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"What?" Roman wasn't necessarily being his typical dry self, but Chanel wasn't picking up on the fact that he was already high before she got here. She rarely ever interacted with the guy, both by circumstance and choice. She didn't hate him by any means, but to say she had a positive perception of him would have been a false statement. It would be more accurate to say that her expectations for him were quite low, and so she had no reason to believe that Roman wasn't being a little shit as a way to exploit the fact that she had an emergency. "The closet? Can you be serious right now? Did I leave my phone here or not?"

"You seriously don't remember?" Roman wasn't just being cheeky now, though his question definitely came across mockingly. When he scanned Chanel's face, it was in sincerity though. He remembered she got pretty drunk the previous night, but he didn't think it was that bad that she blacked out. He stood up, extending his arms towards the ceiling and letting out a sleepy yawn. "Don't worry, I have it. But it's probably dead." He walked over to his dresser to retrieve the phone, turning to Chanel and raising a brow. The relieved sigh she let out told him everything he needed to know. He tapped the screen as he walked back towards her. "It's dead," he confirmed. "Do you need to use mine?"

"Do you have Makayla's number?"

"Definitely not."

Chanel sighed and took the phone from Roman. She wasn't entirely sure if the throbbing in her temple was from last night or this morning, but she wanted to down an entire bottle of Advil right now. It was just a minor inconvenience compared to the major problem of not having a phone at all, but after the events of this morning, even something as small as needing to charge her phone was warrant enough to give her a headache. Even still, she turned the phone around in her hand and looked about the room, quietly wondering how Roman of all people ended up with it. Her face must have told what she was thinking because in the next second, Roman was laughing some, much to her annoyance. "I didn't realize you were that drunk. I figured you were just being weird when I took you home."

"Wait, wait wait." It shouldn't have been that crazy a theory considering Chanel didn't know how she ended up home to begin with. She just assumed she had managed to successfully stumble to the right apartment, somehow still have her keys on her and successfully be able to unlock her door and get into bed. It was just a couple yards away from Roman's place, after all, but then again when you were so drunk that you couldn't remember half of the night, anything that didn't end up with you in a ditch was just as much miraculous as it was mysterious. Still, she couldn't help but crack a smile at the possibility of Roman actually have a semblance of a heart beat. "Did you really, or are you shitting with me again?"

"You asked me to," Roman said. "But I'm not sure if I should be offended that you sound so surprised." Oddly enough, if Roman was sober, Chanel's disbelief would have irritated him for the simple fact that he didn't necessarily enjoy being reminded that people that he was the person he presented himself to be. Not because he was lacking in self-awareness so much, but rather because his self-sabotaging actions were just an unhealthy projection of the person he thought he was. But at least with internal thoughts like that, it felt less real because everything was, well, internalized. To see it validated in reality by other people was affronting because it certainly spoke more truth. Now, though, he was less biased and more understanding. "I'm actually not the worst person in the world."

"No, not the world. Just this floor." Chanel headed back towards the bedroom door, Roman following a few paces behind her. She was in a rush, but she also felt weird standing around talking to Roman in his bedroom. The fact that he had even let her in was strange to her, and that he hadn't kicked her out and slammed the door in her face was even stranger. "If you stopped sniffing that shit you might actually have enough time to live and course correct, you know?"

"What makes you think this isn't me course correcting?"

Chanel rolled her eyes as she exited his room, more than half-expecting for Roman to bid her farewell right then. Instead, he followed her out as well. She considered making a snarky comment that he didn't need to worry about her stealing anything, so the escort was unnecessary, but she decided against it. She wasn't sure why, but after looking him again something told her that she didn't really need to. "Is everything okay, by the way?"

"I have no clue, to be honest."

"Well," Roman said as he opened the door. "Keep me updated if you need anything."

Even Chanel couldn't control herself enough to stop the shock from showing in her eyes. She nervously laughed it off as she headed out. "Right, right. Thanks again." ​
 
It was so cold out. So fucking cold. Winter was never pleasant, no matter how many of them Jordan had lived through, and yet each year it was always somehow shocking, just how cold it could get outside. The wind was what always made it so brutal. The air was cold, dry, and biting on its own, but once one gust of wind hit your face, it reached a whole new level. It edged on being painful sometimes, especially if you were walking in one of the wind tunnel areas of the city. The winters sucked, the taxes sucked, the cost of living sucked, the transit system sucked... sometimes it felt like everything sucked in New York, and yet it was New York, and so that somehow overrode the flaws. Jordan was one of those fools who felt that way too. He loved New York. He loved the people, he loved the job opportunities, he loved the restaurants and stores and entertainment options. There was so much to do and see, and it was exhilarating being a part of such a lively and monumental place. Probably like everyone else, there were times where he felt out of place. Even though he made decent money, it always felt like he was surrounded by people who had ten times the expendable income that he had. It probably had more to do with the the period of life that he was in age-wise than it did the location, but New York wasn't made for sensitive people in any way, shape or form. If it hadn't been for Sam, Jordan might have considered moving somewhere else after finding out about his girlfriend's affair. A new scenery (specifically a warm scenery) might have done his soul some good in ways that even a one night stand couldn't.

The sex he had was good, the girl was cute, even the next morning when the beer goggles were gone, and he was even able to make enjoyable conversation with her over breakfast at a diner near her house after they woke up. They exchanged numbers and she insisted that he call her this weekend if he was around to do something. He smiled and said that he would, but he knew that he wouldn't. The spark wasn't there; he didn't see it going anywhere. As he mulled over it on the subway, rubbing his temples in an attempt to massage away the pain of all of the night's alcohol, he wondered if there was just something wrong with him. Was he too lazy or too scared to pursue something again? He didn't want to be one of those people who had their heart broken one time and swore away love for the rest of forever. He didn't know if he even knew what love was. He felt like he had loved Monica, but what if there was something out there that was so much more than what he had felt with her? Maybe true love was a thing, and maybe he just hadn't found it yet. Or maybe he was just being a hopeful moron who needed to learn that love never lasted. People were flawed, and you could only cover those flaws up in romantic words and kisses in movies and books. In real life, those flaws that existed in every single person were what drove people to cheat, to lie, to divorce, to fight. Was it worth it if that was what was on the line? He wanted to have a family some day, but did he want to risk turning into the kind of person who could despise their partner enough to abandon their entire family? He already often pondered whether that was genetic, whether his absent father's flaws lurked somewhere within Jordan, just waiting for the right moment to jump out. He didn't want to be subjected to anyone else's critical flaws himself, but he also feared how "forever" could turn him into a person that he wouldn't be proud of either.

His apartment wasn't far from the subway, but he made a stop on the way there to get Ibuprofen from CVS. If he planned on getting any work done from home today, he was going to need a lot of that. He wasn't one to typically get hungover. He knew his limits and he rarely ever passed them, but last night he had been feeling understandably anxious, so the alcohol flowed more freely. Thankfully, his job didn't require him to be in the office all that often, and working from home wasn't a big deal. He texted his manager earlier in the morning to let him know, but that was all that would be required. As long as he got his work done and didn't miss any of the team meetings that occurred weekly, no one was micromanaging him.

The party the night before had been enjoyable; to an extent that was surprisingly so. He had stepped outside of his comfort zone, socialized, and managed to get himself back in the game. As he approached the fifth floor, he hoped to himself that it wouldn't be weeks before he crossed paths with Chanel again. He hadn't had much of a chance to talk to her throughout the night, but he wanted to at least thank her for extending the invite to him and let her know that he had enjoyed himself. Coincidentally, she was entering the hallway just as he approached his apartment. He smiled naturally, making good to his initial plan. “Oh, hey,” he offered, fidgeting in his pocket in search of his key. “Surprised you’re up this early. That was a fun party you threw last night,” he continued, allowing his smile to grow into a smirk. “Your friend Cara didn’t seem to like me but thankfully I ended up hitting it off with one of your other friends. A little younger than I normally go for, but fun nonetheless.” ​
 
Chanel gazed wearily at the black screen in her hand. She secretly hoped that God or whoever would get sick of her internal screaming and will the phone on, but alas, it remained dead. She knew she should have felt rushed, especially now that she was so close to being able to call Makayla. She wasn't sure what that was going to do, but at the very least it would make her feel less alone in all of this. She didn't see Brooklyn when left Roman's, and also had no idea where she ended up since Collin wasn't around to be on the opposite end of the girl's wrath. This was a lot to process all at once, and yet, she couldn't make herself push forward any faster than her body wanted to. She knew logistically she shouldn't feel so...calm wasn't the word. Apathetic wasn't either, but maybe numb was the closest she could get to describing it. She wasn't sure if she really just had no energy left or if this was her mind's last resort to prevent her from having a full on breakdown. None of this was solved. She had her phone, sure, and she was able to finally call someone, but she was still effectively where she had started fifteen minutes: with no answers.

Jordan greeting her took her off guard for a second, but then she recognized him. Even at the mention of last night's party, and seeing him literally being her neighborhood as he tried to get into his apartment, it didn't click. It probably wouldn't have clicked until she had sulked back into her apartment, mulling over Holly's seemingly disjointed story, that she would have linked things back to Jordan. She had completely forgotten that he was even there, which wasn't surprising considering she had forgotten where she was half the night as well. Chanel couldn't skip over Jordan being the missing link when he effectively made his own bed by his last statement. She actually wasn't angry when she connected the dots. She was really just incredulous and dumbfounded by his boldness. Chanel's words caught in her throat, her mouth wide like her eyes. "You--"

Chanel had told Jordan the previous night (not that she would have remembered) that it was all downhill after meeting her. In her cheeky comment she was referencing the rest of the fifth floor gang, but really it was more accurate to say that it was all downhill in general. She always tried to cheerful and pleasant, but once she saw red it was hard for her to see anything but. Her body was suddenly awake, the exhausted numbness overpowered by the warmth in her veins. She lunged towards him, pushing his hand away from the keyhole. "Sick freak. What the hell is wrong with you? She's sixteen! Six. Teen! You call taking a literal child out in the middle of the night and getting her drunk is 'fun nonetheless?' I'm letting you know right now that everyone on this hallway is going to kill you."​
 
It probably went without saying that the way that Chanel reacted to him was the exact opposite of what he had been expecting. Jordan didn't expect a high five and a pat on the back like one of his guy friends would have done, but he didn't think that anything he had said was that offensive. Before she began speaking about a sixteen year old, he just thought that she was upset that he would speak about indirectly hooking up with her friends, which he could understand to an extent, but could really only be attributed to a miscommunication in tone and sense of humors. He couldn't imagine it warranting such a drastic response, but then -- sixteen. SIXTEEN?! His heart must have skipped a few beat and he could feel the blood rushing away from his head as he was shell shocked at the accusation. The girl had looked college aged. She had said she was 21, right? 21! He felt even more sick to his stomach as he now began to second guess himself. She had mentioned her age, right? Jordan had never been in a situation where he had to verify the age of the girl that he slept with, because it always seemed obvious. They wouldn't be at a bar or a party that he would be at if they were under 21, he had always assumed. At the very least, they would be 18! The words sixteen made him feel like everything he had just eaten at the diner was about to come right up, and as Chanel knocked his hand away from the doorknob, he fumbled and allowed his keys to fall to the floor.

