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Dite's Decadent Delights, Thursday

It was Emma's last shift at Dite's for the summer, so she was perched on a stool behind the counter, glasses on, running the numbers for the shop. Longhand, of course, since Emma always found numbers soothing.

But the ledger was being marked with red and black and blue ink, neat columns lining up to give Karla (and Dite) a detailed history of the summer, as well as a few potential inventory and financial forecasts based on item popularity and island demographics.

Dite's was open, and Auntie Emma is in the house.

[OOC: Dite's is open, and it's Emma's last post in Fandom for awhile! Thread with Jack will be chronologically last.]

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If you don't want her commentary, but why wouldn't you?

Tell Auntie Emma what you need, darlings.

What Jack needed -- or at least wanted rather badly -- was for her to decide Johns Hopkins was as good a school as Empire State so she would stay on the island with him.

This seemed unlikely. So he steeled himself and went to visit her at work, grinning when he spotted what she was doing. He had light mental shields up; not enough to arouse her curiosity, just enough to keep this conversation from getting overly messy.

"Am I interrupting important math?"

Johns Hopkins had been under consideration, especially if she had gone the route of the sciences and genetics as the major instead of the minor, but Empire State's human development program was better, alas.

...that didn't mean Emma wouldn't try and sneak into classes if/when she visited Jack.

"My pretties," Emma cooed, petting the edges of her ledger absently. "Theoretical forecast maths for the store. Just to keep in practice."

Emma, most people didn't find that sort of thing fun, fyi.

"Don't tell me you're here to stock up, Mr. Priest. Although we do have some nice erotica photography books coming in next week..."

Jack snorted a laugh. "Thanks, but I think I can handle my own pornography purchases."

He was a considerate quasiboyfriend that way.

"I wanted to see you," he added. "We've been" -- awkward around each other? -- "so busy this month. I was hoping we could have lunch before you're off to the great world, without Kaidan or Ronan offering commentary."

Edited 2012-08-23 15:59 (UTC)

Yes, well, he kinda-sorta-maybe-but-maybe-not resented her for the other her leaving him in jail, and she kinda-sorta-maybe-but-maybe-not resented him for the other-him getting killed in such a stupid way. Sometimes it resulted in awkward.

But Jack would have to forgive Emma a moment as she blinked at him, pulled out of her numerical reverie. Yes, they were together and everything and Emma did adore him, but they so rarely did date-type of things that an actual request for a private lunch instead of it just happening caught her off-guard.

A delighted smile spread across her face. "Why darling, I'd be delighted to."

Jack sometimes forgot how much little gestures meant, and her reaction made him mentally chide himself for that stupidity.

He grinned sheepishly. "Fantastic," he said, then there was a pause as Jack realized he perhaps hadn't planned this as well as he could have. "I hadn't packed anything, but we can go out if you can tear yourself away from the ledgers, or I could call someone to deliver. What do you want?"

"Call for delivery, and we can go have a picnic outside once it arrives?" Emma suggested, pausing only to blow on her ink to make sure it was dry before she tried shutting her ledger. "In the park, or down by the beach?"

"I like the park better," Jack decided. "The sand gets in your food, at the beach."

He took his phone out of his pocket. "Is Ching Tai okay?"

"Sounds lovely to me," she agreed. "You make the choices, darling, and we can share everything? I'm just going to tidy the counter and put the books back in the office quick. Then we can wait outside by the cock for lunch."

"Someday you should really get around to naming that thing," Jack advised, but he was already pulling his phone out as he bobbed his head in agreement with her plan. "All right. I'll be there."

By the time she finished up, he'd be by the rooster, order placed and ready for the picnic.

Karla needed her very best friends to stop leaving the island. But she would settle for just the chance to say goodbye.

"Kiss kiss," she said, breezing into the shop. She knew better than to think that Emma would buy her light spirits, but she figured she might appreciate them more than caterwauling about what couldn't be changed.

Karla had done a lot of caterwauling recently.

"I appreciate them so much better than caterwauling," Emma said, not yet glancing up from her neat entries into the ledger. "Hullo, darling, just let me finish these two and --"

Half a second later Emma was blowing lightly on the entry to speed-dry the ink. "A very merry unbirthday to you. I've been doing inventory projections for the store."

"Uhhh...happy unbirthday to you, too?" Karla said, still stymied by Emma's comment. "Is that a thing now? That we're doing? Unbirthdays?"

Wouldn't there be a lot of those?

"And how do those projections look? Good enough that I can say 'screw this' and blow it all on hats?"

"Not quite, but they mean I can set-up automatic orders for the basics; condoms, handcuffs, lube, and you won't have to worry about overstock or expiration dates," Emma said proudly. "I'm going to do some for the more popular novelty items as well, and the more expensive stock so it doesn't just sit on the shelves."

"And unbirthdays are a literary reference. How have you been here this long and no one has made you sit down and read the children's classics? Honestly now."

"Ender started me on Shakespeare," Karla said, coming up to the counter and sitting on air so she could rest her elbows onto it. "Any major changes I should brace myself for or ready a hasty explanation for 'Dite, should she decide to drop by?"

"That's because Ender is a Wiggin, and therefore lacks perspective on some of the more whimsical and less manipulative aspects of life, although many of them are actually great subversive works." Emma actually enjoyed Wiggins; Val, Older!Peter, Tiny!Peter... really, the only reason she tended to avoid Ender was, well, Jareth. Not that she'd admit that in a million years.

So, that was almost a compliment? Sort of?

"I'll have to send you a few when I send along the key to my new place." You didn't think Emma had forgotten her promise, did you, Karla? When she had a place not in the dorms, you got a key. "But nothing that will require a hasty explanation, it should be pretty straight forward. I checked inventory movement going back to the store opening, so as long as the trends continue, you should always have stock and never a shortage without overbuying."

"You're the best, Emma," Karla said, grinning with a joy that far transcended the promise of steady stock. "I look forward to the package. And then telling you what I think about the books."

During a visit. To Emma's apartment. That she'd make. With her key.

"Visits that, if I get informed by Morton that you did something stupid, get rescinded," Emma informed her, just as cheerfully. "I will ground you."

To her couch, most likely.

"But I'll even let leave a toothbrush of your very own. It's a studio in Brooklyn, so, not exactly big."

Karla would take it, groundings and all. "I think I will leave a toothbrush there," she decided, even though she could call and vanish things at will. But this way, it made even more obvious that she was there at Emma's very own behest.

And, because she was kindly that way, she'd even let Jack's toothbrush have precedence. But hers came in third!

"Can I help you with security? Shields and traps and those kinds of things?"

"Shields, definately, and traps at the door and windows." Which had bars on them because, well, all Emma's money was tied up in investments and bonds, and she didn't have much left over for rent.

"I picked up a few tricks from Tersa over the summer," Karla said, a wicked smile blooming. "It'll be fun to practice and experiment with a few of those."

"Nothing that can't be explained away, Karla," Emma warned. "I have to live there, and I can not be outed as a mutant.

That gave Karla a moment's pause.

"...I can work within that," she said. "Nothing that can't be explained away. I'll send you my ideas for you to look over and okay before my first visit."

No world ending plz.

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Dite's Decadent Delights, Thursday

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OOC