Despite there being literally millions of people living in the city, New York had a strangely similar vibe to her middle-of-fucking-nowhere shit hometown of Greenwood. This was not because both places had a similar feel, similar atmosphere, similar taste, or even similar population patterns. In fact, they were polar opposites. What the two seemed to share, at least in Sherri’s case, was the uncanny ability to throw the people Sherri least expected to see right into her path like clockwork. Some may call it serendipitous moments — Sherri called it the universe fucking her over. She was struck with that thought now as she experienced an-out-of-body moment of reflection in the split seconds it took her to recognize the shitstorm she’d inadvertently walked herself into.
She was in the last leg of her shift at Starlight and everything was normal. She’d clocked in, served diner food and a shitton of desserts, sang a bunch of show tunes she loved to people cheering her on, threw around gold stars like confetti — a normal day. She thought nothing when her co-worker asked her to cover her tables for a bit while she stepped out. Sherri was up next for the roulette; she could sing a song, check in on the tables, do a few housekeeping tasks, and clock out. No sweat. So, she called attention to herself as she spun the wheel for the next song of the night and got right into the swing of things. Everything went about as she could expect as she sang and danced around the diner, all eyes on her. A normal day. At least, until she heard an expletive nearby. Not the usual reaction to her singing, and coming from one the tables she’s meant to cover, no less. But she was too into her performance to do anything about it then, so she only made a mental note to get a proper look when she checked up on the table later.
Now she wishes she could go back in time and tell performing Sherri to look now so she could have prevented herself from the shitstorm she is in now.
Because now, Sherri was, undoubtedly, in a shitstorm. A serendipitous moment — a fuck you from the universe. Because, after performing the song, she had handed the mic over to a coworker and began to sashay her way right over to the tables she was meant to cover. As she walked over, she glanced over at the patrons she would be serving only to find herself stopping dead in her tracks at what she saw. Thalia Emerson was sitting at her booth. Thalia Emerson was sitting in her booth. Unbidden, a memory from the last time she saw the woman was unearthed from the deep dark recesses of her mind. The party. The confrontation. Angry words melting into lips and panting and the overwhelming feeling of fucking finally and — NO. Just as quickly as the memory had resurfaced had Sherri shoved it back into the darkness where it belonged. There was no reason to feel flustered, for her heart to be pounding as fast as it was, for her cheeks to even blush. Tha—Cinder was here, and Cinder was like every other patron in the diner. No more, no less. Sherri squared her shoulders, flipped her hair, and continued her walk over to the very normal table of patrons, plastering a smile on her face as she forced herself to be casual. “Hey you guys! How’s everything going over here? Enjoy the performance?” She forced herself to also look at Cinder, keeping her pleasant tone in place. “Do we need anything? Refills, another dessert, a song request?”
When she was doing her time out in LA, one bad teen thing after another, she and some of her roommates would take a trip to Beachwood Canyon, do a hike up Mount Lee and situate themselves on the dirt to look out over the city. Someone would bring tiny liquor bottles that they could down in a flash, shove the evidence of into the waistbands of their pants or cups of their bras, and they’d talk. They’d talk about what stupid things they’d watched on the E! network, about customers that ground into their last nerve and their latest injustice with a tenant a few doors down from them. They’d laugh and sometimes they’d cry at the weight of sitting in the open air with no strings around their wrists, they’d vocalize their dreams and wish for things to simply cease in their existence. It was hard to see the stars in LA, with the smog and the neon glare of the city below, but Thalia would often find a particularly bright light, pretend it was a star, and place her thoughts, her wishes, her manifestations all into that pinprick of concentrated light.
There’s gold star confetti scattered on the tabletop; Thalia finds a piece and places her finger on it, idly trailing it around the surface of the table and places her only current track of thought into the tiny star beneath her. Please don’t come over. Please ignore me. Pretend you’ve forgotten. You already have. She keeps her eyes down at the table as Sherri approaches, metering her expression into nonchalance. Indifference. Hardly even focused.
Thalia’s friends are unlike her — they are rowdy, all smiles and laughs and shouts as Sherri approaches. “Some next level shit,” Scottie drawls in his praise. “Y’know, a voice like that, surprised you haven’t been on Broadway before.” The group murmurs agreements, and Thalia wonders if they’re all as dumb as they look or if they really just don’t know the first thing about her. Scottie elbows. “You’d put our girl here to shame.”
“Scottie, shut up,” Thalia mumbles underneath her breath, returning the jab. She feels the weight of Sherri’s eyes on her and like opposing ends of magnets, never the same but pulled together by the cruel magnetism of the world, she looks up. She’s composed even if there’s a slight flush in her cheeks, and she looks Sherri square in the eye. She knows that if they were underneath stage lights, they’d look hazel, but tonight they’re just brown. Brown, cold, a shortcut straight into a black hole where she could absolutely get fucked. “I wouldn’t mind one of those Mudslide milkshakes. One that’s got the vodka in it?” She just barely withholds the snide comment to request anything from Cinderella.
