"HEY, HUGO."
Hugo cannot quite believe his eyes. Stood in his doorway, looking just as impeccable as she always has done (her beauty is an almost clinical one, straight-edged and crisp) is Alma Dhawan. She's slimmer, now, short and lithe with cheekbones like razor blades and a smile like a salesman. Hugo raises an eyebrow.
Morgan is going to lose it, he thinks. Then: "Alma? Why are you here?"
"Still a charmer, clearly."
"You know what I meant."
"Right." She waits for him to step aside and wave her in, and for once he's pleased for Ray's compulsions: the flat is Alma-level-clean, bleached and dusted and scrubbed to within an inch of its life, reeking of cheap air freshener. "Nice place. I live in a dump."
"Alma Dhawan? In a dump?"
"I live in London. You can pay £500 a month for a cardboard box." She gestures at the sofa and he nods for her to sit, settling next to her. "Anyway, rent prices aside, do you have any idea about the location of my ex-girlfriend?"
Hugo watches her carefully, but there's no sign of even a wince. She says ex-girlfriend like one might say apple or dog, like she was taught it in phonetic lessons at primary school and sees it as nothing more than a collection of letters. Alma, evidently, does not do hang-ups on past relationships. Or maybe she just doesn't do hang-ups about that one, which Hugo can't really blame her for -- it hardly ended on amicable terms. Towards the end, they took their relationship to the boxing ring. Alma was her best match, both of them adept at hurling themselves from the corners of boxing rings and going to hell on their opponents. It was always a draw, with them. They tripped themselves up to trick the other, took a punch to the gut to aim one at the face, fell and cracked ribs to gain new angles to kick at.
Hugo just hopes Alma hasn't come for her victory.
"She's out," he says, just as his phone starts vibrating. "Why?"
"I'll explain that when Morgan's here. Who was that?"
"The text?" Alma nods. "Oh - that's Ray. We share this flat. He's wasted, as per."
Alma watches the grooves in his face deepen, bottom lip jutting out as she types back a reply. She shakes her head; evidently, nothing much has changed in her absence. She used to think there wasn't a single person in Preston that didn't have a piece of Hugo's heart. Now, it seems, it's shared itself out again.
"Let him be wasted, then." Things are simple, for Alma. Her arteries are very much her own. Loving as loosely as Hugo is the practice of lost souls and healers, and Alma has never been either. "You're still trying to help everybody you meet? I told you that's a lethal practice."
"So is law."
She gives him a wry smile. "You're not wrong. But seriously, this guy is a grown man. Surely he can stop himself from choking on his own vomit."
"You've not met Ray," he says. "Besides, he's my best friend - with or without the alcohol abuse. I can't let the bastard die."
"He won't die." Alma says this with absolute certainty. But then again, she's never been the one to wrap her arms around Ray's shoulders and guide him into the passenger seat, never been the one to rest a hand on his chest and check for a pulse, never been the one to disinfect toilet bowls in the morning and clear the cupboards of alcohol. That, as an unspoken rule, has always been a part of Hugo's role as the Eternally Concerned Best Friend. "You know he won't."
"Famous last words." Hugo gives Alma a wry smile, and then stands up. "I'm going."
"Of course you are." She watches Hugo take his car keys from the table and rake a hand through tousled hair, looking slightly dazed. Hugo's had so many one night stands he looks like he lives in the aftermath, with heavy lids and hair halfway settled and clothes always slightly wrinkled. "You've not changed one bit, Inglesby."
"You know," he says, a little hesitant, unsure whether or not he should give Morgan prior warning before re-introducing her to Alma. He concludes that Alma is not a person to give up, and would, inevitably, track Morgan down herself eventually, anyway. "Morgan is with Ray, tonight."
"She is?"
"She is."
"You better bring her back here with you, then."
Hugo bites his lip. "Jesus Christ," he mutters. "Morgan is never going to forgive me."
