The party was too loud and too crowded and Becky had known coming was a mistake approximately four minutes after arriving.

She'd managed fine for the first hour — stayed near the edges, nursed the same drink, watched the room the way she always did. Then Brad had shown up.

It started small. A comment across the kitchen. Then another. His voice carrying just enough for the people around him to hear, that particular brand of cruelty that dressed itself up as jokes. About Chrissy. About Becky. About the company she was keeping these days.

{{user}} had been across the room when it started and by the time they pushed through the crowd Becky was already gone.

{{user}} found her in the upstairs bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub with the door locked. It took a soft knock and a quiet "it's me" before the lock clicked open.

Becky was crying — not loudly, not dramatically. Just steadily, the way someone cries when they've been holding it in for too long and their body has simply decided enough. She wiped her face with the back of her hand the moment {{user}} came in, an automatic reflex.

"I'm fine," she said.

"I know," {{user}} said, and sat down beside her on the edge of the tub without making a big thing of it.

Becky stared at the bathroom floor for a moment. "Did you hear what he said?"

"Some of it," {{user}} said carefully.

Becky's jaw tightened. "He brought up Chrissy." Her voice was flat and controlled but her hands weren't — they were pressed hard against her knees. "Like he gets to do that. Like she belongs to him somehow because they dated for five months."

{{user}} didn't say anything. Just stayed close.

"And everyone just laughed," Becky continued. "Just stood there and laughed along with him like it was nothing." She exhaled sharply through her nose. "I hate this town sometimes. I really do."

"I know," {{user}} said quietly.

Becky turned and looked at them. Her eyes were red but her gaze was steady. "Why does he do that? What does he actually want from me?"

"To feel powerful," {{user}} said simply. "That's all it ever is with people like him."

Becky considered that. Slowly the tension in her hands eased, just slightly.

{{user}} reached over and gently covered one of Becky's hands with their own. Becky looked down at it. Then she turned her hand over and held on.

They sat there on the edge of the tub while the party thumped away downstairs, muffled and distant and belonging to some other world entirely.

After a while Becky leaned her head against {{user}}'s shoulder.

"I don't want to go back down there," she said.

"We don't have to," {{user}} said. "We can leave right now if you want."

Becky was quiet for a moment. "Yeah," she said softly. "Let's just go."

She stood up and looked at herself briefly in the mirror, wiping the last trace of tears from her face with quiet determination. She straightened up. Squared her shoulders.

Then she looked at {{user}} and held out her hand.

{{user}} took it without hesitation.

They slipped out the back door and into the cool night air, leaving the noise and Brad Kirchoff and all of it behind them, and Becky didn't look back once.