that's just life; i lived it twice

Emira finally cracked and bought a puppy in a fit of loneliness while filming. While she could practically hear people shaming her for shopping over adopting, she had gone for the reputable breeder. Chaos was the runt of the litter but already had so much fire that Emira could barely keep up with him. 

For being only ten weeks old, he had big paws he tripped over constantly, and a need to fetch just about anything. His pedigree was nearly flawless, but he seemed content to attack the Velcro attached to his paws with his little teeth and chase whatever ball she threw. 

Emira sat on a bench while she watched Chaos tire himself out by attempting to chew the snaps on his protective blue puffer coat. “You know, these dogs get some seriously bad rep when this is the worst I’ve ever seen a Rottweiler do,” she commented to the person nearby. 

Then his first wife had come along, and it had been all expensive furniture, silk clothes and satin bedding, velvet drapes and designer rugs. Even if they hadn't always lived in a glass house, so to speak, she had never been willing to tolerate any kind of pet. It hadn't even occurred to him to ask.

While he and Kate probably weren't opposed to animals or chaos, they were busy, house and apartment swapping in a way that didn't work for the care and feeding of creatures, never mind training or housebreaking.

That didn't mean he didn't watch with fascination. He liked fresh air, even if it was still cold outside. He liked the park. He didn't dislike children or dogs or people who approached him. Sometimes, honestly, he took his coffee to just sit and watch life happening, and life ostensibly included all those things, including the adorable, rambunctious puppy he'd been watching struggled against its own existence and outwear for at least ten minutes. He hadn't realized the woman next to him on the bench was minding the dog until she spoke, but her words were met with a chuckle.

"Why do you think they get a bad rap?" He asked, completely unaware of pet politics the same way he was unaware of anything else pet-related. "Because this really looks pretty mild, unless you're the coat."

"I bought it for a just-in-case scenario. A work dinner, an event, something to make you eat your heart out later," she ticked off, leaning back away from his touch with a sassy little smile. Fun-ruiner.

"We give them a color and they pick everything for us. I guess we pick between green, blue, or red, and they give us something totally unique," she responded. Judging by how Simon leaned in, she could see the Uber driver glancing in the mirror, either to see how far they went or to kick them out as soon as he could.

"My edits are off to the editor. Both kinds. And I've got my new release set for this summer," she reported, lowering her voice for the latest sentence.

Simon leaned forward for privacy, placing his words carefully, but it wasn't sweet nothings whispered into her ear he was intent on. No, this was definitely racier, more absolutely filthy than anything else. And he didn't think twice because she knew (and matched) exactly how dirty he could be.

"That's not exactly what I'll be eating out," he admitted, his voice a low and full of promise. There were too many ideas floating through his head, places he wanted his fingers and tongue on her body. And he had zero compunction about moving her skirt however little he needed to in order to fulfill any of it. She could keep it on and he wouldn't mind a single bit. He placed a kiss, maybe with more tongue than strictly necessary, below her earlobe and then sat back up, his hands where they belonged in her lap. He could see the Uber driver looking, maybe got off on it just a little, because the man could see all of both of his hands. This was not a kick-them-to-the-curb sort of offense.

With her update, he nodded. He knew the process all too well, of course. It hadn't been that long since he'd completed his own cycle of edits, publication details, more edits, more details, more edits, and then marketing. Writing under a pseudonym did change some of her patterns, her marketing being much different than his more traditional obligations, but it was still just as much work. While he'd never say it because it was so selfish, he hoped actual travel wouldn't be a major component of her book releasing.

"Well, let me know when the time to escape is and I can plan. I'm early enough in the process on mine I can go anywhere, and my adaptation is stalled until probably later in the summer or earlier in the fall. The bookstore is in good hands." He shrugged. "And there's the collaboration but... also portable." He slid his eyes over toward her. It was their collaboration, after all. All he needed was her. "Do you want to go before your release?"

Hearing it repeated in the low tones of a stranger's voice was very different than being addressed by anyone else in his daily life. Kate had bestowed nicknames on him. His agent called him Judy, the result of an unfortunate spelling error, swapping Bloom for Blume in an interview years ago. Monica had called him Si, and he'd cooled from not minding that to hating it. Point being, he'd never been called by his first and last name together in quite this way before.

"I didn't ask anyone to break into anything for me," he corrected. And... was the man before him supposed to pass for a young boy? He was certainly younger than Simon, but there was a fair amount of wiggle room in that estimation, wasn't there? "You were already doing that when I happened upon you."

Simon was the opposite of Eddie in that he didn't know exactly what he was doing. He wasn't even sure what he thought of the brief hint of physical contact. He couldn't deny there was something, though.

"I write books," he explained. "Novels."

Milo smiled, relieved to have not scared this man off entirely just yet. 

