She almost wanted to hit something.
(Not that she ever would, her last name carried a weight around her soul that kept her complacent.)
The idea of driving her car into a tree or rock or something big and solid was driving her wild. It was a desperate attempt to control something in her irritation. At least she could feel something, even if it was a slight fear of her own death.
Of course she would never do it, it was undignified, unjustified, and a waste of energy. It wasn't like her parents kicked her out of the house, she chose to leave. They even protected her for goodness sake, not that she needed it, but the more she became like them the better it had been.
Until the incident last week that drove her into such a frenzy she packed up all of her things and drove across the country.
(Okay, not all of them. Just some essentials she couldn't live without until her address was changed for her Amazon deliveries. And until she could find a decent IKEA and Costco.)
Her parents were supportive of what they thought the reason was. Her father thought she was trying to expand the company West, something he thought was a brilliant move for their tech sector. Her stepmother thought she was being a romantic, uprooting herself from her drab southern lifestyle to explore and be seduced by the big city.
The problem was they thought she was moving to Los Angeles, city of dreams.
Really she was two hours south in San Diego.
Finding the house had been almost too easy, it was a clean neighborhood in the middle of San Diego, not far from anything except the border. She hadn't scouted out the area yet, but in a week there wasn't much time to do anything properly.
In fact the moment she reached the house there were a thousand things she needed to do. Minerva, her partner in crime, had a stack of reports she needed signed and returned through their secured email. She had to contact the local telecommunications company to get her internet set up, and she had to update her address on damn near everything. And the government! The fucking government with anal demands about knowing all about her.
The feelings of rage rebuilt in her belly, burning through her chest. The entire road was painted red with her rage, her hands hurt from how tight they were pressed against the steering while her dashboard turned into a menacing red to warn her about her speed.
She almost drove herself into the sea.
The sea. She had great memories near bodies of water, cooking outdoors was one of the few things that could calm her completely. The sea, that meant she was near her new house!
Perhaps things wouldn't be so bad here.
It was the dead of night, or in her stepmother's words "hooligan time", when she finally made it up her driveway. She knew there was a bed up there, Minerva used her "connections" to have one ready for her by the time she got home. But, the bed was far from her mind.
She took her luggage, two bags and a backpack, and brought it into the house and up into her room. There would be time to admire the purchase later, right now she had to unpack then read reports.
By the time she finished both tasks the sun was peeking through the window and Aubrey thought it was a great time to take a nap.
Not that she would ever call it that.
It took her a month to get settled in, the internet and utilities took nearly a week to get set up and she had the house cleaned while she flew to San Francisco to visit the West Coast corporate headquarters.
When she finally had her first week at the house, Aubrey realized quickly why the house was so cheap. It wasn't soundproof.
Next door lived some sort of DJ who blasted music well into the night, and it was fair to say Aubrey would have liked some of those songs. At a normal proper time. Not in the middle of the night when she had to get to work by three in the morning.
By the end of her second week there Aubrey was ready to murder the "wannabe" DJ and whoever else lived in that forsaken house.
(She always heard two girls singing at least one song every night. Yes, they sounded heavenly together, but that didn't stop the rage slowly boiling inside of her. And no, she was not jealous.)
Before she could terrorize the neighborhood, and teach the people here why they should be afraid, the nightclub suddenly stopped. It happened to coincide with the first time Aubrey walked around the neighborhood in broad daylight with a coffee in hand.
(Her coffee maker hadn't shipped yet, and she was tired of making Cowboy Coffee.)
But that brought her to the second reason why she could never sell the house. As she walked back there was an Asian girl throwing knives into a target with frightening accuracy. As if the girl knew she captured an audience, she turned around and held up one of her throwing knives before throwing it blind into her target.
She didn't miss.
And as if the DJ wasn't bad enough, in the same cursed house lived a woman with a competitive streak a mile wide. It was around Christmas time when she moved in, one of the blessed things about San Diego was the near-perfect weather while her house in the South would be inches deep in snow.
Minerva thought it would be funny to send her "connections" to her house late at night with yard decorations. Aubrey saw the woman once, when she went out of the house to see with her own eyes the damage done to her yard. The ginger looked at her with an amused face.
The next day the DJ's entire house was covered in lights, and their yard was covered in as non-religious as possible Christmas scenes.
Good Lord she was going to die here.
