EVAN LOURD

          Rose’s eyebrows raised as she had the opportunity to witness the fit the woman was throwing because of a misspelled name. She wasn’t going to comment on it or anything, she was just going to keep drinking her coffee and probably going to pick some food up for Gracie on the way out when she heard a voice coming from her side and couldn’t help but to smile at the man. “Oh, that would be quite the world, you know? Where our problems were so petty that the thing to stress us the most is a misspelled name on a coffee cup.” She shook her head, the smile widening. “Fortunately, I guess that’s as big as problems get for this lady right there, can’t say that I do not envy her one bit, I mean, while she has this to be upset about, I imagine you and I have a million other things.”

“How come it’s always the ones that don’t have anything much to worry about in the grand scheme of things who always make such a scene? It’s like they’re uncomfortable when the world doesn’t revolve around them,” Evan interjected, shaking his head bitterly. “It’s like they think poor and struggling people are only poor and struggling to enjoy the benefits of being the center of attention and pitied,” he added, rolling his eyes. “Fucking amazing.”

          “Prank ghosts for YouTube views?” Part of Ophelia tried to even comprehend the man’s words, surely it add up for something amusing, if only she could find the ghosts first so she could prank them on live camera. “I actually am a Paranormal Investigator of sorts,” saying it out loud hardly felt real at all. Sounded like kid’s play, when it actually brought a small (the smallest) portion of Ophelia’s income. “I have an YouTube channel and I put the investigations there, some people watch, other call me phony, but I have a pretty solid base of viewers. It’s quite a hobby, but it’s not what I actually do for a living.”

        Easily irritating himself is a characteristic that figures into one of Ethan’s specialities. An absolute perfectionist who also has little to no patience — truly, though, could he be blamed? His position allowed him no space for the smallest mistakes — he was not one to easily tolerate errors. But then again, pretending that not making mistakes was possible was a denial of the sheerest manifestation of human nature. Slips like those were completely acceptable, at least to him. After all, it wasn’t as though a misspell would actively negatively affect someone’s life…

        The woman’s absurdly exaggerated reaction caused an almost immediate eye roll. Her ’problem’ was stupid, to say the least. And she, an idiot to overreact over something so… simple. He had seen real issues in his life, he had witnessed real need. And so, whenever he came across someone so futile, Ethan would, almost instantly, feel that need to tell that person to ’shut their fucking mouth and just deal with it’ as he had done before. But he knew better than to lose his composure in a public space… And so he kept his irritation to himself. That was until someone else spoke up. “Tell me about it.” He agreed, words followed by a nod. “Someone looks like they could use a fucking reality shock.” Disappointment clear in his expression, “I mean, after she finishes her morning Frap, of course.” He let out, sarcastically.

“Can you imagine being the person who took Starbucks that seriously at all?” Reese said with a shake of her head, letting out a laugh. “I mean, it’s over-priced, shitty coffee and most of the baristas are overwhelmed teenagers, so you’re obviously not going to get good service,” she replied. She let out a sigh, before one eyebrow tilted up. “I feel you though. Some people don’t know what it really means to be upset.” 

Evan gave an amused snort. “Yeah, imagine feeling so passionately entitled to something that’s not really important to begin with,” he shook his head. “How some people waste so much energy on something they’re not even going to care about in an hour, I’ll never fucking know.”

“Are you asking me to behave?” He couldn’t help the chuckle that rose in his throat, a strangled laugh that could only be meant to offend the other guy. “You’ve got some hidden kink there, babe. That, or you remind me of my mom. There is no in-between.”

Evan gave a snort, although to his annoyance it was starting to mingle with amusement. The way the guy went on and seemed to swerve everything even if it didn’t make much sense (at least not to Evan), and the way he seemed undisturbed by Evan’s annoyance was starting to come off more amusing than irritating. But only starting -- there was plenty of irritation left in Evan to fuel a very significant roll of his eyes. “I’m asking you to behave like a normal person and not spring your porn onto total strangers who would rather come down with a case of gangrene than hear about it,” Evan retorted. “If that’s kinky then I’m the kinkiest motherfucker on the planet -- and if it reminds you of your mother, then, hell, I’m her goddamned twin.” He shrugged, traces of sarcasm still in his voice as he added, “Your choice.”

Nina had at least twenty minutes before she had to retrieve her son from Grandmother’s house, though considering the ever-growing collection of ill-fitting, rainbow-bright jumpers sitting in her drawers and the grimaces that came with wearing them, it felt more in tune with a rescue attempt. So standing idly at the counter of one of her favourite establishments seemed like the perfect opportunity to keep herself sated since it was advisable to go war on a full stomach. Within touching and eating distance of a deliciously gluttonous delicacy —— their famed chocolate croissant, Nina’s ears pricked up at the unusual tirade barely noticing the voice bleeding through it. “Hm?” She blinked numerous times before she could fully focus on them. “Oh yeah, of course, that’s absolutely terrible. It almost makes me want to shout something along the lines of ‘Come on, people! Some of us have children who need to be saved from overzealous grandmothers with a love of knitting really itchy jumpers! So stop feeling like as if somebody’s keyed your Prius every time your name’s missing a letter or two’. Terrible, absolutely terrible …” She mumbled sleepily, covering a yawn quickly before Evan noticed. “ — Was that supportive enough, sweetie?”.

Caught slightly off guard by not having been paid attention to, Evan nonetheless found himself giving an amused snort and shaking his head. “I don’t know whether I prefer that to be sarcasm, feigned interest, or boredom,” he said truthfully, taking a sip out of his coffee and fiddling lightly with the bookmark he’d yet to put back into the book he’d previously been reading. 

