Sara & Lara (Patreon)

The first time Sara Pezzini met Lady Croft, she thought she was being carjacked.

It was a Friday. She’d meant to sleep off the workweek and soft-launch a good weekend, but unable to catch a nap at six PM despite how tired she was, she’d decided to take an UberEats delivery and salve her bank account. Starting up her car was an increasingly arduous task; she didn’t take the subway to work because she was an environmentalist. But she coaxed it to life and picked up the delivery from China Cafe and was on her way when traffic snared her.

It made her think of her mother’s wisely nagging words: “Buy a moped! A bicycle! A scooter! Like you had when you were a teenager! It won’t cost much, you’ll save money on gas, and you’ll make your deliveries much faster! You can go between the cars!”

Sara hadn’t tried to explain that this was illegal, even if people did it all the time. It was actually a good idea. It was just that all her time was taken up working or recovering from working and she knew that even if she did somehow force into existence the time to find a decent bike (where? eBay?) and buy it and get good enough at riding it that she only had to worry about killing herself the usual amount…

Well, then it’d be a drop in the bucket. There’d be more frustrations, more chores to do on. She’d never get to some idyllic point of relaxation. Never be a little girl again with a father doting on her. Never be a cop fighting in a righteous crusade on behalf of the innocent. Some days, she barely even felt functional. Like she should hang it all up and record a Tiktok about eating ‘girl dinner’ and hope someone would pay twenty bucks for a look at her feet.

She’d used to pride herself on having grit. But the point of having grit was to do something meaningful. Why be tough just to stay alive? It made her feel like she’d paid good money for a losing horse. Made herself a tomboy when she should’ve turned herself into the kind of girl life came easy to. Bat your eyelashes and push out your chest and collect some Cartier at the beginning of date night.

No. Not her. She didn’t even had a boyfriend. She had to be daddy’s little cop. Be tough! Be smart! Run faster than all the rest, do more push-ups than all the rest! And your reward for toughening yourself up so much isn’t even a life where that toughness counts for anything.

Sara glanced at the light. Red, still. But at least she hadn’t been so lost in brooding that she’d held up traffic.

Her self-praise at being vigilant wouldn’t last long. She’d failed to notice the commotion at the palatial church her car was idling in front of.

As she let her dark thoughts wind out of her bitterness like pus from a weeping sore, the great doors flew open and a bride in full wedding regalia ran out. Tucked under one arm was a cakebox. Held in the other was a bottle of champagne. And at full sprint, she came down the stairs, harried by photographers with cameras flashing like the snapping teeth of a wolfpack.

In a moment, her superb physical condition carried her over the red carpet, past the security cordon, through a stunned crowd of onlookers and autograph hounds, and finally to the door of Sara’s car.

Sara was paying attention to the stoplight. Her inner clock told her the redlight was almost done and before her eyes, the stoplight finally gave her the green.

She was just taking her foot off the brake when the bride threw open the passenger door and launched herself into the backseat. “Drive!” she ordered.

“What the—” Sara was unsure what to be stunned by first. The trespass into her vehicle—the fact that the trespasser was a very gorgeous woman and not at all the orc she would’ve expected to commit such a crime—or the sight of the wedding dress that the gorgeous woman wore.

“DRIVE!” the bride howled, kicking the upholstery as she let loose the wail, and there was so much force in her words that Sara stepped on the gas, the acceleration of her car swinging shut the door that the bride had come in through.

Besides, the light was green.

Sara tried not to split her attention. She couldn’t afford to fix a ding in her own bumper, let alone someone else’s, so she kept both her eyes on the road as if there wasn’t an absolute beauty in her backseat, sniffling.

Seeming only slightly mollified that Sara had given in and put the car in motion that was now taking it away from—Sara glanced at the rearview mirror—a horde of shouting, picture-taking people that seemed more like something out of a zombie movie than anything in Sara’s experience.

Nope. Not my business, not my problem. You’re not a cop anymore, Pezzini, you do not have to put up with this. “Out of my car,” Sara said firmly.

