losttheright | (no subject)

Some days, it feels like she's been going nonstop for months, trying to get her life back and everything about it in order. Some days, that's a relief. If she stops, she has to think about it; if she thinks about it, she'll wind up teetering on the edge of a precipice again, increasingly less capable of staving off the breakdown she's been waiting to hit her since she woke up on New Year's Eve to an empty bed, her child left without a father. Strangely enough — or maybe not so strangely, when she really thinks about it — it isn't Lee she mourns, or is trying to stave off mourning, or whatever the fuck the right words for it would be. Some of her friends who've gone, yes, the loss of Katie and Jamie in particular one that cuts deeply, but mostly, it's herself for whom Molly finds herself grieving, the person she used to be, the life she used to have, the one she's been trying with all she's got to get back to. There are moments when she thinks she almost manages it. Most of the time, though, she knows it's just a front. There's too much she needs to get in order for her to actually feel like herself again.

This is part of that. For the past few months now, she's had occasional meetings with a lawyer, figuring out what her options are and how best to proceed. It's with increasing certainty that she thinks she will move forward with the adoption process, too, making this all the more important while she works out the details.

She's on her way out, feeling just a little lighter, as she's prone to after meetings like this, when she spots a familiar face heading towards the elevator too. It takes Molly just a moment to place her, but she's always had a head for names and faces; it practically comes with the job description. She smiles, then, turning towards the other woman. "Hey," she says. "Rebecca, right?"

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As much as Rebecca loves her job, she doesn't love going from being one of the best lawyers in NYC to relative obscurity in Darrow. She also doesn't love that it took barely a few months for her to be that girl, the one who had a breakdown in public because she realized she wouldn't get to see her ex-boyfriend ever again.

Ex-fiancé.

Lately, she feels like she's barely needed here, called in for some advice or simply because there needs to be so many heads in a room for a decision to count. She wonders why she's doing any of this all until she remembers the money, something she's always been in the habit of spending way too much of.

She'll blame her mom for that. She'll blame her mom for a lot of things. She wouldn't even be a lawyer without her.

Today instead of lawyering she's headed for an extended lunch break – what does it matter? – when she spots a familiar face, brightening a little. "Molly! What are you doing here?"

It's a complicated question with a complicated answer, but Molly shrugs, not letting her smile wane. If she's going to go through with this, after all, she might as well own it, and responding doesn't necessarily mean she'll have to go into all of the details. This might, in fact, be a good way to start doing so. She doesn't know Rebecca well, but she'd liked her when they met, trading jokes on Founder's Day, and that helps, too.

God, she just wants all of this behind her. It's probably a sign that she's making the right decision here.

"I've been meeting with someone who works here," she explains. "I didn't realize you did, too. It's nice to see you again."

"I do. Kind of. I mean, mostly. I'm part-time, right now," Rebecca says, and she has no idea why she feels the need to indulge Molly with that particular piece of information but she's always been guilty of talking too much about stuff people don't care about. Or things that people do care about but shouldn't know about or might judge her for.

In any case, she smiles, much happier to be talking to Molly than some random lawyer who thinks they're a better lawyer than her because they trained here which makes no sense at all. Haven't they heard of Harvard? Or Yale? Not even Princeton? "I'm an associate. Um, you were headed out?" she asks, gesturing at the elevator where neither has pressed a button.

Edited 2017-08-07 08:46 (UTC)

"I was, yeah," Molly says, nodding. There's still only so much she can do, all of this more about figuring out how she could proceed if she decided to than anything else, but the way she sees it, she's better off being prepared than trying to wing it all at the last minute. She doesn't want to wind up regretting anything; she doesn't want to just throw caution to the wind and leave it all up to the system. This is something she needs to arrange for herself. The whole point, really, is that she knows she isn't equipped to be a parent, least of all a single parent, and she would much rather find someone herself who is than wash her hands of the whole situation as quickly as possible. "What about you? I was gonna maybe grab something to eat?"

