A Soft Place to Fall?

[st_clare]

She was afraid to go home.

After she threw up, Julianna slipped into a semi-fugue state while the revulsion subsided to a manageable level. It was almost like dozing off, but not quite. Her thoughts wandered far afield while she tried to regain her equilibrium. When she felt that her knees would be able to support her, she got to her feet and left the bathroom. She didn't know how she was going to explain to the people who handled the budget that she needed a new desk.

Her car was the only one left in the faculty lot when she finally made it outside. She dropped her keys twice while trying to unlock the door. When she looked at her watch, it was nearly ten o clock.

She couldn't go home. Not yet.

When she got behind the wheel, the Watcher directed the BMW towards the street, then decided to hit the all-night coffee shop near her complex. The roads were quiet at that hour, and she went on autopilot, deliberately trying not to think. She could still smell that invisible stench.

There was a payphone on the sidewalk in front of the cafe, and Julianna dug some change out of her wallet to drop coins into the slot. She spoke haltingly to the person on the other end of the line, then gave her location. The receiver made a quiet clunking sound when she put it back into place.

The interior of the shop was brightly lit, and the Englishwoman ordered a cup of hot tea at the counter before taking a table situated in a far corner. The tea smelled fragrant, but she didn't really want it.

Comments

[birthright_npc]

Nathan Donovan may have been a lot of things, but stupid was not one of them. The call from Julianna had lacked a certain warmth and familiarity as their previous conversations had, she sounded... terse and as if somebody had pulled her to within an inch of her tolerance. If anything she had sounded strange, almost as though she had seen too much and had little left over for pleasantries and soft remarks. It wasn't like her or at least it wasn't at all like the woman he had thought she was. But then he's no fool and knows all too well that what goes on between them is light, meant to be fun and nothing quite so deep as to be soul searching.

Getting to her location was the easy part, opening the door, not so much. There was something in her tone of voice which had set his alarm bells ringing, but Nathan would rather see the truth of the matter for himself than assume. Assumption was the death of conversation after all. He spied her sitting alone at a table and moved to join her, hands shedding his jacket and eyes searching her expression with nothing short of concern in the depths of them.

"Julianna?" He asked, troubled by the strange look in her eyes and the pale look to her normally vibrant face. "Is everything alright?"