The next day Nova woke up before Q and sat up to rub the sleep out of her eyes. Oddly enough she actually slept decent, given everything that she went through the day before. She assumed it was because of how long of a day it was, she nearly passed out the moment her head hit the pillow.
She slowly moved her feet off the side of the bed and stood up with a big stretch and a yawn. She made her way to the bathroom to do her business and then padded her way to the kitchen to see if Q had any coffee.
Normally in someone else's house, she wouldn't be so brazen to get it herself, but she had this weird knowing with Q from their old status where she felt comfortable enough that she didn't think he would mind. She knew that he would have wanted her to make herself at home, and to an extent that was what she planned to do.
It took her a little bit of rustling around to find it, but five cabinets and three drawers later, she found everything that she needed. As the coffee brewed, she heard a little mew and turned to see Chessie and Brooklyn staring at her eagerly in the kitchen entrance.
Still no sign of Benjamin Cat.
"Well hello there" Nova said sweetly, looking down at the two little faces that were peering up at her. With that, both cats walked into the kitchen and began to dance around her legs, singing for their breakfast, hoping Nova would get the hint.
"Oh...You guys must be hungry" She said. "Now where would your father keep your food?"
At the mention of food, Chessie began to scream as Brooklyn followed his lead over to their dishes. Sure enough they were empty.
"Okay okay, calm down...We will figure this out...Now lets see" Nova hushed the hungry cats as she scanned the kitchen for where Brian might keep their food. She searched a couple of the lower kitchen cabinets and had no such luck. She could feel the cats growing more and more upset with her as if they knew she was not looking in the right places.
"Alright alright! Chill out guys, you aren't exactly making this easy!" Nova sassed back at the cats while they tried to rub against her legs while she searched.
Finally she looked in the lower level of the pantry and found a big bag of cat food. She smiled and picked up their dishes as both cats went silent and she poured a generous amount of food in each bowl. She even found a small tub of cat treats and placed a few on top of each dish as a way to make up for taking so long on feeding them. She also put food in Benjamin's dish, assuming that he would want to eat too, eventually.
As the cats gobbled up their food, Nova continued to tend to the coffee situation and then climbed up on a bar stool, feeling her first initial sip work it's way throughout her body. She smiled, which was the usual reaction that her morning coffee gave her.
She even poured Q a cup, knowing that he would be down soon enough, fixing it for him just as she remembered he liked it. She knew from past experience that if anything could pull him out of a deep sleep, it was coffee. He wasn't exactly a morning person from what she recalled.
Sure enough, She heard some shuffling and in walked Brian Quinn with a messy bed head and a look of fatigue over his eyes. They caught each other's glances and Nova smiled, raising her eye brows up at him. "Good morning!" She said cheerfully.
Brian grunted out a greeting and made his way over to the coffee pot. As he walked past her, she smoothly handed him the cup of coffee that she prepared for him, giving him a little smile. He stopped for a moment and looked at her, graciously grabbing the mug from her and taking sip. Their eyes did all the talking for them in that moment and Brian couldn't help but smile and nod that she remembered how he liked his coffee.
"Thank you" He said through a rugged voice and Nova nodded. Before she could say anything else, she noticed Benjamin Cat stroll in the kitchen looking for his breakfast. He jumped when Nova gasped at the sight of him.
"Awww! Hello Benjamin! How are you!?" Nova squealed in excitement that she was finally getting to see him. The older black cat froze in step from the surprise of seeing Nova and not expecting it. He looked back and forth at Nova and Brian and then bolted in the opposite direction like a bat out of hell.
"Ohh no! Don't go! You don't have to be scared of me!" Nova called out after him as Brian chuckled.
"Eh, don't take it personal, he doesn't really let anyone near him but me and oddly enough Sal" Brian said, quirking an eyebrow.
"Sal?!" Nova exclaimed in surprise. "I thought that he wasn't a cat person?" Nova said, being generous over the fact that Sal loathed cats.
"Yeah I know, it's kinda funny how that worked out but Sal has known him since he was a kitten so I guess that's why he feels more comfortable around him" Brian explained.
"Oh...Well I guess that makes sense" Nova shrugged.
They each took another sip of their coffee and watched the other two cats finish up their breakfast, which Brian thanked Nova for fixing.
"So...What's on your agenda today?" Brian said, sounding like he was coming around from his morning ruggedness.
"Well...I gotta talk to Robin today...We will see how that goes. I'll probably give Juan a call before I do that to fill him in on everything and tell him to prepare a couch for me. More than likely I'll be ending up there by the end of the day."
