing, or who was there, or anything. What the fuck did I do?”, Angela asked, her speech becoming increasingly quick and panicked. Chanse put a hand on her shoulder, as if trying to steady her racing thoughts. It felt about as effective as trying to stop an avalanche with your mind, but Angela appreciated the thought. Chanse started telling her everything that had happened the night before.
“Ok, to preface, I showed up kinda late after I'd gotten like seven drunk voicemails from you crying at me. But I spoke to Sammy, and she told me what happened. Well, her side at least, but it's not like you remember your side so I only have that to go on.”
Angela shifted on the bed, resting her head on her hands. She knew this was going to be bad.
“All the voicemails were you crying about how you fucked things up, blah blah blah, and I could hear Sammy in the background saying some shit I couldn't make out. It took me a while to find which bar you were at, but once I did it wasn't hard to spot you. I say this with (mostly) love, but you've never looked worse,” Chance laughed to himself, Angela giving him a half-hearted slap on the arm.
“You were on the floor, crying, with Sammy standing next to you looking like she'd just fought in war. You were too far gone to be able to say anything coherent, so I asked Sammy what was going on. She told me that you were meant to be going on a date, but when she showed up to your dorm you weren't there. Olivia told her you hadn't been in for ages, and she started panicking.” At this, Angela cringed into herself.
“God, I fucked it all up. I'm such a shitty person.” Chanse put an arm around her.
“Ange, I haven't even gotten to the bad part. And as much as I don't want to tell you, you should definitely know what happened”
“Yeah. I need to know,” Angela grimaced.
Chanse continued. “Ok. So. She found you, obviously, at one of the bars nearby, and you were wasted. She said you didn't even recognise her after you nearly passed out in her arms. And she said that the whole time, you wouldn't talk about anything except this other random girl. Amelie, I think she said? Or Amanda? Something like that.”
At this, Angela tensed up. She knew it was bad, but not that bad. Suddenly, she had a memory of a Facebook notification and groaned into her hands.
“Oh, you definitely know who I'm talking about then,” Chanse chided.
“Yeuuuup,” came the voice through clasped hands.
“Well she said that you wouldn't stop going on about how this ‘Amanda’ was the love of your life, how you missed her, how it should be you marrying her, shit like that. Obviously Sammy didn't take that too well after you not even remembering who she was. Stuff started getting heated, you both started shouting, you were crying, she was crying, I arrived and tried to deal with the mess. You were way too drunk to get home on your own, so I took you back to your dorm. Before we left, Sammy gave me that note to leave for you. She's angry, Angela, and rightfully so. Who the fuck even is Amanda? You've never brought her up before, and the one time you do is to your girlfriend? What the hell was going on yesterday?” Disappointment seeped into his voice, and Angela tried to hold back tears that she knew were inevitable.
“I- fuck, Chanse. What do I even do?”
“First, you tell me who Amanda is. Second, you send a message to Sammy apologising - don't expect it to go through though, I think she blocked you. Then, pray to any god you can think of that shit starts going right for you.”
Angela laughed bitterly at the last comment. So much God had done to help her these past couple years. “Amanda is… was… I-,” she sighed, trying to get her thoughts in one place.
“Amanda Lehan was my childhood best friend,” she started.
As she started to tell Chanse about Amanda, it felt as if she was getting further and further away from her own body, and slipping back into the past. It was like she was a kid again, crying alone at night about a crush she couldn’t get over. She abruptly stopped in the middle of her sentence, and started to laugh, tears streaming down her face. Through the haze of emotion, she could see Chanse grow increasingly worried as her laughter only grew louder, her whole body shaking as she tried to contain her emotions.
“Angela? Are you okay? What’s going on?”, he gently asked.
Sobs overtook her body, and she couldn’t find the words to reply. She could feel Chanse’s arms wrap tightly around her, trying to keep her from falling apart even further.
“It’s so… fucking… stupid,” she got out inbetween sobs. She tried to control her breathing, Chanse’s hug slowly bringing her closer to reality.
“It’s so stupid - I’m so stupid. It’s been years and I’m still not fucking over her. And now she’s ENGAGED.”
Sighing sympathetically, Chanse rubbes her arm, “Hey, Ange, it’s ok to not be over her. There’s no rule or expectation to get over someone in a certain amount of time. You can take as long as you need to grieve… just maybe don’t go getting into relationships when you’re still hung up on someone else.”
The last part made Angela give a half-hearted laugh. She whispered something into Chanse’s shoulder, but he couldn’t quite make out what she was saying.
“Hmm? What was that Angie?”
“She- she never even loved me back,” was all she managed to get out before crumpling into a shaking, unstable ball on the bed, tears starting once again.
It took most of the day, and part of the night, for Chanse to get Angela into a somewhat stable state, by which point she was completely exhausted. After sending a quick text to Olivia to check that she wouldn’t be back that evening, Chanse tucked Angela under her covers, hearing a slight murmured thanks, and fell asleep in the bed across the room from hers. God, he hoped she’d be able to move on. Part of his soul was ripped out every time she cried like this, and he didn’t know how much more he would be able to take.
As the days became weeks, and weeks became months, the memory of Amanda never faded. As much as she wanted to go crazy and date as many people as possible to try to get over her, Angela knew that would only make things worse - and besides, she didn’t think Chanse’s heart could take dragging her drunk, crying ass home again. Instead, she threw herself into her studies, waking up early to go to class, spending hours every evening studying, and trying to fill her brain with exclusively class-based information. Sure, it didn’t really help her get over Amanda, but it helped push the feelings down far enough that she could convince herself she was fine on good days. She figured that at least this way, she’d be able to do well in exams, get her degree, and fuck right out of this city she had grown to despise.
Every few weeks, Chanse still invited her to a party, knowing her inevitable response, but hoping he might get her out of her dorm room that was now overflowing with paper and sticky notes. And, every few weeks, Angela declined the invitation. She didn’t trust herself enough around alcohol anymore, and didn’t want to break her intricately created façade of being okay. To replace the parties she once loved, she made flashcards, and covered the walls on her side of the room with sticky notes covered in wild, unreadable writing. She was fine. Great, in fact. All her professors had commented on how much more engaged she was, and she was doing miles better in all of her exams than before. She was doing great.
Great, until she got back to her dorm after class, and the walls she built up for the day came crumbling down, collapsing on the worn carpet, surrounded by increasingly large and increasingly disorganised piles of paper. Great, until Chanse introduced his new boyfriend, and she realised nothing had stopped around her. People hadn’t stopped moving, dating, partying, just because she had. She wanted to disappear on the spot and cry until her lungs stopped taking in air, but she plastered on a smile and told the pair how happy she was for them. Because she was doing great, and people who are doing great don’t have breakdowns over their best friend being happy. Great, until Chanse appeared at her door with a box of takeout, the smell making her lightheaded as she realised she hadn’t eaten for days. Great, when he walked further into the room, pity visible in his eyes, and sat down next to her on the floor with the container full of food. Great, as she wrapped herself around him and began to silently sob as he fed her pieces of pasta from the box on the floor, not asking questions, just making sure she was still alive.
Yeah, she was doing great.
She was doing great, and she was graduating in three months.