Invisible String

Chapter 5: Moving On

"Well, we all like it. What are you having to drink?"

"Oh, I will, um... I'll take a beer."

"Five shots of tequila. Got it." Jay laughed as he got up to go get the shots.

Her phone buzzed on the table. She wasn't going to look, instead reaching out to put it back into her pocket.

"I'll go help Jay with the shots." she announced, promptly getting up from the tiny table. Except that she didn't made her way to the bar. Instead, she stepped out of Molly's, desperate for just a moment of silence and a bit of fresh air. She took her phone out of her pocket, and without looking at the screen again, she just turned it off.

🦷

"A woman changes her hair like that, it means something, right?" Will suddenly blurts out on the next day. He sounded confused.

Elizabeth stopped chewing on her sandwich and looked at her brother.

"Is this about Natalie?" Lizzie asked. Of course it was, but she just wanted to test him. Apparently, Will and Natalie were the only ones that hadn't noticed their feelings for each other.

"Why'd she do it?" He ignored her question.

"Sometimes we just need a change." she explained. He still looked confused, and annoyed now. She sighed. Men were so oblivious. "Do you remember when I was sixteen, a few weeks after mom's funeral, and Josh dumped me, I cut my own bangs and tried to dye my hair pink?"

"Yeah?"

She raised his eyebrows at him, hoping he would understand what she meant. Her brother obviously didn't.

"Dr. Halstead and Dr. Halstead!" Noah Sexton came up to them, smiling mischievously. "Lizzie, you're coming to my party tonight, right?"

They weren't exactly friends, she had just bumped into him a couple of times, but he had extended his invitations to her and seemed like a good guy.

"Sure." she smiled. "I'll bring the drums."

They both looked at her like she had just grown a second head. Lizzie shook her head. "It's a joke. The school I went to, we had this tradition before graduation to walk around campus on our last day with drums and other instruments, chanting... anyway. We'll be there."

"Great! See you guys tonight."

Will finished his lunch and got up to go back to the ED, not before Lizzie reminded him he needed to get his shit together.

And apparently, he finally heard it. As she was getting ready for the party later that day, her brother called with the news, and a request.

"Lizzie's home for idiot brothers who got dumped, how can we help you tonight?" Elizabeth made her best impression of an automated voice as she opened the door to Will.

"It's not fun. And she didn't dumped me, it was mutual." he argued. Her brother had his arms full, carrying a suitcase and a box full of random paraphernalia from their apartment.

"Sure. Mutual." she rolled her eyes at him. "So, you told Nina?"

"Yeah. I told her I couldn't go on pretending that I didn't have feelings for Natalie." Will sighed. "She didn't take it well."

"I can't blame her. But at least you were honest and didn't go behind her back." the words left a bitter taste in her mouth. "Come on, let's go to that party and have some daiquiris, you can think about all of that tomorrow."

The place he had chosen for his party was quite beautiful, a Hawaiian themed bar by the river. Apparently Keoni was acquainted with the ED staff, and there was a big sign of congratulations dedicated to Noah right on the entrance.

Noah was quick to go and say hello when they arrived at Keoni's Luau. She barely had congratulated him when Noah put one of those Hawaiian flowers necklace around her neck. "Aloha!" he shouted as he walked back to the dancefloor, and it was quite a sight seeing him doing so with a similar flower necklace and his new white coat. It reminded her of her own graduation, that euphoric feeling of ending a cycle, to finally be what you worked so hard to become.

"Go." she turned to Will, who had been watching Natalie since they arrived. "Ask her to dance."

He took a sip of his beer, smiling sideways. "I'm not sure I should."

"It's just a dance, not a marriage proposal." she pushed him lightly.

She ended up sitting on a table with her strawberry daiquiri and Sarah Reese, and saw Will going up to Natalie and pulling her to the dancefloor. As she watched their smiles and careful moves, she felt an arm going around her shoulders. Noah came up from behind her, pulling her and Sarah closer. There was a flash, and she saw the phone in his hands. He said something about Instagram, and then he took Sarah's hand and pulled her to dance with him. Her eyes scanned through the small crowd, recognizing the faces of her co-workers at the hospital. She couldn't help but notice the ones that weren't there.

Finishing her drink, she got up to join everyone dancing. Elizabeth would be lying if she said she wasn't missing her life back in Missouri. She left a lot behind her, almost nine years of her life. Still, even with all the changes and the problems, she felt more and more sure that she was always meant to come back to Chicago.