CHAPTER TWELVE

"What's with everybody thinking me and Tootie have a thing?" Jo growled pushing passed her former partner.

Louie closed the door behind her following her with his eyes. She went in the kitchen where he heard her open the refrigerator. She glared at him and settled on her couch like a patient would in their shrink's office. He chuckled at the idea of him as a shrink.

"I think you make a cute couple," Louie shrugged.

"She's like my kid sister!" Jo yelled with reproach.

Louie kept his mouth shut. Jo lay on his couch and he took the arm chair his mom liked when she watched her soaps. Now months since she passed he could still smell her perfume when he sat in it. Another sigh signaled a request for another beer. The one she had in her hand rested on her stomach as she looked up at the ceiling as if it had the answers.

"Your kid sister's hot," he handed her a bottle. The smirk on his face dropped, "what?" Jo just left it at a glare. "So who's everybody?"

"Blair," Jo groaned petulantly.

"Oh," he said a little too guiltily.

"Just oh?"

"Not just oh," Louie confessed, "when she came by the job I thought she knew and told her type 'oh'."

"You what? You told her me and Tootie were…." She trailed off, "great," she breathed.

She wasn't worried that Blair knew she was into women. Jo was focused on the fact that he shared that he thought she was dating Tootie. Relying on his powers of deduction when he spoke next, "how was I supposed to know Blair was the one?" He settled his drink on his knee. What he was asking didn't escape him.

"You didn't," Jo clipped then after a pause, "she's not."

Words were easy. I hate you. I love you. When the emotion strikes they roll off the tongue. That's where actions came into to clear the confusion the fogs of words rouse. When the emotional high dies down from the declaration the only thing left is the show. She had a key to his place she rarely used especially in the last few months. But today out of the blue Jo was here ready to rant about her day or rather a part of her day that involved a woman she claimed not to love. While he fetched her beer, because she was too depressed to move, he was amazed at how intelligently slow his friend could be.

"She's not?"

"No…." Jo drawled lazily, as if she wondered if she actually believed her own words

"No?"

Jo sat up suddenly, "you gonna play parrot or am I gonna get a little intelligent conversation here?"

He held up his hands "I'm flattered you think I'm capable."

"Keep up," Jo blew out dropping back on the couch. Beer sloshed on her shirt and she mumbled, but didn't get up to clean up the slight spill.

The doorbell rang.

"You expecting anybody?" she hadn't bothered to move when she asked.

Louie stood ignoring her question to answer his door. She heard a familiar voice and growled when she heard an additional set of footsteps head into the den. She closed her eyes intentionally.

"Hey Jo Po," Senior's nasal voice greeted her annoyingly. "King Louie didn't tell me you were here."

She opened them enough to eye him through slits. She lifted her drink in acknowledgement it was more polite than ignoring him. Senior and Louie were around the same age. They knew each other for over fifteen years roughly since their academy days. Senior rarely if never left off the King with Louie. The older man had explained one night that Senior's Sicilian roots explained the name. His love of Louis Prima had inspired the name. The famed trumpeter voiced The Jungle Book orangutan King Louie. The older man felt like the name was meant to be.

Jo usually avoided hanging out with Louie with Senior around. He was tall and meaty, with a mustache and a gap that everyone saw with his overly friendly smile. "I wish I could lay on my ass twenty four seven now," he joked.

Jo opened her eyes, "some of us have jobs and others of us get suspended for doing our jobs," her jaw clenched. She wondered if she could take him, then she wondered if he would take her in for assault of an officer if she gave into to urge to punch him. In effort to not tempt fate she mumbled an excuse that she had to leave.

He reached out to her arm in a half grab, she looked down at it and he pulled away. He held up the first flag. "The captain's head is so far up bureaucratic ass it wouldn't matter if you were a skirt or not," he spoke.

It was strange. When she pursued the case all she heard was that she was letting her feminine sentiment cloud her judgment. She took being the precinct punch line in stride, because she knew she was right, unfortunately a child had to pay for an investigation that hadn't mattered until she ended up dead. And even after that her killer was never held accountable.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she found herself saying. Her faith in the law was waning. The reason she had stopped the social work, was to help people beyond the limitations of a desk. As idealistic as that was for her in her early twenties she sought it out. She took scum in and had encouraged a few kids to make small changes to their lives to do better. But when it came to money and power what did her badge mean when people like March saw it as no more than an accessory.

"He would throw any one under a bus to keep his position. Don't take it personal its politics," he shrugged.

"I didn't wear a badge for politics," Jo didn't like being a toy.

He scoffed, "justice?" he finished the thought in her head. "That's a wet dream you gotta let go of. The real difference between the rest of us and you," Jo looked at Louie who had yet to say anything to the contrary. "Is that while we were thinking of bashing March's head in you actually did it. Damn the consequences you put a big dick in his place, but now you have all the time in the world to drink beer and play mechanic and he's not even in prison or dead for your trouble."

Jo lowered her gaze. She felt like child for asking, and a part of her hated herself needing to ask, "Then what's the point? A paycheck?"

Senior shrugged, "everybody's got their own reasons."

She nodded absently. She never thought that anything Senior said would be worth mulling over, but she was wrong. She told them goodbye and headed into the chill of the evening. It was a bit windy, but she decided to walk. She thought of everywhere she could go. She discarded each option as she thought of them. She didn't want to be around anyone, but she wasn't too psyched about being left alone with her thoughts. Going over to Louie's should have been more relaxing, but it hadn't.