He held the man’s palm in his hands, investigating it closely. You can’t exactly tell the future from lines on a hand, but you can learn about a person that way. Milo saw creativity in this man, and some rather interesting family dynamics, as well as an abundance of natural luck. 

As soon as he saw that last bit was when he got the Vision. He called them that although he didn’t always see something - sometimes, like now, it was just a feeling. But it was always true.

The darkness he’d seen had been a rather sharp (if temporary) dip in this man’s luck.

“You’re going to lose something important. Not a person, thankfully - an item,” Milo said. “It’s going to cause some problems for you, I’m afraid.”

There were plenty of reasons why their relationship was rocky at best, but right now, Murph was the shit stirrer. He needed to rein himself back in.

So, maybe that was why he huffed out a laugh at Simon's quip, this one with a tinge of actual humor. He sucked in a breath and then let it go, along with the tension he wanted to take out on every other aspect of his life except the part that deserved it.

Which, of course, is why Simon seemed to unknowingly one-up him once again and raise the white flag, offering understanding and experience for a situation that Murph would swear on his life he was completely alone in. Even still, he wanted to dig his heels in, insist that Simon had no idea. But his eyes swept the footwell of the carriage as he nodded silently, sitting with the weight of it all for a few seconds.

He looked up finally, his shutters coming down if only just. "I could probably survive a meal with you," he hedged, even as one side of his mouth curled a little in a peace offering sort of half smile. "I mean, it'll probably be a close call, but I'm willing to take my chances. And if you step out of line, just know I keep a bag of marshmallows on me at all times."

"Maybe we'll plan something fast casual, just to be on the safe side. No lingering through courses, no extra bottle of wine," he mused, not even a little serious about wanting something other than those things anyway. "Noted, but... don't they melt?"

"Mm." He tipped two shots of Morocco into the cup, a dash of roasted walnut oil and the rose water. "Why were you in Morocco?"

Though he was distantly familiar with the whole cherry stem thing from various pop culture sources, he had never directly participated in those discussions in school, always lingering too far on the edges of those sorts of interactions. "A little later into spring, we do a strawberry rhubarb danish that's pretty good." He shrugged, drizzling in a moderate amount of King Syrup. He whisked the drink, nearly finished with preparation. "Not sure if you're a pastry guy."

"Oh, I was on a sailing team," he answered without any kind of pause. He'd long given up trying to make it sound less preppy than it actually was. Of all the battles he'd fight in his life, that wasn't one of them. There were certain inescapable facts about him -- he'd been a sailor, he'd gone to school at Stanford, he owned a tuxedo that he'd worn more than once, and he preferred Top Siders to almost any other kind of shoe -- that did nothing to dispel that image. "But that was years ago." That was the most he could do to temper it, to take it out of the present. He wasn't likely to jet off to Morocco anytime soon.

He rolled his shoulder, a little shrug. "I don't know if I'd say I'm a pastry guy, but I'm not against a strawberry rhubarb combo as long as the rhubarb keeps the strawberry from being too sweet. I'm also pretty adventurous, so I'll give it a try."

"Simon Bloom invisible?" he asked with a bitter-tinged laugh. "That'd be the day." Perhaps it was because Murph's own life had crashed and burned around him and he was still standing among the charred and smoldering remains, but the drama frustrated him. Maybe it was really because misery loved company and for as hard as he tried to pretend otherwise, he was miserable. But it felt like Simon was making some sort of play at being this tortured artist. He wanted to be doom and gloom but he'd been stitched together with attention and glory.

Okay, now he was being dramatic. Even in the safety of his own mind he knew he was laying on the woe is me a little thick, so he drew it back, rolling his eyes at Simon as he snatched the flask and took a rather large sip— okay, several— before handing it back. "Mmmm, tastes like altruism," he quipped, pausing for a beat before un-burritoing himself and offering up a corner of the blanket.

The grass is always greener, isn't it? Until you find out it's not.

He'd had too much therapy to get into this just now, so he let it pass. It was way too early for philosophy in terms of both time of night and bourbon consumption and, probably, pretty precarious between the two of them. He may have been late for that realization, but he'd had it eventually. All he wanted to do was change it. But, he supposed, it was easy to be the one seeking change when you weren't the one whose life had just turned upside down.

"That's gotta be what, like, middle shelf?" He quipped, accepting the flask and then the corner of the blanket. It was still cold as fuck but, honestly, he felt a little better. He let his eyes glance over the landscape as they rolled along, inching closer to their destination. He sighed and finally just committed to asking for something, hoping it wasn't too much or too pushy. "I, uh, know this was really weird as far as activities go. Thanks for coming. Now that we've mostly survived this, Kate's out of town for a few more days if you want to grab some kind of a meal sometime. We're obviously not the same, and I didn't live with Monica before we got divorced so circumstances were not the same, but I don't think I had a meal that wasn't liquid for stretches, so... anyway. The offer stands."

