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The bar the Jack's suggested he and Alex meet up at is a little hipster-y, but the booths are pretty private and their drinks are strong. Decent food, too, not that Alex is gonna care about that. He's there early and has grabbed a booth, sitting so he can see the door and sipping on a rum and coke. His hair's tousled semi-stylishly, and he's got a black and grey striped dress shirt worn open over a black tee.
Alex might not be able to drink, at least not without undesired consequences, but she can still show up at the bar to meet up to talk. In fact, she agrees to do so enthusiastically, and she arrives pretty much exactly at the appointed time, sort of fading into everyone's awareness as she reaches the door and pulls it open to step inside. Her hair is wild explosion of curls, untamed tonight, and she's wearing jeans and a leather jacket over a black tee of her own.
As she enters the bar and heads across it toward Jack, who she spots almost immediately, some of the other patrons start giving her nervous glances and shifting uncomfortably. She doesn't have the same effect on Jack, though there's definitely something off and kind of unsettling about the eerie, kind of fae perfection of her features; to ordinary people, the effect seems to be pronounced. She tries to ignore it, for now.
Jack leans out of the booth with a wave and a smile when she walks in, and slides out of his seat to stand. As she gets closer, the scent of an oncoming rainstorm drifts on the air, a little out of place among the food smells. There's a metallic tone that undercuts the otherwise fresh scent - it's faint, but it's pretty easily identifiable as blood.
"Hey. How are you?" Jack offers her a hug, if she seems comfortable, before dropping back down into the booth again.
Alex is a hugger, at least with people who aren't uncomfortable with that, so she returns it warmly. More warmly than some people might expect from the walking dead; she has the Blush of Life going, which means she's generating body heat. "Up and down," she admits with a brilliant smile as she steps back and unslings her laptop bag, which she takes everywhere, before sliding into the booth with it on the inside.
"How about you?" she asks. "I'm glad to get a chance to catch up. It's sometimes weird to run into people from high school, but for some reason... not, so much? With you."
"Yeah, can be really weird sometimes," he nods. "Helps that you know Mearcstapa, I think, at least on my end. I've been..." he takes a drink. "Up and down's about right, yeah. Been a pretty crazy few weeks, but that seems like how life's been going for everyone lately, you know?"
Alex briefly looks like she's wondering if she should or shouldn't say something related to the 'really weird' statement, and then like she decided against it. "The friend of a friend thing definitely helps," she agrees. "Membership in some of the same communities does, too. Solidarity goes a long way." She leans back in her seat and smiles across the table. "I've heard some of the craziness. I was working with Mearcstapa a bit on figuring out what was going on with that odd radio broadcast last week."
Jack nods at the friend-of-a-friend thing. And then raises his eyebrows. "...I don't tend to listen to the radio, even Radio Free...I know he's been busy with a lot of shit, but I don't actually know any of the details." He sits back, looking thoughtful, and takes another sip of his drink. "What was the broadcast?"
Alex seems a little surprised Jack doesn't know, but beyond the momentary surprise she doesn't try to make him feel bad for not knowing. "Someone hijacked the signal," she answers, the tone leaning hard into 'isn't that weird?' territory. "Which shouldn't be possible for something... encrypted... the way RFF is. I ended up getting pulled into a bunch of discussion about what that might mean, with some of the frostier members of our shared community."
"Hijacked...? Shit." He ponders that, his frown deepening. "Yeah that's...that's not something that sounds like it should ever happen. Maybe I oughta listen to RFF more often..." Another drink, and he eyes Alex. "Sounds like the community's welcomed you back, if even those frosty types are pulling you into conversations...?" He trails off, sounding hopeful for her sake.
"Yeah, there's a lot going on there. I've sort of fallen out of the loop for a lot of it, and that's okay. I have..." Alex shrugs, then offers a smile where she touches the tip of a (nomal looking) canine, "plenty of my own trouble to deal with right now, too. I'm in a weird place right now. Still figuring out where I belong." She smiles again. "You seem to have found a place for yourself, though?"
"Eeehhh..." There's a little bit of a grimace, and he shrugs too. "More than I had in high school, that's for sure. Still feels...precarious? I guess? Even if I know it's not, still feels like that. You know? Wish I could help more with any'a your trouble - but Mearcstapa seems like a better fit, there anyway. He's got connections that I don't - and you work in the same field, too." He smiles. "You were into computers back then too, weren't you?"