Jacob’s brows slowly climbed, a slim smile tugging at his lips as he listened to the other man’s sudden mini-rant. He had a lot of good points, though, so all he could do was nod along, glancing towards the drink counter for a brief moment to make sure his own order hadn’t been placed there. “All I can think about is the type of hell that woman would unleash if her drink had been made wrong.” He whistled low in a dismal tone, head shaking. “Some people honestly just have no concept of anything bigger than themselves.”

Evan let out an amused snort. “From what I hear, she’s trying the patience of every bartender downtown already,” he said, thinking back to a particular conversation he’d had on that exact matter. “You’d have to wonder what kinda privileges they sit with in life to not have to even consider that the universe extends beyond their personal space.”

          With their laptop open in front of them and their trusted coffee mug by their side with a usual half eaten croissant not far away, Sutton tried their best to start writing the letter from the editor for June’s magazine, as May’s was already out in the stands. The sails were solid so far — being a self-fed magazine, they could speak their minds about the government as much as they wanted to, with not repercussions other than a few threats for red-blooded Republicans here and there. Nothing they couldn’t handle. Their fingers hovered the keyboard of their MacBook as they were begging for the words to come to them, but their mind was adrift and it was hard to keep concentration. It only took a voice coming from beside them to completely rip their attention away from their task. “Imagine living among a class of people who have their brains so shoved up their anuses that this happened as a daily occasion. I have lived among politicians for my whole life, try to have a barista mistaking their name, it’s proper chaos.”

“I can imagine,” Evan let out with an amused snort, shaking his head. “It’s not exactly a secret that a lot of politicians are complete drama queens,” he added, thinking, in particular, of a specific, recent president, and said president’s Twitter account. But that, of course, was a double-edged sword, because Evan was loathe to even look at the guy as a legitimate politician to begin with. “I’m glad I’m not working around any type of people like that. I could get everyone’s lunch wrong at the fire station, and they’d all be happy to eat what I bring them instead.”

“Good lord. Some people are so dramatic.” Sarah rolled her eyes. “Man, that’s the worst. For a year I worked as a sales clerk in a vintage boutique. Luckily our usual customers weren’t that rude but you know, there’s always this spoiled brat who thinks being mean to retail employees is cool – we had one of those and she was the worst. I didn’t back down though, we had an argument. Have you seen Bridesmaids? It was like the scene between the girl and Kristen Wiig.”

“Tell me about it,” Evan scoffed, nodding. He hadn’t seen Bridesmaids, but if whatever scene the chick was describing fit into what they were talking about, then Evan didn’t see the need to really correct her on that. “I’ve worked pretty much every standard retail and service job you could imagine, and sadly I’ve had way worse than girls like her. The most annoying people are people trying to haggle for prices -- at a supermarket. As if I won’t lose my goddamned job if I charge them any less than the price it actually is. It’s always the people who look like they can really afford the item, too, and never people who seem like they could actually use it at a lower price.” 

“Don’t know if I’d fuck Dill ( @dilldexter ), or fuck and marry Cordelia while killing Dill, ‘cause I don’t know if it’d be more satisfying to fuck my irritation out with Dill, or just outright kill him. Won’t know until I find out, right? Don’t know what the fuck I’d do about Jackson ( @yojacksonn ) though, I’ve exchanged less than fifty words with him so it’s not like we’ve bonded or anything. At the end of the day, I’ll be marrying Cordelia ( @cordeliabaker ) ‘cause she’s my other half and that’s that. At least in marriage I can steal stuff from her more easily.”

“If seeing stuff like that annoys you, then why don’t you go somewhere else for lunch?” Jackson asked. 

“Because I like this place,” Evan said. “It’s not the cafe’s fault some people can’t help but be brats wherever they go. I’d rather complain for a few minutes than choose a new favorite place to have lunch at.”

This guy wasn’t the first to tell him that he had the tendency to become unaware of what came out of his mouth, and it has, in fact, gotten him in trouble in more ways than one, but the stubborn thing that he was, he wanted to push further. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for when he said, "You’d be so much more attractive if you could just stop looking like you’ve got a stick up your ass.”

“I know right? Like what is the fucking big deal? It’s just coffee. It’s not a legal document.” Sarah rolled her eyes. “I don’t get it, why would anyone get upset over such a small thing like this?”

“Apparently, getting your name spelled wrong by one letter is the same as getting your mother’s virtue insulted,” Evan shook his head. “Who knows? Some people don’t feel full unless they’re yelling at somebody, and who’s easier to yell at than retail and service employees who can’t do anything about it?”

Scratching his eyebrow, he glanced over at the guy next to him. He was going on and on and wasn’t until he was almost finished that Jackson realized he was talking to him. “I didn’t hear half of what you said. But people get mad over the stupidest shit.” 

Evan quirked an eyebrow. “That, they do,” he agreed, not entirely happy with not having listened to. The difference between him and the girl was, he wasn’t going to throw a goddamned tantrum about it. “Come here for lunch for the next few days, and you’ll witness it firsthand.” 

      As Logan watched the scene in front of him, he couldn’t help but chuckle. He’s been back living the civilian life again for a few weeks now and he hasn’t realized how much he missed it. He was so used to the soldier life that everything he did again felt new. “Trust me, I want to be living her life right now too.” He responded after hearing the man’s speech next to him. “Are you still having car troubles or was that just a figure of speech?”

"A figure of speech,” Evan confirmed, “although it wasn’t one, once upon a time, and knowing my car it likely won’t stay a figure of speech for long.” Giving an amused snort, he shook his head. “Now, if I were her, I bet there’d be at least two people in my life who wouldn’t blink at the thought of buying me a new, functional car, but sadly I live in the real world and am responsible for my own shitty appliances.” Sarcasm laced his tones, much as per usual. “Life is great, isn’t it?”