Sure has been a long time hasn't it, heh? Welp, back from my vaction and returning to the writing fold, as much as I can anyway. Had to take a bit of a break.
Special thanks to Mandy the O, and to my editors as well.
Mostof all,thank you to my readers for being so incredibly patient.
Seasons will go, be grateful.
So, I say goodnight, for you.
Cause you want it that way
I can see, what you mean to me now.
So, I'm waiting now, I'm waiting now.
A Thorn For Every Heart, "Pretty When You Cry"
"Thank you for coming, Miss Reynolds. Sorry I hadn't the chance to speak to you at the restaurant."The interrogation room was quiet – too quiet – and it obviously made Jessie very nervous. Just like she had been doing in Denny's, she was again fiddling with the several bits of metal that were set in the lobe of her ear. Her multicolored acrylic nails were just as gaudy as the rest of her clothing. Christina couldn't help but compare her to a Pablo Picasso painting where colors and designs were splashed here and there.
Either that, or a dancer from an 80's Madonna video.
The detective did her best with ignoring the steady click-click-clack of the nails to sterling silver as she pulled out a seat and settled down into the worn leather. Jessie only nodded, staring at the mirror lining one wall. Finally she pointed one mint-colored nail.
"Do we have to stay in this room? That," she indicated with a poke toward the large reflective glass, "is making me nervous."
I don't think that's the only thing giving you the tics, honey, Christina thought as she watched her and her constant shifting. The girl was jonesing. Twin golden-brown brows furrowed slightly. So young... Shaking her head softly, she turned off her compassion and focused more upon work. Compassion often made things more difficult.
"No worries, Miss Reynolds. There's no one in there. It's only you and I," she responded honestly with a genuine smile. "We could move to another room if you like?"
Long, hoop earrings thumped mutedly against the sides of the woman's sleek neck as she shook her head. "No. No, it's cool. And please, call me Jessie. 'Miss Reynolds' makes me feel like my mother or something." She gave a soft chuckle which inspired one from the detective across the table from her.
"All right, Jessie. Now, I'm sure you've been asked these things already, but I haven't heard them yet. I'd rather trust my own ears instead of the notes the officers take. Do you mind if I record?" Shrugging off her jacket and letting it rest listlessly against the back of the chair, she began fishing out the small pocket recorder and placed it upon the table.
Jessie eyed it with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. "Don't I need a lawyer or something for you to do that?"
"No, but you can always summon for one should that be your wish." Compromise with the interrogated, make them feel comfortable and be unthreatening. All will go well. That philosophy worked with certain people, and Jessie was one of them. Christina curled her fingers around the recorder again and began to slide it back, but paused at the shake of the woman's head.
"I don't care. I don't have anything to hide. I just want to get this over with." Lifting a hand to rub the back of her neck, all of her silver bangles went shimmering down toward her elbow, gently chiming against one another as she kneaded.
"Understandable." Nodding once and pressing the button to begin recording, she sat back again, getting as comfortable as she could. "Ready?"
Pulling in a slow breath and huffing it out sharply to get a bit of dyed black hair from her face, Jessie nodded, weakly smiling to Christina.
"As ready as I'll ever be."
It was conclusive.
No one knew, or saw, a damn thing that could prove useful. In a normal restaurant setting this would have been unbelievable. But Denny's in the wee hours of the morning was hardly a "normal" setting; there were few people, and those who tended to be there were often distracted by their respective meals, or company. It felt like another one of those dead end cases, but that didn't deter Christina in the least.
If anything it made her look forward to finding out more about this case.
Tucking back a bit of hair that slipped forward, she failed to notice the stripe of ink her pen had left upon her skin and returned to her writing. She also failed to notice the well dressed man standing in her doorway, his lab coat over his arm.
She always became so engrossed in her work, and Raoul always found her concentration to be endearing, if not a little annoying. More than once he had to call her name several times just to get her attention, and even when he had it, it wasn't guaranteed that he had it completely. Her mind could always be straying off to whatever case she was working on. It wasn't always like this...
A solid knock on the doorframe had her glance up, and she smiled softly. "Evening. What's up?"
Shrugging, he stepped further into the office, glancing over the walls as if he hadn't seen them before. He set the powder blue coat over his shoulder and tucked his hands into his pockets, fiddling with the keys that were in one. "Nothing. Just going on my break and...well...I wanted to know if you wanted to join me. I figured what with the way your nose was stuck in your notes, that you haven't taken yours yet."