Thinking of Kate tempered anything else that was going on, grounding him and snapping him out of it at least for a moment.

"From the ten seconds I've known you, it seems to suit you," he answered honestly. One of the hazards of naming characters was he could only decide if a name fit. He wasn't actually good at conjuring anything. Sometimes he was certain Weike Wang had gotten it right by avoiding the entire convention.

After all, he was sure people heard his name and formed an impression. He'd never been able to pin down what that impression was. He didn't think this was going to be the time he got an answer, either. "Simon Bloom." He chuckled when Eddie delineated the vowel structure of his title. "I'm fairly proficient at spelling. Thank you for the clarity."

He snorted softly at the the thanks; even Morning Glory had a pretty strawberry-forward Valentine's menu. Still, Jae thought he'd managed to incorporate them in a tasteful way, even if he was pandering a bit to the twenty-somethings who made up his primary customer base. "I think it's largely an aesthetic thing. Strawberries are red and shaped like hearts. Some people think they're an aphrodisiac."

"I think there's something to them staying a little rare, though. I haven't had them for years because I haven't been back to Morocco for a long time. That's what makes them special now. If I had them all the time... eh."

He tucked his hands into his back pockets while he waited, content to stay standing and keep chatting lightly even as the light filtering in through the windows was starting to take on a more 'the day is waking' hue.

"It's not the most subtle of metaphors, is it?" He replied, his grin small. "I guess the limitation is mine for not thinking of them as one. Cherries, maybe? In, like, middle school when we were debating who could knot a stem with their tongue? But I've never considered strawberries. Maybe I'll think about it when they're in season."

(Maybe she was using this job as an excuse to not edit her latest book. Maybe. But, it gave her ample opportunity for them to dress up and for Simon to wear that cologne she loved.)

"Maybe to you, but for me, it's probably a little too cold," she teased. Kate couldn't help but lean back into his's arms when he drew her back against him so she leaned against his chest. A sense of brief contentment fluttered over her, warmer than the heat set in the loft.

"You're focusing on feeling me up," she chided, but she made no effort to untangle herself long enough to get out the door. Once in the Uber, she snuggled into his side and her arms wrapped around his.

"I like that color on you. It brings out your eyes," she complimented, propping her chin on his shoulder. The contrast in color made his eyes pop. "I'd bought this dress ages ago and I finally have an opportunity to wear it."

Blue eyes slanted toward hers, the contrast of her whiskey-hazel eyes against his shirt where her chin propped also something that made his breath catch, even as she paid him a compliment that sat low in his gut in the best way, somehow better than any of the others like it he'd ever gotten. "Did you buy it for something else?" He asked, rubbing his thumb against the fabric on her skirt until it, breathing her in because she was so close at the same time. When the fabric on her dress shifted and her skin was under his hand, he admittedly slipped it a little higher on her thigh, testing the boundaries of propriety. He wasn't going to mess with either of their Uber ratings by doing anything completely inappropriate, probably, but that didn't mean he couldn't tempt himself to.

Finally, he leaned forward enough to rub his nose against hers, still fighting the urge to kiss her, and then pulled back. They would have time later. "Do we have any idea what we're eating tonight? Or is half the fun that we're supposed to guess?"

He honestly didn't know how that sounded vaguely dirty to his own ears, but it did. It made him smile, but he needed to change the topic now or he was going to slide his hand under her dress or his tongue into her mouth and that would be it. Their Uber driver would probably dump them out on the curb and tell them to find a hotel room.

"How are your edits coming? Maybe when this round of them is done, we can take a trip. I really missed you." He was well aware they only had a ten minute drive, so it wasn't worth starting a bigger conversation.

Amara gave Simon a wry grin at his explanation. "Ah, the classic; I’m in charge of nothing, but I’m trying anyway approach," she said, her voice light and teasing. "That’s the secret to survival, isn’t it? Just acknowledge that life’s going to throw a few curveballs, and then duck when you have to. The punch in the face is a guarantee, though."

As he mentioned Blue Rhapsody, she gave a nod, happy to hear that he enjoyed his time there, even if they weren't regulars. "It’s got that vibe, doesn’t it? Just enough elegance to make you feel fancy, but not too fancy to make you wonder if you’re overdressed. Definitely a place to visit on a casual night out. Also," she paused for a beat, "you can’t get the full experience until you’ve tried our signature cocktail.” Her smile widened when he mentioned the chaotic aesthetic and eccentric professor combo. "I mean, I feel like eccentric professor does have a nice ring to it," she said with a playful tilt of her head. "And besides, you’d pull it off. You can be quirky and scholarly with enough charm and a few mismatched socks. Maybe a tweed jacket, too. Embrace the chaos, if you can." She raised a brow at his hair, already beginning to notice the shift in his usual style. "That’s the most graceful rumple I’ve ever seen," she joked. "You’ve got the aesthetic down without even trying."

