They stood around the painting depicting a small cottage with a family outside in the front yard. Two children were painted playing on the grass and a woman holding a rake while a man shook hands with another.
"Do you think she has a connection to Freja? If so, what does it mean?" Melissa asked quietly.
The smell of whiskey on her warm breath hit Lola and provoked her gag reflexes. She stepped to the side and created enough distance between her and Melissa to where her breath was neutralized by the air between them.
Melissa, embarrassed and tipsy, pinched her lips shut and covered her mouth subtly with her hand.
"I don't know but what if she does? What if she knew more than she let on when we were there? She did seem intrigued by you," Lola said.
They thought back to the pendant that occasionally hung around Melissa's neck. The gaudy stone in the middle of swirling metal wires tied around the silver which protected the core.
They heard loud breaths and the smell of whiskey filled the little space that Lola had created.
"Why are we whispering about a painting?" Justin whispered as he poked his head between the girls.
He bent his knees to get on their eye level and squinted as he read the plaque on the bottom of the frame.
The girls glanced at his drunken face and saw the flask clutched in his hand. Melissa reached out and grabbed it, his fingers were so relaxed that he barely noticed when she took it.
Wrapping her fingers around the leather band that circled the flask she shook it in the air and stared at Lola.
"You finished it?" She asked with exasperation.
Justin moved his finger to his lips, "shh," he said with his eyes barely open.
"I'll get us more." He whispered. He walked over to the display of whiskey bottles, some of them dating back a hundred years. They were each from a historical moment, saved and preserved to be looked at for future generations and their stories being told along with the viewing.
"Are you crazy, the Mayor will kill us!" Melissa slurred.
She stumbled over to the wall where they were safely tucked away in unlocked glass boxes because nobody thought they would get stolen seeing as they held sentimental value for the townspeople. Something Justin didn't seem to take into consideration as he preyed open the fourth box and snatched the bottle.
Mellisa winced and turned around, expecting some backup from Lola who was incrudiously silent during the theft.
"Say something!" Melissa scolded in a slur. She wasn't a drinker, perhaps a glass of wine or two with her parents, so the whiskey currently swimming around in her system was affecting her gravely.
When she faced Lola however, something she saw sobered her up slightly.
The sparkling eyes turned matte and she bit on her tongue to keep from slurring her words.
Lola was watching the bottle like she was making a decision, an internal fight over the outcome of the situation that she tried to control. But she relinquished it, allowed the dark in the pit of her soul to take over, and shrugged her shoulders.
"Take it and let's go." She said.
Melissa parted her lips as if to speak but no words came.
Justin took the bottle with a proud grin and put it under his jacket.
They took off, down the hallway and out of the house. Whilst everyone else was inside preparing for the event Lola got behind the wheel of Melissa's car and the other two jumped in.
An unhinged laugh left Melissa's lips when Lola started driving.
As though everything she'd held inside was let out, she didn't stop until Justin handed her the bottle and she chugged it down.
With her hand on the wheel, her fingers tightening till her knuckles turned white and her jaw clenching hard enough for the pain to throb up her temple she eyed the bottle pressed against Melissa's lips.
The dark gold in the glass that she knew would ease the pain. She knew it would make her numb, forget for a moment everything that had shattered her.
Maybe if she downed the bottle she would smile, for a moment.
Justin leaned between the two seats and jerked the bottle from Melissa's hand. The broad ring on his finger clinked against the flask of the bottle as he held it for Lola to grab.
"She's driving!" Melissa said and tried to take the bottle back but Lola's hand shot out, as though she wasn't the one behind the wheel she wrapped her lips around the tip of the flask and took three big gulps before Melissa ripped it from her hand. The dizzy swirls didn't take long to kick in, Melissa gripped the wheel and Justin smiled as he watched Lola disappear into the quiet cloud of denial. When she opened her eyes she calmly looked out on the street and pressed on the gas.
They drove down the street with Melissa getting more drunk by the second and they were all losing their logical thinking as the car drove off the main road and onto the small ones that took you to the farms outside of town.
They turned up the music, lifted the bottle in the air, and drove until there were no houses, people, or life anywhere but in the nature around them.
Lola was about to drive off on a patch of grass when Melissa shook her head.
"Keep going, there's a playground up ahead." She said.
Lola didn't know what she was expecting when Melissa said park but it wasn't the ghostlike pieces of metal that they drove up to.
"No one plays here anymore ever since they redid the park by the bridge." She continued as they exited the car.
Lola swayed with her arms stretched out like wings at her sides and pretended that the wind lifted her feet from the ground as she closed her eyes. Her mind was concocting the perfect lie, a beautiful fantasy that didn't exist when her eyes were open.
He was there, Jax Blackwood, just as he had been always.
His lips moved and she could smell him as though he was standing right beside her.
The conversation they'd had in the car on their way to Elwina played in her mind and he put two fingers under her chin.
"Are you saying you'll never sell me?" She asked, just as she had in the car after reading the Story Of The Doe. A playful grin on her lips when she joked and she expected a playful reply.
"I'm saying I will never leave you," he promised. He parted his lips and dragged his tongue over them as he leaned in, about to seal the promise.
"Yo are you with us?"
Her eyes jerked open and Justin held his face uncomfortably close to hers with his eyes squinting to make sure she was fine.
"I'm here," she said and smiled but it was harder to hide the disappointment than she thought and Melissa saw the pain on her face.
"Come on my angel girl, let's go to the swings and drink our sorrows away," Melissa said. She hooked her arm in Lola's and they fumbled over to the rusty swings.
Justin stood behind them, he lifted the bottle to his lips and took a drink as he watched the girls move in a drunken haze across the playground.