"Sixteen?!" he repeated, clearly blindsided by the accusation. "She's not-- she said she was twen--" He couldn't even get a full sentence out, especially now that he really wasn't sure if he had even confirmed her age with her. She didn't look sixteen. His brother was older than sixteen, and he had seen girls his age before. They were still kids! Then again, makeup could make a girl look however old she wanted, he reminded himself. Oh my fucking god. There really was no appropriate way to react to a situation like this, at least not as far as Jordan was concerned. He didn't even feel like this was real life. "She said she was going to school to be a... a..." What the hell did she say she was in school for? He knew that he had talked about this with her, if not her age directly. She asked him what he did for a living and he said that he worked as a programmer, and she said she was going to school to be... "A doctor for uh, dogs and stuff, you know!" Things couldn't have coincidentally went any more wrong than they already were. In the panic of all of this, the word "veterinarian" was completely escaping his mind, and he had no idea that the girl Chanel thought he was referring to had an affinity for dogs (and also a vocabulary where "doctor for dogs" would come out over "veterinarian" too). "She wasn't sixteen! I would never do that!" he insisted. He would never do that knowingly but with the passion in her own voice, he was starting to consider that maybe he had just ruined his life. It all would have been a mistake --- an HONEST mistake, but in what world would that argument hold up in?! ​
 
After realizing that Collin wasn’t home Brooklyn headed back across the hall to Nick’s apartment. She wasn’t sure what the next move was. She didn’t have a plan. All she knew was that she was pissed off, and someone was going to pay for it. Maybe she was being over dramatic, maybe she was being impulsive, and maybe, in a way, selfish, but it didn’t matter. Brooklyn had a bad habit of allowing her emotions to consume her. Whether they were good or bad (though, most of the time they were bad), she didn’t usually just feel them and move on. They usually fell on either end of the spectrum, and that was what got her into trouble. It was what left her still loving Nick after all of this chaos, and pain and craziness, and what left her wanting to murder someone for merely suspecting that someone had harmed Holly.

She didn’t know who deserved her wrath right now and that was frustrating in itself. She felt like contacting Makayla was the smart thing to do, so she headed back into the apartment to get her phone. She ran into Roman in the kitchen before she could get there, though. “Someone on this floor drugged and did something to Holly, and I need to find out who it was so I can kill them,” Brooklyn snapped, altering the story somewhat to what she felt had happened. “I know it wasn’t you because you aren’t a sick fuck and I could hear how busy you were all night, and I don’t think it was Collin because he’s such a bitch, but I guarantee it was one of his little friends. Did you see any of them here last night?” she demanded. The way that she was talking quickly and fiercely was an indicator of how bothered she was feeling.

After Chanel had left, Roman leaned his head against the door and stood there. He thought his eyes were just heavy and that he was blinking slowly, but really he was standing there with his eyes closed, his mind wandering elsewhere. Wherever it was, it was funny like most things seemed to be today, and it was light, like how he felt. Roman never really did coke. Self medicating was his usual go to, but last night when it was brought up, he couldn't focus on anything else. That it had been such a long time since he'd had any made the desire to recall that distant taste even that much stronger. It was why he was feeling it more than he would have otherwise if he was a more regular user. The way he was feeling now, though, had him wondering why he didn't sniff more often. Strangely enough, his form of escapism allowed him to be more present, more open to everything around him. He wasn't angry and he wasn't in pain or trying to escape anything. He just was and that was all he needed to feel good, which was really all he ever wanted.

Roman walked away from the door after what felt like years that were really just seconds. He headed into the kitchen, distracted by his need for something to drink. He needed to brush his teeth, he thought to himself. And to take a shower. Maybe even smoke beforehand. Brooklyn's fury pulled him away from just standing with his hand on the fridge door handle, but he wasn't in the right state of mind to be able to process so quickly. His already currently whirring world didn't pair well with her quick movements and words. He could hear her anger and register it as such, but he also just registered it as Brooklyn. Roman shook his head and blinked, turning to face her, and walked over towards the island. "Wait, wait. Slow down. I don't even know where you came from," Roman said. "Why is everyone freaking out today?" He wondered aloud, though the question was meant to be asked internally. First Chanel and now Brooklyn. Even Cara was energetic this morning. "What about Nick's friend's having a gun under the bed?"

Why were all men so goddamn useless? It was an age old question that wasn't going to be answered today, because there wasn't time for that. If Brooklyn was feeling more grounded, she would have noticed immediately that Roman was high. Him being awake this early was abnormal, but because she knew he had someone over the night before, it wouldn't have been the key indicator. The way that he looked and acted would have given it away immediately. Roman was often high, but depending what he was on, the highs all manifested differently. By now, there were some highs that seemed so frequent in his life that she couldn't tell where they stopped and where his personality began, so she couldn't always indicate those. A cocaine high was an easy one to spot, namely because she knew the signs from her own personal experience. Right now, she couldn't tell if she had just told the story incorrectly due to her own frazzled state, or if he was just being an idiot, so the incorrect retelling only annoyed her.

"I was in a good mood this morning," she felt the need to insert, as if it was noteworthy enough for her to deserve a medal. It seemed like any time she was in a rare, authentic, good mood, someone always had to ruin it. She wasn't going to linger in the self-pity regarding that right now, but she would likely wallow in it later when this was all said and done. "But then Chanel came over saying that she found Holly clearly drugged and half naked, talking about sleeping with some guy who lives in this building who she apparently met at the party last night," she explained. Again, it wasn't the actual story, but because of how angry it was, Brooklyn could now convince herself that it was the true story. Besides, with how nonchalant Roman was acting right now (to no fault of his own, really), a little extra dramatic flair felt necessary. "And I am all for that child receiving a life lesson on the need to grow some fucking common sense, but not this way." She looked past Roman, considering going to wake up Nick again. As they had all witnessed earlier this week, he apparently had an endless supply of anger that he would be ready to throw at anyone. Waking him up wouldn't benefit anyone, but part of Brooklyn wanted to get him involved. If he could play the hero and redeem himself, maybe she could justify being with him in her head.

"That's not good," Roman said nonchalantly, but also a bit unsuredly. "I don't know what you want me to tell you."

"Are you deaf? I literally just asked you if you saw any of Collin's friends here last night?"

Roman rubbed his eyes and exhaled. It was really annoying when he couldn't enjoy himself, but he still felt too good for that annoyance to fester into anything. He simply understand on a very surface level that his situation and Brooklyn's situation weren't on the best timeline. He couldn't do anything about it though. It wasn't like alcohol that he could just purge or absorb through a lot of food. And even then, those 'remedies' weren't immediate. Still, he was at least trying to be sober-ish. He wasn't entirely sure why, especially because he wasn't even registering what was really happening and that this was related to their Holly, but he tried to keep the room from spinning long enough to focus. It was seriously difficult though. All he wanted to do was slump over and melt. He had to think though. About something. "Well, yeah. That hot one he brought over. Maybe she..." He pushed he palm to his forehead, unsure of what words he was supposed to be stringing together for this conversation. "Has that gun."

Brooklyn wasn't asking for someone to attempt to talk some sense into her. Shaking her head and releasing a dramatic sigh, as if Roman was a complete and utter waste of space, she didn't even respond. Instead, she headed deeper into the apartment and back into the bedroom that she had spent the night in. "Wake up," she said as she flipped the lights on, though her voice was notably softer than it had been just seconds ago when she was talking to Roman. She noticed it herself and it annoyed her because it was just another reminder of how fucked up her relationship with Nick was.​
 
Albeit them ultimately being untrue, Jordan was unknowingly filling in the gaps of Holly's story. In his own truth, it seemed like he was lying and doing a terrible job at trying to cover his ass. Chanel was even more appalled at how obviously full of shit he was right now. Anyone who spoke to Holly for five seconds could pick up that she wasn't like a regular teenager, and that made her prime steak for a pedophile. Of course he would flip it back on her, but this was Holly. If he was going to try to cover his behind, he should have at least made it seem believable. "How dumb do you think I am? She can barely count, you think she knows well enough to lie about her age so that she can go home with you? Are you fucking kidding me right now? You think a twenty-year-old wouldn't know what they were actually in school for? Please tell me how many college students don't know the word veterinarian." The more she verbalized how insultingly stupid his response was, the angrier she got.

She stepped closer towards Jordan and used all of her strength to shove his backwards. "I'm calling the fucking cops. And you can explain to them how you saw a teenager in kid's pajamas, took her back to her apartment and had her put out on some skimpy outfit so you could take her to a strip club, then ended up taking her God knows where to get her drunk and kiss her and God knows what else, just to drop her off knocking at my door this morning a hungover mess, and somehow was able to mistake her for a fucking adult. And I'm going to kill Collin too for not murdering you when you had the nerve to take her to his place to put on makeup." She wasn't going to mention that her phone was dead and that he had about ten minutes to make a run for it if he didn't want to being sleeping in a cell for the rest of his life. By this point, though, she was so heated that she was determined to find a phone to call the cops as soon as possible. "And you're still a sick fuck for doing that to any girl! You will be dead by the time the police arrive."

"What the hell are you talking about?!" The look on Jordan's face probably portrayed his confusion just as well as the words coming out of his mouth did. He was freaking out before she had said all of this, but now he felt like he was in a nightmare. Not only was he scared shitless, but now he was beyond confused as well. Nothing that she was saying was adding up, but it was hard to pull out anything to cut her off about, because his head was spinning. It was way too much, way too fast, and the sharp contrast between how he had walked into this conversation and how he felt now, just seconds later, made him want to jump out of the nearest window. She was threatening him with death, apparently some sort of gang assault, the police... he couldn't be blamed for standing there as she yelled at him, frozen.

"What are you talking about?" he repeated again, merely buying a half a second of time to collect his thoughts and allow his brain to sort out what she had just said. "Pajamas? Strip club? Holly?!" Still, he was really just verbalizing the thoughts he was still trying to process in her head. "I don't know who came knocking at your door but it wasn't who I went home with. Her name was Kendall and she lives in Astoria, which is where I'm coming from, so there's no way that she showed up here before I did!" Jordan had heard about girls who were psychopaths, but he had never met one before in real life. He was now convinced that the girl he had just slept with had to have been one, because apparently she was a complete liar. Either that, or Chanel was the psychopath. Maybe they both were; at this point, Jordan was just convinced that he must have done something unspeakable in his last life to be put in this situation right now.

He shook his head, an unsuccessful attempt at shaking the thoughts about how his life was over, if all of this was true, out of his head. "I don't know who Collin is or who's telling you that I stopped at someone's apartment first, but your friend Cara literally watched me talking to this girl and leaving with her, so clearly I'm not the only one who missed all of these signs that you're saying were there!" He bent over to grab his keys, anger fighting against the sheer anxiety that riddled his body, and probably being the only reason why his hands weren't shaking so much that the keys fell again. "She lives with you, right?" he said, referring to Cara. "Go ask her! Bring her out here and see what she says, because I know that wasn't a fucking sixteen year old and if it was, I'm not the only one who didn't notice and if anyone was the one getting her drunk, it was you!"

Now Chanel's head was spinning again. Things were going far too fast for her to be able to stop and process what Jordan said and compare it to her understanding of things. She gripped the roots of her hair, furiously wondering how she even got tangled in all of this and why she had to be hungover in the midst of all of this craziness. As Jordan knelt to grab his keys, Chanel stepped between him and the door and placed her foot on them. "Uh uh," she said. "I'm not done talking to you." Chanel was far too angry and far too deep into this to be able to zoom out and see things more concretely. In this kind of situation, who really would decide to take a step back and compare alibis with the suspected offender. Hearing Cara's name thrown into this, and knowing for sure that Cara wouldn't have even let Holly get near alcohol, was proof enough, but at the end of the day she still didn't know Jordan. Chanel also knew Holly hadn't been at that party because the chances of none of them spotting her was slim to none, especially not if she were there long enough to get drunk; on top of that, Holly herself had asked how the party was. She swore silently to herself and to Cara for not being at her apartment when she actually needed her. Cara's potential involvement did keep her from shoving Jordan again. "Holly wasn't at the party, jackass. You really think any of us wouldn't have noticed her?" Jordan really didn't have enough background knowledge of the group for Chanel's rhetorical question to hold much weight. It was something that was obvious to everyone on the floor, though, that she wasn't used to having to explain the dynamics of things. And even still, you didn't have to live with or near Holly to know she stood out from the crowd. "She woke up in the middle of the night and came outside looking for us, which is where she ran into some guy from the party who got her dressed to go out and get drunk. And she said it was a neighbor. You are literally the only other person there is, so excuse me for not believing a total stranger."

Once again, she cursed her phone for being dead. Obviously if it wasn't, she would have called Cara right then and there. And given that it was 2019, she of course didn't have the girl's number memorized. Chanel stood firmly blocking Jordan's entrance into his apartment, but she wasn't really sure for what. "Cara will not cover for your ass, so you'd better not be lying to me." As Chanel pieced together more and more of what Jordan had set, she was coming to another conclusion, one that she was bittersweet about. She exhaled a peeved and exhausted groan. "And you're telling me you don't have any roommates that you invited?"

