LIQUORICE & LIQUOR.

 

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FORWARD. 

This short story was quite a journey to write. I am not in the slightest bit like Lucy, Ollie, Richie, John or Noah, but they were exceptionally fun to write about, I can promise you that.  

Perhaps it may not be a surprise, but this work was originally a work of fan fiction. I hope that, in spite of this, you give this book a fair chance. It could end up surprising you more than you thought possible, but I digress. 

Before we proceed, a warning; this book is heavy when it comes to content and themes. There is swearing and implied sex and most definitely, substance abuse and morally incorrect decisions. Please remember that this Bonnie and Clyde type story is most certainly a work of fiction. I don't condone any of the the themes that occur within this story. 

 

Finally, a dedication; to Leah and Charlie, who have both supported my writing and my mess, always. 

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PART I. THE RIOT. 

CALIFORNIA, 1992. 

She’s never had it easy. She knows that’s no excuse, and she’s completely aware she can’t play the orphan card every time. Then again, she runs out of ways to explain how fucked up she is. She thinks that the word orphan, stained in blood across a cracked mirror is the perfect way to sum up who she is.

She smokes, perhaps a little too much and coughs every fifth puff. Sometimes she swears she can feel her lungs collapsing. She’s learnt to ignore that feeling.

Sometimes she makes her fingers bleed because she keeps trying to chew her fingernails when they’re have become reduced to stubs. Her mother would probably scold her for that habit. If she had one.

//

He always had it easy. He knew that perfectly well, raised by wealthy, famous parents surrounded by dinner parties and silverware and TV show interviews.

That, and of course, incredibly easy access to drugs and underage drinking.

The celebrity lifestyle was intoxicating, and he spent most days wanting to go a little bit fucking Dorian Grey, even if it meant selling his soul.

His family sent him to rehab twice. “Oliver, I think you’re addicted to heroin,”

“Nah, I’m just addicted to fun.”

//

Rehab is, of course, where he meets Richie.

//

Richie grew up in a family just like Oliver’s, except his were much shittier. His parents stuffed him into neckties just a little too tight and learnt how to cover his bruises with makeup, taught him how to smile through it out of spite. Kicked him out because he was sick of being fake.

//

As soon as Richie turned 21, they ran away from rehab and Oliver emptied his trust fund before they could disown him. The pair bought a bottle of rum to celebrate, and made the barman who served them sit down and have a glass too.

“May I ask why exactly you’re pouring the barman, a stranger, a glass of rum?”

Oliver’s eyes had glinted. “We’re a bit psycho, if you couldn’t tell, mate.”

John shrugged and clinked his glass with Dicks’, rum and ice sloshing. “Welcome to the club.”

//

Noah met them at a party and stuck around for the weed.

//

She feels like she’s floating through life, not really living it. Just surviving, trying to forget the shit she’s been through by staying alive long enough to see tomorrow. Even if there’s probably no point.

All she wanted was a pack of gum, and she doesn’t know why she’s in a thrift shop instead of a gas station, but she ends up looking at the antique books and shoving one in her bra when the shop clerk isn’t looking.

She’s always thought thrift shops were strange places, strewn with books, dust and curious oddities. Why would people give up all of this shit? She knows she sees it differently because she never grew up having the kind of stuff they sell here, but she often wonders about the lives of the people who owned the clothes before her.

She picks up a trench coat with a $20 sign on it, biting her lip. Worth it? Probably not. However, she’d look fucking badass.

Oliver sees her because Richie dragged him there to see if thrift stores sold bongs.

He doesn’t mean to notice her, but her hair is a flame against the dust. She’s squinting and she looks pissed off at life, until the moment where she sees Alice in Wonderland. She opens it, reads the inside covers, and smiles. It’s genuine, but strange and foreign, as if she’s out of practice when it comes to genuine smiles. Oliver decides he likes that smile. She looks around, not noticing him, and shoves it in her bra. The shop clerk is oblivious.

