Robin couldn't place how Halloween had come and gone so fast, and every day at school that followed was spent looking down every corner and through every class window until she caught a flash of that head of bouncy blonde hair. She saw her once on Thursday in a soft pink sweater tucked into thickly-belted jeans. Robin wanted to run over and say something, anything really, but she was heading into the room that they did student council meetings with her brown messenger bag hanging from her shoulder.
She hadn't seen her since.
After school the next day, she headed to a record store to pick up Joni Mitchell's album Blue on cassette, and it was all she was able to listen to now. Even now at noon on a mundane Saturday, she sat at the square table in her kitchen annotating her side by side translation of Dante's Inferno whilst "California" ran through her walkman and into her ears.
She sort of imagined the lyrics as a love letter from her future self in Europe to a future Monica. No matter how much the place was a dream of her's for all that it was, it wasn't her real home in the form of a teenage girl waiting for her in California.
She was so taken by the lyrics and strung up on this alternate version of her life where she was sitting on park bench in Paris, that she hadn't noticed her mother trying to get her attention from the kitchen doorway. It gave her no choice but to cross the threshold and tap the table twice by Robin's open copy of Inferno.
She pulled down her headphones. "Ciao."
"You have a gorgeous friend at the door for you," her mother says warmly. "So pretty."
"Milton's molars are still coming in. Gorgeous is a slight overstatement," Robin let her headphones hang from her neck and began to make a final note by one of the verses.
"Not Milton, honey. Monica." Robin's head shot up. "I can't believe you've never mentioned her."
Robin rushed to her feet from where she'd been gawking at the open doorway, forgetting Inferno altogether, and sprinted to the front of her house where Monica patiently stood in a v-necked brown leather dress that ran down to her mid-calves with a long suede coat that fell down a little higher. She had on necklaces and a skinny fringed scarf that looped around her neck, but even more interestingly, her hair was pinned back kind of shaggily almost, as if it was a last minute decision.
She was zeroed in on one of the art pieces Robin's parents had hung up on the wall—an abstract, geometric style her mother had been newly trying out.
"Hi," Robin says, not realising how out of breath she was.
Monica turned head first, a hesitant smile with enough teeth to count brightening her face as she met Robin's eyes. The brunette never looked lankier with her shoulder's postured back stiffly, her dark tee tucked into her belted jeans and beaded necklaces hanging lamely onto her chest.
"Hey." The rest of Monica's body turned, too, and she pointed at Robin's headphones. "Joni."
I said a week, maybe two... Just until my skin turns brown... Then I'm going home to... California... California... I'm coming home...
"Yeah," Robin quickly pressed pause on her cassette. "What are you doing here?"
"That's a great question," Monica awkwardly laughs, fiddling with the rings riddling her fingers, and Robin noticed the brown fur on the cuffs of her coat sleeves just as quickly as she noticed how nervous Monica was becoming. Robin didn't know that nervousness was an emotion she was capable of expressing. "I was wondering if... Well, first of all, I should apologise for just turning up like this. You're probably busy. You could've had a shift, I hadn't even thought of that—"
"I don't," Robin interjects. "I don't work Saturdays. Or Wednesdays, Mondays or Thursdays. An odd order to recall that in, but I'm all yours."
"Perfect." The corner of Monica's lip twitches. "Do you wanna come prom dress shopping with me? I know it's stupid to go with someone who's not actually going to prom but I liked spending time with you so I figured what the hell—"
"Yes," Robin says, trying not to smile too hard. "Yes, I would love to."
Monica takes a deep and relieved deflating sigh. "Cool."
"Cool."
Monica's nose scrunched up. "Please tell me you can't tell I rehearsed that all last night and this morning."
"I mean... I couldn't before but—"
"You know now," Monica shuffles on her feet. "Great."
Robin tried not to think about what she admitted too much, deciding to just keep things moving before she said the wrong thing and messed something too good to be true up. "I just need to get my shoes but wait here?"
Monica stared at Robin slightly doe-eyed. She spoke to her so gently, like water trembling through her fingers.
"Okay," Monica crosses her arms, smiling a small yet warm smile.
Robin smiled, too, sensing how vulnerable the blonde had become in a matter of seconds. But she only turned around and head towards the cloak closet down the hallway.