At the very least her stress and rage levels were down. It was a strange feeling when she suddenly lost much of the old stress she had carried with her from her parents. She was too springy, almost weightless as all the old thoughts that would have sent her into a homicidal rage now made her shrug.
It felt… good? Nice?
They were the kind of people she would have never associated with in her old world, so she avoided them. But the universe had other intentions for her, unfortunately.
The doorbell was a strange sound to hear. No one visited her, and Minerva did as she pleased quietly. Aubrey was in the middle of White Fang, and she debated on whether or not she should ignore the bell. It was her scheduled downtime, so she didn't really have to get up.
Her nature got the best of her and she stood up.
'Be polite to every visitor and your neighbors.' Her stepmother's voice rang through her head as she opened the door.
In front of her was a short brunette clad in plaid and thick headphones around her neck. The DJ.
Aubrey had become so relaxed, complacent really, that she didn't snap at the girl. Instead she smiled.
"Hello." She said.
The brunette gave her a weak shaky smile back. "Hi, I'm Beca, your neighbor and gosh, I was wondering if I could borrow a cup of sugar."
Aubrey blinked. "Sugar?"
"Yeah, sorry about the strange request, we ran out and my wife's baking for the school fundraiser."
She looked like Atlas with the weight of the world resting on her tiny shoulders. Aubrey thought about saying no and the social consequences attached to it. If she said no, nothing would come of her stay here. She would always be that outsider stealing glimpses of the inside, and years ago she would have been alright with that.
But, now she was tired.
"Yes of course, come in. I'll get you a bag."
She should have thought about it more thoroughly, she realized as she tried to sleep. She was regiment, control, structure. She had no clue what would happen now, and that was terrifying.
The doorbell rang again, this time Aubrey was in the middle of Kazan. Work had dried up, driving Aubrey crazy, She was born to work, not to be idle. Good God she would die if Minerva ever forced her to retire.
She stood up faster than she cared to admit and opened the door to Beca and a plate of what looked like caricatures of animals.
"For you." Beca said, either a soft grimace or smile on her face.
"Thank you." Aubrey said, taking the plate of baked lumps of sugar from the shorter woman's hands.
It's nearly a month later when the doorbell rings again. Aubrey is in the middle of writing an essay to Minerva about how Kazan and White Fang are basically the same novel, and that Call of the Wild and White Fang are the same novel in reverse. She almost misses it, her creative anger blocks out the entire world outside of her canvass of words.
"Beca?" She is surprised, but not entirely.
The brunette smiles at her and squeaks out an "Hi", before her teeth grit and her jaw visibly clenches.
"I need to borrow some more sugar, please."
The signs of Beca's irritation are there, Aubrey's almost shocked at how crude they are. Beca's jaw juts out, her eyes are narrow passes and her clenched hands are plain in the daylight. And Beca must think she's hiding it well.
"Of course, how much do you need?" If Aubrey is known for anything, its will be for her polite manners.
(It makes cutting people down so much easier.)
"A cup and a half please."
Beca groans and grasps her ears as she waits, leaning on the counter. There were a few things she could do in the moment, finish measuring out the sugar and sending Beca on her way, or asking the DJ about her troubles.
She almost kicks Beca out of her house, a lifetime of loneliness leaves her ill equipped to help anyone. But, there is a sadistic part of her desperate to try.
"Beca," Aubrey said while pouring the sugar into a bag. "Not that I'm upset or anything, but you do you keep asking me for sugar?"
Beca's eyes flared and Aubrey was worried she had unleashed a beast upon her house.
(Which would have been a bitch since she had just cleaned up the entire house for spring and even bought herself some new expensive furniture. And she was also worried that she had upset the brunette, feeding into her self loathing and anguish. )
"I'm sorry…" The words died in her throat as Beca shook her head.
"No, I'm not mad at you." She clarified, looking at the bag. "It's Chloe. She refuses to buy a bag because she thinks I would eat the entire thing to give myself diabetes on purpose. Which is stupid, because she bakes so much I might as well have."
"Why?" Aubrey was at a loss for words, she couldn't wrap her head around it. How could someone love another person so much?
Beca shrugged. "That was my reaction too." She looked up, thoughtful. "Honestly, if I wanted to leave her without a divorce I would just run away instead of trying to kill myself slowly. Quicker and easier."
Aubrey nods, reasonable, and hands over the bag.
"If you're free Friday, you should swing by. We always have a block party on Fridays during the winter. It'll be fun." Beca says as she leaves. "It starts at five at my place."