She then saunters to the counter and forks over $20 to the clerk for the trench coat in her hand. She smiles in an alarming manner, a smile full of jagged edges, before throwing on the coat and leaving the shop like a thunderstorm. Richie shuts Olle’s jaw and shakes his head.

“Well fuck,” he mutters.

“Indeed.”

Now, he’ll never see that thunderstorm again.

//

Well, that’s a lie. He sees her in the diner three hours later. She’s hunching over a plate of chips drenched in ketchup, vanilla coke in a glass with a silly straw. Her pack of Cigarettes sits next to the cup. It cost her the last of her cash, she’s bouncing her leg thinking about everything else she could have spent this on, but it’s fine. Really.

He’s only supposed to get liquorice, but he sees her in the booth, in her new (old) trench coat. He’s sort of dumbstruck. So much for never gonna see her again, huh?

She cautiously takes the book out of her bra and opens it, reading the words etched into the cover. It aches, but she can’t stop reading the words all my love, mom xoxo.

“You should probably be more subtle when you steal next time,” He smirks and nods to the book, sliding into her booth and stealing a chip. She practically growls at him.

“Fuck off.” She pauses for a moment to take a sip of her drink, frowning at him. “Are you following me or something?” She looks on edge as she says this, still bouncing her leg, but she’s not pushing him away just yet. She’s curious about this boy. Hazel eyes, messy hair, scars on the inside of one forearm. A walking intrigue.

“No, just a small town,” He steals another chip, ignoring her slight snarl even though he shouldn’t.

She scoffs. “A thrift store, a gas station, and a diner don’t make a town,”

“True. Still a safer bet to steal from the gas station than it is to steal from the thrift shop though,”

She pulls the bowl of chips away from him and lowers her voice. “Would you mind not telling the entire diner that I’m a thief, please?”

He leans in, so close their noses could touch. Lucy wonders how long it’s been since she’s been this close to another human. If she’s even still human.

“Why shouldn’t I?”

She pushes the chip bowl back towards him.

He shrugs. “Fair enough.”

Her bouncing leg becomes still. She steals a piece of liquorice from the packet he put on the table. He lets her.

//

“Are you just going to follow me home like a puppy?” He asks as he leaves the diner, her in toe. 
“I don’t even know your name,”

“Lucy. And you’re a dick,” she says without consequence, hands deep in her pockets, hood up. She shivers in the rusty February air, her feet trembling in her combat boots. He glances down, not surprised to see her ripped stockings and a welting bruise on her left knee.

“Oliver,” he corrects her. Although dick is a close friend of mine, he thinks, pushing his glasses further up his face. She takes them from him.

“Wow, you really are fucking blind,” they’re huge on her face, and Oliver decides he wants to capture this moment. Lucy, a girl who he barely knows, red hair under a hood with his glasses, which are way too big for her, green eyes like planets.

“Cheers mate.”

“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” She asks as she fumbles, looking for something in her trench coat.

“Uh, my parents host an early morning breakfast show together. It might be from that,”

“Huh. Probably. Do you have a lighter?” She’s pulling the cigarettes out of her pocket with shaky hands, not looking at him. 

“Only if you give me a cig,”

She complies and they light up on the side of the shitty dirt road.

“Where are we going?” she asks after a puff and a cough, giving the glasses back. She inspects her fingernails on her other hand. They’re bleeding again. God she needs some rum… or cocaine. That would also work. She takes another drag. 

He raises a brow and exhales smoke. “You could be an axe murderer for all I know,”

She grins, the same jagged grin he saw her give the shop clerk. “Only on weekends. Right now, I’m bored.”

He shakes his head in disbelief. “I live in a shitty house with my mates two blocks away,”

“Cool,”

He looks at her, and thinks about how she ate those chips as if she didn’t expect to eat anything else for days. “You don’t have a home, do you?”

Her gaze hardens. “Why the fuck do you care?” She bristles.

