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She and Ben talked a bit more before they both went back to work and that's how the rest of the shift went.
Work, chat, work and so on.
Until it was time for her to punch out and head home.
l/p

Return

Return

*peeks in*

Damn. That was a little surprising. Mike didn't know the details. There probably were a dozen stories floating around about the woman's death.
She shook her head , and the thoughts from her mind as she went back to making drinks and taking orders.

It went on like that for hours, until things really started to slow down. A few stragglers coming in for coffee after late nights at the club or partying.
Some would get breakfast, others just came for the coffee.

There were a few times she had some quiet moments. Everyone had been waited on and she'd cleared and cleaned her section. So she'd leaned against the back counter and sipped a cup of coffee herself.

Ben came over to stand beside her, asked if she was ok.
She sipped her coffee thoughtfully , swallowed and nodded once she'd lowered the mug and cradled it in her hands.

"Yeah. I'm good. "

It was no where near the truth. She hadn't been sleeping for shit. Drinking coffee at this hour didn't really help matters. She'd been having those nightmares about Pow Pow again. It's not something she talks about. Add to that the call she'd received, the timing of it all.
Maybe the dream was trying to tell her something.
She lifted the mug for another sip and Ben gave her that Rock brow. One arched up and the other lowered . She responded with an arched brow of her own. Lowered her mug and gave him a look.

"What's that for?" she asked and Ben shrugged his shoulder.

"Just not buyin' it but I won't push. So Pride huh? You're actually going and not working it this year?" he asked and she put her mug down on the counter top. Leaned back and rested her elbows on the bar and stretched her legs out in front of her.

"Yeah. Thought I'd take everyone's advice and take a day off. Do something for myself. So why not. Pride is always a great time. " It has been for her. Even when she has only been attending because she was working.

"How's the new place working out?" he'd asked and she turned her head to look at him.

"Great. I really like the place. I'm still putting it together. I need to do a few things."

Like stop in at Del's studio to pick out a few photo's for the walls.
She's also been wanting to drop by bosslady's place and see how she's doing.
She's got a lot of things she wants to do , but so little time to do them in.
Maybe she should take a vacation. Just a weekend get away to some little town nearby. Get her head on straight again.

Main House
Holly inched forward in another small press of her palm and scooch of her rear, only for that motion to brush a page, produce that dry papery noise slithering between sock and rug.

A page? Wait, what is this paper? Holly turned to glance, to trace the… distribution of pages.

Hollopoly money, cast here and there and everywhere, take a picture. Her attention pulled back to you as you gave your account of things, absent the specifics, absent the crucial detail that delivered all the context and without the punchline, waiting for her confession to fill out like an ad-lib with only one solution.

Tell him.

Just tell him, it's okay. It's ethical. There's nothing else to say, that's what this is all about. This is how you do polyamory. This is the lifestyle. You can't manage his— "No, Elodie didn't just get tired of waiting, she saw me kiss him."

The convenient thing for her to do would be to just push this on Leo's parents — just how terribly they embodied both Holly's distant and unattainable but also the inversion of her philosophy and how their obstinate denial of Leo represented an origin point for all of his damage…

…but the fact that his damage didn't have anything to do with her nor charged her with any duties, especially as it related to her selfish desire to be Leo's hero in all of it…

To try and sell that to you? The one who knows her the best? Who's elbow-deep in her affairs, exposed legally and existentially, connected to her romantically, sexually, in business and threats to life and limb, with the floating connect to Chicago, with her past scarred into his hands?

Nah, her refusing to bullshit you was equal parts respect and pragmatic realism.

The finger-crawl encroachment took a rest with her half-leaned in your direction, diverting her weight to the soft back cushions so she sat awkwardly diagonal, legs crossed behind her like she was suspended mid-dive.

"…Leo… I think he got dumped? Said Elodie wouldn't take his calls all night, he lived with her so he assumed he wasn't welcome back home anymore which meant he had nowhere to go. He stayed with me at Rockshore last night."

…and well the last time she brought a paramour around here…

out

amosmarsden has started a new game with the following players:
amosmarsden

" S T A R T G A M E : t r u e "{ " g a m e I d " : " 1 7 1 8 6 9 7 1 1 7 " , " p l a y e r L i s t " : [ " a m o s m a r s d e n " ] , " r o l l N u m b e r " : 0 , " c u r r e n t P l a y e r " : 0 , " d i c e " : { " f a c e s " : [ 0 , 0 , 0 , 0 , 0 ] , " r e r o l l " : [ t r u e , t r u e , t r u e , t r u e , t r u e ] } , " s c o r e 0 " : { " 1 " : n u l l , " 2 " : n u l l , " 3 " : n u l l , " 4 " : n u l l , " 5 " : n u l l , " 6 " : n u l l , " p l a y e r " : n u l l , " u p _ t o t a l " : n u l l , " b o n u s " : n u l l , " 3 k " : n u l l , " 4 k " : n u l l , " s s " : n u l l , " l s " : n u l l , " f h " : n u l l , " y a h _ t o k e n " : n u l l , " y " : n u l l , " c " : n u l l , " y a h _ b o n u s " : 0 , " b o t _ t o t a l " : n u l l , " g _ t o t a l " : n u l l } , " o w n e r " : " a m o s m a r s d e n " , " s t a t u s " : " r e a d y " , " r o u n d " : 0 , " l a s t P o s t " : 1 7 1 8 6 9 7 1 1 7 }

in

Main House
His eyes completely acclimated to the dark, he'd been sitting in some form of it, in this room, for the last twenty-four hours.

