#malaidupont

The month of love had come and went and the girl's night Alycia had promised her cousin went rescheduled a few times as she battled a work schedule that would cause most to break. Not her though, no. She rose to the challenge of navigating a company half a day's drive away, and forged a path for it to expand into territories further North than it had ever been.

"Okay," The older brunette had always been the type to cut straight to the point, lest she was attempting to manipulate someone for her own gain. Though she'd never, unless she had to, manipulate Malai. "What is all the moping about? Your ex lover is back, your mother..." Aly trailed off. No words for the burden of an overbearing mother that hadn't already been spoken in years past, as she too understood the weight of a matriarch set on living her second wind through you. "Tell me Mal. Then we'll drink it all away.."

There was a single bright spot in the hellhole that was Half Moon Bay. A member of her family she didn't detest. "Mal." Words slurred from the lips of a woman, drunk on the bar's sorry excuse for top shelf liquor. "This place is horrid. How have you survived!?" The quaint, small town was her cousin's home, but Malai had traveled the world. She knew better existed. Yet, she chose to live here? Aly couldn't fathom it and existed here only as long as she had to. "Here, drink this. We have to do a photo for the press. The group--" Which was what Alycia affectionately called their family's company. "—had me cut a check for this—" Her hand waived at the charity event happening around them. "—thing."