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Then, well, there was a lot of not talking.Pagan - 6 months"Roderick, leave the poor girl alone," Kennedy warned as Cyrus brought his girl in for the first time.
Roderick was still Roderick, always looking for a chance to fuck with someone, especially one of the women.
"What, mami? I'm just welcoming her to the club. Social graces and all that."
"Puppies," Maze said, shaking her head. "Just when you think they're growing up because they stopped pissing on the rugs, they go and start eating the furniture and chasing cars like idiots."
The new batch of probates were finally off lockdown in the barracks room, having gone through background checks, skill assessment, and whatever bullshit, menial task the rest of us could come up with to torture them.
Sugar and Virgin did it all without even a grumble, both having already gone through the process once before, and likely in a lot less friendly of a group.
Roderick took every opportunity to fuck around.
Roan did it all stoically, taking orders from some of us who were younger than him without bristling.
"Well, at least these ones are almost trained," Kennedy agreed.
"Sure, but I bet as soon as we start being able to kick back and relax, Reign'll be adding a new bunch on. He's in a zone about this shit. But heaven fucking forbid he finally give me a patch," Maze said, giving him a small-eye from across the room, to which he only smiled. It was an old game for them, Maze only jokingly holding onto the bitterness about not being patched-in. "Alright, well, I have to go pick up my demons. Children. I mean children," she said, moving off. "I'll see you at five for my touch-up," she added to Kennedy who was home for a dinner break.
If she had been a workaholic before I met her, driven by a hunger both metaphorical and literal, since she expanded her salon, it was borderline obsessive.
I think, after a life of only struggle, getting a taste of success was addictive. In just five months since her reopening, she had needed to hire three new hairstylists, a full-time manicurist, and a pussy waxer. There was a name for what she did, but fuck if I could remember it, and waxing pussy was pretty much her job description, so I called it what it was.
So me literally forcing her every night to take an hour for dinner was probably the longest stretch of awake-time we got most weekdays. But I wasn't complaining. I understood the drive to make a life you felt pride in. Mine might not have been traditional, but it was what I wanted. So Kennedy needed to work toward the life she wanted too. I was more than happy with the time I got to spend with her.
But this was important.
And I only had forty minutes left.
"Come on," I said, grabbing her hand.
"I thought we were eating here," she responded as I pulled her out the doors and toward the gates.
"No, I want coffee. They have some shit to eat there."
"At the coffee shop?" she asked, brows drawing together.
"Yep, come on, you're short on time."
I pressed her into the table she had been at six months before, making her stay there as I got the drinks, the ring heavy in my pocket.
"I guess she didn't follow my advice," Jazzy said, shaking her silvery-purple hair. "This might be the only time ever that doing that was the smart choice."
"What advice?" I asked, dropping a ten into the jar for Hannibal Lecter over Dexter.
"I told her months ago that if she wants a tour of your sheets and orgasms that make her see the face of God, that she should go to the party. But that if she had any ideas on commitment, to run. Guess I misread you, huh?" she asked, giving me a smile.
"Guess I misjudged you too, Jazz. Was that rumor I heard about you true?"
"Which one? I get talked about a lot," she said with a smile, not being bothered by that in the least.
"About a certain man you're fucking with."
"Sh," she said, eyes going around. "That's top secret. Where did you even hear that?"
"Luce caught you guys getting it on next to his cruiser last week."
"We were not getting it on. We were making out. And I don't know, you know? He's a cop. And I'm friends with the likes of criminal scum like you," she said with a wink. "Now go and do whatever has you fidgeting like a kid in church. Oh, and you still haven't given us a Yelp review, you know. No amount of tipping is going to make me forgive that."
"No?" I asked, reaching into my wallet and dropping a fifty.
"Well, I'm feeling a bit of clemency. You know... for today at least."
I chuckled, taking our drinks and moving to hand one to Kennedy before sitting down at the table I had sat at half a year ago, when I first got a glimpse of her.