Monica's head dropped and she began to idly walk a little, only to pick her head up at the sound of Robin's voice as she turned back only four steps down. "You do know that it's the middle of November, right?"
"Yeah. But with formals coming up, dresses are discounted early so I wanted to do something now. Especially because I have the money for it."
Robin pouted. "Fair enough."
She head to the closet, slipping on her converses and bomber jacket and was back soon enough.
Monica still had her arms crossed close to her chest. "You ready to go?"
"Yeah," Robin exhaled. "Let me just say bye to my mom." Monica only nodded and watched as Robin made an effort of calling her mother's name to locate her in the house.
"Robbie, cherub," Mrs Buckley says, leaving the living room.
Monica smiled at the pet-name and nickname alike, sucking in her lips to uselessly hide it. "We're heading out," Robin says. "Do you need me to bring back anything?"
"Where are you going?"
"Prom dress shopping."
Mrs Buckley's eyebrows drew together as she glanced between them with a look of incredulity. "In November?"
"For me," Monica jumps in, both eyes averting to her. "I'm stealing your daughter for the day for my own selfish gain. I hope that's okay."
"That's more than okay," Mrs Buckley's smile bloomed. "You got a seat for one more?"
Even though she laughed jokingly, Monica played along. "For you, always."
Mrs Buckley frowned as she cooed a gentle, "Oh," and enveloped the blonde in her arms like they'd known each other for a lifetime. Robin knew her mother no doubt had her eyes closed and was bathing in the warmth of her friend's embrace, but Monica smiled a fond, amused smile at Robin's discomfort, her brown eyes staring right at her.
Monica pulled back, holding Mrs Buckley close by her elbows. "You smell so good, what is that?"
"You are the first person to point it out," Mrs Buckley says and allows the young blonde to pull away entirely. "Granted it is new but... vanilla and mixed spice."
"She's really serious about her smells," Robin says with an underlying sarcasm in her tone.
"Spend every waking minute like you're meeting someone new. That way they associate you with a loving smell." Mrs Buckley placed a hand on her heart, "Yours is so citrusy and sweet. It's beautiful."
Monica gently laughs. "Thanks. It's the Fabergé."
"Okay, that's enough smelling my friends," Robin says. "We have to go."
"Yeah," Monica barely looks at Robin then, letting her head to the door and open it as she centres her attention on Mrs Buckley. "It was lovely to meet you, Mrs Buckley."
"Not lovelier than meeting you, honey. You girls have a great day."
The minute they step outside, door closed, Monica can't help but lament. "I love your mom."
"Yeah, she's pretty cool."
Monica fished her car keys out of her pocket. "Mine is the total nuclear family, white picket fence, American Dream situation. She's my mom and I love her, but we're not cut from the same cloth to say the least."
"But that happens though," Robin says as they stroll down her driveway. "Sometimes the apple doesn't fall far from the tree and other times the apple rots a hundred miles away somewhere else."
"And I'm the rotting apple?" Monica's eyebrows quirk pointedly.
Robin cringes. "I should have really used a better analogy."
"Yeah," Monica laughs and rounds the front of her car. But as Robin gets a hold on the passenger door handle, she can't bring herself to pull it just yet, juggling the courage to say the words on the tip of her tongue.
But the second the click of Monica's door sounded once she opened it, Robin released. "You look nice by the way."
Monica looked across the roof of the car at the brunette, her lips slanting with a smirk. "You're a mean flirt, you know that?" Monica didn't even let the words simmer to gage a reaction, she simply opened the door and slipped inside the car.
Robin, still stunned, had to blink herself back to earth.
"Robin, look at this."
It was a spaghetti-strapped velvet piece with a blue floral embroidery pattern lining branches across the bodice as well as a diagonal divide between the black upper-half of the dress and the metallic blue lower. It was long, too, but not long enough to kiss the ground.
"It's nice," Robin says, the same way she had about the other dresses Monica had asked for an opinion on. Robin had noticed Monica had an understated taste. She ignored frivolous layers, puffy sleeves and padded shoulders. It was like she was purposely trying not to stand out. "Anything would suit you though, we've been over—"
"Not for me, for you," Monica presses it against Robin's body.