When he asked for her name, she smiled, tipping her head back in a faux-ponderous way. "I’ll keep the mystery alive for a few more moments,” they brunette teased, before revealing, "I'm Amara, it's nice to meet you." She said softly, and extended her hand. At his mention of books, she thought for a second, then replied with a grin. “Oh, I’m sure you have. We all have a few books floating around in the back of our minds, just waiting for the right moment to resurface.” She leaned back slightly, tapping her chin. “I’ve read my fair share, though I’m more about the ones that make me laugh out loud or, at the very least, make me feel something. You know, those books that stick with you long after you’ve finished them? I’m always on the lookout for something that’ll do that.”

He narrowed his eyes. "I definitely enjoyed it. When we lived in San Francisco, it was more about the extremely upscale and kind of snobby establishments?" He paused on the question, just making sure his meaning was conveyed with minimal words before he continued. "So this was a nice change of pace and it was much more our pace. But apparently, I can't claim full experience because I just stuck with my semi-boring usual. What's the signature cocktail?"

Then he was tossing his head back and laughing, not so loud it drew attention, but still. This conversation was somehow visual and he kind of dug it. "Yeah, but tweed jacket and leather elbow patches always felt a little too stuffy, you know? And I generally like no socks. I was also a professor in my twenties, so it felt like I wasn't old enough to pull it off. Maybe now things would be different."

And he certainly wasn't going to find himself teaching in a place like the one he'd graduated from, because he didn't have room for something that demanding. He also wasn't sure of his ex-wife's backdoor political power here, but he wasn't going to try to find out. Plus, while Stanford didn't have over-the-top policies, it was a lot of things that had collars and buttons, slacks, and blazers from the staff. He'd only been slightly rogue in the unstated rules with his Henley shirts and dark jeans most of the time, but it felt truer to who he was then. Not eccentric. Barely a professor.

All he could do when his hair, too long for his own good, didn't cooperate and she complimented him on it, was try not to blush and shrug. It wasn't the first time he'd heard it, but for some reason, it was a difficult compliment to just accept because it had just happened. He hadn't done anything to create it.

"Nice to officially meet you, mysterious Amara," he said, still smiling a little at the way she extended the mystery for a beat. And he found himself nodding, too, at the rest of her explanation about reading material. "Exactly. I might recommend a book called Chemistry to you. Kind of an odd book for me to have enjoyed, but I really did. I think it's fascinating that we never know the characters' names but we feel, in the end, we know them so well."

Simon had never thought about owning a bookstore until he'd bought one as a little bit of a passion project in the lull between his last book being finished and being published. The hours he'd spent curating into a vision he had for it, probably boring Kate to tears she suppressed, had been soothing and well-spent. He hadn't thought he would need the meditative activity, physical enough to involve moving bookshelves and detailed enough to involve scouring the Internet for collectors' editions and finds that fell into a rare niche without being archival. But he had needed it, clearing out the mental clutter from his first marriage that lingered, settling into his happier life in Chicago. He was only happy he'd found a small handful of employees, enough someone could have actual days off if they wanted, who felt the same way about the little store.

"That's true," he said. "Something different but not too different. And anything can be mysterious if you want it to."

He considered Jasper's suggestion and eventually nodded. "Stephen King always sells well I think. He's a master of reinventing himself, but it's always in a storytelling way. Maybe I'll check that one out. I can't maintain the Under the Dome grudge forever." He rolled his lips together. "But Agatha Christie is such a classic. I think I'll always have a soft spot for those."

Which could've been strictly the timing of his listen through a series of Hercule Poirot audiobooks as he and Kate were getting together but keeping things under wraps. While not an aphrodisiac by any means, Agatha Christie had been the backing track to a lot of really great moments.

“Hmm.” She straightened up, admiring her manicure as she thought about what could be a useful form of payment towards her. But to Estie, this wasn’t about monetary value, but more a test to see how much she could toe the line. Adult friendships were a curious thing — moreso when you didn’t have childhood trauma and nostalgia binding you together — so she often wondered at which point any boundaries would be crossed.

“How about you pay for the contents of my basket this fine evening? And then I can pretend I didn’t see you at all.” Estelle was more-or-less kidding though; if she couldn’t fund her dinner from a fancy market, she wouldn’t be here. It was interesting, though, to see how he’d answer.

She considered, though he wasn't sure if it was genuine consideration or harassment based on the way she checked her nails as she thought. He was barely holding back a smile and laughed after she made her suggestion.

"I can do that and then you can forget me. Or, Kate should be home soon and you can share dinner with us if you'd like."