"Yeah. I was there. In the seat you bought for me. A few rows in front of Wally, Molly, and your mother."

As your eyes acclimate, as you take the other side of that couch, the side closer to the open path toward the kitchen and hallway back to the front door. Maybe your foot nudges one, but there were torn pages from his moleskines all. over.

"There was a bit of a mix up as they had to double-check I was on the guest list, and when I showed up, you were in a conversation with Leo, Elodie, and maybe his parents?

You left as I was making my way towards you so I waited for you to come back..."

His voice soft, Hollow. Like someone was strangling him. The sloshed liquor is poured again into his mouth. Past his clenched teeth, sluicing through gumline to draw that heat throughout his mouth, on the way past his dry, acidic tongue.

Call it an educated guess, about your family. He didn't see them in the cast party, but that doesn't mean they weren't there. It did mean that they were going to be there for you if you needed a ride somewhere. When you didn't come home by 3 am, the drunken writing in his 'diary' that he wanted to remember, back when he was hot, became kindling for the kind of fire that only ignites internally. The door shut, the embers smolder. Back when he stormed in and went at his liquor cabinet like one of the bottles hid the antidote and he was going to find it.

It turns out they all did, you just had to mix them together.

"Saw Elodie get tired of waiting. So did I."

He sniffs. He leans forward, grabbing the half-ashed blunt and taps it against the frame of the ash-tray, he pulls it up to his face, blowing his whiskey-breath over it and watching the ember ignite under his direction.

He puts it to his lips and takes a puff. Exhaling. Looking to you.

"Why didn't you come here?"

She was halfway through her shift, the place had been busy. Unusual for a Monday but she wasn't complaining. The busier it was, the busier she was and that meant shifts went by fast.

She and Ben were on the bar and Stephanie and Mike were waiting tables.
The phone rang and since everyone was busy and she'd just finished getting her customers drinks. She called out as she walked toward the ringing phone.

"I got it."

She reached out and picked it up off the cradle , pushed the talk button and put it to her ear.

"Thanks for calling the City Tavern, how can I help you?"

She never gave her name. Ever. She hated the small talk . Hi this is V. Yes like the letter. No it doesn't stand for that. No, just V. Yes. Really.
Thought it wasn't just V. She wasn't about to divulge that to just anyone.

There was a pause before she spoke out loud again.

"Yes, we deliver. Yes, you can use door dash if you like, or we can deliver it ourselves. "

The customer on the other end seemed thrilled with that idea. Can't blame them. Door Dash and those other delivery services charge more than the damn order, most of the time. That'll be 15 bucks and a 50 dollar delivery charge for Door Dash.
Talk about scamming people.

The customer asked a few more questions, and had been calling about a lunch delivery for his office for tomorrow afternoon.

"Yeah, we can do that. We'll need at least two hours notice, possibly more depending on your location and the size of the order. If you know what you want and for how many I can take the order and leave it for the morning crew to fix up and deliver at your desired time and location tomorrow."

The guy started to give her details and she carried the phone over to the menu screen to put in the order.
After he told her everything they wanted, she was glad she asked the guy. Would've pissed off the morning crew if he called last minute and expected this all to be delivered in an hour or two.

There were a few items she repeated back to him, and then the final order when he'd told her everything he'd wanted.
She punched in the address , the time they wanted it delivered and gave the man the total. There were a few more words exchanged before she told him thanks for the business and goodbye.

She wrote the entire order out on paper as well. Just on the off chance something screwed up with the system. Always back shit up somewhere. Keeps your ass out of the fire.

She walked over to Ben and gave him the order and went over everything. Explaining she put it in the computer already but to leave the note and back up receipt for the morning crew tomorrow.

A few more words between them exchanged before she returned to her end of the bar to collect empties and wipe down the bar surface.

Main House
It was a little hard to tell, at times, especially with the lights low to accommodate the projector screen and the movie, and the heavy sheen of you crossfaded, movements rendered slow, mood tendered low.

"Wait you came?" Holly groaned quietly, edging closer on the couch on walking palms as she tried to gradually acclimatize you back to warmth like a hiker rescued from hypothermia. "God I really needed you yesterday…"

Her eyes followed, not receiving the full inflection of your initial comment not for ignorance but… perhaps a heavy dose of denial, of hope.

You grabbed, dosed, listening to the hollow and contained, muted splash of liquor inside the flipping bottle, the wet pucker of pressure equalizing.

"No, family was set up in a hotel downtown but yeah I was at home in Rockshore…" Instead of asking how you knew, Holly just cut to it. There was no path before her where attempting to deceive you was going to do anything but do damage, after all, and you needed no help getting there.

But what was she going to do? This was a bizarre game of circumnavigating the central wound, like chasing her around a table the center of which contained an envelope with both question and answer that you dreaded opening and reading, and neither could you pin her down to get her to go read it for you and thus become your villain.

…so around we go.

"…I thought Leo was going to come out to his parents yesterday. He managed to curve that entirely, so everything's just… j-just a big mess…" What did it mean for the future of the show? Holly… sincerely didn't know, but at the very least she had a tourniquet available for at least one bleed. This was another one. Nurse Holly… wholly unprepared.

Galway Girls tribute to Ed Sheeran

https://youtu.be/KvUVAkbplr8?si=oSkeJdGC4DkbJG62

Galway Girls tribute to Ed Sheran

https://youtu.be/KvUVAkbplr8?si=oSkeJdGC4DkbJG62

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