"It's a shame my prom isn't for another year."
Monica frowned, as if deciding it didn't look too bad, then held it up, shaking the hanger in the air a little. "Doesn't mean you can't still try it on."
And the thing about Robin and Monica was that Monica knew she would get her way and Robin was at no liberty to tell Monica no. She didn't like the thought of seeing disappointment in her eyes and even worse of a prospect was the knowledge that she was the cause of that disappointment.
So, she stood in the mirror of a changing cubicle with wooden walls and a long golden curtain, staring at a reflection she didn't recognise. And it wasn't that she felt uncomfortable in the dress, it was actually a perfect fit, but it was more that she was uncomfortable being seen in it.
"How's it going?" Monica asks. It kind of sounded like hearing her at the other end of a tunnel. She was in the next cubicle over, changing into one of the several dresses that had piqued her fancy.
"I'm not sure about this," Robin pinched the skirt, pulling a face.
"Are you in it?"
"Unfortunately."
"Can I come look?"
Robin did deliberate for a moment, but the answer was still the same. "If you must."
Monica peeked her head in first, her eyes finding the dress almost fitted to Robin's figure right away, then slipped inside taking Robin's appearance in the reflection. Robin tried to remain indifferent to Monica's raised eyebrows and the smile twisting on her lips, but the embarrassment that flared inside her was impregnable.
"You look hot."
Robin mistook her genuineness for teasing. "Monica."
Monica looked her dead in the eye and mocked her tone, "Robin." She spun her pointer finger in the air, "Turn. I want all angles."
And Robin obeyed, albeit rather stiff and awkwardly. Monica kept an eye on the way the dress fitted Robin's body, even the elasticated back, entirely black silk, and was pleased.
"Do you want to be my prom date? Is that an option?"
Robin stopped once she was facing the mirror again. "You're not funny."
Monica rested her chin on Robin's shoulder, smiling at her reflection, "Not trying to be."
Robin felt her breath stifle in her throat.
"Only there is one thing," Monica pulled her head away, gnawing on the inside of her cheek as she concentrated on all elements of Robin's appearance, her body, face and hair alike.
"What?" Robin looked down at the dress.
"Hold your head up straight."
Robin, although perplexed, complies anyway.
And Monica pulled the banana clip out from her hair, shaking it all loose to let it fall to her back in an unruly yet chic mess. She held the clip between her teeth then ran her fingers through Robin's short waves until it was all bunched up high on top of her head, and Robin watched Monica in the mirror every step of the way. She took the clip back and used it, then once she was satisfied, she looked at Robin's hair in the mirror and pulled out a few loose strands to frame the front and the sides of her face.
She tilted her head to see it from a new angle, and smiled with satisfaction. "Much better. You have nice shoulders. You should show them off more."
Robin could visibly see the pink inflaming her own cheeks. "Aren't we supposed to be finding you a dress?"
"I prefer admiring my friends, is that so bad?"
"It is when only one of us has a prom this year."
"And one of us looks really good in blue," Monica badgers, but when Robin's eyes fall to her black and blue appearance, she assumes Robin thinks she's only being teased, which wasn't half-wrong. "Seriously. It brings out your eyes. Are you wearing mascara?"
Robin shrugs. "A little." But her nonchalance doesn't prevent a crooked smile from crawling onto Monica's face. "Why are you smiling like that?"
"I'm not smiling like anything."
"You're smiling like you think it's stupid that I'm wearing mascara. Like I'm trying too hard or something."
Monica frowns. "Why would you need to try too hard?" Her inquisition quickly averts into smugness, and the taunting overwhelms Robin in a heartbeat.
"Can we go back to focusing on picking dresses out for you?"
"Well it's obvious this isn't the chosen one if you haven't said I look pretty in it once." Monica turned around, hitting back the curtain and disappearing behind it. Robin only really caught that the crimson dress went down to Monica's knees and it was long-sleeved and silky.
"That's because you look pretty in—" Robin stopped herself, knowing Monica was long gone by now. "Anything," she mutters to herself, her head lowering as she softly sighs. Then it was just her and the dress she wasn't sure about again.