He stares back at her just as hard. “Just do,”

She bites her tongue so hard she tastes metal before responding. “No, I drift, I guess. I got a shitty Camaro I crash in most of the time,”

He glances at her, unsure of how to ask what he’s thinking.

She already knows exactly what he’s thinking and shrugs. “Yeah, I did steal it,”

He shakes his head, and she raises her brows at him incredulously.

“I may be a thief, but you’re obviously an addict,” she looks at his arm.

“I had a fucked up childhood,”

She scoffs at him.

“At least you had a childhood” she scuffs her boots on the gravel.

He doesn’t know what to say. “Everyone’s got shitty stuff,”

He opens the door of his house as it says it, and she flings herself inside the door before he can think otherwise.

Richie is lying on the couch, trying to kick John in the face. Noah is asleep on the floor. There’s a book about Winston Churchill and bong on the coffee table.

Richie whips his head around, as he’s going to say something to Ollie.. He squints as if he’s trying to remember where he knows her. Instead of figuring it out, he says, “Who’s this slut?”

She wipes dust off the coffee table with her index finger and inspects it. “Someone who could cut your dick off in three seconds flat.”

He sits up suddenly and says, “Excuse me?” at the same time John says, “I like her.”

Oliver takes a moment to register this scene. The boys and the bong are normal, commonplace, but Lucy looks like a big bright stain of colour, out of place but also…belonging.

“Want a hit?” John asks her politely, as if it’s tea and not weed. He pushes Richie off the couch as he does so. 

She smiles and takes the bong from him; cautiously stepping around Noah’s sleeping form as she does so. “Thanks.”

Oliver kicks him awake gently and throws him the liquorice he bought. 

“Thanks mate. Who’s this?” He asks through a mouthful.

Richie shakes his head. “Keep up, mate.” He says it as if he has the answer, causing John to throw a pillow at him.

Oliver shrugs. “Oh, that’s Lucy. She steals books from thrift shops and she followed me home,”

“OHHHH!  YOU’RE THE ONE WHO OLLIE WOULDN’T STOP MAKING EYES AT EARLIER!” Richie shouts suddenly, and John grimaces. Ollie socks him in the arm, hard.

She only laughs and falls onto the couch next to Richie and takes another hit of the bong, flashing her scary grin again. Noah looks both terrified and in awe as her pupils slightly widen.

“She should follow you home more often,” He remarks.

“Which book?” John asks as he gets up to make a cup of coffee.

She pulls it out of its spot in her bra. “Alice in Wonderland,”

Richie snorts. “Oh, I want some of the shit she was on, man, I’m telling you.”

//

She ends up staying for dinner, which is just a combination the pop tarts and marshmallows that Noah and Richie ran to the store to get because they had the munchies. They put the Killers on the record player John bought and scream the lyrics through each mouthful. After, John runs out the back and comes back with a bottle of rum and a small pack of cocaine. Lucy gets up and throws her arms around his neck aggressively. He thinks she’s trying to kill him until she sways and starts laughing.

“You have no idea how much I’ve been thinking about rum and coke today,” She sighs as she releases him.

Oliver smirks. “You know, when people usually say that, they mean alcohol and cola, not alcohol and illicit drugs,” He pours five glasses of rum.

“Oh fuck off,” Lucy glares at him at him, but she can’t resist breaking into a smile. It sort of aches. She doesn’t remember smiling this much, ever. Richie starts setting up the coke.

“What is it you do, Lucy?” John asks conversationally. Something in her snaps. She stops smiling, bristles again, suddenly on edge. It feels like time has stopped moving. The boys look at her.

“I might ask you the same thing,” She grits her teeth. “You seem to have a lot of money hidden up your sleeve,”

Noah sucks in a breath, but doesn’t move.

“Oh, actually, we’re in a band,” Richie cuts into the silence.

Time starts moving again and Lucy smirks.

“Oh yeah? What do you play?”

Richie snorts the coke and then goes to show her all of the instruments. They’re all shitty and dusty, but a pile of cash from the EP release sits in the corner by the drums.

