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"So you robbed a flower shop because this Rosalee lady whacked a guy in the head with a brick?" Roddy asked skeptically. Not that he wasn't glad that Monroe hadn't gotten shot, obviously, but the man's kitchen table looked like Aunt Sophie's curtains had come to life.
"I did not rob any florists," Monroe said with a roll of his eyes. "It just took me a few tries to find the right bouquet."
"Uh-huh."
Monroe sighed. "Well, I bought the roses first, just because those are sort of the automatic flowers that you buy, but when I started thinking about it it felt a little...presumptuous. So I went back and got poppies, but when I looked it turned out that those can represent death and that was completely inappropriate. Then I got the jasmine, but the scent is really magnified indoors—you can probably tell—and that seemed kind of risky since I don't even know if it's one she likes. Plus there's already going to be plenty of jasmine in a spice and tea shop if she does like it, even if it's not in flower form. But the dhalias have basically no smell, and that's kind of weird when it comes to flowers. You know?"
"Uh-huh," Roddy repeated after a minute, mostly because he wasn't sure what else to say. Well, okay, 'overthink much?' was kind of on the tip of his tongue, but Monroe was starting to look stressed and he didn't figure that running his mouth was going to help. "Did she at least like the ones that you did give her?" he checked. "I mean, you did get around to giving her some, right?"
"Yes, I did, and yes, she did."
That was enough to make him look pleased again, and Roddy decided to just nod and be happy for him. He counted Monroe as a friend, although he'd been kind of surprised when he'd realized that that was the right word, but it was still weird to see an adult mixed up about dating stuff. Or...God, it was a crush, wasn't it? A grown up with a crush was just weird.
And he was suddenly a little worried that the whole dating thing wouldn't somehow sort itself out once he was done being a teenager. Shit. He'd kind of been counting on that.
"Any chance you've got someone that you want to give some flowers to?" Monroe asked, gesturing at the bouquets on the table. "Because I have no clue what I'm going to do with all of those."
"Yeah, right. After everything last spring Sarah got shipped off to her aunt's place in like Virginia or somewhere, and she's never even sent me a text."
"Sorry."
Roddy shrugged. Thinking back, he wasn't too sure how their dating had been going even before that considering she'd never been willing to admit it to anyone. He hadn't much liked being treated like a dirty secret. "I guess I could take one by the graveyard if you're sure you don't want it," he offered after a minute. He knew Dad went sometimes, but he usually didn't. It wasn't Mom, just a stupid marker in the ground.
"Sure," Monroe agreed.
"Oh, hey, what about Detective Grimm? He's got a girlfriend."
Monroe snapped his fingers. "That is an excellent idea. So if he takes one and you take one, and I can turn the jasmine into tea myself, that only leaves one more to deal with." He looked at the table of flowers for a moment longer and then shook his head. "I really should have thought things through a little better."
Roddy was still pretty sure he'd thought things through a little too much, but he remained unwilling to give voice to the thought and took another bite of his muffin instead. Monroe didn't have to feed him or anything, but it was nice to be able to grab a snack after forty-five minutes on a bus.
"You about done?" Monroe asked.
"Yep." One more bite, and it was gone. "Should we start with the Vivaldi?" Technically the one they were working on was a two cello piece, but one of the cello parts was partially in tenor clef anyway so he'd taken that one.
"Sounds good."
Stopping a little after three had worked pretty well the last couple weeks so that's what they aimed for this time, and then Roddy collected one of the bouquets—the poppy one, which apparently was appropriate—and headed for the bus stop. The graveyard was sort of on the way home anyway.
Roddy stifled a yawn, glad that his face was hidden inside his mask. It had been a solid rave, no question there, but DJ'ing hadn't exactly been in his plans for the night. Dad was due back tomorrow, and since Roddy hadn't exactly been doing a great job of keeping the house up in his absence, he'd been scrubbing dishes and running laundry and hauling trash and all of that all day to catch up. His plans had involved crashing early tonight.
Unfortunately when Sammy had called he'd made a big deal of this being the last rave before school started next week, or at least the last rave before Portland's public schools started since Von Hamelin wouldn't be back in session until the Monday after, and how Roddy just had to be there. Personally Roddy thought that he was being kind of ridiculous since it wasn't like there wouldn't be plenty of raves on the weekends during the school year, but he also knew that it was better to put aside money when you had the chance. Especially since tonight hadn't even required an excuse for Dad.
That didn't mean that he wasn't ready to wrap it up, though.
At least the crowd finally seemed to be matching his energy—his real energy, not the show he was putting on—the spaces between the bodies on the dance floor below growing steadily larger as people trickled out, and even if it took longer than he might have liked Sammy eventually caught his eye and made the sign to shut it down. His ending set was one he'd been using for the past six or eight months, more than long enough for people to recognize it, and although it drew a couple shouts of protest, there were a lot fewer of them than there could have been. And it was probably from the same handful who would have complained even if he'd kept the music running until dawn.
A few diehards tried to keep dancing even after the music stopped, but even they gave up when Sammy started shutting the lights down, and Roddy retreated back to the other room to remove his mask and let his yawns loose to the world.
"Oh, come on," Sammy said with a slap to his shoulder. "You're eighteen. Shouldn't you still be ready to party hearty?"
Roddy gave that opinion all of the consideration that it deserved. "Have you got the cash?"
Sammy sighed and handed it over. "Call you next weekend?"
"Next weekend?" Two in one month was usually the max; they didn't need to give the police a reason to start paying attention, and Sammy was usually good about keeping that in mind.
"Sure." His grin returned. "This was our end of summer blowout, next week we celebrate everyone surviving their first week of school."
He was entirely serious, and Roddy didn't bother to hide his eye roll. Even though Sammy wasn't wrong and that would absolutely draw a crowd. "Sure, just give me a call," he agreed after a moment.
"Will do. And don't worry about it, we'll lay off after that until October, probably. The kids really will be taking time settling into school again."
He kind of had a point, and Roddy nodded.
"Want me to keep the mask with my gear until then?"
"Yeah," Roddy agreed. "Thanks."
There were a couple people hanging around much better suited to helping Sammy carry the turntable and gear than he was so Roddy didn't bother to offer, tucking the cash away and starting the hike back to the trailer. He couldn't afford to let himself relax entirely, not when he was passing through abandoned warehouses that tended to be less so at night, but he did whistle up some accompaniment in the form of a couple sewer rats who'd let him know if anyone was approaching and turned the rest of his focus towards putting one foot in front of the other. At least Dad wasn't likely to be back much before noon so he'd be able to sleep in.
He waved the rats off once he was finally in sight of the trailer and was nearly to the door when he finally noticed that there was a car in a place that there shouldn't be a car and worse a person climbing out of said car. Adrenaline had him fully awake again in an instant and ready to run because that wasn't Dad and—
"Roddy?"
Surprise was enough to drop him down flat-footed again. "Detective?"
"I don't even want to know where you've been," Detective Grimm said. "Come on, get in the car."
"What? Why? I wasn't doing anything." Which was...okay, technically not exactly true, but he sure as hell hadn't been doing anything that would require a detective or a Grimm to show up at his door in the middle of the night.
"I'll tell you on the way."