“Look,” the woman said, collecting herself enough that a crisp English accent emerged from her trying-not-to-sob words. “I rather need a ride.”

“Get a taxi.”

“Does it seem like there’s bloody time for that?” And the woman’s own frustration boiled over. Her face crinkled and fresh tears burst from her eyes.

“Ah hell.” Sara had stuffed months’ worth of complimentary fast-food napkins into her glovebox. She opened it up now, took out a wad, and passed them back to the bride. But only because if she didn’t empty out her glovebox anyway, soon there wouldn’t be any room for her insurance information.

“Thank you,” the bride said in a ragged little voice.

Traffic slowed again. Sara looked in the rear-view to see that the horde had gone from Resident Evil to Mad Max. Land Rovers, sedans, motorcycles, and enough people running to start a small marathon—all were on their way to Sara’s tailpipe.

Quickly thinking of her destination, Sara recalled an alternate route. She twisted the car onto a sidestreet, hung a right, a left—anything to put some distance between her and them.

She didn’t mean to take the bride’s side in all this, but at least there was only one of her.

“I’m not taking you anywhere,” Sara announced.

The bride broke from her nose-blowing into confusion. “You’re taking me back there?”

“It would serve you right. No. I just mean I’m not fucking driving you somewhere, unless it’s on the way to my DineDash guy, whose address I’m not giving out by the way, because you’re a fucking weirdo.”

It seemed to take a moment for that to hit the bride. Then she started caterwauling.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Sara tried reaching back to pat the bride reassuringly and a honking car horn brought both her hands back onto the wheel and her car into its own lane.

“It’s not you.” The bride blew her nose again, wadded up the tissue, and dropped it to the floor. Sara winced at that, but she didn’t have much room to talk. She’d strewn the floors and the seats with receipts, test results from doctor’s visits, empty fast-food containers… none of them had snot in them, though.

That’s it. We’re at the tipping point. I am going to clean this car out. I’ll buy one of those air fresheners for the rear-view mirror and make it official.

“You have a fork?”

Sara was as surprised at the question as she was at the answering thought that yes, she did. She had forks and spoons and sporks, all plastic-wrapped from fast-food joints she’d visited. She hadn’t used the utensils, but she’d been loath to throw them out, and so they’d formed a colony in the center console of her car.

She opened up the console, picked a single-use cutlery, and passed it back to the bride.

“Thanks. I’m… you’re great. I’m so sorry for imposing. Here I am—look at me. I’ve not only ruined my life, now I’ve made a mess of yours.” A hitch entered her voice. “I bet I mucked up your whole day!” she wailed, inconsolable, as if she’d thrown off someone’s performance at the Super Bowl instead of complicating Sara’s plans of day-drinking, watching something on Netflix about Victorians, and maybe practicing some self-care if there were any scenes where someone’s poofy shirt got wet.

“No, no!” Sara assured her, knowing a bit angrily that she was being such a girl about this, not asserting herself at all, actually trying to comfort the person who was… not hijacking her car, but squatting in it at least. “I was having a shitty day anyway. Not that you’re so bad. I mean, I want you out of my car still, but I’m not going to…” Sara let her voice drop off to near-silence. “Shoot you.”

Yeah. That would help the hysterical woman. She remembered being a lot better at handling mental cases when she wore blue. Apparently it wasn’t like riding a bike.

“I didn’t even think to share with you until just now. I’m such a slag. Stop the car… please. God, is that the first time I’ve said please to you? When I’m in your ruddy car?”

“It’s fine. I’m stopping the car.” They’d come to another redlight anyway. Sara checked the rear-view, the driver’s side mirror… no more horde.

There, that was her good deed for the millennium. She’d helped this strange Brit get away from all the many people she’d either pissed off or made insatiably curious. And now the adventure was over and she could chalk it up to being one of those Big Apple things.

The bride did get out of the car. Only to march up to the shotgun seat, throw the door open, and climb in. Why didn’t you lock the doors after she got out? Why oh why…