She’s giggling at the revelation that Oliver Hargrove, son of two New York Breakfast TV Hosts of a show that she never watched, sings in a band. And she’s currently in his living room snorting his coke.

//

She falls asleep on the floor and suddenly looks less angry. It’s four AM and Ollie tentatively throws a blanket over her, scared she’ll wake up and stab him. He saw the shard of glass in her boot, smelt the blood where it had cut into her foot and she’d ignored it. He wonders about her, how she got to be in the middle of Fuck All, California, stealing books from thrift stores. He wonders if she’ll ever tell him.

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PART II. THE RUIN. 

The next morning, the spot where she slept is empty, and Oliver thinks that this time he might actually never see her again. That is, until she drives her shitty car onto their front lawn, throws herself onto their Futon couch, and eats their cereal. They all agree that they have to keep her.

//

A month passes and Ollie forgets what life was like before her presence. Sure, she’s kind of deadly, always smelling like blood and cigarettes and somehow, she always gets cocaine dust in her red hair. But then again, she laughs with them, smile like a dagger, and convinces them to start making music again.

“I’m bored. I want to hear music. Just… Make it good shit, you know,” She takes a drag.

She’s looking at him, regarding him like he’s a canvas on the wall. Like she’s thinking about how she could reach her arm around his neck, feel his pulse, squeeze. She thinks for a moment, watches him fall to the ground in front of her. She thinks he’s too pretty, hair in his face like that. She thinks he makes her heart beat too quickly and maybe she should just reach out and choke him. Or maybe she should reach out and hold his hand. She takes another drag.

Oliver looks at her through his hair as he strums the guitar. He’s thinking about how she’s strange and unusual and there’s always the smell of smoke and blood. He thinks about the dust on her lips. How he wants to take all the fucked-up-ness and make her happy. Maybe. He doesn’t like thinking, there’s too much he doesn’t know.

What he does know, however, is that the room looks a lot brighter now she’s in it, sun in her hair, dust and smoke in the air as she flicks through her book.

“Why do you care about this book so much, Lucy?” Noah asks her.

Her eyes glint angrily like a knife blade for a moment, but they soften quickly. Oliver pretends he didn’t notice.

“I like the note on the inside,”

“What does it say?”

She goes quiet for a moment. Her one rule is not to trust anyone. Keep people out, because they’ll leave you. Then again, the boys are still here. Somehow.

She flicks to the front of the book.

Dearest Mary,

I hope your birthday is as beautiful as you are. I believe that each life is of wonders, and you, my child, are my favourite wonder in this world. I thank heaven every day for you. I hope that one day you find your wonderland too.

All my love, mom xoxo

They all exhale slowly.

Fuck,” Richie mutters.

“Why does that matter so much?” Noah asks abruptly. John kicks him in the shins. If it was anyone else, Lucy would have stabbed him or her without question but Noah has a look of childlike curiosity when he asks her. The kind she never had.

“I never had a Mom,”

“Same.” John says simply. They smile to each other gently.

Oliver thinks that gentle, sad smile is her real smile. Not the one made of daggers and blood. This smile is one of the most beautiful things he’s ever seen.

//

Sometimes she reaches up and Oliver can see a small scar across her ribs. He wonders how she got it. He’s always too scared to ask. He knows she can use the shard of glass she keeps in her sock as a knife with no problem.

Even though they all know she could kill them, she still gives them pieces of her, bit by bit. Tells them small details of her life, hiding them with blunt details in quieter moments. In the way when people say things that are important and painful, as if they don’t mean anything at all.

“I learnt how to snort coke when I was eleven because one of the girls in the orphanage was fucking a dealer,” she says, softly, while they smoke weed on a Tuesday.

“The care taker told me no one else would ever give a shit about me and I left the orphanage when I was 16.” She tells them all on a rainy Wednesday at the diner.

John looks like she feels, his silly straw matching hers. She gently clasps his hand from across the table, and even though she initiated the contact, she still jumps out of her skin at his touch.