"I could use some fuel," Rebecca agrees. Fuel for what, she's not entirely sure, she could go out for the entire day and not come back and she's not sure her boss would notice or give a damn if she did. It's upsetting, just a little, in part because she studied hard and is a pretty excellent lawyer but mostly because being needed is incredibly important to her.

But it's whatever, she tells herself, it's fine, she'll find a case to impress them with in no time at all. She just has to prevent further nervous breakdowns in the future. "There's a place that does an amazing Reuben and half-decent coffee not far from here?"

"Sounds perfect," Molly says, smiling as she nods in agreement. She could use a distraction, even if she does feel a little lighter, and while she might not know Rebecca well, she'd enjoyed speaking to her before, enough that she doesn't think it will be too weird to go grab food together. Besides, there's something nice about spending time with people who haven't known her through all the shit that's happened over the past couple of years or so. It lets her decide who she wants to be, lets her try to settle into feeling a bit more like herself. "Really, anywhere with half-decent coffee is fine by me. I need as much of it as I can get."

"That would make two of us," Rebecca says with an enthusiastic nod. There's a coffee in the office, of course, and probably pretty good coffee, but she needs to get out and now she has an excuse. As long as no one thinks she's poaching their client, or something. "It's decided, then," she says, hitting the down button and stepping back as a handful of people exit before they can move inside.

"A caffeine fix is always better with company," Molly says, voice light and lilting, almost teasing, as she steps into the elevator. It's something of a front, maybe, but it's a familiar, easy one, and she really does tend to feel a little better after meetings like this, temporary a relief as it might be. It won't be more than that until she does anything more than this, and she can't do that until she's certain, until she has everything in place. "So how've you been, anyway?"

"That is a... question," Rebecca draws out as she follows Molly in. Really, she's been doing better, for the most part. She hasn't had any public meltdowns and nobody's caught her singing to herself all day. If they have they haven't said anything, at least.

But things still aren't great. They probably won't be until Rebecca finally, fully forces herself to accept that this is her reality and that she's not going anywhere anytime soon. She's never been one for accepting reality, though, it's kind of been her entire problem. "They're okay. I mean, I'm alive? And nothing too weird has happened here in a while."

"You sound like me," Molly says, laughing as she does — not at Rebecca, but at the wording of it, far more relatable than it probably ought to be. She's given plenty of similar answers to the same question more times than she can count over these past few years, and, really, that's what counts. She's alive. She hasn't been in imminent danger lately. Her life is a shitshow and she's too exhausted for words and she doesn't know how long she can stay in this holding pattern, but she's here, and that makes her lucky enough. Everything else, she can figure out. "Nothing too weird happening is always a good thing. I think we're finally over the PR debacle from the Hatchimals incident."

"I still feel like Hatchimals were somehow more obnoxious back on... Earth, I guess," Rebecca says. She means it mostly in jest because at least the long lines of people in Target and Walmart hadn't tried to kill her or anyone... as far as she knows. Of course, almost no one here seemed to have heard of the Furbie evolutions before they were wreaking havoc so it wasn't like that had all that much warning. She'd avoided them on principle. "How do you handle the PR fallout from a toy invasion? You guys must be experts at that by now."

"You use very, very careful wording," Molly says, a twitch of a wry smile playing at one corner of her mouth. "Emphasize the fact that the mayor and his staff had no way of knowing what was inside those eggs when they arranged the egg hunt, that we were all as taken aback by everyone else." She pauses a beat, debating whether or not to add the rest, and then decides to hell with it. "And someone has to take the fall, of course. The aide who first suggested it was let go. Not really much of a loss, anyway." She'd insisted all along that it was a stupid idea to distribute those eggs, but especially with that being the case, she thinks she's handled the whole thing about as well as anyone could. At least she didn't have to fight off any of those devil toys herself.