Jordan had no idea who this Holly girl was, and at this point, he didn't want to know. She was obviously trouble, very serious trouble that he didn't want to get involved in. He wondered why he had went to that party last night. Clearly, he was destined to be alone. He should have taken Monica cheating on him as a sign and just called it quits for a little while. If he wasn't spending Valentine's Day with someone he loved, he should have just stayed in bed. Should've, would've, could've. "There are how many floors in this building? How do you know she wasn't talking about someone on a different floor? And if some creep really did want to lure a sixteen year old girl into bed with him, why the hell would he tell her he was a neighbor if he actually was one? I'd imagine you'd say that to lure them in, not to be honest!" He had no idea what the story was anymore. A sixteen year old who couldn't count, something about waking up in the middle of the night, someone dressing her? Every aspect of it was weird, but the weirdest part was that he was now somehow included in all of this. He doubted that Chanel even remembered his name, and yet somehow she knew him well enough to accuse him of something so despicable with what was clearly very limited and vague information.

"I'm not some college kid like you guys who has time to fuck around with these kind of accusations," he snapped. "I work, I live here with my little brother, and that's it. No roommates. None of that. I'm sorry that you must've invited some pedophile to your party, and now you're trying to use me as the scapegoat, but I'm not going down for something like that when I Did. Not. Do. It. I know who I slept with, and it wasn't a sixteen year old named Holly."

"And I'm not some man child whose more afraid of 'these kind of accusations' that are rarely ever taken seriously than the actual act itself, so don't try to fucking gaslight me. I am not the one." Jordan might have made another point, but once the fumes were lit, blowing hot air only made things worse with Chanel. "Just like a man to think something like this is limited to age and like you're so much older than me. Grow the fuck up." Chanel was too angry to just let Jordan off the hook, even if things weren't really coming together. His fire matched with hers only made her want to push back even more rather than take a step back. As with anyone that was acting out of a sense of protection, taking a step back was nearly always completely out of the question. "Little brother?" She asked suspiciously. "How little are we talking? Would he be here?" Chanel hit her fist against the door behind her as she gave Jordan a cold look. "Give me your phone too," she said, holding her hand out. "Mine is dead. I'm going to call Cara." ​
 
Yep, this girl was crazy. "The last thing I'm about to do is hand over my phone to some random girl who's accusing me of something so messed up," he said, a look of disgust on his face. "I'll call her," he insisted, though he didn't actually want to do that. Not because he thought that she was going to speak against him, since he was literally just telling the truth, but more because it was awkward and this entire situation was insane.

He bent over, taking his key from the floor now that Chanel had stepped off of it. He glared at her as she banged against his door, but as he placed the key in the hand that had been extended for the phone, he calmed down (just a smidge), because he decided that this was all ridiculous. She was ridiculous, all hyped up over something that didn't even happen, and he would be just as ridiculous if he continued to feed into it. "And while we're at it, calling witnesses to the stand, bring this Holly girl out here, too," he said, his voice indicating now that he was taking the situation less seriously. He didn't care if it angered the girl more. In fact, he almost hoped it did. How dare she accuse him of something like that and then berate him for being angry about it?

As the apartment door swung open, Jordan barged inside. In the midst of the mayhem, he didn't even take into consideration that it was 10 AM on a Friday, which meant that Sam was at school. Or should have been. His brother had texted him just a little while ago saying he had stayed home because he wasn't feeling well, but Jordan hadn't seen the text. "Sam!" he shouted, only a few steps in the door. He didn't slam the door in Chanel's face or anything, mostly because he knew she wasn't going to let him, but also because he felt like she deserved to see for herself just how dumb she sounded. "Get out here!"

He walked past the pair of female shoes that sat neatly next to the doorway, having been left there by Sam just minutes ago since he knew they were Holly's despite her claiming that they weren't. A shower had ton him loads of good, and he had just finished getting dressed when his brother's voice startled him from the other side of the apartment. With a toothbrush in his mouth, he stepped into the hallway, and then into the living room. "What's up?" he asked, his expression quickly transforming from one of curiosity to concern at the sight of his brother's own expression. Jordan looked pissed. Like, really, really pissed. it was an emotion that Sam wasn't used to seeing him wear. He always saw Jordan as being a little too serious for his own good, but he also understood that his brother liked playing the "man of the house" role. It was just how he was. This was different though, and the hot girl who stood a few feet away from him in the doorway complicated the situation even more.

"H-" Sam couldn't even get a "hello" out in her direction before being interrupted/startled by his brother's loud, bordering aggressive voice again.

"So, our lovely neighbor thinks that--" Jordan laughed, the humor stemming from a sarcastic and taunting place, as he stopped himself and looked to Chanel. He typically wasn't so dismissive or condescending, but he had just been accused of assaulting a sixteen year old for no reason. That was, understandably, enough to bring out the worst in him. Turning to Chanel, he waved a hand towards his brother. "What is it that you think I--or we, have done to your made up sixteen year old friend?"

Growing up, Chanel's mother had always told her her pride would be the death of her. As a child, Chanel for one she thought her mother was just being dramatic as any kid would. Then for two, she would always confuse the statement, thinking 'pride' was used for happiness and arrogance. Of course, as she got older she understood, but it still didn't matter to her. Now, though, as she stepped into the apartment of an angry man who she felt (less so than a few seconds ago) done something to her friend, she fully understood what her mother meant. She walked and kept close by the door, her chin remaining parallel to the floor, unwavering, as she quickly scanned the room. It was only then that she saw the pair of women's shoes on the ground. Please don't kill me. Please don't kill me. Please don't kill me. Even Chanel was intrigued by how angry Jordan seemed to be. It wasn't that it didn't make sense. Men and their egos were more fragile than glass, but she also had experience with angry men, and so she instinctively turned into a shell. When Jordan's younger brother emerged, she raised her brow. "Strange that you and Makayla already have so much in common," she said aloud with a crispness to her voice. "I told you about the gaslighting," Chanel said, pulling her eyes away from Sam. As soon as she saw him, she knew what was coming, but she was going to maintain her cool so as not to give Jordan the satisfaction. It really didn't matter one way or the other because Jordan wouldn't be getting any sort of apology out of her. "Do it again, and we can finish this conversation at the station."

By this point, Chanel was really just bluffing. The police station was never the destination, let alone the first stop, when you looked like her. She turned back to Sam, turning her head slightly. Her callous tone shifted to one that was softer and more curious. "Shouldn't you be in school?"

“You really think I can file a report for someone accusing me of sleeping with a sixteen year old?” Jordan said, responding to Chanel’s last comment sarcastically. His agitation levels were visibly high, so much so that it wasn’t until Chanel pointed out Sam’s out of place presence that he considered it to. He looked to his brother then, with more confusion.

“Yeah, well I wasn’t feeling well. Why, what’s going on?” Sam was confused, but growing nervous too. He didn’t know why, because he didn’t think he had done anything wrong, but seeing his brother in such an emotional state was all that was needed to signal that something was wrong.

“Chanel is the neighbor that hosted that party last night,” Jordan explained, taking a few steps closer to Sam but turning so that he wasn’t directly facing either of them, but could spin his head either way to see both of them. “She claims that some sixteen year old friend of hers got drunk with some guy last ni—“ Jordan didn’t even finish his sentence. He didn't need to. Sam’s eyes had widened like a deer in headlights.

“We just went to a party the basketball team was throwing!” he interjected quickly, reading Jordan’s face just as well as Jordan left his. Instinctively, he took a few steps backwards. Not because Jordan was ever violent with him, but just because he was scared. He didn’t think he had done anything wrong in the moment, but now that makeshift adults were apparently angry about it, he felt like he needed to be. “And she didn’t have a phone, or lost it or something, so when we got back and she didn’t have a key to her place I let her stay over, but nothing happened! I swear!”

Jordan clenched his hands together in fists. Chanel’s internal thought about egos was right, because right now Jordan wasn’t mad at Sam for any reason outside of making him look like a complete buffoon. He had just treated Chanel like some dramatic, out of her mind, liar. Her accusations towards him were still wrong, but now that his brother was apparently the culprit, he was equally liable just by association.

Well, that was easy enough. As soon as Chanel saw Sam, Holly's story made sense. Not just the details she gave, but the ones she missed that wouldn't have caused people to think she was kidnapped by some pedophile. For these reasons, Chanel fury dimmed into a stormy calmness. She was confident that it was Sam, but she still wanted to hear his side of things because going to Holly for further details would probably complicate matters since the girl didn't have a sense of the true dangers of reality. "Do you remember her name? Or what outfit you apparently had her wear? Or why you were going to a strip club?"

Sam was still confused, and still nervous. He didn't like the feeling of being grilled by a stranger, but even more, he didn't like the way that his brother was looking daggers straight through his soul. Had this not come out of a stranger's mouth, Sam didn't think that Jordan would have cared about the whole thing. In truth, he hadn't been planning on telling Jordan, but it was only because again, he didn't think that his brother would have cared. So he went out on a school night, made a friend, had a little bit too much to drink, and then let her sleep over. Big deal. Maybe the sleeping over part was a big deal though, now that he thought about it. Had Jordan come home in the middle of the night, he probably would have felt uncomfortable with the idea that there was sixteen year old girl sleeping in the room next door, while he had no idea about it. "Holly," he answered confidently. Had Holly not asked (and seemingly forgot a few minutes later) what his name was ten times during the night, he might not have made such a point about remembering hers, but he had to know it well to tease her about it every time she asked his. "And she wanted to wear that! I mean, like, she was wearing pajamas when I found her and then told me she was going to a strip club and that we wouldn't need fake IDs to get in because her sister works there, so you know, I was down and all. I asked her if she thought they would let her in wearing pajamas and she said no, so we went back to her place and she wanted to play a game where she shut her eyes and I picked clothes out for her, and that was the only thing that seemed club appropriate, you know?" Given the looks on both of their faces, no, they probably didn't know, but they had to have been there. He didn't make her wear that, and even if he had, he didn't see it as being inappropriate. Maybe weather wise. But otherwise, it was fine! He still felt like they were convinced he did something to her, and because he hadn't realized that there was anything off about Holly, he could only assume that they thought that he had slept with her. He wasn't going to admit it, but he was a virgin too, so he definitely would have been celebrating more if that had happened.

"I swear to god I didn't sleep with her. I slept on the floor because she passed out the second she sat down on my bed. I didn't think it was a big deal, seriously." Sam was the one doing the frantic rambling by now, and his eyes searched the room momentarily as if they were searching for an answer to make this right. "Those are her shoes!" he claimed randomly, as if it was helping his case, any. "I mean, I think they are. She wore them there and back but then said they weren't hers and left them here this morning when she left."

"You're dead the second she leaves here, I hope you know that," Jordan said, his glare refusing to waver as he looked at his panicked brother. Sam was right in the idea that Jordan was only really pissed because Sam had allowed his night out to turn into a problem for him. It wasn't the act of it all that bothered him because he wasn't a parent who gave a shit about their kid telling them their every move. He was pissed because he was now having to deal with this, and deal with it in an extreme way at that. "Where does she live? We will go over there and apologize to her parents after I get dressed," Jordan stated, looking back at Chanel. His tone fell within all normal parameters now, a sharp distinction from how he had been talking to her a few minutes ago, but that was only because she was throwing accusations at him now. He was responsible for Sam though, so in a way, her accusations were still justifiable even now.

Chanel raised a brow at Sam's rambling. She wasn't being nearly are sharp as she had been with Jordan, simply because there didn't seem a need to be. Still, she was mildly amused about his retelling because it could only be a story like that with Holly involved. Makayla would still kill her, sure, but Chanel wasn't even really mad. She had been there herself as a teenager, and gotten into some really stupid because of it. At least Holly managed to run into this kind of kid. Chanel walked to the shoes Sam nodded towards, leaning down to pick them up. These definitely weren't Holly's, and anyone who spoke to Holly for five minutes could have known that. But still, she thought as she looked back towards Sam. She could tell this kid wasn't lying. Chanel couldn't explain how anyone could not realize Holly was different, but she wasn't upset about it in this regard. Almost as quickly as she had flipped when she saw Jordan and make the connection that he was the only other reasonable suspect, she returned back to her more cheerful disposition. She wasn't happy by any means, but her face and body relaxed as much as it could. "With me," Chanel said. "Thankfully for your sake her sister isn't home yet. It'll probably be best for you if I spoke to her first. And that's not me trying to make things anymore convoluted. Trust me, it's a courtesy." Chanel's tone wasn't sarcastic, but instead more deprecating, as though her statement was better left trusted than proved in person.

