The Gunslinger

Chapter 3

    Having lost Harvey the way that they did was difficult. It all seemed to happen so fast one moment he was there and the next he was being loaded into the ambulance. They had grabbed Morgan and ran to the car. It took them maybe twenty minutes before they reached the hospital but when they found Liz sitting in the back of the ambulance, they knew the worst had happened. From there it was just a matter of picking themselves up and saying goodbye to the man they all knew and loved. Liz struggled for a while, but Ashley and Courtney did what they could to console her, and it seemed as though Morgan had helped her the most. Nobody had any idea what they talked about but somehow it helped the young woman move on.

See shortly after her father had run off on his family, Ashley's older half-brother was kicked out of the house; he turned eighteen and Penny just got tired of having him around. It was about two months after he left that they left the church entirely, another two months before her mom started dating again, and it was only five months after that that she remarried. Ashley always thought that her mom seemed to be better off after leaving the church. Penny even welcomed Ashley's friend Courtney into their home when she needed a safe place to live. It was Christmas when secrets came to light, but her mom was more accepting than they thought she would be, and Courtney stayed with them until the pair moved out.

Ashley was eighteen when she and Courtney moved in with Harvey, and about a year later she met Liz. After a year or so of dating, Harvey moved Liz into the apartment. They all grew close; going out on weekends, hanging out at the bars, just having fun. None of them had much of a plan for the future; they were all satisfied with just living after everything they had been through. It was not until three years later that the real world had crept up and slapped them with a reality check; suddenly it wasn't Harvey that they were spending all their time with, it was Morgan.

There was a month of police reports, interviews, and investigations, but they never did come up with anything. Morgan told the police she was a runaway, and when they asked about the body, she just told them she didn't know anything, that it obviously wasn't her when she was standing right in front of them. She gave them her story, and that's all there was to it. As for the man she was with, she told them his name was Jackson; a man with brown hair, about six foot tall, no tattoos, and she had only been dating him for a few weeks, so she really didn't know much about him. They all knew it seemed flimsy, but after she talked with Liz a few times there was a strong urge to just drop it and move on. None of them objected to it, they all just wanted to put that awful night out of their minds and move on. They kept a big picture of them all up on the wall, and they never got rid of anything.

Three months after Harvey died, they had returned to as normal of a life as they could. The group started going out again, they started laughing again. They all knew that Harvey would not have wanted them moping around, being all torn up over what happened. There was one night though that changed nearly everything for them. They went out to a dingy little dive bar, their favorite spot. A rough crowd but strong drinks and Harvey had always felt a weird connection to this place. Almost like home, minus the smell of mold and whiskey and the slight slant of the old wooden floors. There were rumors that a while back a prostitute had shot a john point-blank in the bathroom, there were still bloodstains on the walls and ceilings, but they all questioned whether it was true or just bad upkeep. They walked in, the familiar ding of the bell above the door; it was a Friday night, and the place was alive and well. A live band took the stage and they had to wait for a bit before they found a table. They didn't take notice of the ladies that walked in after them, the ones who had followed them down the sidewalk and into the bar.

Once they got a table and got comfortable, they were working on their second round of drinks when Liz got up to use the restroom. She made her way into the stall and heard the bathroom door open and close as a woman took the stall next to her. Liz thought nothing of it until she was standing at the sink washing her hands when the stall door opened and this...woman...walked out. She was tall with wavy red hair that framed her freckled face. She stepped up to the sink next to Liz, fixing her cherry red lipstick in the mirror before turning to look at her. Now Liz had always questioned her sexuality, she had never really acted on her feelings, even though she had confided her secret in Harvey just like he confided his in her. However, here she was standing in the bathroom of a dive bar watching this woman with rosy cheeks fix the lipstick that made Liz's heart race. Liz felt something she hadn't felt in a long while. She thought back to all those times she had to clear her browser history when she searched for "girls kissing".