in the dark;

Abel was a little impressed with how forward she was being now. He wasn’t sure if she was interested or just being friendly, but the subtle touch of his knee kind of drove her point home. “She is a sweet kid,” he said with a bit of a smile. “Not a lot really. It’s kind of terribly lonely.” He was being honest but also coy. He wanted to play this and see were it led him to. 

“Well, I’ll be,” he said, looking up into her newly familiar face. “Did you ditch the dog with your boyfriend for a solo date with yourself or are you stalking me?” Abel couldn’t properly rein in his oddball sense of humor most of the times, but as soon as the words had come out of his mouth, he realized that this was his casual fishing to see if she were single.

“I know,” she replied. She really did appreciate that everyone worried about her. Sometimes she was convinced that Iain and Pao consulted about these things behind her back. The thought didn’t bother her, and in fact was a little comforting that she had people who worried about her in her life. Shiv smiled and nodded. “Yep. Hot as fuck, right?” She couldn’t help but beam a little bit. She’d managed to reel in that man all by herself. 

“Está como un queso, Loba,” Pao replied as she melodramatically fanned herself. She bit back a joke about him having any siblings and zoomed in a little more on the photo. They looked happy, and that’s all she really cared about. “So this guy is the real deal, huh?”

“Damn. Alright. I know it’s not negotiable, but he’s nervous about it all,” Shiv said. She wanted to make him as comfortable around the people in her life as she possibly could. “You’ll like him. I met him at one of my shows actually accidentally. It wasn’t something that I had planned at all, but here I am.” There wasn’t a lot that she did consciously plan. “I’m sure that I’m some grand trout or something, but that’s beside the point. I am still a hot fucking mess. Stuff usually doesn’t go this well for me, so I’m kind of in awe of it all.” She fished her phone out of her pocket, keyed in the code, and pulled up a cute selfie of Ryan and her before sliding the phone over to Pao.

-

“We’ve been through so much, Loba,” Pao said quietly. “I don’t want to see you get hurt or be a part of something you might regret.“ She was sure Ryan was charming, handsome, what have you; she wanted to make sure he was good enough for one of her oldest friends, one of the few people who understood what it was like to be an immigrant. She didn’t want this to get sappy, but she wasn’t going to be a bystander to disaster. As Shiv passed her phone over, Pao raised an eyebrow before she looked at the selfie on the screen. “He -- wow.” She zoomed in a little on the photo. “You met him at one of your shows?”

“Well, you’re not wrong there,” he said with a small nod. “BB-8 looks more anxious than he actually is, but he’s pretty anxious. However, he’s a nice dog. He and Stella are crazy about one another.” Abel’s ex wife had handpicked BB-8 for Stella and Stella had given the dog one look and named him after a droid. “Most dogs are high maintenance in their own ways.”

“I’m sure a lot of droids would have sufficed,” she said with a shrug. She didn’t know much about Star Wars, but she’d half-seen a few of them. “I love dogs. They’re such complex but somehow relatively simple creatures. I think they tend to come into their own names, y’know?” She pushed loose strands of hair behind her ears, smiling at him. “They seem like they’re crazy about each other.” 

“It’s just he was literally left holding the bag during a robbery. He’s like really good at locks and cracking safes and all of that stuff,” she said, trying to make it sound really matter of fact. “Besides that’s not even the worst thing that people we know have done.” Pao and Shiv had been there and seen a lot of stuff and if they hadn’t done it they knew people who had. “Oh, you can definitely meet him. He’s fucking hot, Pao. Like otherworldly. Don’t know what he sees in my hot mess ass, but he’s sweet and he’s genuine.”

“Me meeting him isn’t negotiable at this point in our friendship,” she teased. Of course, she wasn’t joking, but she did mean well. Was this guy who he said he was? Was his role really as small as Shiv believed? What were his intentions? Typical things a best friend need to know. “Maybe he loves a mess,” she said with a smile. “Besides, you’re a catch. Don’t sell yourself short.” 

Abel nodded. “Abel like the Bible but with less murder.” Well, maybe not less murder because he was a medical examiner, but it probably wasn’t the place or time to bring that up detail. “And well, as I said before the kid one is Stella and the dog one is BB-8. Stella named him, not me. If I’d named him he’d at least have been an Obi-Wan.”

George laughed quietly. His cool introduction may have been odd, but it was charming all the same. “Dogs tend to grow into their names, don’t they? Di is  just a nickname for Diamond. She can be high maintenance but also, well, tough. I guess that’s the right word.” She pursed her lips and looked over to the little girl and the two dogs. “C-3PO seems like it’d be a better fit for an Iggy, though. What with the anxiety and all.”

“Well, I puked this morning, but I’m nervous and that’s nothing new. Sometimes I puke before a show. It’s not out of the ordinary.” She shrugged. She also wasn’t unfamiliar with drinking too much and puking either. This wasn’t that type of case at least. “I love him, Pao. I love him, and I feel stupid about it because of course everything with me goes fast and hard and I crash and burn. Then there’s the fact…well, he’s been to prison. It’s nothing serious, but he’s terrified of meeting Iain now because of that.”

She opened her mouth to speak but quickly closed it, unsure of how to respond right away. Pao was happy for Shiv, of course, and she knew she could trust her judgment when it came to others. She was just apprehensive of a how quickly she got serious romantically. That could have been her own problem to work out later, though. Pao sighed and then took Shiv’s hands in hers, squeezing them gently out of reassurance. “I can try to withhold judgment for now,” she said with a smile. “I’ve got to meet him, though.”

“Stella’s pretty durable,” he said. He wasn’t sure how durable that BB-8 was though. Stella was elated at a new dog coming over as BB-8 was sniffing the air nervously. “At worst she’ll frighten BB-8 over there. He’s nervous and scared of a lot of things.”

She was amused at how nonchalant he seemed to be while she had been rattled by the unlikely possibility of her dog knocking over a child. “Well, if it’s all right with you, Stella and BB-8 are more than welcome to entertain Di. She’s a boundless cloud of energy.” She smiled at him. “I’m George by the way.”

“Hey, I just wanted to get that out of the way so you don’t assume things,” she said. Every time she had something to tell Iain he would sometimes think she was getting ready to tell him she was pregnant. “Anyway, what I am going to tell you is a little more embarrassing and a lot more elaborate than any of that.”

Her eyebrows raised in curiosity. “I wouldn’t have assumed it had you not said anything, but now that you have,” she said, pausing for effect, “I’m not so sure.” She grinned. “What could possibly be more elaborate than that? You’d be responsible for another life in this crazy world.”

Abel sat up a little straighter at the arrival of the dog that was more like a thousand cotton balls instead of an animal. Luckily, the dog seemed friendly and BB-8 was more or less friendly himself despite looking like a personification of anxiety. “I promise my kid and dog don’t bite,” Abel said to the woman. 

Diamond had stopped by a nearby tree, sniffing the ground around it. George jogged as she approached the little family. "I believe you," she replied with a small huff as she caught her breath. She smiled, hoping she could charm her way through this. "I was worried Di would run into or knock over your daughter. She’s, well,” she said, biting her lip as she thought over what to say, “not  aware of her surroundings just yet.”