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[handleyourshit]

  


This is Rosita.  I'll hit you back when I can.

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[hippie_ninja]

"I'll make sure anything illegal doesn't get near you," he says softly. That's his biggest concern: that something Jacob was involved in will come around on Rosita, will lose her job or much, much worse.

[handleyourshit]

"He always talked like he needed to protect me." She shakes her head. Fucking Victorians, which is apparently a thing she gets to say now.

"I wish he'd just been more willing to put things on the table. To ask for help. Which, I know, is rich coming from me."

[hippie_ninja]

"You're better at it now." Asking for help. She's asked from him, which is all he can ask, really. She's taken help from Jesus's men.

[handleyourshit]

"Staving off the unending tide of the restless undead will do that for a girl," she chuckles.

"I sent Carver a birthday cake. I apologized for ghosting him."

[hippie_ninja]

"I'm glad. He understood, you know. That you needed time." But he's still glad. Carver showed up and he deserved an apology if not an explanation.

[handleyourshit]

"Need," she says, present tense. She knows that much.

"I figured he might. He - we were both pretty rough. The night before."

Of course, Jesus knows that. He found her crying in her kitchen.

[hippie_ninja]

He knows. His hand rests on her ankle. "Has he been in touch with you since you gave him the cake?"

[handleyourshit]

"Yeah."

She'd had some doubt. She still has some doubt, and she doesn't know what it'll take to dispel it.

"We have... a date." That's what it is, after all, even if neither of them called it that. "Tomorrow night. Just getting a drink."

[hippie_ninja]

"Where are you going?" Because that says a lot about what kind of date it will be. Just a drink could be a lot of things.

[handleyourshit]

"The Wild Pony," she answers. "In the Down."

He said he knew he was inviting her to a western bar. But mostly: "He said it's pretty quiet, mid-week."

[hippie_ninja]

"That Western bar?" He raises an eyebrow. "Like from Texas? Or am I stereotyping?"

[handleyourshit]

"Like from Texas," she chuckles.

"I didn't pick it. He did."

[hippie_ninja]

"Yeah. It's still sharing a little bit of the old world though. Your old world." Which is an intimacy for people like them. "You should go all out. Have fun."

[handleyourshit]

"Mm," she says, noncommittal at first.

"I used to be a party girl. Didn't matter what kind of party - fiestas, rodeos, barbecues, clubs, I loved 'em all. Dallas was a good mix for that. Lots of cowboys, mestizos, soldiers, street racers. All of 'em."

[hippie_ninja]

He can picture it, Rosita moving from party to party as effortlessly as a butterfly moving from flower to flower.

"Might be nice to have a night out like that again."

[handleyourshit]

"Yeah. The only catch is - none of that really mattered, you know?"

She's gone to bars and clubs here, she's invited herself to parties when she needed to not think about other things.

"It's how I get through quota here, too. Doesn't matter. Have some fun, move on."

[hippie_ninja]

"He matters to you. You know where the line is with him now...you know what you can't rely on him for." As painful as that is, few people get to see those boundaries in real time.

"You can still have fun with him."

[handleyourshit]

"I can," she agrees. It's a possibility at least.

"But I'm a bitch, J. I know how I swing when I'm hurt. And I know how easily I let that happen."

[hippie_ninja]

He looks at her steadily. "You're allowed to be hurt. See how it goes. You're never going to get anywhere but where you two are at right now if you don't try, and clearly neither of you like where things are at right now."

[handleyourshit]

"Is that advice you'd be happy to take yourself?" she wonders.

"If you cared more about someone than they do about you, and knowing that pisses you off and tears you up every time you think about it, would you keep going around them just to see what good could be salvaged knowing they'll always be more important to you than you are to them?"

[hippie_ninja]

"I have had to take it. It hurts. It keeps hurting. But for me it was better than just losing them completely." He has no idea if that will be true for her or Carver. There are no good options here.

[handleyourshit]

"That's why I don't want to cut him out of Creekside completely," she admits.

"But having someone as an ally and going on a date with them are two completely different things. You don't see me asking Ezekiel out for a drink."

[hippie_ninja]

"Carol would kill you." But he gets what she's saying. "Did you ask Carver? Or did he ask you?"

[handleyourshit]

"No she wouldn't," Rosita can say with some confidence. She's far too sensible for that.

But anyway: "He asked me. All I said was I did want to see him around again, but it was text, so."

[hippie_ninja]

Well, that's good, at least. If she had asked Carver this would have turned into a different conversation.

"So you said yes," he fills in. "Because you're willing to let him try."