"She should be back soon though. You can stop by later though; we're 5B. And I'll just text you when your chances of you being castrated are in the single digits." Again, she wasn't even trying to be an asshole by this point, and her tone spoke it enough that it probably made Makayla sound like she had mob connections or something crazy. It was well understood that Makayla was tiny, but mighty and it didn't take look to pick up on that. It was why Chanel was very cool in her description of her roommate. There wasn't any need to extrapolate things. They were what they were, and they spoke for themselves. She had no idea what Makayla was going to do, if anything, but if she ended up hanging these two by their balls, she wouldn't have been surprised either. This was certainly a first for her by way of her giving a number out to a guy. And it was even funnier because had Jordan asked last night as a way of making a move, Chanel wouldn't have been too likely to oblige. She walked over towards the two, one arm wrapped around waist. The other resting on that one as she extended her palm and gave a saccharine pout. "You gonna play nice and let me use your phone now?"

Jordan didn't know who Makayla was, so he was relieved when Chanel said that she just lived with the sister and Chanel. He was sure that Chanel was going to drag his name through the mud despite claiming that he was lucky she would get to her first, but either way, this beat having to talk to the girl's parents. Jordan had always tried to be the man of the house and take care of his family, but his family had always just consisted of him, his mother, and his sister. Sam and his father had been around for a while, but that was after Jordan had moved out to attend college, so he never had to worry about the kid. He was letting him stay here to do his mother a favor if anything, and while Sam had never caused a problem like this before, he was immediately now wondering what he had gotten himself into. It was one thing to house Sam, but it was another to have to play his parent when Jordan didn't even feel like an adult himself. "Thank you," he said sincerely, looking Chanel in the eyes as he handed her his phone. What else was there to say? Sorry? Maybe it would feel warranted later after he had time to think the whole situation over. Right now he didn't know who to be angry at.​
 
Roman understood how absolutely useless he was right now. Even if he could fathom what all Brooklyn was going on about, he wouldn't have been able to do anything because he was far too lifted. There were other times where it wouldn't have been a good idea, but he would have been so hyped and out of his mind that he would have overlooked it. Fortunately for all parties involved, this wasn't the current case, and it usually wasn't. When Roman used harder drugs to get high (re: anything that wasn't weed and save for the pain meds he popped like vitamins), he didn't like to use it as some casual thing. He wanted to wring it for all it was good for you, and so he was pretty much always functionally useless. If he wanted anything else, he'd just take his usual things to be numbed out enough to go about his day. He also wasn't usually taken off guard by the extent of his lack of sobriety. Last night was mostly desperation though. He wasn't trying to keep track or anything. In truth, just a couple of lines would have been enough to keep things tolerable, but he'd forgotten how good it felt, and how annoying it was for that feeling to slip away when he was just getting used to it. And after sniffing cocaine every half hour for several hours, it would make sense that twelve hours later he was still off his ass. This was higher than he had anticipated, though ironically intentionally so, but he still wasn't worried. It was more like a pleasant surprise. Like when you come home after a shitty day and realize there are leftovers in the fridge. Or when you come home after a shitty day and are able to find a bottle containing its last three pills.

It was funny, really. He chuckled to himself as he let the water pour from the faucet sink. He knew how crazy he would look standing here right now with water pouring over his hand while he just laughed. That he had to snort all night just to find amusement out of something so fucking stupid. That was hilarious. And to think just a couple of years ago, he was in London, completely detached from reality. Completely ignorant to the ways of the world thanks to his sheltered upbringing and lifestyle. Yet he was somehow closer to reality than he'd ever been, when he was physically an ocean away from all of that, and mentally away from where he stood right now. It was purely comical. He really was fucked up. Chanel was right too. He probably would never stop finding it funny until it was too late and he was choking on his own bile. Which was even funnier because he vividly remembered the moment he told his father he would sooner die than come back home, and that the only way he was returning was in a coffin. Pure gold, he thought to himself as he walked down the hallway, shaking his head as though it was so hilarious unbelievable. This wasn't at all how he saw things turning out, but it made so much sense. The one thing he didn't know; the one thing he couldn't predict was really the only choice. Even as emotionless and muted as he came across, even Roman knew it wasn't healthy to look at the world through such a calculative lens. It was the only one he had though, and so to finally be able to experience through a different, especially with the help of drugs no less...You couldn't make this stuff up.

He closed the door behind him with a smile, still laughing slightly beneath his breath. Roman had actually forgotten about Cara. The only reason he went into the closet then was to grab some clean clothes. Why? For no real reason because it wasn't like he was going anywhere. He was still attempting to act like everything was going as normal, and normally he took a shower and got dressed. Still dazed and in his own mind, enjoying the futility of everything up to this point and finding it quite hilarious, he was surprised when he looked up and saw the blonde. "Shit!" He exclaimed, dropping the glass on the floor. "Fuckkk." For a second, he sounded like his regular self. The annoyance came back as he craned his head back and rolled his eyes, but as he knelt to pick up the glass, it was funny again. Also because it was pretty funny to find Cara of all people in his closet. He managed to stop laughing long enough to peer back up at her and said, "Not that it's not nice to see you, but what are you still doing in here?"​
 
"And thank you for your cooperation, boys." When Chanel was finally in the hallway by herself, she realized she was holding her breath. It couldn't have been, but it felt like she hadn't breathed since she left Roman's place. Now in the vacancy of the hall, she had the ability to just stand there and process and nothing else. She had been trying to process since she found Holly, but it was really just questioning and investigating. Now that things were over--well, as over as they could be until Makayla got back--her mind could wrap around things from beginning to end. And as the adrenaline lowered, she was officially exhausted. She wondered if she had even slept at all last night versus just dozing in a sleep-like state. Plus, she was also thinking she was going to vomit. She did end up heaving some as she walked back to her apartment, but fortunately it didn't pull through. Chanel could feel the juice sitting on her stomach, though; an unpleasant feeling. The sloshiness in her stomach reminded her that she actually hadn't had breakfast. At least she had those sandwiches. She didn't think she had it in her to whip up anything.

Fuck, she thought to herself when she finally made the realization that she should have had the sandwiches on her person. Chanel considered just going home and eating toast and wallowing, but she was now also reminded of Brooklyn. She didn't know what the girl had ended up doing, but she could only assume it was run into a dead end. Even Chanel knew well enough that Brooklyn wasn't the type to just come to a stop on her own. At least not without dramatics. It felt necessary to tie up any loose ends, and it was just courteous to make sure no one still thought Holly was harmed. She would have stopped at Brooklyn's place instead of Roman's, but since she had to get the food anyway, and since that was where Brooklyn had initially headed from, she figured she would just make a stop there. ​
 
God, it felt nice to be back in his own bed. Nick's bed wasn't anything special, but it felt like it last night. Brooklyn had bought him a new mattress a year or so ago, but that was only for her own benefit since she slept over so often. His blankets were thin, as he often found himself feeling overheated, and his pillows were flat and lifeless. It was a fair representation of most of his possessions, really. His room was scarcely decorated. Nothing hung on the walls, he had a dresser, a bed, a night stand, a closet, and that was really it. He didn't have any need for a desk so he never bought one, he didn't have any need for an arm chair so he never bought one, and so on. There were things that he splurged on. He had dropped $2,000 on a Supreme hoodie once, as a celebratory act after pushing some fake Xanax pills off on tourists he'd never see again. He had shoes that had led him to needing to borrow money from Brooklyn to pay his rent. There were things here and there that he spent way too much money on, that he later realized he spent was too much money on, and that oddly, he didn't really care about. He didn't consider himself to be big on fashion. He wasn't brand-obsessed. Sometimes he just felt like spending money on stupid shit, and that's what he did. He never got those same urges to spend his money on logical things like a new mattress, a new bath rug, etc., so they just never happened. Thankfully, Roman was a pretty neat roommate, so household things like that got taken care of. It wasn't that Nick was dirty or messy, either. Lazy was probably the best fitting word, though he would deny that.

Coming home after being gone for a few days brought a feeling of comfort in its own right, but coming home after feeling like he had destroyed a relationship, only to find out that she wanted to sleep with him on sight brought feeling nice to a whole new level, both physically and mentally. The "physically" part was a good reminder of why he and Brooklyn had stayed together for so long. They weren't good in a lot of ways, but sex was one thing that they knew how to do right. It had hit the spot so well, that even being woken up to florescent lights beaming down on his face didn't bother him. In fact, as soon as he heard Brooklyn's voice, a sleepy smile appeared on his face, and though his eyes remained closed for a few seconds as he adjusted to being awake, he rolled over towards the sound of her voice. "Wanna order in? I'm starving" It couldn't have surprised many people that the first thing on Nick's mind upon waking up would be food. Aside from smoking, eating consumed much of his days, and despite being lean, Nick ate like there was no tomorrow. He could eat anything, really, and being high most of the time didn't help that.

"I think Roman already did," Brooklyn answered, momentarily side tracked as she watched Nick for a moment. She hated how natural this felt because she knew that it was never going to work. She wanted it to, even if she wouldn't admit that right now to anyone, but it wouldn't. It couldn't. And what a fool she would look like for taking him back after how he spoke to her and acted towards her (and towards Collin, but she didn't care about him right now), in front of everyone. The Collin thing was a whole different issue, one that Brooklyn still felt strongly about because Nick was wrong in so many ways, but as most people probably were, she was more consumed with how the problem directly affected her than with how it affected him at the moment. Her comment about the food came with little thought behind it. She had pieced together the smell of the food in the kitchen while talking to Roman, but didn't realize that Chanel had been the one to carry the sandwiches in minutes ago. If Roman had ordered in food, he sure as hell had better have ordered enough for at least her to, or else he was about to hear it from her (and lose whatever he had ordered from himself).

"But I need you to get up," she said, getting herself back on track. "Some guy drugged Holly and slept with her last night and I need you to take care of him," she explained, pulling the blanket off of him as if that would speed up the process. By now, Brooklyn was convinced that this was the story that Chanel had told her, even if she had actually put her own, more intense, spin on it.

"Okay, okay." Nick didn't know what he was saying okay to, as he said it. It was more of a gut reaction to the urgency that Brooklyn's request seemed to demand, given that she was one step away from tugging him out of bed. As he sat up and eventually got to his feet, the words that had been spoken clicked to their meaning, and he looked over at her in confusion. "Wait, what? Holly? Our Holly?" Nick didn't really like Holly. He wasn't a fan of kids because he didn't know how to relate with them, or what to do with them. Some of them could be broken by just picking them up the wrong way and others could whip toys at you from across the room with the strength of ten men. They were loud and annoying and from what he heard, cost a lot of money. Holly wasn't a normal kid, but she was more of a kid than she was a teenager, and her energy overwhelmed Nick. He was never mean to her, and sometimes he even got a kick out of how obsessed she was with Brooklyn, but he didn't know how to interact with her in any sort of meaningful way. Even with that being said, Nick would gladly knock someone out for just looking at the kid the wrong way. If she was the epitome of annoying, she was also the epitome of innocence and youth... something that he wished he had been able to hang onto, himself, for longer than he had. No one was going to walk in and take that away from a kid who probably deserved to hold onto it for as long as she wanted. Considering all of that, hearing that someone drugged and slept with her had him ready to kill.

Someone who had only seen Nick recently would think that violence was his natural state of being, from all of this, but it couldn't have been farther from the truth. His temper wasn't short and 99% of the time, he was zoned out, in his own world, and ready to go with the flow of whatever life threw at him. He didn't get bothered by much and even when he was bothered, he usually could seclude himself or take a hit before any sort of annoyance or anger showed on the outside. He didn't like being angry, but he also didn't like people messing with the few people that he cared about. "Who is he? I'll blow that motherfucker's head right off, I swear to god." Brooklyn didn't even have to ask -- Nick was on his stomach in half a second, sliding under his bed and ruffling around until he reemerged with a Glock 19. It was loaded, ready to go. He had only had to use it four times in the past three years that he'd had it (with only three of those actually hitting a target), but better safe than sorry. He was already wearing sweatpants, so he only had to toss on a t-shirt, and tuck the gun into his waistband. If he could beat the guy up with his bear hands and ensure that he spent the rest of his days eating through a straw, he'd save the bullets. If not, well... karma.