* * *
WHEN HUGO SEES her, buried in the midst of bodies sweating out alcohol, she's dancing with Willow Johnson, very girl-next-door, into saving the trees and veganism. They became friends, for some reason unfathomable to everybody else, when Willow knocked on Morgan's door raising money for a new town park. She'd been invited in for a drink, and, two or three glasses of red wine later, when Morgan put her sexuality to the test, turned down the offer of a date but instead gave Morgan something she perhaps needed more: a friend.
They've stayed that way ever since - longer than Hugo expected. Perhaps years of failed relationships have made him cynical, but he's been waiting for the car crash ever since the two stepped out of the acquaintance zone. Because with Morgan, there is always a car crash.
Alma is proof of that.
He threads his way through the writhing masses to meet them. Nearby, Ray is slumped against a wall, face just visible through a net of fingers. He always looks like this, after the buzz. Ray's limbs take all too kindly to alcohol but his mind does not, and by the time his muscles have slackened and his words are running themselves together, his drinking habit has his brain cornered.
"Hey," Hugo shouts, over the pounding of a song he's heard all-too-many-times, half an hour before unlocking the door to his flat and leading another hopeful inside, twelve hours before he watches them leave the same way they came. "How much has he had?"
"Ah, my favourite killjoy." Morgan ruffles Hugo's hair. "You're worse than the AA team leaders, babe."
This is Morgan Roux, full force. Hugo prefers her toned down, less callous, more of a Sunday morning than a Saturday night. He's seen Morgan bent over a canvas, paintbrush clenched between her teeth but lips still tweaked into a smile, blinds adjusted just-so and light softening everything that scares people off. Like this, though, she's smirks over shoulders and age-old spite, bitter and unrelenting, like the aftertaste of black coffee, double shot, no sugar. A perfect state, then, to meet her ex-girlfriend in.
"We have a problem," he shouts. "A big one. Help me get him back to the flat and I'll explain?"
"You try me, Hugo Inglesby." She steps away from Willow, anyway, planting her hands on her hips. "I swear to God, if it wasn't for you, I'd be forgetting a lot more of my problems on Saturday nights."
"You'd also be spending them in A&E," he points out, tilting his chin in Ray's direction. He's standing, just, on bent legs and sheer willpower. "Come on. If we're quick, we might make it back before the vodka makes its début."
"Where's the fun in that?"
"I ask myself the same question when I'm scrubbing sick out of my car seats." Hugo follows Morgan through the turbulence, her strides announced with the flashback of gold heels and a spit of 'move, wankers.' He and Willow advance more apologetically, with scuffles forward and hands pressed palm-up against their chests. Walking in Morgan's wake is a lot like walking through the zone of a natural disaster, yourself completely unharmed, while gaunt children raise blood-stained arms in greeting.
Hugo feels like the kicked-in headlights of a relief truck.
That intensifies five minutes later, when he's holding Ray up by the armpits and emptying him into the passenger seat of a car that, admittedly, isn't loaded with food and emblazoned with logos, but might as well be, for all the temporary charity it's provided. For a shitty little Ford with an engine intent on burning its way through Hugo's bank balance, it carries loads almost as admirably as its owner.
(Admirably sometimes taken in the loosest sense of the word -- such as now, when Hugo is sprawling himself over the console to hold Ray down, swearing all the while, and occasionally banging the dashboard to the tune of We Will Rock You, cranked up to maximum volume).
"Ray. Ray. Listen to me, m -- that was my dick, you bastard! Okay. Okay, it's fine. Never mind the fact that damaging the crown jewels is usually prison sentence material. That's irrelevant. However," Hugo passes him an empty plastic carrier bag, "ruining Walt's interior is another matter entirely. Puke into that, if you must."
"Walt?"
"The pretentious twat names his cars after poets," Morgan supplies. "This one's Walt Whitman. The last was Ginsey. And the one before that ..."
"Doctor Seuss," Ray mutters. "King of the words, empire of verse, and master of rhyme. Right, Hugo?"
"I hate you."
"You wish you could." Ray smacks his hand down onto Hugo's leg and grins. "Now then, driver. To Flat 2D!"
"Speaking of which," Morgan says, leaning forwards to rest her chin on the side of Hugo's seat, "what exactly is the problem you mentioned?"