Her smile turned more into a good-natured smirk. "Am I so transparent?"
"Like glass," he stated with a laugh.
She looked away from him, her eyes falling upon the scattered papers upon her desk. Well, I do need a break. These lines are beginning to blur. Pulling the papers together, she piled them off to one corner of her desk then turned to her computer to start powering it down. "All right, you talked me into it. Where to?" Snatching up her pager she clipped it to her belt, pressed up to a stand and collected her jacket.
Giving a glance to his watch, he nodded. "Well, we have an hour. I know this place not too far from here that's still open." He turned, making his way out of the door and looked over his shoulder briefly as Christina locked up her office.
"Anything's better than McDonalds or, God forbid, Denny's."
Hook, Line & Sinker didn't look like much from the outside; small and nestled between two others, one could walk right by it should they happen to blink. From the shingles down to the anchor-and-lifesaver shaped sign, it could've been mistaken for a bait shop if it wasn't in the middle of the city.
It didn't seem like a place where Raoul would go. Son to the late mayor and business man Martin Chavez and brother to the affluent Phillip – who had taken over the company once their father had passed – one would almost expect him to choose some classy restaurant, or at least a place that didn't look rundown. She bit the bullet and trusted his decision, even if she did give the hole-in-the-wall a dubious regard.
"Best seafood, huh?" She climbed out of his car, feeling a bit overdressed, and waited for him at the curb, before crossing the street to get to the eatery.
His grin was wide as he held open the door for her by the shanty rope handle. "Would I lie to you about food? Come on now." Bowing her through, he called out a greeting to the passing owner who knew him and his appetite for the blue crab cakes. They were directed to a small table in the back and he ordered a Coke, a plate of those very crab cakes and whatever Christina wanted, then sat back in the creaking chair.
"How long's it been since we've been out together?" He chuckled softly, remembering when the two of them would be out nearly every Friday night...if work didn't interfere, when he'd been as sure as her feelings for him as his for her. His Coke arrived along with her drink and he wrapped both hands about the glass, considering her over it. "I miss having your attention to myself."
Even though she had ordered herself the shrimp platter and agreed with herself that she didn't need any dessert, she continued looking over the menu, inwardly lamenting over the plethora of delicious choices that would go straight to her hips. Blindly reaching for her Sprite, she paused, giving a quiet smile, then tipped the glass to her lips. After her swallow, she motioned to a small picture on the menu and placed it down. "I think next time I'll try that piña colada shrimp. That looks pretty good."
Ah...so she isn't going to talk about it, Raoul thought, a soft laugh in the back of his throat even if he wanted to grunt in frustration. He picked up his soda, took a long drink, then nodded in agreement. "Mmhm, had it before. It's delicious." He wanted to talk about them, not food. He missed her, nearly everything about her and in the last few days he had been thinking over their past; what had gone wrong...what could still go right.
"Christina..." He sat forward and reached for her hand. "I'd like to take you out again sometime. Not to a place like this. I know it's a dive, but somewhere nice. A little wine, a little dancing...if you can make the time, that is."
"Why, Mr. Chavez, are you asking me on a date?"
"I think I am, Miss Daniels." His smile was slow, white teeth gleaming as his hand squeezed tighter, affectionately.
She could hardly remember the last time she went on an actual date, and not just an outing with friends. No, she did remember. Years ago, and ironically enough, it was with him. We were just kids then, and I didn't have this job... She sobered to seriousness, offering him another smile, this one fainter than the last.
"I can't make time, Raoul. Not with this new case and all. Maybe when the freshness of it wears down..." She trailed off, glancing to his hand upon her own, then slid it away to take up her glass again. Swirling the contents, she watched the ice clink against the sides before taking a drink.
Her withdrawal had him sighing deeply. Wrapping his own hands back about the glass, he nodded with a faint grunt and took a lengthy swallow of his drink before simply tipping it all the way back and draining the glass. "If it's not one thing, it's another. First school, then job hunting...now the job itself."
"I have to make a living some how." She tried not to sound defensive, or that she was tucking her tail to the conversation. Supporting her comment with a shrug, she brushed off some condensation from the glass with a glide of her thumb.
He glanced up to her, and for a brief moment, dark eyes went introspective as if he was thinking of a long-ago event. "I can be patient, Christina...I don't give up easily. Remember the whale watching trip?"
Patient? She hid a frown. You know my work always comes first. Why this need for patience and determination all of a sudden. It wasn't so sudden though, was it? Since their renewed contact with him working at the same station he had been patient in wanting to spend time with her. Perhaps even before then. It was difficult to keep correspondence when she was trying to get her career off the ground, and he was joining the military.