"We're not sure. Chanel told me, so we're trying to figure it out because Makayla's MIA, probably dead." Even though her plan had been to tell Nick to get his gun, she was caught off guard when he pulled it out without her even asking him to. She knew he had it, of course, but she always felt uncomfortable seeing it. She didn't think he would ever use it on her, obviously, but still, it was unsettling. She didn't grow up in an environment where things like this were normal or commonplace, and seeing it reminded her of how serious its consequences were. If Nick went out there to do the right thing, he was absolutely going to end up in jail then. Absolutely. He'd have a murder charge on him, on top of an assault charge, only making him seem like more of a problem to society. At the same time, someone like this mystery man deserved this. She'd help him hide the body. They could be out of the state in just an hour or so. "Don't use that unless I tell you to," she requested, a look of uncertainty on her face as her eyes followed his form as he got dressed.

"I won't."

They headed into the hallway just in time to hear Roman's door shut, and before they got farther than the kitchen, there was a knock at the door. Brooklyn looked over at Nick, waving him to wait in the kitchen, as she went to answer it. "Did you find him?" It was Chanel on the other side, and because she wasn't processing that Nick was still technically supposed to be in hiding, and not hanging around in the open before she knew that Collin was going to drop the charges, she didn't hesitate to open the door widely to allow the girl to come in. "And you don't look good," she added, more of a Brooklyn comment than one out of sheer concern. "You really should get more sleep. Dark circles don't look good on anyone."

Thinking that the sandwiches were Roman's, Nick helped himself to one of them. He needed some fuel if he was really going to be demolishing someone's face in a few minutes.​
 
"Neither does getting back with your ex after he shoved you to the ground," Chanel said. Even though Cara had mentioned his arrival, she still didn't expect to see Nick standing in the flesh. And just moving normally as ever. Maybe it was just strange to her because she felt strange right now due to the hangover and it being a strange morning. The adrenaline from her encounter with Jordan was so strong that it made the side effects from last night feel even stronger now that she had calmed down. Her snappy retort likely implied otherwise, but she wasn't feeling like herself. Well, this really was more of her usual self and it was coming out because the cheerful, pleasant Chanel was the conscious effort. This was her with her guard down and nothing left to lose. "It's good to see you nonetheless," she said, looking back to Brooklyn before doing a double take once she realized Nick was eating her sandwiches. "I was actually coming back to get the food I left. And hoping I would run into you. Yes," she said in response to Brooklyn's initial question. She stepped past Brooklyn to go inside and headed towards the counter. Although she had just stated that Nick was eating her food, she slid another sandwich towards him. She didn't need all of these, plus she knew Nick didn't have a quaint appetite. She didn't really know that many men that did. "But it's nothing to bring the Hulk out for."

She wasn't even sure where to start. Usually Chanel was good with giving detailed and verbose monologues. The way she was feeling now, she was afraid to say much of anything. There was no telling if her words would be interrupted by her queasy stomach. "I thought it was Jordan from last night. Turns out it was his little brother who's Holly's age. I didn't even have to make him confess. He just gave it all up, knew Holly's name. Then, probably unknowingly, his recount of the story was very much only something that Holly fit into. I'm leaving the rest up to Makayla whenever she decides to get back." Chanel didn't know how long Brooklyn had been back. Long enough to unsuccessfully scope out Collin and get Nick. That seemed like enough time to try and reach out to the girl. "Did you try getting in touch with Makayla? Or Collin? I hope not with him, at least. I doubt I can convince Roman to throw another banger if you managed to make him change his mind in all of a morning. You two must really be something special to have him do something like that. Especially you." She looked towards Brooklyn, eyed her up and down, but not in a way to size her up. There was a small, but pleasant grin on her face as she recounted just how Roman was able to get Chanel to agree to help him out. She wasn't sure if Brooklyn knew or not, but she hoped she did. She thought it was cute regardless, even if the whole trio's dynamic made no sense to her. They were clearly thick as thieves and seemed to have been for quite some time, as they were already tight when Chanel arrived to this complex. It was far more than she had now or had ever had in the past. They had to be doing something right. "I've never even been able to pull a smile out of the guy."​
 
Holly had always enjoyed playing with water. One of the few perks about her upbringing was that she was raised in an area that wasn't surrounded with lakes, and rivers, or even just backyard swimming pools, because she absolutely, without a doubt, would have wandered away from home and drowned in one of them as a child. She had learned to swim when she was seven or eight, but would torture Makayla into bringing her to the nearest swimming pool during the summer. As a toddler, her mother would often leave her in the bath for hours (clearly, great parenting) because unlike how she was on dry land, Holly could sit in there and play for hours and hours and hours. Even to this day, she sometimes laughed just at the sight of water coming out of the sink faucet when she went to wash her hands. There was something about the stimuli that water brought that was fascinating and calming to her body and mind. By now, Makayla had gotten on her enough about taking long showers when they shared a bathroom with a roommate that she knew not to take up too much time, but knowing not to do something, and actually not doing it, were two different things. As with most things, Holly wasn't being defiant, but rather, her brain just couldn't prioritize information well enough for her to realize when she was doing something she was told not to do. Today's shower probably could have been at least an hour and a half to two hours long simply because she was showering in Chanel's bathroom. There were so many new things to see, and touch, and smell that Holly didn't know where to start!

Surprisingly, she hadn't even been in the shower for ten minutes before she reemerged. In her hand was a bottle of shampoo, the other clutching the towel that she had wrapped around her body. "Chanel, I have a question!" she called out, prancing out of Chanel's bedroom when she realized that she wasn't back yet. A few feet away, she heard the sound of her own shower running, and she was quick to knock on the door. The few seconds of running had her head feeling woozy, but she tried to ignore it because now Makayla was back! Her brain told her that that was fun, that it was a good thing, which only further spoke to her poor thought process. Any kid who had just spent the night drunk and at a stranger's house without telling their parent (or in this case, sister), would probably be terrified to face the wrath that waited for them. Holly's brain was very bad at sensing danger, so nothing would have suggested to her that she was about to walk into hell, had it actually been Makayla showering. "Makayla! I have a question!" she declared loudly, continuing to knock insistently on the door. She wanted to know when she was supposed to use the shampoo. Holly could read that it said shampoo, and she could read that other bottles said conditioner, body wash, etc. but she didn't know what order they went in. No matter how many times Makayla told her to wash her hair before putting conditioner in it, once in the shower, Holly was never able to remember. By now, they had resorted to a system where Makayla would right a huge "1" or "2" on the bottles in Sharpie, which made things easier.​
 
"You're an idiot," Cara hissed, the second Roman opened the closet door. She had been standing in there for only a couple of minutes, but it had felt like at least an hour. It didn't smell as bad in there as she would have thought, but she managed to convince herself that holding her breath for as long as possible was necessary, only before brushing against a particularly soft garment hanging behind her and convincing herself that it was some sort of rodent jumping onto her. By the time that Roman opened the door, she was overheating and freaking out, and the way that he had to go and make a scene upon opening it only irked her more. He was so, so, so, so, so stupid. Cara wasn't worried about him attracting any unwanted attention since she was sure that Chanel had left by then, but his stupidity bothered her nonetheless. She felt like he was wasting her time and especially now when she was set on going home, showering, and recovering from the night before, every second felt one hundred times longer than it actually was.

"I'm leaving," she stated, stepping over him and brushing herself off theatrically as if she had just walked through a dust and bug ridden jungle. "So either tell me that no one is out there and I'm safe to leave, or be prepared to sit in jail with Nick after I tell everyone that I just escaped after you drugged and tied me up in here all night," she finished, rummaging around for a few seconds before finding her phone, and grabbing her phone from under his bed sheets. It wasn't an appropriate thing to threaten, but anyone who knew Cara knew that you couldn't put anything above her. While many people she had encountered in her life, especially when she was younger, would claim that she was manipulative and conniving and good at stabbing people in the back, it wasn't really her thing anymore. She was still capable of doing all of those things, but she cared so much less now about being sneaky about it and saving face that she was much more direct in her care-free ability to be ruthless. ​
 
Roman didn't know why all the girls were in a bad mood today. Or was it just him? Any other time he couldn't fathom not being eternally annoyed by even minor things, but today it was difficult for him to comprehend what there was to be negative about. That in turn really only made it all the more comical. Typically, he didn't enjoy feeling like he didn't know something, simply because he had been groomed to believe that he was inherently better than everyone and yet that he had to prove it. No one was after his brain, and now that he wasn't a child that was just going along with whatever he was told it shouldn't have still been such a thing for him, but it was. He was still quite territorial about his perceived knowledge. Feeling out of the loop and completely out of touch as to what was going on would have driven him mad any other time, but fortunately he was high enough that it actually tickled him. He wasn't sure why Cara's moodiness (which wasn't really moodiness; he just couldn't hold a train of thought) made him grin, and he wasn't sure what she was so upset about to begin with, but that whole whirlwind was pleasant for him.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Roman said, trying to match her tone, but the lightness to it made it sound more mocking than serious. "You're the one taking the piss because Chanel talked to Collin and he's dropping the charges." Perhaps last night if Cara had asked twenty minutes later than she actually did regarding Roman's generosity, she wouldn't be in this predicament because she probably wouldn't have slept with him. As was evident to just about anyone, Roman twelve hours ago was no where near as relaxed as he was now. Never mind the fact that that was not at all what Chanel had told him. She had simply mentioned that everything was handled and he didn't have anything to worry about. Which was really perfect timing because he was then able to actually enjoy the rest of the night and even his morning, despite the fact that everyone seemed to be having a different experience on the latter. "And you're the one taking the piss again because I'm the drugged one here, not you," he said, pressing his thumb to his chest. "I bet if you could persuade my best friend to sleep with my brother to get him to change his mind, and the only caveat was having a threesome and waking up high the next morning, you probably wouldn't be in such a piss mood, innit?" Roman returned back to what he really had no business doing in his current state, and worked intensely to focus on the shards of glass on the floor so that he could pick them up. Even with being high and with it being glass, he was being unnecessarily cautious. Regardless, he would wind up with a cut hand before this was all over. "But Chanel left a minute ago and Brooklyn's back in her room shagging Nick."​
 
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Brooklyn had to smirk when Chanel fired a retort back at her. She could appreciate someone who could hold their own in a conversation, especially when she consistently thought of Chanel as being the type to go home and cry about anything said about her. She didn't appreciate what the retort revolved around, and Nick would probably pay for that later, but she was more fixated on Chanel for the moment. She managed to avoid interrupting as Chanel explained what she had discovered, and Brooklyn paused momentarily to process it. The guy being a teenage kid made things a little bit better, but Brooklyn had been a teenager once too, and those boys could be just as scummy as men. It didn't take a rocket scientist to realize that Holly wasn't normal, so she still took issue with the fact that this boy had apparently gotten her drunk and slept with her, and she couldn't realize why Chanel was so relaxed about it. Maybe if she had seen Sam for himself, with that innocent little face and flustered responses, she would have felt similarly, but for now, she remained skeptical. However, she remained tight-lipped as she watched Chanel come inside to fetch her food, that Nick had already begun eating, at Brooklyn's direction. She still didn't remember Chanel coming in with them, but now knowing that they were hers and not Roman's made the sight of Nick eating them all the more satisfying. Brooklyn knew that it was sick to think this way, getting pleasure out of other people's stress, but she couldn't help it. If she didn't get to be happy, nobody did - or at least that seemed to be the mentality she was stuck in.