Until a gentle scrape of the curtain behind her sounded, and a head peeked through on the right side of the mirrored reflection, blonde waves hanging in the air as Monica tilted her head and clasped the golden material with her hands. "Rob."
Robin met her gaze in the reflection, her eyes widening slightly.
"I'm smiling because the mascara's nice. Seriously." There were no traces of humour to mistake Monica's tone this time. She meant every word, that much was clear, and Robin didn't know that her already heavy heart could take it.
Monica gave the brunette a final once over, then slipped behind the curtain again to change out of the red dress that still covered her arms.
"Really?"
Monica looked over her bare shoulder in the mirror outside of the changing room cubicles as she took in the lilac chiffon gown with a ruffled off-the-shoulder flounce covering most of the bodice. It reminded her of the dress Lori Singer wore in Footloose, which was her claim to picking it up in the first place. But now that the material was on her skin, she couldn't let go of it or Robin's parted-lip reaction.
"You're perfect," she says from where she was sat back on the chair outside of the cubicles, her legs spread open. She had gotten there four dresses ago.
Monica's eyes was fixed on the refined piece decorating her body and primped her hair a little, switching between holding it up and down from time to time to see if it threw her off at all. It didn't.
Monica frowned, her hands running down the material at her hips. "The last one made me look like a loofa, didn't it?"
"A little bit. Or a cloud."
Monica turned around, facing Robin from the other side of the short walkway. "Now you're just being a jerk." Then she disappeared back into her cubicle.
"It was supposed to be endearing."
"Sorry, I can't hear past this curtain!"
Robin smiles to herself, picking up a magazine on a table beside her. She looked at the models posed and all smiles with their high ponytails and high-waisted jeans and colourful fits. "Who do you think you'll end up going to prom with anyway?"
"Billy probably," Monica admits, her shadow moving under the curtain as she shifts around. "We talked about it once like we already agreed on it or something."
Robin wasn't remotely surprised. She wasn't even sure why she asked in the first place.
"You know I used to do this all the time with Carol for fun—prom dress shopping. I think this is the first time I'm actually leaving with a dress."
Robin closed the magazine and put it back down. "What happened between you two?"
"It's kind of like you and Barb I guess. Just happened a little later on in our lives."
"Do you miss her?"
Monica scoffed a laugh. "No. She was kind of like a bad rash you can't get rid of. All of them, really. Tina's probably the only one I still talk to regularly."
"So, hypothetically—"
"You and your hypotheticals." Robin could hear her roll her eyes.
"If one of them showed up at your door asking to kiss and make up, you'd show them where to go."
"Probably."
"You're not a firm believer in second chances?"
"I am. Third and fourths however," her voice strained a little as she tried to put something on or take something off, "not so much. The only one I actually miss is Steve." Robin's eyebrows furrowed with her eyes trained on the floor as she listened. "I've known him since kindergarten and even though he was just a total tool, he always meant well."
Robin tapped her finger against the side table. "He seems different lately."
"Different how?"
"Just over the course of the past year. I saw him help my manager clean up some graffiti at the cinema a while back. And even then he isn't his normal charming self. Not always anyway."
Robin thought back to the few times she was swore she noticed him sulking in Mrs Click's class. Yes, she was looking at the back of his head, but it was in his demeanour and his lowered head. He easily could have fallen asleep out of boredom, she told herself that day, not really caring, but a minor part of her, the inquisitive, nosey part, couldn't help but wonder.
"It's probably Nancy. I hope she's turned him square, he really needs it."
"Not even close," Robin says. "You should see him in history. The way people laugh at his horrible jokes like they're being paid to do it, and even Tammy Thompson."
"You're saying Tam's immune to a bad sense of humour?"
"No, I just mean how she obsesses over him. Sometimes I swear she might have to physically manhandle her jaw from off the floor. And do not get me started on that hair—she stares at that thing the entire hour straight like it cured cancer."
"That implies that you stare at Tam the entire hour, too."
"I was embellishing!"
"Whatever you say, weirdo." Monica pushed open the curtain entirely, dresses hanging over her left forearm whilst she combed her fingers through her hair. "Okay, does my hair look acceptable?"
"It always does," Robin stands.
"Not after first period phys ed, my friend. It's brutal. Anyhoo, let's motor shall we?"