Brian pressed his lips and nodded, feeling a little relieved that she had worked out some sort of a game plan. He was considering to offer her to stay in his spare room but knowing her, she would never accept it and he didn't want to chance things being weird between the two of them now that they were finally back on friendly terms. If for whatever reason things didn't work out with Juan, he would revisit that subject later but for now, he just needed to let her figure out things on her own.
"That's good, I really liked Juan. He seems like a really good friend and he was pretty cool" Brian replied.
"Yeah, he's my buddy. I've known him almost as long as I have been in New York, him and I have just always vibed really well, I don't know what I would do without him."
"Well, I'm gonna finish this and then I'm gonna go back upstairs and change and then I'll take you back to Robin's so you can do what you gotta do, sound good?" Brian suggested.
"Yeah, thank you so much, for everything really...I really really appreciate it" Nova said, reaching out to touch Brian's arm to let him know she was sincere.
"Your welcome...I know I said this last night but I'm just happy we are talking again" He said leaning back and looking at her with a sweet smile. "I really missed you kid."
Nova couldn't help the blush on her face. Brian didn't want her to feel awkward so he quickly chugged the rest of his coffee and set his mug down, tapping the counter.
"Okay, I'm going to get changed and I'll be back, thanks again for the coffee."
"Don't mention it" Nova said with a half smile and then she watched him leave the kitchen to head to his room.
She couldn't help but stare at his backside as he walked away. After all, she was only human...
Soon enough, Nova and Brain were on their way back to Robin's. Nova gave Juan a call on Brian's phone since her's was still dead, to let him know what was going on and how Robin lied to her. She told him that she was going to confront her about it all today and asked if it would be okay if she could stay at his house and potentially be roommates for a while until Nova could fully be on her feet, literally and figuratively.
"Of course girl!" He said. "I'm pretty sure Bruce wouldn't mind, as long as you don't care that we party till whenever, you're always welcome to come stay, this will be fun!" Juan cheered.
Bruce was Juan's current room mate. They had been living together for years and even though Bruce was just as gay as Juan was, he was the kind where you would never know it. They were not a couple, just really good friends that went back even further than he and Nova did. Even though Nova did not see him as much as Juan, she still loved him just the same.
"Awesome! Thank you so much! You will be the first to know how everything goes. I'm sure I'll see you later" Nova replied.
Her and Juan said their goodbyes and then it was just her and Q in the car.
"Juan sounded excited...Not that I was ease dropping but I could hear him through the phone" Brian commented.
Nova snickered. "Well, it's not like I'm not sitting right next to you...Ugh...I'm kinda nervous. I have never had a fight with Robin before and I have seen her get into arguments with people...She can be pretty brutal"
"Ah I don't think you have anything to worry about. I mean you are pretty damn well entitled to your feelings and she did do you pretty dirty. If she gets nasty with you then that should tell you what kind of friend she was in the first place, you never needed someone like that" Brian consoled.
"Yeah...We will see how it goes" Nova said before she buried herself in her thoughts. Q kept quiet, letting her sort things out in her head. He cranked the radio on lightly just so it wasn't so quiet.
Q pulled up to Robin's apartment and wished Nova luck. Nova thanked him again for everything, feeling really appreciative for everything he did for her and to have him back in her life.
"See you at work" Q said, giving her a wink. Nova waved and watched him ride off down the street. She turned to the apartment complex and took a deep breath, bracing herself for what she had to do.
Nova let herself into the apartment that her and Robin shared and pocketed her keys. She set her purse down and walked into the kitchen. The place was eerie quiet and Nova called out to Robin but there was no answer.
She cautiously walked around, almost as if she was expecting Robin to jump out and scare her, which they used to do to each other every now and then.
She turned the corner to the living room and gasped when she saw Robin laying back on the couch. "Oh my God! You scared me half to death!" Nova exclaimed. Something began to feel very wrong when she noticed that Robin did not stir or wake at her words.
"Robin! Hey Robin! I'm Home!" Nova said louder, before scanning the room.
She looked like she fell asleep in her work clothes. She had black streaks running down her face from her makeup and Nova notices two bottles of Grey Goose sitting on the coffee table, one of them being totally empty.
Nova sighed. She must have had a bad day at work and hit the booze pretty hard last night. It definitely was not the first time she had done this, usually it involved another guy, but she was probably expecting Nova to be home and decided to start without her. Nova lightly shook her head and walked over to tend to her, which also wasn't a first.
