Rabbit

When Elle had left, she also left her cell number. "I'm not at my apartment much anymore. I need a new place to crash."

"Crash here," Emily offered impulsively.

"I don't know how long it'll be before I find a new place," Elle warned.

"That's okay," and it was. Elle was the most alive person she'd ever met, and having her living there wouldn't bother her.

"You always offer your apartment after a first date?"

"No. I usually offer a restraining order if they ever visit again."

Elle said she'd be back that evening with the things she would need.

All day at work Emily only half read her assigned articles. There were some words she translated with less then usual accuracy. When she came home she began to make dinner-pasta, marinara sauce, steamed vegetables. Elle arrived after six, when Emily had the food out on the table.

"Wow," Elle left her suitcases in the foyer and followed her nose to the eat-in kitchen.

Emily smiled in a way she hadn't since her last bout with weed.

They sat down, and Elle complimented the heady sauce. "Where's you learn to cook?"

"Rome," she said. "Mother always made me learn something local wherever she was posted. In Italy it was cooking. In Riyadh it was calligraphy, and that was hard because I had to get fluent in Arabic quick. And she couldn't think of anything the year we were in Bangkok, so I learned how to pick locks, pockets, and be a con artist. And spear fishing. I'm babbling, aren't I?"

Elle reached over and tucked some of Emily's hair behind her ear. "What did your mother do?"

"American ambassador. She still is."

"Keep babbling," there was a bottle of red wine. Elle wrestled with the cork until it popped off, and poured two glasses.

"She wanted me to be a translator, like with the state department. Thanks."

Elle had handed her a glass. "Do you like doing that?"

"Well, I'm good. But I got my degree in criminal psychology, which nearly made Mother have a heart attack. She settled for a bout of hives, though."

"Good for Ambassador Prentiss."

"Hives are good?"

"Shows more creativity."

"What about you?"

"My dad was a cop. Mom worked in a Laundromat. Still does. I never told her I was shot, asked Jason not to. He respected that. She would've gone nuts. Daddy died in the line of duty, and she wouldn't want me to do that."

"Were you ever a cop?"

"I went straight to Quantico. Overachievement syndrome, I guess. But after the mean streets of Brooklyn, it didn't seem all that terrifying."

"No male dominated field is scary for the daughters of single mothers."

"Amen to that."

They ate companionably, and Emily finally asked if Elle had gone to the doctor today?

Elle grimaced. "He's a man. I try to avoid him."

"Maybe I could come next time, take some of the heat?"

Elle leaned forward until their noses were almost touching over the table. "Maybe I should. You've obviously had a serious, untreated head injury that needs tended to."

Emily laughed and let in drop. She could read the signs.

She was a profiler, after all.

Author's Note: It just made sense that Emily was raised by a single mom. We never hear about Mr. Prentiss, after all, just Ambassador. And I meant no insult to to any who work in places which provide public laundering of clothing. It just fell in my head and took up residence where my brain once resided.