“My mother taught me how to do everything out of spite when I was 14. Maybe its best that you didn’t have one,” Richie sips a beer.

She glares at him harshly for a moment, and everything is so tense that there’s a moment where everyone might think she might hit him. She thinks about it, imagines stretching across the table and punching him in the face, breaking his nose and letting the blood flow. Then she thinks that maybe she shouldn’t. Because he’s just as fucked up as her, which is new and its own brand of beautiful.

Oliver is gripping her hand under the table because he knows what she’s thinking. He can feel her tensing and he brings her back down the earth. He’s learnt to steady her in a way no one else can.

She relaxes slightly and sips with her silly straw, tapping Sirius’ foot with hers under the table, and he smirks.

“I guess we’ll never know.”

//

They use the shitty diner Wi-Fi to email a couple of record companies some demos, and when none replies, they decide to go to the bar, where all broken dreams go to die.

“We should just go to LA anyway. What have we got to lose?” Oliver’s hands are in his pockets, his gaze hard, determined.

“Uh, how the fuck would we get there?” Noah asks them as the door swings open.

“Lucy’s shitbox will never get us to LA,” Richie replies unhelpfully, and John rolls his eyes.

“Don’t be mean to Lucy’s car, dickweed,” Ollie says before ordering a round of drinks.

Lucy shrugs. “I don’t give a shit, it’s not like I paid for it. Plus, Anyway, I’m sure will Black apologise to it later when he’s high off his fucking head,” she grins devilishly.

“Man, you’re evil,” Ollie and Richie both seem to say, chuckling at her.

“We could always catch a bus,” Noah says, even though everyone shrugs in distaste.

“Or put some money together and get a van. That way we can take the instruments too.” Lucy suggests in between vodka shots.

Oliver likes this idea.

“Sir, you okay with that? Even if it means less cocaine?”

“No heroin for you either, Ollie,” John reminds him.

Richie holds up his drink. “Let’s make a fucking record.”

//

They spend the evening at the bar, where they all get very, very drunk.

//

It’s 2am and there’s a man with a bun and bright blue eyes who was watching sports at the bar, and when his friend leaves, he smiles at Lucy, who gives him a sarcastic dagger-grin of if you talk to me, I could kill you. Try me.

Oliver and Richie are playing some sort of hard-core beer pong, yelling and shouting, John and Noah are cheering, and none of them is paying attention.

He wanders over to her and it feels a little hazy but her skin prickles. She feels like the very opposite of alive, her skin itches, she tastes something metallic.

“How you doing tonight, Love?”

“I’m fine, love,” she takes another shot and sways slightly, and he catches her, steadies her. The way Oliver does when she’s about to do something stupid, the way he steadied her two months ago when she felt like she was falling through life. The way he steadied her by bringing her into his life. The way Oliver should be doing right now. But this is not Ollie, this is a stranger, Ollie feels 1000 miles away. She feels wrong. Everything feels wrong. She circles out of his grip. The boys don’t see.

Her pulse rises and it hurts, her ears hurt. “Are you alright?” He finds another way to grip her shoulders, running his fingers down her exposed arms, she’s shivering and she’s looking for an exit through bleary eyes.

“No, I’m fine, you can leave me alone,” She tries to step away again, but his fingers tighten on her arms, her exposed flesh and the taste of blood is stronger than ever before.

“I don’t think it’s wise for you to leave on your own,” He seems to feign concern, but there’s something poisonous laced within his voice, something that says leave with me or don’t leave at all.

“I do what I want.” She spits at him. “I’m punk rock,”

She pauses for a moment to laugh at her own joke, as if she’s the funniest person she’s ever know. He doesn’t laugh, instead tightening his grip.

There’s a split second, and she rolls her eyes, feels every movement in her body, alive for the briefest second.

That’s when she socks him across the face.