"Yeah, most people just gravitate to me because of my sparkling personality," she offered Chanel, knowingly adding a sarcastic tint to the tone as she tilted her head slightly to smile at her. "But, no." Oh yeah, Makayla... Trying to contact Makayla probably should have been Step 1 before trying to kill the perpetrator, but Brooklyn had forgotten about it in the moment. She looked at her phone then, scrolling through texts until she found the one from Makayla from the day before. "Oh yeah..." she said, a remnant of a guilty smile appearing on her face as she re-read the text from yesterday. "Makayla did tell me yesterday that she was going to be gone overnight. Someone in her family died and she left the city, but she said Holly would be fine for the night." So, Makayla hadn't killed herself. That was one less thing to worry about it (though Brooklyn wasn't really worrying about it or her in general, to begin with). "I wonder what she was smoking when she thought that Holly would be fine for the night alone," Brooklyn pondered, leaving the doorway area to enter the kitchen where Chanel and Nick were. She walked past them and towards the fridge, glancing inside of it longingly. The sight inside was a disappointment, as it always was. Returning to her cup of coffee that was now lukewarm at best, she took a sip. "Well, I hope you have fun taking care of her until Makayla gets back. On the bright side, she already lost her virginity on the first night on your watch, so you can't do much worse moving forward."​
 
After running the shower for a few seconds, standing outside of it as she waited for the water to heat up, Ruby changed the course of her plans. She deserved a nice, hot bath, some lavender candles, and a glass of red wine, all at once. While the bath was filling, she got the wine and candles in order, and just before she heard a knock at the door, she had finished pouring bath salts into the filling tub. She was surprised to hear Holly's voice, especially since she appeared to think that it was Makayla who was in the room. She hadn't seen Makayla since getting Holly, and she also hadn't seen (or heard) Holly. The voice caught her off guard, but Ruby was quick to open the door, eager to redirect the child to wherever her sister was.

"Hi, my love," she smiled. "It's just me in here; not Makayla." Holly was wrapped in a bath towel, wet, holding a bottle of shampoo in her hands. It took Ruby a moment to realize that it had to have been her who was showering in Chanel's bathroom, and not actually Chanel, since she shared this bathroom with Holly. She didn't have much time to think about it, but it took less than a second to realize that that was odd in itself. Chanel's bathroom was attached to her bedroom, so it went without saying that it would take blatant effort to opt to use that one instead of her own. That shower had been running before Ruby got home, too, so it wasn't like Holly decided to do it because Ruby was using their bathroom, and it wasn't like Makayla would have ever let her do that even if that was the case. "I can help you though, what's going on? Are you taking a shower in Chanel's room?" she asked, stepping out of the bathroom and taking a quick glance down the hallway. She was surprised that Makayla hadn't poked her head out of whatever room Ruby was convinced she was in. The girl was always on top of taking care of whatever Holly needed, it seemed.​
 
Once Nick realized that it was Chanel at the door, and not someone who he needed to kill, he pretty much zoned out. The sandwich had been wrapped in tin foil, ensuring that it was still warm by the time he bit into it, and it hit the spot. He enjoyed it so much that he wasn't even about to start asking questions about why Roman was apparently in a good enough mood to be buying them all breakfast, especially after throwing such a party. A party that... by a quick glimpse of the space around him... hadn't been cleaned up after. Nick would probably volunteer to do it later, since it was his fault that the mess was here to begin with, but it only added to the curiosity around how Roman could be in a good mood. Ah, wait -- he had kept someone over all night. Nick remembered hearing them going at it when he had gotten up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. That made sense, and even if it didn't... well, this sandwich was still good.

He only tuned into the conversation when Chanel took the bag of sandwiches away, offering him one more as she claimed they were actually hers. She didn't seem to mind that he was eating one, so he offered her a smile and a thumbs up, merely because his mouth and other hand were too busy with the food to give her anything more. He probably should have been embarrassed, knowing that she had witnessed him how she had witnessed him the other day, but he actually didn't even remember, at the moment, that she had been there. Because of all of the adrenaline, most of the event had been blacked out. He remembered Collin and Brooklyn being there, but the rest was fuzzy, and he wanted to keep it that way. "I owe you," he said eventually, once his mouth was empty, as he imitated himself smoking a joint, to signal to her what he meant, before tuning back out of their girl talk to focus on his sandwich again.​
 
"It smells nice," was the first thing that left Holly's mouth once the bathroom door opened. She was surprised to see Ruby standing before her instead of her sister, but she was more intrigued by what was happening behind Ruby in the bathroom. There were candles lit, the bath tub was full and bubbly, and as she stated, it smelled very nice. Holly's personality was strong, and if she was anything, it was resilient. In the moment, it definitely would have been difficult to sense that she wasn't feeling well. A sick Holly was usually an upset one; she would be clingy, emotional, and have a more blunted affect. She wasn't usually the type to complain about being sick in a direct sense, but it was still typically pretty clear by the shift in her demeanor. The Tylenol had helped some, so it deserved some credit, but she still didn't feel great. Even if she hadn't had all of that alcohol, sleep was imperative to her functioning level, and she had barely gotten any of it the night before. However, with all of her sensations being stimulated by something that seemed so intriguing to her, she seemed near enough to her bubbly self in the moment that it may have been hard to notice anything being off. "What in the world is going on in here?!" she asked, followed by laughter as she invited herself into the room. Ruby's questions went in one ear and out the other as she set Chanel's shampoo down on the counter and dipped her hand in the bath water, just to laugh at how the bubbles felt.

"In the movie 'Because of Winn Dixie', the girl gives Winn Dixie a bath in a little pool in her backyard," Holly explained. "And she spiked his hair up to look like a Mohawk." The giggles that followed would have suggested that she had just delivered an epic punchline. Her ability to amuse herself with even the slightest things was characteristic of Holly, and probably aided in her resiliency. She had been through a lot in her life and in most of the situations she had lived through, there was nothing to laugh at. Not on the surface level anyway. It took appreciating the little things and finding amusement in them to feel any sort of pleasure, and while her life was far better now than it had ever been, what might have begun as a defense mechanism had now grown into an aspect of her personality. "Maybe instead of taking a bath you can hang out with me," she suggested, her focus shifting when she realized how cold she was, standing around wet in just a towel. "I don't feel good today so I don't have to go to school." To Holly, not feeling well that was the moral of the very wild story that she opted not to tell. Not because she felt the need to hide it, but merely again because Holly's brain didn't prioritize information in the way that most people's did. Explaining why she didn't feel well might have been useful in a situation like this given the nature of it, but it didn't seem important to her.​
 
Chanel blinked at Nick, simply trying to come to any sort of understanding as to how men were so... Nick was pretty chill, but if he really brushed off what Roman did for him that easily, she didn't have much to say. Maybe he wasn't paying attention, but as she looked around the apartment, now realizing that it virtually didn't look like one at the moment, she couldn't find anything that would beg his attention. Still, it was strange for him to not react to Brooklyn's fairy tale about what happened regarding Holly. Maybe he was just super stoned but didn't look it. To be fair, though, she always assumed Nick was at least a little bit buzzed. "Don't worry about it," Chanel said. "You can just repay me by keeping your hands to yourself from now on. I'm persuasive, but I'm no fairy godmother.

"That makes sense, though--about Makayla. I mean, I'm sure she won't be happy when I tell her what happened with Holly, but I won't bug her about it until she gets back if she's dealing with that." The last thing Makayla probably needed right now was for Chanel to call her about how her baby sister went out by herself with some stranger and got drunk, and was now home from school hungover. It was quite the tall no matter how you spun, but it was doubly alarming because it was Holly who was involved. A simple punishment, like being grounded, probably wasn't as straight forward with Holly. Or maybe to Makayla it was such a big fuck up that it was that simple. From Chanel's perspective, she only knew that she wouldn't know what to do in the situation, so she would sympathize with that. "And no one slept with anybody last night. Except for maybe you two." She grabbed one of the sandwiches from the counter and extended her arm towards Brooklyn. "She'll be back though. She wouldn't just leave Holly like that. So don't say anything to her about last night. Especially not regarding Holly and her virginity." She curled her lips into a frown and shuddered. Still, it was a dark day when even Holly had more action than she did. She knew Holly would have been traumatized if anything sexual happened, but Chanel still slept completely alone. No boy in her bed, on her floor, or on her couch. No boy in sight. Considering how wildly drunk she been the night before, though, she was actually quite okay with that end result. "I'll be back later to help with...this." Chanel waved her arm in a circle counter clockwise, motion towards the rest of the apartment. "My head should be done imploding before long." She could really use some weed right now, and she almost doubled back on what she had said to Nick so that she could get some right now, but she remembered she had the bag he left for a couple of weeks ago. But it wasn't at apartment. Damnit. She would be the one to blackout and not know how or when she got back to her place, but somehow remember where she left her weed.

"Well, I will leave you three to it then, assuming I don't need to do anymore damage control."​
 
"How long had you known about the two of them?" Nick's question came from out of the blue, and it only took a few seconds for him to realize that. In a way, he was thinking out loud. He wasn't sure if he had meant to ask Chanel that question, especially with Brooklyn right here, and especially on her way out. He genuinely wasn't asking with any malicious intent. The question had just crossed his mind, and he was too curious to not ask. It had been Chanel who had told him the other afternoon, hadn't it been? She and Makayla were blending together in his mind (and not because they were similar in any way, just because his brain had been too hyped up to keep anything straight), but he was almost certain that it had come out of Chanel's mouth that Collin had slept with Brooklyn. It wouldn't be proper to call Chanel just one of his clients, because she wasn't that. Even if they weren't friends in the way that he was friends with Roman, they still counted as being friends in Nick's mind. He had a lot of clients that he was friendly with, and a lot of clients that he smoked with, but make no mistake -- they weren't smoking free weed with him. They were smoking their own weed, and were often just stupidly friendly enough to offer Nick some, despite knowing that he obviously had enough to supplement his own habit if he needed it. Chanel was pretty, but that too wasn't enough to warrant occasional handouts because Nick wasn't looking for someone to sleep with (and by now, he knew all the girls on this floor were trouble, Brooklyn included). He felt like they were friends of sorts, and he smoked with her occasionally enough that he was curious if she had just found out that afternoon too. He still didn't know when Brooklyn had slept with Collin, and even though part of him didn't want to know because the mere thought of it infuriated him, there was also a part of him that did want to know... for closure (that he didn't deserve), maybe.

Maybe he did have an anger problem. He wasn't feeling fiery red right now, and in fact, he casually took another bite of the sandwich after clarifying, "Her and Collin. You know, how long had you known about what you told me?". Even if anger wasn't the emotion that was festering on the surface, he was clearly digging for something to rile himself up over, even if he didn't consciously realize it. No one wanted to think of themselves as being a monster. Being hard and tough, protective and territorial... that was one thing. But had Nick been shown a video of what he had looked like, and how vicious he had acted, he would have been sick to his stomach. He never had any abusive people in his life where seeing that would trigger him, but he would only be able to imagine how startling his behavior would have been to someone who had seen violent people like that before. There was nothing loving, or admirable, or cool about that kind of violence for a reason like this one.

Brooklyn wasn't his property. Nick knew that. It just felt too personal. For most of their relationship, one of Brooklyn's biggest complaints about him had been that he wasn't going anywhere in life. He was lazy, always stoned, directionless, and so on. One day she wanted them to get their own apartment! She wanted to go on nice vacations! Have a baby! Get married! Move to the suburbs and buy one of those white picket fence houses, and before long, Nick was going to end up driving a minivan, wearing a suit to some shitty office job that he hated, moving a front lawn, pretending to enjoy the next door neighbors when Brooklyn would invite them over for dinner...... No fucking way! Obviously, at some point Nick's mind got carried away and jumped to where it believed Brooklyn's requests would land him, and he wanted no part of that. It was too much pressure. There was nothing worse than pressure. Nick didn't necessarily want to do nothing with his life, but he didn't want to be pressured into doing anything either. It just wasn't him. He needed to grow up a bit, that was for sure, but for the past few years he had been battling with that inner (and sometimes outer) conflict of knowing that he wasn't good enough by Brooklyn's standards.