"I was!" Alex agrees with a nod. "Actually, you know, I started selling some of the software I wrote before I graduated from high school, although looking back at it I'm ashamed that I asked people for money for some of that drek." She laughs softly. "I started publishing some articles around then, too. That's how I got started on the conference circuit, which is where I met Mearcstapa." She tilts her head and says, "you don't seem so sure about things. Anything I might be able to offer some advice on? I can listen with the ear of someone with a totally different perspective, so many that would help. No pressure, though."
"Hey, you had to start somewhere though, right?" He smiles. "Its cool shit that you and he do, not something I'd ever really thought about before. Which...is probably why you have jobs, 'cause most people don't think about this shit." He huffs out a quiet laugh before his face falls a little. "I...mm. I mean...shit's stressful, but...a lot of it's good. Where I am now, I mean. And that doesn't feel like it's gonna last, 'cause the good stuff doesn't tend to. If that makes sense? Guess it doesn't help that the stressful shit is what's kinda threatening the good stuff. Hm." It seems like he had to actually talk this out in order to come to that realization.
"It takes all sorts," Alex answers with a little shrug, but a smile and a glance away that suggest that having her skills be talked about as 'cool shit' means a lot to her. "Ah," she says after a moment, and she nods as her smile subsides a little. "No, I hear you, it feels to me most of the time like nothing lasts." She leans forward to reach a hand across the table in invitation. "Want to know what I keep telling myself that helps, though?"
"At this point, anything helps, I figure." He finishes his drink with a sigh, and leans on the table, resting his cheek on his fist. "HIt me with it."
Alex draws her hand back and shrugs. "I remember that all the bad shit doesn't last either, and new good shit comes along. Sometimes the old good shit comes back, too. Like Mearcstapa coming back into my life."
Jack pauses before he lets out a small breath. "...You've got a point. I always feel like the bad shit lasts so much longer than the good shit, but that may just be 'cause my brain's a fuck, sometimes." He says it with a small laugh, making light of the statement. "It's probably not great to count on things going wrong before they go right, but it's saved me some grief. Not...recently..." He winces again, like he's thinking of something in particular, "but...in general. Easier to move on if you don't get your hopes up." What a depressing statement, coming from a Spring courtier.
"That's how we're wired," Alex says with a shrug. "It's one of the well known biases in people's thoughts; all the bad stuff stands out better than the good. Like..." she considers. "Like the fact that if someone has a conversation with you where they give you seven compliments and one criticism, most people will remember the one criticism long after they've forgotten the compliments. Our brains are all fucks."
"Fucking...monkeys with anxiety," Jack says with a huff of a laugh. "You said...you're still trying to figure your life out? Hasn't been long since...everything, for you. Right?" He gestures vaguely, to indicate her 'everything'.
"It..." Alex looks like she's struggling, just a little, with the topic. "A little bit over a year," she says. "I guess over a year and a half now. But I've only had about six months to start figuring out what it actually means for me. I... didn't get out much before that."
Jack puts a hand out, his forehead creased with concern. "You don't...if you don't wanna you don't have to talk about it. Seriously, you can pretend I never asked." He offers her a smile, a show of his sincerity. "Six months is...no fucking time at all, though, 's no wonder everything's still kinda up in the air."
Alex reaches for the hand, but shrugs. Before saying anything she pauses and then leans to the side to glance out of the booth and around the bar to see how close everyone might be. It turns out that nobody's sitting at any of the tables right around them, big surprise. When she sits straight again she speaks a little more freely. "I spent most of the four years I was missing, including the first year or so that I was what I am, locked up in a cage in someone's basement like a lab rat," she says softly, and more than a little bitterly. "It's not just being what I am I've had to adjust to."
"Jesus..." He breathes the word and winces, squeezing Alex's hand. "That's...nightmarish. I don't...even know what to say, except that. You're safe from the fucker who did it, right?" At that his frown deepens into clear worry for her.
She squeezes back, pressing her lips into a line for a moment at the same time. "It was," she says. "I didn't expect to get out, honestly. Somehow, though, someone found out what he was doing. I still don't know, it doesn't matter. When it was discovered he was executed and I was set free. Someone else who used to be Avowed took me and has been making sure I'm looked after."