There’s a numb sort of adrenaline that kicks in and she manages to drag him outside into the alleyway before there can be a commotion. Once there’s no one around, he struggles free from her grip and punches her in the same spot she did him, and then in the ribs. Her entire body is numb, from alcohol, cocaine, and weed. So numb that she can’t really feel much right now, so she proceeds to kick him in the knee and then the crotch. It’s all sluggish and brutish, not like any movie, and that’s how she remembers she’s not hallucinating. She wonders what her mom would be thinking if she could see this. Whoever her mother is. Was.

Ollie looks around after she’s been gone 4 and a half minutes, after he knows he’s losing to Sirius, and it feels like he’s also been kicked in the ribs when he realises she’s gone. He opens the door and his breath mists immediately and he sees her messily attempting to bash a person up. But all her muscles have deteriorated from the drug use and she’s fighting a losing battle. Even if she seems convinced that she’s winning.

He pushes the guy off her and punches him square in the jaw without a moment of hesitation. She’s shocked and then angry, shooting him a venomous glare for interfering. There’s blood running down her nose and jaw and neckline and she limps as she moves. This only makes Ollie punch the guy harder. Richie comes out and he’s yelling and John and Noah are screaming for him to stop because they think he’ll only help beat this guy up. But he drags Oliver off him and there’s more shouting. Ollie is fucking drunk, pulling against Sirius’ grip to fight this guy. Lucy tries to stand and looks pissed off.

She picks up an empty bottle and breaks it on the outer brick wall of the bar, the shattering puncturing the air and causing a silence. The guy with the man bun uses this, struggles free and runs while the rest are stuck looking at each other.

“Are you okay?” Noah asks into the silence. He’s not talking to anyone in particular.

“Yeah,” Lucy responds. She wipes her nose and tries to ignore the stinging. Oliver fixes the boys a look, a leave us alone for a moment look. John tentatively touches Lucy’s shoulder, shocked when she doesn’t flinch, Richie nods at her, and she nods back in thanks. They go back inside, and Oliver leans against the wall, looking at her. His vision is fucked and blurry, and he can’t tell if her hair is in her face or if it’s the blood. There’s a bruise on his rib. He puts his head in his hands, everything spinning, hair haphazardly falling.

“What the fuck, Lu?”

There’s blood in her mouth and the metallic taste finally makes sense. She spits. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.

She fits as much callousness into the last word as she can. She knows how to make it hurt. Her lip stings, she’s bruised. And fuck, she’s slurring because she’s still drunk.

“No, you don’t.” He agrees.

She looks at him as if no one has ever said that before.

“But if you’re gonna get into fights you know you can’t win, at least tell me why you’re gonna be that fucking stupid. I think you owe me that.”

“What the fuck does it matter, Hargrove? It’s stupid! I’m a stupid bitch; I’ve always been like this cuz no one has never fucking taught me how to be better. Maybe I’m too far gone.” She pauses to breathe.

“I’m the most fucked up person I’ll ever know, but you make me even more fucked up, you’re a fucking idiot who stole my chips before you knew my name, and you’re just as fucked up as me. And you’re the shittiest person I’ve ever met.”

He raises a brow, breath hitched. “Is that all?”

She spits blood again, clutching the broken bottle. “Not even close. Cuz you and the boys make me feel safe and I’ve never ever felt like this. Which is dangerous as fuck. So fucking… I don’t know. But fuck you.”

It’s a swift, jagged motion of alcoholic rage and Lucy is choking on her tears, but she reaches forward to stab him with the broken bottle. All she knows how to do is ruin things.

He knows it hits him, he can feel a little blood, pooling on his abdomen. He winces, but he's trying to ignore it. He catches her wrist and she drops the bottle. He presses his bloody fingers to her cheeks. There’s still a trace of cocaine on her nose among the blood, all the blood and the fucked-up-ness of it all.

Then he kisses her. He ignores all the blood even when it’s in his mouth and his hair and maybe his eyes, but nothing else matters. She turns him and he pushes her against the wall, her hands amongst the tangled knots of his hair. She kisses him like nothing else matters.

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PART III. THE RECKONING. 

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EPILOGUE. 

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~

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