THE QUILL [OPEN]

[abster]

'Hey Sweetheart, I'm sorry if I woke you. I just haven't heard from you in a couple of days and I know college can be- HI ABBY!- Gabrielle sweetie let me just try and talk to your sister. It's just her answer phone, go put on Tangled again I know you like that.- FLYNN RIDER!- Listen, I'm just starting to worry about you. Silly, right? Okay, give me old mom a call when you have chance. Don't work too hard, I love you... I love you Princess.'

Swearing softly as she listened to her mom's message again. Listened to how tired she sounded, how exhausted she must've been and how happy Gabby sounded. Kicking her dumb car's interior, she counted the money in her wallet again. One hundred and seventy bucks and change, that was all she had left and she couldn't keep sleeping in her car forever. The cops probably wouldn't take too kindly to that here, small town and all. She knew exactly what that was like.

Climbing out the back seat of her car, she grabbed her laptop and headed towards the last place she'd seen her father but the only place she at least knew sold coffee here. She hadn't planned on sticking around, she certainly wasn't sticking around for him at least. At least she could get good coffee and free wifi, and maybe she could make the coffee last all day if needed. She was good at doing that and even better if they had re-fills and a bathroom.

Rubbing her eyes, she ran a hand through her hair and went to order muttering the word asshole over and over again. Her own private mantra to keep her going.

"Hey, you don't know if they've got a town paper or something here? You know the kind with cheap places to stay?" Abigail asked, rubbing the dark eye-liner into the corners of her eyes with her thumb as she yawned.

Comments

[abster]

"Sure but I'm not... house hunting. I don't plan to stick around long, just long enough." Abigail replied, paying for her coffee with the change in her pocket before dragging her bag to the table. Taking one page of the paper, she smiled before offering her hand. "Thanks, I'm Abigail. Abigail Flynn."

[astra_inclinant]

"Hmm. There're some hotels that might work. Or a sublet, if you can find it."

Mira sets down the chai to shake hands. "Mira Kazmi. Nice to meet you, Abigail." She doesn't miss the last name. Flynn's a pretty common name, but it seems like too much for coincidence that it belongs to one of Siren Cove's more notable. "So, what brings you to our little corner of the country?"

[abster]

"Yeah, hotels aren't in my budget. Think less Paris Hilton more Norman Bates," Abigail replied with a small grin. Shaking her hand firmly, she looked up to the heavens as if asking for mercy. "Family. My dad is apparently here in town, not sure why though. It doesn't really seem like his type of place. He's more of a... dirtbag kind of guy."

[astra_inclinant]

Mira grins. "Let's agree right now to both find something with slightly saner management than that." She raises an eyebrow at an ad that could be just a little poorly worded or might be someone looking to break into human experimentation and flips the page over.

"But tell us how you really feel," Mira jokes and takes a sip of chai. "So if he's a dirtbag, why are you hunting him down? I mean, if that's not too personal."

[abster]

"Hey, he was such a sweet boy. You know he wouldn't even harm... a... fly." Abigail replied with a grin. She'd watched that at Sam's, late at night and draped over his bed while she tinkered with his dad's old laptop. "I owe him and I don't like feeling like I owe anyone anything. Let alone him. He's really sneaky which is unsurprising really."

[astra_inclinant]

Mira laughs, and raises an eyebrow in agreement at the paper. "I can understand that. My parents are pretty chill but I still don't like living at their house, I feel like a failboat of an adult even though I'm employed and all that. And I mean, I don't think of other people that way. Just myself. I'm supposed to have it all under control, or something." She shrugs with a roll of her eyes. "Of course, not being asked after like I'm still 16 would also be A+. But yeah -- I get not wanting someone to have something to hold over your head. Especially if you're not on good terms."

[abster]

"And we are not, we're too alike in a lot of ways." Abby replied. Just one meeting made it pretty clear just what kind of a man Jack- Robert was. Lying to his family for years, pretending it was all for the greater good and she wasn't sure which was sadder. "But I'm not going to go round knocking people up when they have a secret other family or families."

[astra_inclinant]

"It'd be pretty impressive if you did, though," Mira says with a grin over the paper. "I mean, not to assume too much about your babymakin' parts, but."

"Dude sounds like a real charmer. So. What do you do when you're not hunting wayward sperm donors?"

[abster]

"It would be an extraordinary feat, wouldn't it? I'd at least make the six o'clock news." Abigail grinned. Her baby making parts were pretty normal as far as she knew and she wasn't ever hoping that like her dad she'd be a baby making machine. She was way too young for all that. "I was at college, I'd just started. Computer Engineering, that's not exactly worked out because of my dad."

[astra_inclinant]

"The Cove, definitely," Mira grins. "You're a tech kid! I was a physics major. Astronomy, myself, but I went to class with a lot of engineers. So wait - where does your dad come in there?" She gets not wanting to owe him money, but she can't imagine that her dad would offer college money if he wasn't going to let her go to college. Then again, she has nicer parents than a lot of her friends, and she knows she's lucky in that. Or maybe it was a totally different situation: she's a little lost.