Hugo bites his lip, bides his time for a few seconds by swearing at the driver in front, a criminal tripping on his way to his execution. Then, after adopting the God-fearing part of his agnosticism and praying to every Higher Power he's ever heard of, he says: "ah. Well. Let's just say your ex-girlfriend might just happen to be sitting in my living room."
"Funny joke, Inglesby."
"Not a joke, I'm afraid."
"Is this the girlfriend?" Willow asks, after a few seconds of quiet, because everybody that knows Morgan well enough to know that her star-sign is Scorpio and her favourite wine is Merlot and she cries at Nemo also knows that out of all of Morgan's exes, there is one -- and only one -- that has the ability to silence her. Bring up any other, and she'll curse for an hour straight, deliver angry monologues on how they fucked her up, shout their names and bring her fist down on tables. Alma, though, is the only one that has this effect, the only one that suspends the air like this, the only one that catches Morgan's fist mid-air and sounds like early mornings.
"Have a lucky guess." She's turning rancid, now, like her Mum, sour over sad every time. "Who else? Who else other than Alma? God, I thought we both agreed we were done."
"I thought you wanted her back?"
"No, Ray, I just miss her. Doesn't mean I wanted her to show up."
"It kind of does, in my -- "
" -- Ray, shut up, please."
"Thank you, Hugo." Morgan squeezes her eyes shut, sees a thousand people wave goodbye and never turn back. People, she knows, are not homes, and yet sometimes they can make excellent, temporary, dangerous replacements, all at once. Morgan has been evicted more times than she can count. Rarely has she had her keys returned.
She can deal with abandonment, now. She's not sure how to go about handling the reverse.
"She's probably just to mock me, anyway," she says, telling herself more than anybody else, pessimism an unfailing source of armour. "Yeah. She'll just ... she'll see me and she'll be so pleased she dodged a bullet, so pleased she's going to have a degree in law and I'm going to have one in liberals arts, I mean, really, it's justified ... and then I'll show her how many bottles of wine I get through in a week and it'll make her day, she'll ... she'll laugh at me, and then she'll leave. Laugh and leave."
"Morgan, honey." Willow is looking at her, all doe-eyed pity and terror, like a kid in an X-rated film. Sit through it, and you gain a mark of respect, leave or cry or panic and you're done for. Being friends with Morgan is a lot like that, sometimes. It's probably why Hugo can watch the Saw films back-to-back these days without blinking an eye. "I'm sure she won't."
"Willow, no offence, but I think it might be better for everyone if we drop you off at your flat, tonight." Hugo stops at a traffic light and cranes his neck around to face the girl in the backseat. "Trust me, okay? You probably don't want to see this."
"But -- "
"Seriously, Will." Morgan has her fingernails between her teeth, and the words are muffled. "Let Hugo drop you home. I'll talk to you tomorrow, I promise."
"As long as you're sure."
"I'm sure. Pull over here, Hugo."
Willow climbs out of the car with her limbs all tangled up, unsure of where to throw themselves, her tongue bouncing off the roof of her mouth and spitting condolences that Morgan imagines she picked up from her time spent working at a card shop - I'm So Sorry, Good Luck, Things Will Be Okay. She imagines them flying out into the car swarmed by little trademark symbols. And yes, she adores Willow - who doesn't? - but there are some crises that are best handled by Hugo Inglesby.
"You don't have to accept whatever she's offering," he says, when Willow has slammed the door shut and stumbled away, a shaky thumbs-up offered through the car window. "Okay? You might think she's better than you, and I can't change that. But please, Morgue, just remember you have the right to tell her to leave."
"Nobody ever comes back," Morgan says, and Hugo wonders where she's pulling this mantra from, wonders how deeply buried it is in the base of her stomach that she can chant it like this, thick and slow, like she's speaking in honey. "Nobody. Why does she think she can break the fucking rules? Why even give me the option to ask her to stay?"
"I don't know, Morgue," he says. "I just don't know."
* * *
one like = one prayer 4 morgan when she sees alma
(she'll probably need it)