#lan:chat

              Stopping in her tracks when she noticed her brother across the street, accompanied by a familiar face, Maya’s eyes narrowed and her jaw set. Mike wasn’t a bad guy, but it was the fact that he was with their dad that made her hesitate— a sense of betrayal bubbling right under the surface. When they pushed the door open to the cafe she had agreed to meet with Mike at, and not their dad, that was it for her. She quickly turned on her heel and walked in the opposite direction, turning a corner and nearly bumping into someone, creating a bit of an awkward moment of dreaded anticipation mixed with relief, leaving the two of them standing opposite each other like idiots. “That was close,” she muttered with a puff, tension rolling off of her shoulders. “You wouldn’t happen to know a place around here where they serve liquor before 4pm, do you?” She asked, deciding she might as well put the awkward moment to good use.

Having hid in the backroom at Uncle Louis’ for a few minutes to avoid her brother’s ex-girlfriend and whatever complaints she had about him, or about her life in general that tended to take up the better part of half an hour, Cecilia came back out again slowly and smoothed her hands down the little apron tied around her waist, complete with fresh tomato sauce stains and a hint of oregano. She cleared her throat quietly and walked up to a customer that had arrived in the meantime, probably wondering why she had left in such a hurry. “Sorry about the wait,” she mumbled, looking up at them a moment later. “What can I get you?”

                      “––Alright,” The word was spat out in a mutter, gruff and defensive beneath his breath. A looming pair of footsteps had been following him for some time now, winding and meandering through Westbrook’s side streets on his tail for a reason that, to him at least, had to be sinister. A deep drag of his smoke, a pivot in his footing, and he was turning to ‘stalker’, “Fuckin’ enough already.” Paranoia was a dear old friend to Jason Cash; the devil on his back, if you will. It was what you got when you dabbled in the felonious–– even worse when you lived it, breathed it, and drank it, too, “I know my ass is nice on the eyes, real nice, but it ain’t nice enough to be stalkin’ for ten blocks. So? The fuck you want?”

“Strictly hypothetically speaking of course. I mean, it’s not like I’m not content with the view from here, I was just... wondering.”

“ —– So my captain is getting a little concerned with my work habits,” Scarlett began, eyes boring into the person before her. Casually dressed with a smirk on her lips, it was her usual ammo for a day on the job. Her captain complaining — which Scarlett liked to call morbidly suggesting — that she wasn’t doing things correctly was a day-to-day basis thing as well. She knew she was good at what she did, he could shove it. “According to Captain I-Have-An-Electric-Rod-Shoved-Up-My-Ass, telling someone a dead body looks ‘gross and like it hasn’t been to the Bahamas in a few thousand years’ is not an accurate description to put on a police report. Like dude, I’m aware I can’t actually put that on a police report, but live a little maybe? Take a joke, damn,” she breathed out, a roll of her eyes at the thought of her repressed captain. “I was just speaking the truth, making an idle comment; my eyes don’t deceive. I know a good tan when I see one, and that honey did not have it.” For the most part, she was joking, but she knew what it looked like to the outside eye — not that she minded, she thought with a carefully crafted smirk and tilt of her head. 

                     “Sorry, but uh... did you see a set of keys anywhere around here by any chance?” Olivia asked, teeth clamping down onto her bottom lip in a lock, equivalent to crossing her fingers for luck, as if it might affect the answer to her question. While she was an optimist by heart, there was no way of knowing where her keys had gone — she couldn’t pinpoint the moment where she lost them, not even close. “My bag,” she said and held it up, small, soft, tan leather with a stretch of stitching that had come undone at the bottom. “There was a hole in it that I didn’t see, but uh... my keys did and made a run for it. Can’t get home now,” she added and pointed toward her car.