"Good." Jack's face clears a little. "No one deserves the shit you went through." He shudders. "Glad you got out, and that you don't have to worry about him. There like...a support group, or anything? For folkx who went through shit like that?"
Alex blinks a couple of times and then lets out a wry laugh and a single word, "Spring? Most of you have gone through similar, but worse."
"Well - yeah, you're not wrong." Jack sniffs in amusement. "But I meant...for all of you. 'Cause sure, we know what it's like to be...owned, like that, but...not all the other shit that goes along with your situation. And honestly...I dunno if I'd say what you went through was better than any of the shit we've gone through. Just different, in a comparable sort of way."
"Hmm.... there's someone whose role is like that, but officially only for her own organization, and it happens to be the same one that Mr. Executed worked for," Alex answers with a wince. "Which isn't to say she condones what he did, I'm sure she doesn't, but they're all scientifically minded. That would appeal to me normally, but that scientific approach happens to also be where I came in. It makes everything weird."
Jack winces in sympathy. "I wonder if there's other folkx who...maybe didn't have the same kinda time, but...who didn't get to where they are 'cause they wanted to. Like...less of a Counselor with a capital C and more of a community, if that makes sense? I don't..." he huffs, seeming to be a little embarrassed, "I don't know a lot about your community, honestly. But maybe there's some people with a simliar sort'a trauma? Not to say that Spring's not a great place to be, too, but it seems like y'oughta have people who know more of the ins and outs of who you are now."
"Honestly, our community is a lot more hands off in a lot of ways," Alex says with a sigh. "Or maybe it feels that way. Although we do have a bit more of a family-oriented system, found family style, rather than blood family. I don't know that there are a lot of us who didn't even want to be what we are in the first place. Some who did, but didn't have it turn out the way they wanted." She thinks a minute before saying, "maybe I should start one."
"Could be a good idea - even if it's a small group, it's better than being alone with it all, isn't it?" Jack gives her a smile. "Might help you...feel like you've got a better handle on your life, too, if you've got something like that."
"Yeah. Or it could just be nice to have other people to talk to about not having signed up for this shit," Alex answers with a sigh. "At least from what everyone keeps telling me, the people who run things in this city are a lot better than in others. Some of the things I hear about other cities sound miserable. Here people are pretty much hands off, so far."
"Either way, absolutely. 'S what support groups are for, right?" He eyes the bartender until he catches their eye, and orders another drink. It's not like there's many people to keep them busy in here anymore.
"Oh yeah? 'S good to hear - and at the very least, sounds like they don't fuck around when people do really messed up shit."
The way that Alex seems to clear a room, even if people don't just immediately run for the exits, is a little uncanny. It's not that the place empties out, it's just that people who are more sensitive to her presence just find excuses to leave, even if they don't realize why they're doing it.
"I suppose it is. I wonder if I can even find enough people to make a group, and not just have a couple of people sitting around bitching." She lets out a soft laugh, then shrugs her shoulders. "Can't hurt to try, I suppose. And yeah, certain things will get the people in charge here to come down on you like a hammer. They seem to otherwise be willing to give people all the rope they need to hang themselves."
"Seems to be the case - Mearcstapa tell you about all the shit with...Ms. Cordray? 'Cause the Sakima's giving her rope, an' also her go-ahead to deal with it, if we gotta." Jack grimaces, and thanks the server who comes over with his drink.
"And honestly, even if it's just a couple people sitting around and bitching, that's still something."
Alex grimaces at the mention of the Cordray name, which is probably plenty of answer on its own. "She tried to hire me," she says. "I haven't told her yes or no yet, but I certainly don't have any plans to work for her. I'm just buying time, at this point, before she gets pissed off again." She pauses long enough to leave a separator between thoughts. "Our society's laws leave people a lot of leeway to do shitty things. And a lot of leeway to respond to them harshly. We do have a law that says that we won't protect people from themselves if they go poking other supernatural societies and provoke an aggressive response, though."
"Yeah she's right on the edge of that. She tried to 'hire' me, too." His smile is more like a grimace. "And decided that threatening shit I care about was the way to go when I declined. I dunno 'f she'll be any less awful to you, if you say no, but...be careful."