And then you get a guy like Collin. A good looking kid, nothing really special, but none of that matters because what does he got that you don't got? Money. And lots of it. Nick didn't even know the full extent of it, but he remembered one night years ago, before he and Brooklyn moved into Cara's place, they had googled her just for shits and giggles, and somehow Brooklyn's FBI level stalking skills landed them on her dad. He wasn't just some off the grid rich guy. He had a Wikipedia page. He was on the Forbes website. He was a fucking boss. He wasn't famous or anything; Nick wouldn't recognize him if he walked down the street, but that shit didn't matter. The only thing that mattered in this world if you wanted to be anyone was money. It didn't matter that Collin was a little bitch. He was rich and maybe Brooklyn would look past that for now, but as she always told Nick, she wasn't going to wait around forever for him to get his shit together. Nick would have been angry had she slept with anyone, but his reaction wouldn't have come close to that. Collin didn't deserve it and it wasn't his fault that Nick had this conflict that indirectly involved him, but unfortunately, Nick wasn't a deep enough thinker this week, and could still justify what he did as being right.​
 
Even if Ruby was used to Holly's quirkiness, it was still hard to suppress a look of surprise whenever she opened up her mouth and something so odd or inappropriate came out. While the case load that Ruby took on in the present didn't contain any patients with severe illnesses, she had worked with patients from both ends of the spectrum of severity throughout her schooling. There were certain types of disorders where even if patients differed in certain aspects, they were still pretty standard. People in manic states were a good example of that - a lot of the times, the things that they were so hyper vigilantly focused on differed in terms of content, but the behavior was all of the same. You could spot them from a mile away and know exactly what was on, what meds they were prescribed (and were probably not taking). Even though patients like that could sometimes be alarming from a clinical standpoint, there was also comfort in knowing what you were dealing with. While more difficult and obscure patients were intriguing, at least for Ruby, there was also that challenge of being scared of getting it wrong. If she saw someone like Holly in the clinical setting, she would absolutely have been baffled. There were certain aspects of her persona that pointed to clear diagnoses, like ADHD and some form of a learning disability. The rest of her was so... Ruby couldn't even put a word to it. While Holly was obviously quite child-like, she didn't seem to be regressing, and she also didn't seem to be child-like in a massively destructive way. At her age, it was destructive in the sense of appropriate formation social relationships, but she wasn't someone that you would look at and believe to be mentally ill based on it.

When Holly had willingly volunteered that she had been born addicted to drugs, it only complicated Ruby's process of mentally figuring her out even more. When you started to throw physical disabilities into the mix, everything got ten times harder because then it became nearly impossible to figure out what was a symptom of a mental disorder, and what was a symptom of the physical disorder (at least in Ruby's position where she obviously wasn't reading Holly's chart). Ruby didn't know much about Holly's upbringing, and while she didn't think that Holly would mind talking about it since she had volunteered information about it before, Ruby never asked as much as she wanted to. The only reason was Makayla. She knew that Makayla was sharp, and even if her intentions were pure in wanting to know more about what had created Holly, she also had enough tact to know that in this case, it would seem like she was trying to pry for dirt or something to gawk over. She didn't want Makayla to feel any more uncomfortable than she thought she already felt around her, and that was okay. Ruby could respect boundaries, even if she was curious.

Her smile appeared only as a response to how silly Holly was, apparently fascinated by Ruby drawing herself a bath and wanting to relax for a little while. She watched as the girl touched the bubbles, consumed by the setting for a few moments, despite being wet and only clad in a towel herself. Most people probably wouldn't realize it, but Holly was probably one of the most interesting people in the entire city. She existed within her own world, and within reality, seemingly dancing on the borderline 24/7 but in a way that didn't come across as being delusional, just innocent. It had to be a coping mechanism for something, the psych-minded part of her declared.

As much as Ruby wanted to just soak, sip her wine, and mellow out for a bit, she couldn't say that now. Not only was Holly sweet enough that Ruby would always feel bad rejecting her, but once she mentioned that she wasn't feeling well, Ruby's maternal side flipped on and she wrapped an arm around Holly's wet back to lead her out of the bathroom. "Of course, I would love to hang out with you," she said, leading Holly towards she and Makayla's bedroom. She assumed that Holly had finished showering since she looked wet and clean, and was speaking about hanging out. "Why don't you get dressed, and then we can relax for a little?" she began, following up with "And what part of your body isn't feeling good? Did Makayla think you should visit your doctor to get checked out?"​
 
Just as Roman was wondering why all the girls were being crabby, Chanel was wondering why all the guys she was running into were determined to give her an aneurysm. She didn't even know what Nick was talking about at first. Not only was the initial question quite vague, but Chanel had almost completely forgotten what sparked Nick's outburst in the first place. His actions were so far off base from what everyone knew him to be on top of the fact that neither she or Makayla could have anticipated Nick to behave in such a way at the information. Even that day when he stormed out, the pair were left confused. Chanel's brain turning inside out certainly didn't help the matter, but even if that wasn't the case, she still would have been left with a headache trying to understand what Nick was talking about. Brooklyn was able to catch on quick than she was though.

Brooklyn’s head snapped back towards Nick when she heard what he was asking. Was he for fucking real? The look on her face probably spelled out the disgust she felt. It was already embarrassing to be seen the morning after with a guy who had shoved you and acted like a maniac in public days earlier. To have him open his stupid mouth and CONFIRM that he was still in that mindset was mortifying. It may not have been for most people, but Brooklyn liked having an independent and strong reputation, and that was slipping out of grasp way too quickly for comfort. “What the fuck does that matter to you? You stupid fucking men thinking women owe you something... get a grip and grow up.”

When he did end up following up with more clarification, she was virtually no better off. Instead of being confused, she was simply shocked. It didn't register on her face because any sudden movements were sure to make her vomit, and she had expended all her adrenaline on Jordan and his brother. Still, she could feel the warmth in her face and arms as she inhaled deeply and swallowed the saltiness in her mouth. She, too, considered Nick to be a pal, but not by any great circumstance. If you asked her to, she could make the case that she and Roman were friends. Before this morning, she would have even considered Jordan to be a friend simply because they lived on the same floor and were at the same party. She actually really liked Nick. Honestly for no other reason that the fact that he was incredibly hot. He was nice as well, and chill to hang out with, but even for excitable Chanel, she wouldn't view just anyone in such an endearing way, especially a guy, unless they looked like Nick. As she gazed at him, now, she didn't see that though. Perhaps she wasn't just shocked to see him in person, but she was just shocked that this was what he looked like. And he looked different. Nothing physically had changed, but she quite literally couldn't view him the same. She still wasn't sure if he had completely ignored the conversation she had just had with Brooklyn or not, but either or it wasn't a good look on his part. Because if he did ignore it, to only interject when it was related to him was just as alarming as him hearing the conversation and steering it back to something completely unrelated.

In truth, she wanted to tell Nick to kiss her ass. To ask him how dare he. She studied him for a second, quite curiously, as he took another bite into his sandwich. And as she watched him chew, she cracked a warm grin. It was a genuine and not at all ominous. She would have looked the same as she always did around Nick, although her doting nature towards him were vacant from her eyes. "Wow," she cooed in just under a whisper, a low giggle beneath her breath. "Truly unbelievable." She looked towards Brooklyn, confusion now on her face. She was hearing this, wasn't she? Chanel wasn't at all concerned about Brooklyn being upset with her. Her head space wasn't there, and she was really too out of it for it to be there. Even if that wasn't an issue, Chanel wouldn't have been able to care about Brooklyn's potential upset enough to not address Nick. "You could have killed him. You literally pushed her to the ground. You and Roman were going to fight. And you...?" She wasn't trying to deflect by putting everything on Nick, but the thing was she didn't need to deflect. There really wasn't any room to. This was all on him. Chanel keeping her mouth closed wouldn't have prevented Nick from being who he had apparently been this entire time. "I want you to know," she said calmly. "That I don't have to answer that question for many reasons. The main one being that the room is spinning and my head is about to explode, so I really don't want to use the energy to. But it doesn't seem like anyone is going to check you, so I'll power through for your sake. The answer to your question is I don't know. And I'm not going to stand here and try to think on it because, you know what? It doesn't matter. I don't even know if there was or is or ever will be a them. But let's say there was. Let's say there was a them for six months and I knew since the beginning. You still did what you did, and it was disgusting. If I had known you were going to do any of that, I quite honestly would have kept it to myself. I wipe my hands of you and all of this, but I guarantee that if you two did get back together and I see you with another girl, I will be going straight to this one over here." She nodded towards Brooklyn. "And just as a heads up, Collin will be talking to you shortly." Chanel turned her head to face Nick. "And he will continue to live here, and you will continue to deal with it. Because I'm not doing this again. Roman did this for her, first of all. And that's the only reason I agreed because after what you did to her, it was personal."

Chanel was quite pleased at how poised she had remained. She really wanted a slew of swears to be sprinkled in, and she really wanted to yell. But this was really all she had energy for. She might end up regretting it later, as this would have been the second time in the first hour of her day that she had 'slipped' from the happy-go-lucky Chanel she was known for and was working to become. Going into further detail about why it was personal, and why Nick should have been doubly grateful for all of this would have been helpful, but Chanel wasn't going to deliver her vulnerabilities like that. It still hadn't settle in her memory that she had done so with Collin the night before. "I'm sorry if that was rude, but I really have to vomit and so I just don't have time for stupid questions right now. If you have a problem with me for anything I just said, you," she pointed her hand towards Nick. "Can eat it. And you," she said, her hand pointing towards Brooklyn now. "Can hit me up sometime tomorrow when I'm actually a functioning human being. I'll be back later to help clean up. Please don't bother me before then."

And with that, she walked through the kitchen and out the door, closing it silently behind her. She walked to her apartment with her eyes closed as she was saying a desperate prayer to the Lord, and also one to her body to please wait just 30 more seconds before it decided to cave. When Chanel entered her apartment, she began to head towards Makayla and Holly's bathroom, since she knew her own was occupied. She happened to come across the girl and her other roommate instead though. "Oh, oh. I'm sorry. She's home sick today, so I was watching her. I just had to step out for a second. Is everything okay?" Chanel smiled towards Holly, the girl's sweetness really being the only good thing that she had come across this morning. But even the girl's innocent energy wasn't enough to hold Chanel's stomach at bay any longer. She squeezed her body some as her stomach tightened--a warning. "Sorry, just give me one second." She left the two girls in the hallway as she did a fast-paced walk, almost jog, to her bathroom.​
 
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Friday, June 7th, 2019 | 6:00 PM
Location: The Forrester's Summer Home (Exterior | Interior)
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The winter had felt especially long and cold this year, and yet spring had managed to fly by in what felt like half a second. Collin had finished his classes, spent a lot of time working for his father, and for the most part, felt like he had had a productive few months. Summer was the breather that he needed. He was still working for his father (more than he wanted to be, honestly), but he couldn't complain. Very few kids his age could say that they were working for the largest hedge fund company in the world, and that they could do no wrong there, as their father was the head of the company. It was one of the privileges that Collin had that he was very conscious of, because there was no way to not be of something like that. He wasn't treated like a king or anything, and he didn't walk in and get his own office, but he could come and go as he pleased, shadow on any project, and he didn't have to kiss anyone's ass. Collin still wasn't sure what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, but going into the family business was beginning to seem like an option that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

As a child, most of Collin's summers were spent in the Hamptons. He and Cara would go out with their nanny, and their father would stop by on the weekends (which didn't feel strange to Collin, given that that was just how their relationship with their father had been). The memories from here were good; Collin played on a local summer tennis league, he learned to surf, and was friends with a lot of the other neighborhood kids who had summer houses in the area. Their home was situated on a pristine four acres of oceanfront property and they had everything that they needed there to have fun.

Every year, for as long as Collin could remember, his father would host a party for his employees at their summer home, too. It was his way of saying thank you, he always told them, and while everything always seemed cooler as a kid, Collin wasn't wrong back then that it looked like everyone had fun. Though he and Cara were often assured up to bed by the time that the sun set, Collin still was aware of how loudly the music played and how many garbage bags filled with empty alcohol containers would be picked up by the sanitation department the next morning. Interestingly, most years than not, his father left before the end of the night anyway to return to the city, so he couldn't blame people for taking advantage of a welcomed opportunity to have fun. After working at his dad's company for a few months, he understood firsthand how stressful the industry could be and even though the employees were paid well, he could see why people often burned out in the industry young. The pressure was nearly tangible when there was billions of dollars on the line.