He'd thought of her a great deal while he'd been in the Navy. Though there had been a parade of other women who had both been bedmates and simply friends...he'd always had her there, tucked away at the back of his mind; a pleasant piece of his past that he found himself thinking upon now and again...
Saved by the bell – or in this case a waitress named Maria – she sat back as the woman set her plate down and gave her a quiet thanks. It was only after the waitress delivered Raoul's food, filled their glasses, and wandered off did she answer: "I remember."
By her lengthened silence over their meal, Raoul had wagered a guess that she'd rather leave the past in the past; he couldn't have been any more correct. A small part of her might have wanted to pursue a returning relationship, but that was snuffed beneath the weight of responsibility and work. She took after her father in that respect. He had been determined to teach her to take care of herself, and that as long as she worked hard with few distractions, she'll never have to be subjected to poverty again.
Though she might live off of Hot Pockets and Sprite now, it was better than powdered milk and generic corn flakes, mostly because she chose to live that way.
Christina was glad to get back to work, and even more so when she finally got home. She'd been thinking about her break and the half-hearted conversation, and it plagued her for the rest of her shift, even during her ride home.
Tossing her keys to the small basket next to the door, she shrugged off her jacket and hung it up with a sigh, then wandered up to her room. Her steps not her own, it was her thoughts that were leading her to the walk-in closet and the box upon the top shelf. Lowering to the floor and placing the box upon her lap, she opened the lid to set it aside. Her fingers reached in, brushing against the worn silk, and she remembered.
For two months she had looked forward to the field trip. Taking after her mother, she had become fascinated with sea life, especially orcas. When she heard that the school was selling things to raise funds for the trip, she had her father speak to everyone he knew at work, and even brought a few of the catalogues with him for his fellow employees to flip through. How she wished he could go with her, but she knew he had to work; he'd already missed too many days due to his illness.
She closed her eyes, breathing in deeply, indulging in the salty scent of sea air that her memory provided. She remembered standing upon the deck, watching the waters as they roiled around them, the gentle wind causing white crests to form. Then she heard it, the call that a herd was seen near the bow, and without regard to her safety she rushed in that direction.
While her feet were steady and sure, a gift her mother had given her when she was still a child wasn't, and the length of silk went fluttering from her shoulder, tumbling across the deck and toward the ship's edge, precariously tangling on one of the bars. If it hadn't been for the hand that snatched it in mid flight, its owner nearly falling over the railing, the scarf would've been lost forever.
She couldn't thank him enough, and each time she did, he only gave her a warm smile and said that it was nothing. That was the day she had met Raoul. It wasn't too long before they started dating, and though her friends warned her about dating a junior – she was a freshman at the time – he never proved to be the cad they often mentioned upperclassmen were. His parents didn't enjoy the fact that their son was becoming distracted by a young woman who was beneath their social standing, and thought to put an end to it.
Like most teenagers would, they rebelled against that attempt and often saw each other in secret. It wasn't until he graduated that they managed to get the upper hand and forced him to join the military. There was little she could do but continue with her schooling, and turning her interests to her father's profession. They tried to keep in contact, but with him in boot camp, their letters were few and far between.
When her father was diagnosed with colon cancer, she tried to spend all the time she could with him before he passed on. No matter how many times she told herself that she would be prepared, his death made a great impact on her life; he was all she had left. Raoul was pursuing his own goals, and she believed that she would never see him again. Fate had different ideas, and she was proved wrong during her graduation.
He was a vision to behold standing beneath the Los Perros High School banner; his hat beneath his arm, Service Dress Blues neatly pressed, dark hair cropped close to his scalp and a bright smile upon his lips. She didn't know how long they held to each other, and she wept when he kissed her.
He left two days later when his leave was over, promising never to forget her.
As the years passed and the letters between them became more scarce than before, she knew she had to try to forget him in an attempt to focus more on college. She didn't know what to think when he returned to her out of the blue. They both had moved on with their lives. She still didn't know how to take this change, and his obvious lingering affection for her.
Sighing softly, she closed the box, though paused and removed the scarlet silk from it. Tucking the box away and climbing to her feet, she readied herself for bed, foregoing a shower, for she believed she would end up falling asleep while standing. It could wait until morning. Nestling her face into the kinky fur of her bear after wrapping the scarf around its shoulders, she breathed in slowly, her tired mind catching the faux-traces of salt air.