"I told her that I wouldn't even consider working for her if she didn't provide me guarantees she'd leave all of you alone," Alex notes with a roll of her eyes, to suggest how much she believes that would actually come to pass. "She complained to me about Mearcstapa doing something to her mind, and wanting remuneration for that, so I told her 'that sounds like a 'you' problem.' She's just determined to make enemies, isn't she?"
Jack coughs into his glass in surprise, and grins as he sets it down. "Well hell, if you get that from her, maybe it means she's turned over a new leaf. Some how I highly doubt it. She's real determined to turn everyone in this town against her, i'm pretty sure." He shakes his head. "Just hope she doesn't try anything really awful. For all our sakes."
"I'd have to actually work for her, which isn't likely to happen," Alex answers with a shake of her head. "Especially not to spy on everyone else on her behalf."
"She just wanted me in her pocket - for whatever fucking reason. Apparently the unions where she's from can be bought." He scoffs, and takes a drink. "Even just talking about her leaves a bad taste in my mouth," he says with a grimace. "What else have you been up to?"
"How do you think I feel? I can't even wash the taste of her name out of mine," Alex answers with a sigh. "Sometimes I wish I could have a drink. I mean, I can, I'll just regret it later. Maybe I will anyway." She eyes the glass in front of Jack, glances toward the bar, but doesn't get up or anything. "Let's change the subject anyway. How'd you end up meeting the rest of your polycule?"
Jack's face eases into a warm smile at her question. "Met Lux at a club - Vertigo?" he pauses, watching her reaction to see if she knows the place. "Kinda...took 'em home on a whim." His smile widens, and a bit of a blush creeps onto his cheeks. "And then kept taking them home, and at some point we realized we should probably have a talk about that. An' Mearcstapa, he was..." The smile falters a touch, and he takes a drink to cover. "He was with Lux, first. Met him through them, and things built from there. Neither of us thought we'd end up dating, I don't think. But here we are." His smile is back. "They're both pretty wonderful."
Alex laughs softly and says, "you have a cute blush. That might explain part of why they wanted to go home with you. I know Vertigo, I think. Isn't that in the gayborhood?" Alex is gay, but she was also 20 when she got kidnapped and now she's a vampire, so she doesn't really know much about the bar and club scene. With more enthusiasm she says, "are you and Mearcstapa actually a thing now? I think last time we talked, that wasn't going on. That's cool!"
That makes him blush still more, and dip his head with an embarrassed sort of smile. "It's in the gayborhood, yeah. Good dancing, lot of us hang out there. And eh...yeah, it's kinda new. But...official enough, it's...it's..." He doesn't seem to have the words, but his smile says a hell of a lot about how much he cares about Mearc.
"It's good," Alex finishes, like she's saying that's enough of an answer for the moment. "I'm genuinely happy for both of you. Mearcstapa has been a really good friend to me, so I'm happy to see him happy, and the fact that you seem so much happier than when I knew you last means more to me than I'd have thought, if someone had mentioned you to me a few months ago." She grins, but then relieves some of that particular embarassment on Jack's part by asking a different question, instead. "Do you still play sax?"
"I've changed a hell of a lot since we saw each other last, yeah," he agrees with a nod and a huff of amusement. "Haven't played since graduation. Still got it though, it's collecting dust in the back of my closet. D'you still play?"
"You have, and I can see how good it has been for you," Alex replies with a wide smile. "I'm glad for you." She nods, but also lifts a hand to make a so-so wobbly gesture. "Not for a few years because, well, obvious reasons. Like not having access to an instrument to play. My parents might have mine, but that's a whole other... thing."
He winces in sympathy. "No chance of reconnection there?"
"Oh, I want to. What do I say, though?" Alex sounds like she's been struggling with this question for a while, based on the frustration in her response. "I can't tell them where I've been for four years. I can't even show up to talk to them except at night. I'll have to make excuses for almost every family event they invite me to. I need to figure out something, though. They lost my brother first, and then me. Gone with not trace."
Jack puts a hand out again, reaching for her arm to give her some tactile support. "That many secrets are hard as fuck to keep. Sometimes I eh...think it might'a been easier, if I hadn't reconnected with my sibling, when I got back. And they're..." He glances around the bar again, "fucking psychic. I don't...I wish I had any advice at all, but I...I don't. It's a shitty situation."
Her other hand comes out to rest on his, taking comfort in the touch. "Yeah, like, if I was Lost I probably wouldn't even be wondering, I'd have done it, but I don't know how I could possibly keep up the facade. My family is very close." She stops and asks, "did Mearcstapa tell you how I ended up Avowed?"