She thought about Blair. At that same moment she happened to be passing a phone booth. She looked at it and then jingled the coins in her pocket. She could make a call. Her interactions with Blair made her feel bad afterward. Though hearing her voice seeing her were comforts that Jo anticipated despite the aftermath.

Coins fell into the slot and she dialed the number she knew by heart. Blair had looked busy with her new beau. She pulled the phone away from her ear on the third ring. It was then inches away from being placed back on the receiver that she heard someone answer.

"Hello?" she heard the voice again.

She let Blair wait for an answer until she heard another voice in the background. Jo closed her eyes slamming the phone down with force. She fled from the phone nauseated by her jealousy. She was living in a dizzying stupor that held nothing but questions for her. Questions she couldn't answer just yet.

Randall smiled into Blair's neck. He didn't see the troubled look she wore. When the phone rang they were on a pleasing path. Clothes were being pulled gently, but not insistently, not yet anyway. Randall was genuinely eager to see the body that clothes hugged so well. Although outside of sleeping with him to spite Jo there was no more fervor in her to meet Randall's genuine passion. Her attraction was shallow, and if there was a future for them it would be made from artificial affection and nothing more. During the dinner he brought up her father, the company, books, movies, and community gossip. He wasn't lax when it came to conversation.

Now he was kissing her. In the same intimate way that Jo had kissed her. The familial technique was pleasurable. But his hands bothered her. Randall and she had chemistry, but she had fireworks with Jo. She smiled and giggled and Randall, not for the first time, mistook himself as the cause. Sometimes Blair let him think that. And other times like tonight she pulled away and brought work up as an excuse to end the night early.

His exasperation was obvious, "what are we doing?"

"Enjoying each other's company," Blair answered simply, because that was how she saw it.

"But always to a point," he countered. He knew Blair knew what she did to him. Her reputation painted her as an infamous tease. But he took the information for what it was—gossip. Randall underestimated her resolve. Advancing their romance both reasonable and pleasure seemed elusive.

"A point that I am more than happy to indulge until I'm ready," she reasoned. His frowned deepened at the news. "Unless you would want to rush me into something I wasn't ready for?" she studied him.

When he sighed his chest rose from the long breath deflating with its release. "You're right," he had let his frustrations get the best of him.

She reached out to place her hands on his chest in a gesture of comfort. His hands were quicker and grasped her wrist gently, before placing a kiss on the inside of each hand. "I don't think that would be a good idea," he pointed out weakly.

The blush that followed was uncontrollable. She knew what she did to men, but Randall was overt in his appreciation for her attentions in a way no other man had been.

"Goodnight," she smiled at him and he returned it not trusting his voice. She watched him leave. Blair let him have his distance to calm down and strode to the kitchen when she heard the door close from his departure.

She pulled out a refrigerated bottle of wine to pour a glass. She stared into the den at the hearth. Cuddling beside it when the weather was chilled was something she often enjoyed. She couldn't wait until the fall.

"Romantic lighting," she heard Natalie's voice and immediately turned a light on in the kitchen. "Mood music," Blair rolled her eyes at the way that Natalie exaggerated the syllables of the words. Natalie and Tootie rounded the corner met by a glaring debutante holding a glass of wine menacingly.

"Are you done?" her lips pursed.

Tootie shook her head making herself at home. Blair followed the younger woman with her eyes. Tootie looked up to meet Blair's gaze and paused at the look. She didn't have enough time to question it when Natalie barreled through the quiet with a tirade about work. Her tone changed hinging on excitement when she brought up a new columnist from Chicago.

"I suppose one could say he was handsome if one were into that type of thing," she ended after sharing how her colleagues had herded in the break room just to talk about Daryl.

"Is that right one?" Tootie leaned in looking at Natalie pointedly.

"What?" her friend squeaked. Daryl had been useful because of his background as a criminal journalist. He helped her with her new project at the behest of her editor when Daryl had made it clear that he wasn't interested in taking over Natalie's story. She respected him for that. Her own smooth talking and her boss's aggravation at losing stories with potential kept her on the trail.

"You want to take this Blair or should I?" she asked turning to Blair to catch that look again.

Blair jumped then took a sip from her glass to play off being caught again. She could acknowledge that Tootie's transformation to Dorothy had been an interesting childhood. She had grown up from a brace faced kid to an attractive woman. Though she had never contemplated her beauty beyond a passing appreciation, now she was practically studying her. What had Jo so wrapped up in her? Was it her eyes? Jo always admired her eyes. They were the gateway to the soul. Had she seen something more in Tootie's? And if she did what was it?

"Tootie's only pointing out that this columnist is the only person you've actually mentioned without making the stink face."

Said face made an appearance when she started to deny Blair's accusation. Tootie began laughing and Blair noticed that her face lit up attractively when she did. To move the conversation away from her undetermined attraction to her boss she frowned at Blair then her friend. With unsubtle grace befitting Natalie she pointed out Blair's staring startling the blonde.

"What, I'm just admiring an attractive woman of another ethnicity," she defended lamely.

Natalie and Tootie shared a look then simultaneously returned their gazes to Blair, "Blair," Natalie started slowly, "Are you putting the moves on Tootie?"

"No," she answered quickly and a lot louder than she planned.

Natalie looked unconvinced and Tootie just frowned, but kept quiet. She shook her head turning to the sink to wash her glass after she gulped the last of it down. When she turned back their expressions had become pensive even after she announced she was tired and going to bed. While they could have executed part two of mission intervention with Blair, they thought better of it. Part one hadn't gone over well with Jo. She had basically run out the room when she found she could move without the world spinning.