Collin was hopeful that today wouldn't be able stress, or pressure, or any of that. He had made friends at his father's company (though, he understandably sometimes wondered if they were his friends for self-indulgent reasons), he was in the mood to drink, and eat good food. He had only arrived at his summer home this morning, as he had been working at the office all week, but he was already settled in, had spent some time on the beach, and was now showered, dressed, and ready to enjoy himself. He hadn't even seen Chanel or Cara, who he knew had been spending some time out here this week, though it wasn't shocking given the size of the property and just how busy it had been in the house this morning getting everything set up outside. The company had hired a bunch of cars to drive out any interested employees from the city, and many of them were now arriving, he figured, as he noticed from his bedroom window how the lawns and outdoor spaces were filling up with movement. He emerged just as the party was beginning to pick up life. One of his co-workers, Viv was one of the first people he spotted when he made it outside.

"Look who made it," Collin grinned as he walked up beside her, cutting a few of the people waiting behind her to get a drink from one of the bartender stations that were scattered across the property.​
 
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Outfit // Outfit
Even for Cara, it was hard to be in a bad mood after spending all day at the beach. The weather had been perfect today; not too hot, with a nice breeze that made laying out as relaxing as it could be. She had taken a few dips into the ocean and pool, read some of current book she was into, had a lovely lunch with Chanel, and sipped cocktails as she got ready for the evening. Like her brother, she felt like tonight was going to be fun. There were going to be so many people present that being in the same vicinity as her father and stepmother didn't feel stifling, and in her defense, she had managed to have a civil breakfast with them this morning without a hitch. Whether the rest of the weekend was going to go calmly was yet to be determined, as Cara was now minutely regretting extending the invitation to a bunch of people who lived in her apartment building. In fact, "extending the invitation" was a bit of a stretch. She had told Holly that she could come, merely because the girl had asked and Cara figured that there was no way that she would be able to get out here on her own. The sweet spot that Holly held in Cara's heart worked in the girl's favor because that single invite had turned into Cara extending it to Ruby and Makayla, and then somehow it was decided that Brooklyn, Nick, Jordan, and Sam were coming as well. Space wasn't the issue, given that between the two houses on their property, there were over twenty bedrooms, but the people were the issue. It was no secret that Cara wasn't friendly to everyone, and while things had mellowed out on the floor over the past few months, she merely didn't want to deal with the responsibility of having to host people, nonetheless people who were troublemakers. It was impossible to say no to Holly though, especially given that this would only be the second vacation that she would take in her life, and the first one where she would be able to play in the ocean. That revelation had been shocking to Cara; even more so than her finding out that Holly had never been to Disney before their trip, and she had probed the idea that it must be considered some form of neglect with Ruby before being told that it wasn't. The guilt (and in Cara's head, her sheer kindness) made one thing spiral into another, and here they were.

"Okay?" Ruby had just called Cara to let her know that she had just arrived with Makayla and Holly, and though she was in a good mood, it was apparent that she was still Cara by her response. Did they want her to roll out the red carpet for them? Did they not realize tons of other people were pouring onto the property, too? "You can come in... do you not know how to use a door?" Her tone wasn't as rude as it could have been, but that was only because some of her energy was being focused on examining her reflection in her mirror as she spun around to check out all angles.

Ruby was glad that she hadn't put the call on speakerphone because she knew that Makayla already felt uncomfortable with this trip. She had expressed that she didn't like the idea of continuously being in debt to Cara, especially since she had been hanging out with Holly recently, but given Holly's excitement, she had agreed to the trip. Ruby was glad; she knew that Makayla needed a break from the stressors of life. The girl worked so hard every day taking care of Holly that she never took a moment for herself. It was interesting to see just how far Ruby and Makayla's relationship had come over a span of a few months. No one would have guessed that they would have been as close as they were now, with the most surprised probably being the two of them. Granted, no one knew that the two of them were dating. Makayla justified it as preferring to be a private person, and Ruby had been okay with keeping it a secret for that reason. She wasn't a very showy person either, but admittedly, she did have her days where she wondered whether Makayla was embarrassed of being with her, and that was why she didn't want anyone to know. She often attributed those thoughts to her tendency to overthink and left it at that, but they never truly went away.

In an effort to ensure that the girls didn't think anything was up, Ruby held in her sigh and smiled, as if the conversation she was having with Cara was pleasant. "Okay, see you in a few," she chirped, before hanging up the call. She was used to Cara's Cara-ness by now, even if it still somehow caught her by surprise that an adult could behave so petulantly. Then again, taking one glimpse at the estate they had arrived in front of was all it took to realize why Cara acted like this. Before hopping out of the car, Ruby texted Alice, her friend, who also happened to be Cara's stepmother. She had given the blonde the benefit of the doubt in an attempt to allow her to be helpful, but if she wasn't going to be, then Ruby would overstep her and reach out to the Forrester that she actually liked. Unsurprisingly, by the time that they had gotten out of the car and brought their luggage towards the front of the house (only to be intercepted by house staff who insisted on taking care of the luggage), Alice had responded saying that their rooms were ready and that one of the staff members would take them there, as she was caught up in a conversation outside. "So, Cara said that she's super excited that we're finally here and that we can make ourselves comfortable upstairs before going out to see what's going on outside," she said, her tone more geared towards Holly as she looked towards the younger girl, before glancing over at Makayla with a reassuringly positive look.

​
 
Roman never really welcomed curiosity, even as a kid. It seemed strange, especially considering that kids were naturally quite inquisitive about the world. Then given that by the time most kids his age were still babbling over what few words they could hardly even pronounce, he was able to do mental math most adults couldn't even do, it was all the more odd sounding that he didn't ponder about anything. Roman, like any child, was curious in his own right. He just liked knowing things, and the more that his intellect was praised, the more he wanted to know, albeit for the wrong reasons. He wasn't wondering about quantum theory when he was five. Just because he solve derivatives in his head didn't mean it brought any joy to him, just like any child. In fact, even though he liked it, it was so second nature to him that it was quite underwhelming. Naturally, he wondered what else there was to know. And many of them were quite normal. Like when the earth's birthday was, and where its heart was. Then, inevitably, the thin threshold between his juvenile questions and the rest of his mind was crossed. If plants grew because they were alive, and plants came from the earth, how could it have no heartbeat? Even a five year old couldn't fully grasp the meaning of 4 billion years, but few would count their own heartbeats per minute to map out a theory on how many of their own heartbeats equaled one earth heartbeat. And even fewer would choose to determine how many earth heartbeats it would taken before he was a dead old man.

To Roman, that was not curiosity though. Because whenever he did have an 'earth's heartbeat' moment, where his question converted into intellectualizing everything, even his mind couldn't handle its own complexity and he would break down into a fit. The truth was that he was actually a very confused child, and he simply needed to make sense of it, just as any child would. The thing was that he didn't do it quite the same way as other kids his age, and even if his brain was mentally light years ahead of people three times his age, his brain was still physically that of a child and it could only take but so much. He liked knowing things, even now, but he hated being surprised, and he gradually learned to associate that with being imaginative. And as he got older, he found less and less of a reason to question anything at all. Things that didn't make sense to anyone else, made sense to him, and for some reason that made him special. That was simply who he was, and so he was always self-assured in where he should be because he excelled at everything and he was raised to believe in an us versus them mentality, where everyone else was beneath him, simply borrowing his space. There was no need to wonder or question why; things were simply how they meant to be. He couldn't explain why he knew the things he did, or why it made sense in the way that it made sense to breathe, but he had learned to not dig deeper.

How, then, he was able to manage up to now was beyond him. Typically, the answer would have been what it was for anything: why he was happy, why he was tired, why he was numb, why he was in pain, why he was sick... Drugs. But he had been clean from them since he started working for Cara and Collin's father. There was no back and forth, no struggle. He just quit cold turkey. The only reason he was successful was due to his stubbornness and determination at his refusal to fail at anything. He had to prove something, not to himself, but to his aunt, and to everyone else who would have had no clue he was proving anything to them. He knew he didn't have a problem, and his ability to stop so easily proved it. In all honesty, the start of everything was a ride itself. It was a whirlwind enough that it made sense he couldn't fathom how it was June already. Looking back on it, it almost like he was in full out survival mode. Simply moving without questioning it; running without looking behind. There was no reason he should have been doing so well, but that was part of the thrill of it. But as he was quite familiar with, the best highs had the worst crashes. Inevitably, his body caught up with him and there was a period where he was confident he was sleep walking the entire time. It didn't bother him any; he was just incredibly fatigued, even though his mind wasn't, which only made the exhaustion worse. And even if it didn't bother him, there was a small worry in his mind that he was going to end up relapsing. Even stranger, he didn't want. Not just because he didn't want to feel like a failure, but because he didn't want to go back to that version of himself. Just like the initial roller coaster of things that seemed to blaze by in a blink, Roman was sure that down period would have been the same if he didn't end up having to vocalize any of it out loud. But there was one night Cara was over. She didn't need to be, especially since his brain had finally reached the point of needing to sleep, but he wanted to see her. The thing was, being on the verge of passing out when a girl you liked was over gave off the vibe that weren't in the mood, which was only more confusing when you were the one who invited her over in the first place. In response to her frustration, Roman ended up explaining why exactly he was nearly a zombie. He never spoke with anyone about his usage, at least not in a serious manner. Looking back on it, Roman was pretty sure the only reason why he didn't relapse was because of that moment he had to get everything off his chest. That still didn't explain how he had functioned up to this point, and how he was functioning now.

It was strange for him to question his place and his ability to succeed, but in all honesty he felt like a fraud with his polite laughs and oddly pleasant conversation he was having with someone about rugby. He wasn't interested in rugby at all, but upon hearing his accent, the man he was talking to, who just happened to be really into the sport, had launched into an entire dialogue about it. There was no reason for him to feel like this, especially now. This was quite familiar to him. So familiar, in fact, it felt a little creepy. Like he was living in the past again, which was certainly no solace when he was already certain he wasn't progressing at all in any facet of his life. It was like an itch that needed to be scratch; that need to just wonder why? Why was he standing here with the daughter of a potential investor hanging onto his arm instead of being strung out in the shower? It was, however, an itch that he knew would only end up in an 'earth's heartbeat' moment. He was confident he would come apart if he left his mind wonder, and so he tried hard to find ways to quiet his mind, but it was a skill he was not well versed in when it didn't come from an orange bottle. "I didn't know you were so passionate about rugby," Alessandra teased as she led him to the pool. It, too, was strange, Roman thought to himself as he shot Ale a playful wink, that he was uneasy doing this, especially because she actually was pretty nice, even if she was way more physically doting than he would he like. For most people with an average set of morals, fraternizing with the daughter of a potential investor in the company you worked for would have been mildly uncomfortable to say the least, and oddly enough, Roman was in that camp. If this had been before he left home, that wouldn't have been the case though. He pinched his tongue between his teeth as if to physically silence his mind from adding that to the list of things he was questioning.

"England's really not as interesting as you lot seem to think it to be." He followed her lead as she tugged him by the hand to sit beside her on one of the pool chairs. "I guess that would explain why you're so boring."

"I mean, I do like it out here a bit aways from the heart of the festivities. I guess you're a plus too."

"Shut up!" Ale nudged him with her shoulder, her head resting on his own for a second. Roman glanced back towards the house, not to scope out an escape, but just to make sure her parents weren't nearby. He needed to keep her happy, but he also needed to be professional as well, and he didn't think getting super cozy in front of everybody adhered to those standards. "Would you stop freaking out? My dad's in the main house."

"Easy for you to say," Roman snorted. "You didn't see the look he gave me." It was hard to not be forgiving towards Ale, though. The intel he had been given was that she had never had a boyfriend, which was marvelously unbelievable to him still since she was really pretty, but her affectionate ways and excitability made it make sense more and more each time. There was also the fact that it was difficult for Roman to receive something he was so unfamiliar with, and the fact that he still didn't understand how anyone could really be genuinely interested in him; another reason he felt like a fraud. He furrowed his brows at her, trying weakly to stop the grin from appearing on his face as Ale laughed. "What?" He chuckled nervously.

"You're just funny without even knowing it. Buuttt," she sang, squeezing his hand. "That's why I like you. Well, that among other things."​
 
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