He shakes his head. "He's not one to tell other people's business, like that." But he sure does look curious, as he finishes off his second drink with his eyebrows raised.
"My Brother got Taken," Alex explains quietly, making sure nobody nearby can hear them. Nearby, in this case, not being very near, since nobody wants to come sit near her table if there's somewhere else to sit. "I promised my brother that I would always be there for him when he needed me, so I followed him into the Hedge to try to get him back."
"Oh Alex." Jack's face falls. He looks horrified - and very, very sad. "That's...fuck, life's been a real fuckin' treat for you, hasn't it?"
"Up and down," Alex answers with a more grim tone than when she said it earlier in the conversation. "He's still gone. No Fetch, thank goodness. I'd probably be in jail, if I think about how I was reacting to the situation at the time."
He grimaces, and nods. "Don't blame you. There's a...I mean people escape." He gestures to himself, clearly aware that she knows that. "I dunno if that hope's helpful...?"
"It is. I'm still hoping," Alex agrees with a nod. "I also know that sometimes people come back in a different era than they left, even if it wasn't long for them. The one little silver lining I see so far is that if that happens, maybe I'll still be around to see it."
"I'll hope right along with you. And - I mean you...don't really have to worry about getting old, 'n missing him that way, do you...?" He seems to want to confirm that this particular vampire myth is true. "'Cause that gives you a lot more time."
"I won't die of old age, anyway," Alex confirms with a nod, because it is true. "From everything I hear, though, most of us end up having shorter lives than our previous life expectancy. I gather a lot of that is psychopathic tyrants that come to power in a lot of places, and some of it is just people thinking they're unstoppable now and taking foolish risks."
"You don't strike me as the psychopathic tyrant sort - or the sort to just let someone like that come into power." He smiles at her. "And you don't seem the type to take risks, 'specially if you've got a reason to keep yourself living. Or...un-living?" He says it quetly, and laughs.
"The person in charge here is kind of scary, but it doesn't sound like she's the sort who would end my existence on a whim," Alex agrees, on the tyrant front. "It she was, I'm not sure what I could do about it. I'm a wimp. I'd probably do my best to keep my head way down, and survive."
"Sometimes surviving's all you can do." It's spoken like someone who has an intimate familiarity with what it means to survive in the face of a tyrant. Which, you know. Probably isn't all that surprising.
"I...actually met her, couple weeks ago. Mearcstapa got me a meeting, about the Anna-Marie thing. She's something else, but she seems like she knows her shit, when it comes to being in charge."
That's a surprise, clearly. Alex blinks and asks, "you did? Oh, that makes sense. You know, we basically have a law that says 'don't make us get involved, you won't like what happens if we do'."
"Yeah we basically wanted to confirm that, and make sure we weren't gonna step on anyone's toes. Which she made abundantly clear that we're not." He huffs in amusement. Not that...anything's really happened, since then. Anna-Marie hasn't really made good on any of her threats. Which...I guess is good. Even if I'd like the chance for her to...not be in our lives, ever."
"Same, Jack. Same." Alex lets out a frustrated sigh. "I'm tired of being new at all of this. I'd started feeling like I had things figured out. I'm glad to have friends again, but I still feel awfully lonely a lot of the time." She looks pointedly around them. "People keeping their distance doesn't help with connecting, either. It means a lot that you wanted to meet up."
"I'm always happy to meet up. 'S really really nice to see someone from high school that doesn't wanna make me claw my face off." He takes a drink, and then cocks his head thoughtfully. "You and Lux ever meet up to go find you someone?"
"Eh," Alex says with a small wave of her hand. "We did meet up, and it was useful, in a way, but that's never really satisfying to me. I'm not really a casual fling sort of girl." She laughs and admits, "probably more of the third-date-is-a-uhaul sort, to be honest, not that I've had the chance to actually move in with someone at this point in my life."
"Heh. Me'n Lux were a casual fling and we've somehow still ended up in a third-date-is-a-uhaul kinda situation, so don't think you're safe just 'cause of that." He grins. "I wasn't looking for anything but a hookup, but..."