"Hey Robin, wake up" She said, reaching down to smack her knee but there was still no response. "Robin! Wake Up! You passed out last night!" She said a little louder this time, but still no change.
Nova felt her heart drop. Maybe this wasn't like the other times.
She sat on the couch next to her in panic and grabbed Robin by the shoulders and roughly shook her, continuing to call out her name. She even slapped her in the face to try to get some sort of response, but there was no such thing.
Nova started to hyperventilate and it was then that she noticed two bottles of pills tucked into the crease of the couch. Nova quickly picked them up and she felt sick when she saw what they were. It was a bottle of Xanax and bottle of Nova's personal pain pills that was prescribed to her after her accident for when she was having rough days.
Both bottles were completely empty.
Nova went into a deep panic and held her hands up to her head as her eyes began to water and her hands began to shake.
"Oh my God! Robin!" She cried out as she continued to shake her and call out her name. She grabbed Robin's phone off of the coffee table, luckily it had just enough battery power in it to call 911.
She put the phone on speaker on the coffee table and pushed Robin off the couch and stuck her fingers down her throat, trying to see if she could spike a gag reflex from her to cough up the pills.
"911 what's your emergency" The operator said on the other line.
"My friend! I t-think my friend Od'ed...I need an ambulance here right away!" Nova yelled with her fingers still in Robin's mouth.
The operator asked her a few questions but Nova was in such a state of distress that she just answered 'I don't know" to almost all of them, until they told her that they were sending an ambulance her way.
Right when the call ended, life had all the sudden sprang into Robin and Nova got her to throw up some of the pills on the carpet.
"Oh thank goodness!" Nova said in relief.
Robin continued to cough and Nova held her and kept saying "You will be okay, you will be okay" over and over again until Robin collapsed.
A few moments later, the ambulance arrived and after that, everything felt like it was happening in a dream, like it wasn't real.
They asked her a series of questions and Nova did her best to answer them and then they carted Robin away, letting Nova know what hospital they were bringing her to. Nova asked if it was okay if she rode with them, giving that it would take her longer to get there since she did not have a car and luckily they complied with her request.
Before leaving the house, she quickly went into her room and grabbed her charging brick so she could charge her phone to let the appropriate people know what had happened and so that she wouldn't be on her own dealing with this. She sat in the front seat of the ambulance as instructed and sure enough, the moment she was able to power on her phone, there was a flood of texts, phone calls, and voice mails coming through her phone.
Majority of them were from Robin of course, but there were a few from Violet and Heather as well, asking Nova if she knew what was going on. She assumed that in Nova's absence, Robin was searching for someone else to share whatever misery she was going through.
Nova didn't have it in her at the moment to hear the voice mail's (she had a feeling they were really bad) but she thumbed through some of the the texts. In the beginning they were legible. The basic "Where are you" and "When you will be back".
She saw another text that pretty much summed up what led up to the incident.
"Well...You are not here so I guess I will tell you, TruTV dropped me. I'm done. They fucking fired me. Fuck Pete and fuck the show! I hope it burns to the ground"
"It's a piece of shit show anyway"
"They have no idea what they just did. It is going to crumble to pieces without a proper publicist"
"Watch out, you're next"
Then they grew even darker, turning into "Its really selfish that you are ignoring me" and "Your a bitch, fuck you and fuck your life, this is all your fucking fault. This is what happens when you ignore your friends when they need you the most."
Nova felt her heart sink and she couldn't read anymore. She knew all too well how cruel she could be over texts, right mind or not. Even though she knew that she was not at fault and that it was okay that she had her own life to live, she couldn't help but wonder if she never left last night, would all of this have still happened?
And that was where the guilt set in.
She knew Robin had issues but she really thought she was working on them. She knew that the network had her under a lot of pressure and it was a rough job, but Nova couldn't help the pity that she felt for her, knowing that her whole well being relied on her job with the show. Sure she had other clients, but TruTV was her biggest by far and she had a lot of herself invested in that position.
Nova closed out of her messages and began to call Violet and Heather to see if either one of them could get a hold of Robin's parents to inform them of what happened while she dealt with all of this.
Despite all the bull shit that Robin had put her though, all she wanted for her right now was to just be okay and get the help that she needed. She didn't know where they would stand after this or when she was going to be able to confront her about her issues, but none of that mattered right now.
All that mattered was Robin's mental health and Nova planned to stay with her as long as she could to make sure she would get through this.