"Yeah, I suppose you never know," Alex says with an answering grin. "It might be a good idea for me not to bite anyone on a second fling, or they might start getting suspicious, though." She narrows her eyes in thought at that. "'Every time I go home with this spooky hot lady, I feel drained for days'. It's some people's preferred MO, though, so maybe people don't catch on."
"Not gonna lie, I've felt drained for days after nights with Lux, sometimes." He grins and winks, though his flippancy is spoiled just a touch by the blush that creeps onto his cheeks. "But I get what you mean."
Alex laughs, and she herself doesn't blush. Maybe that's because she's undead, but really she just doesn't seem embarrassed. "I'll bet," she says. "They look like the sort to tire someone out, in the best ways. Now imagine that plus missing blood, though."
"Might be...kinda a drawback eventually..." He does seem to be taking the time to think about it. "Sure as hell'd have a hard time functioning, with that extra exhaustion. But like you said, some people're into that sorta shit...?"
"Look around us," Alex says, "at who you don't see, in a bar on a Friday night." Her tone is a little more glum now. "The people who end up willing to go home with me are usually into some sorta shit, anyway."
Jack grimaces, and nods. "Yeah...that something you've talked about to other folkx? I'm sure everyone's kinda got their own way of getting through it, don't they?"
"A little bit," Alex says with a shrug. "People just seem to mostly have ways that, like the way I've been going now, I can do but not like, or they do things I couldn't or wouldn't do."
"Mmm. Fuck, it's shitty that it only works with..." He gestures to the bar around them. "Be easier if you could just...let 'em know in advance, and know they'd be into it. Hell, I'd help you out, if I could."
"Ahhh..." Alex reaches up to scratch a cheek with the tip of a fingernail. "Apparently I can learn to make that work. With time and effort, and a lot of getting sick. As I develop some of my powers, because of what I was before, I'll supposedly be able to learn to get sustenance from harvesting emotions too." She pauses and adds, "and make your harvesting more fruitful."
"Oh, yeah? That's pretty fucking cool. Not the - getting sick part I mean, the...the rest." He spins his drink glass around on the table idly. "Sounds like it might be worth figuring out how to do."
"It probably is. It involves developing some skills that are kind of uncomfortable for me, but it might be worth doing anyway," Alex answers with a sigh. "I don't like manipulating people's emotions, but just because I learn how to do it doesn't mean I need to abuse it, right?"
That gets an emphatic nod. "You get to choose how you wield that shit, absolutely. There's shit I know how to do that makes me squirm - but I know how to do it. And there's people who'll abuse that shit, sure, but you don't gotta be one of 'em."
"Yep, I suppose that's true. And at least some of what I can do is pretty fucking great," Alex admits, offering Jack a wry smile as she does. "Like being able to read odd details about people if I focus on it, or making people just not notice I'm there. Great for dodging creepers."
"Oh yeah, that's a useful thing to have. 'S nice, being invisible sometimes." He takes a sip of his drink, and pulls his phone from his pocket, wincing as he looks at it. "Shit, we've been here for a lot longer than I'd planned - 's a good thing, definitely."
"Really, what time is it?" Alex asks, since she hasn't been paying attention herself. The sun's not coming up any time soon, and that's enough for now. "It might be a good time to wrap up, if it's late. Thanks for buying my drinks tonight, good thing I'm a cheap date," she adds with a grin, since she never ordered anything.
Jack huffs out a soft laugh. "I'll buy your drinks any time. It's getting late, yeah, I gotta get at least a little sleep tonight." He drains his glass and slides out of the booth to stand, opening his arms to offer a hug.
"Lets do this again, though. It was really nice."
Alex slides out of the booth and stands to accept the hug with both arms. "It was nice, and I'd be happy to do it again. Feel free to give me a ring any time. I don't get bothered much by being a third wheel either, or a fourth as the case may be. I enjoy compersion from seeing people I like being happy. But I won't feel bad if you all want alone time when you go out, either."
"I'll keep that in mind. I've been catching up on Mearcstapa's youtube channel, it might be fun to hear you guys talk shop." He gives her a squeeze before stepping back to fish a few bills from his wallet to leave on the table. "I'll see you around."
"I'd love to do a joint video," Alex agrees, "but... there might be problem with that. Like it getting back to my family. I don't know, I'll think about how we might do it." She grabs her laptop bag, opens a pocket to get out a couple of bills, and leaves a tip just because she helped take up a table for forever. "Have a nice night, Jack. Take care."
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